We are seeing a remarkable surge in discontent with the system and a turning to radically alternative ways. But there is a wild variety of initiatives and we need to think carefully about which of them are most likely to be effective. Here are some thoughts that might help us to focus on the best strategies.
First, getting clear about the situation
In my strong opinion many well-intentioned good green people do not understand the magnitude of the global predicament and therefore they seriously underestimate the change that is needed. Many assume that reforms to the present system will suffice to enable a just and sustainable world, but there is a very strong case that this is quite mistaken. A study I carried out took common Footprint and related figures and derived the conclusion that if the world’s 2050 expected population were to share natural resources equally we would all receive about one-ninth of the per capita amount we in rich countries get now, and if economic growth continues at present rates the fraction would more than halve by 2050.
In other words, we must face up to enormous degrowth to far lower rates of production, consumption, “living standards” and GDP. That cannot possibly be done by or within a high-energy, highly industrialised, capital intensive, market and profit driven, globalised society, capitalist or otherwise. It is now well established that this conclusion cannot be rejected on the grounds that growth can be “decoupled” from resource and environmental impacts.
Implications for goals
The only form of society enabling the required huge reductions is one in which most of us live in small, highly self-sufficient and self-governing, cooperative, localised systems, content with frugal ways, with zero-growth economies under local control and not driven by market forces or profit. There could still be high tech, universities, R and D, (small) cities, (a little) international trade, and a (small and controlled) market sector. It could not be a society under heavy centralised control nor could it be a capitalist economy, but in my view most production should be via very small privately owned family and cooperative farms and firms. There would only be a very small role for a centralised state, because power would (have to be) located mostly within the many communities. (For the detail.)
Why? Because this localised form of settlement is the only one that can enable huge reductions in things like transport, roads, packaging, “waste” treatment, distance to work, bureaucracy, energy demand, infrastructure, global trade, and need for capital. For instance highly self-sufficient communities can function without sewer systems or the need for a fertilizer industry, because they can recycle wastes to their nearby gardens, and their members can get to work on foot or bicycle, and their leisure committees can ensure that most people have lots of interesting things to do in the locality and never want to go near a cruise ship.
There is reference within the degrowth movement to the need for reduction, but the extent does not seem to be recognised, let alone stressed. If I am right about it then the fundamental goal of the movement should be getting to what I term The Simpler Way. My hope is to see the very diverse concerns of groups within the movement explicitly connected to this vision of the required social form. That is, they need to make it clear that their particular concern or project is a sub-goal contributing to this general over-arching system change goal.
This would make the movement more unified and focused, whereas at present it can seem to be a bewilderingly diverse collection of random and unconnected complaints and utopian proposals, many of them actually having little or nothing to do with degrowth or radical system change. For instance many (admirable) proposals to do with alternative money, housing, universal basic income, more just trade, etc. can be achieved without degrowth or radical system change. But their relevance can be easily made clear simply by pointing out how these projects are intended to contribute to the above alternative vision..
At present I think anyone coming across most Permaculture, Ecovillage, community garden, monetary reform, affordable housing, and many other proposals would see them only as options and policies that would be enjoyable or would improve the quality of life of participants. People looking at the web pages for these projects are not likely to see them as advocating social forms and practices because they will contribute to revolutionary system transition. Their importance is typically not portrayed in terms of being elements in the new social form we need, or steps towards it.
I think this is especially disappointing with respect to the Ecovillage movement. Its web pages typically portray ecovillages as yielding participants significant quality of life benefits, not as illustrating aspects of the kind of communities we must all move towards if we are to solve the global sustainability problem. This is not to imply that all of us must move into Ecovillages; that’s not necessary or possible, but Ecovillage ways need to be seen as illustrating the kinds of cooperative and self-sufficient etc. arrangements that we must work to establish in our towns and suburbs.
Remedying this situation would simply be a matter of making the connection explicit; that is, stressing the role and contribution the movement is making to the general degrowth campaign. It does not require any alteration in purposes or activities; it just needs a little reframing to make clear how the project is intended to be a part of and to contribute to the general degrowth goal.
Implications for means, strategy …what practical action should we take?
The range of things being done is very encouraging, but I worry that much of the often heroic energy of concerned people is not helping much to bring about the transition. We need more discussion of what actions are most likely to be effective. People in the degrowth movement recognise that strategy is a neglected topic. Here are some thoughts. (For a long discussion of the transition issue.
Much that looks like discussion of strategy isn’t. Many books and articles list things like guaranteeing a minimal income, reducing advertising, implementing local currencies or fairer trade or a cooperative economy. But these are goals, not means to goals. They are components of a desirable “degrown” society. They are not ideas on how to achieve one.
