Welcome to the Economy Committee!

Responsible board member: Cerisa van Kesteren, cerisa@dwars.org

As DWARS, we want to move towards a green and social world. Our committee is concerned with how to shape our economy towards this goal. At meetings and get-togethers, we discuss how our economy works and what the areas for improvement are. Out of these discussions often come fun activities and interesting papers, which we use to further shape DWARS's economic policy. This is also a fun way to learn more about the economy together. So you don't need any prior knowledge about this to participate!

We welcome new faces to join the economy committee! 
Are you interested or want to know more about economic-political issues? Then send an email to economie@dwars.org. If you like it, we can put you in the WhatsApp group and/or you can come to the meeting and think along! The meetings are open to members of DWARS, but if you are not yet a member, you are of course welcome to come and watch.

Our next events / meetings

Economy Committee meeting

03 February 2026 DWARS Nationwide 19:30 - 21:15 DWARS Pand, Sint Jacobstraat 12, Utrecht See details
Recent publications

The world is changing rapidly. Globally, the far-right is seizing power and conservatives, liberals and social democrats are actively cooperating or even collaborating with them. At the same time, geopolitical tensions are rising, and with them global investments in ‘defence’. In a series of three articles, we look at how these investments are affecting our well-being, nature and peace, while also looking at alternatives to achieve peace.

Articles can be found on our publication page and on AboutDWARS.

What does a war economy mean for our well-being?

Author: Noor Ypma and Stephan Grootjans

Europe needs to invest substantially more in defence, says von der Leyen, the president of the European Commission, Mark Rutte, the secretary-general of NATO and our own group chairman Frans Timmermans. But what does such a war economy mean for our well-being? This article will look at the specific drawbacks or forgotten negative consequences of investing and deploying military resources. Specifically, this article discusses the ecological damage of the military, the danger of an arms race and where all the money for defence should come from.

Read the article here

The military and imperialism

Author: Stephan Grootjans, Renzo Gort, and Noor Ypma

In the media, society and therefore also within DWARS, there is a lot of talk about our defence and investment in the military. This is often seen as a logical step, given foreign threats and the unstable geopolitical situation. However, the downsides of these investments are barely discussed. By highlighting outcomes of investments in the military in recent history, we want to draw attention to the often-occurring negative consequences of this.

Read the article here

A pacifist alternative to security

Author: Noor Ypma

Peace is an important value of DWARS. In this article, we will first describe a different idea of security, based less on an ‘us against them’ mindset. Then we will look at how we can provide that kind of security, by transforming the army into a people's army and more diplomacy and dialogue in the event of conflict. Finally, we will apply these insights concretely to the ReArm Europe project and answer the question: how can you provide security in a peaceful and non-violent way?

Read the article here

"Ecology without class struggle is gardening."

- Chico Mendes, Brazilian trade union leader and environmental activist
The presidium

We are the presidium (president and secretary) of 2024-2025 and would like to introduce ourselves to you.

Are you interested in economics and would like to possibly join the presidium next year. Then send us an email (economie@dwars.org) for questions.

President

Economy Committee

Noor IJpma

Secretary

Economy Committee

Casper de Kok

Noor IJpma
I really enjoyed the meetings, publications and activities of this Commission last year and wanted to become more active within the Commission. To this end, I have taken on the role of chairman. Besides hoping to publish fun and interesting articles and organise activities together with all of you, I also hope to learn a lot from your experiences with economics or economic topics.

Casper de Kok

Political Consultants

At DWARS, we have a large number of political advisers. They help the national board by providing input on political issues. They also follow the news, listen to debates and advise the board on topical issues.

In addition, the political advisers actively work with their committee. The political advisers this year are Job and Floris. We pull together with them on current issues. For example, we are now working together on a project of ecosocialism, and a project around war economics.

What are we doing now?

This year is all about transposing and deepening what is in DWARS's political programme. Last winter, for instance, we laid down in the programme that DWARS is anti-capitalist and that we want to work towards an alternative system. Our idea is ecosocialism. Together we want to think about what exactly this means for DWARS, but also how ecosocialism can help DWARS in shaping the DWARSe ideals. In addition, this year we will work on decolonising our economic views, including by finding out to what extent our economy is built on (modern) slavery, colonialism and colonial values. We hope to enshrine our results on ecosocialism and decolonisation in the political programme at the summer congress.

Articles
Last period, we also wrote a number of articles again. For instance, we wrote an extensive piece on degrowth and why green growth is totally unfeasible. For those with less time, we also have a opinion piece written about. In addition, in another article we the new pension system explained. For more articles, you can visit our own publication page view.

We are always open to new topics and floors. Even if you don't have an economics background, you are welcome to join the conversation. After all, we are also here to learn from each other!

Activities
Besides these topics, we also discuss current affairs and organise regular activities. For instance, we recently went to an event at Pakhuis De Zwijger on Decolonial Marxism. This dealt with the links between the colonial and communist struggles. Here, there was a particular focus on areas where the Netherlands had historically been influential, namely Suriname, southern Africa, and Indonesia.

 

“Capitalism will not invest in protecting nature or building large infrastructure projects; it is simply not profitable.”
- Kohei Saito, Japanese philosopher

Ecosocialism: our alternative to capitalism

Author: Noor Ypma, Renzo Gort, and Stephan Grootjans
Publication: 03-03-2025

We want to get rid of capitalism, but what is a good alternative system? Committee on Economics then quickly thinks of ecosocialism. Therefore, with this article, they dive into the question: what is ecosocialism and what does it mean for us?

An introduction to Ecosocialism