And in almost all cases the usually implicit strategy is to call for the government to implement these goals, someday. In my view that is futile, a waste of time. Here’s why.
Again consider the magnitude of the “degrowth conundrum”. Compare, the enormity of the change that sufficient degrowth requires with the fact that almost everyone in this society is obsessed with growth, increasing production, consumption, wealth and GDP, and cannot doubt that these are the supreme goals in the universe. Add the fact that we are trapped in structures and procedures which give us no option but to work hard to keep the growth economy growing. Our rulers cannot do anything about this, and have no desire to. Degrowth means the end of affluence. And it means the end of capitalism. Did you think our governments are going to facilitate those objectives? If the economy stagnates voters will quickly toss out the government, let alone if there is significant degrowth.
The essential problem is not stupid and/or corrupt politicians captured by the corporations. It is the growth and affluence mentality embedded in our culture. Degrowth is a cultural problem. We can get nowhere unless and until most people have come to see that the present system needs to be dumped, that it is not going to provide for us, that it is leading us to catastrophic global breakdown … and that the solution has to be cooperative, self-sufficient, frugal localism … and that this can be a liberation to a higher quality of life for all.
So what is to be done is to work hard at changing that mentality. If we do that then implementing all those utopian dream policies will probably be easy.
This reveals the mistake that Eco-Socialists make. Like Marx, they get the order of events around the wrong way. They think the right strategy is to work to “take the state” and then the right policies can be implemented from the top. (Marx thought that transition to the new culture centred on “communist” values could be worked on slowly after the revolution took state power.) But the state cannot initiate or run this revolution. The transition can only emerge at the grass roots level because it is essentially about people turning to self-governing cooperative communities. The state cannot tell every town when to plant carrots or fine individuals for not turning up to working bees and it cannot make the communities thrive. The alternative way can only succeed if people are empowered and enthusiastic, eager to make their town work well, enjoying the camaraderie, and keenly aware that their quality of life depends not on how monetarily wealthy they are but on how well the town functions. The coming time of great troubles (see below) will force us in this direction, that is, force us to come together to try to take control of our local situation.
And obviously the state would not want to implement degrowth unless it had first been elected by a majority of people who wanted that … which again means we could get nowhere until we had persuaded the majority to a simpler way perspective.
Thus the general answer to the “What is to be done?” question at this point in time is simply, do as much as we can to fix the mentality, to raise awareness of the above perspective, to help people to realise that the growth and affluence commitment must be dumped and to see that there is a very satisfactory alternative way, which many are turning to it.
Again, when this cultural revolution and the emergence of local initiatives are well underway, making the big structural and policy changes at the state level will come onto the agenda.
This is an Anarchist vision, not a Socialist vision. It is necessary, not a matter of preference. The argument has been that when the global situation is understood, especially the magnitude of the degrowth required, it is evident that the answer has to be primarily small scale localism, and it is obvious that this cannot emerge unless it is preceded by profound cultural change to essentially Anarchist values and ways. These focus on small scale collectivist communities in which all can participate in self-government and there is no top-down domination. (We would still need some state-level agencies, but they will not exercise centralised power ruling over us.) Things would be kept in good shape by happy, conscientious citizens who derive life satisfaction from living in community focused on non-acquisitive values, spontaneously attending to the welfare of all members and their ecosystems. (For a detailed argument that degrowth goals and strategies must be Anarchist.)
Some practical things we might try doing
Drop the key ideas into casual conversation whenever possible
We can all easily do the most important thing, which is …talk. We should draw attention to, raise, drag in and go on about simpler way themes whenever we get a chance. A few words in passing can be enough to lodge an idea. Watch for opportunities to briefly refer to our themes, to plant and reinforce ideas, especially in casual conversation. Let people know that we are not just expressing our own ideas but that there is now a big degrowth movement … suggest that they have a look at this and that website.
Be prepared with written material that can reinforce the point if people show an interest, or tell them you will send them a link. Develop a stock of good summary outlines and arguments you can give or send to people who show an interest, or with whom you get into an argument. (The Simpler Way website is intended to provide such material, in varying detail; e.g., short and long accounts.)
These are some basic themes I try to focus on;
- This society is increasingly failing to provide for people. Many are struggling, dumped into homelessness, and poverty.
- Most of us worry about insecurity, such as fear of unemployment, small business failure, old age, violence on the street, retirement prospects.
- The fact that we work perhaps three times too hard. People complain about not having enough time.
- The fact that the pace is too fast, and large numbers of people are stressed and depressed. Most of that would be avoided in a society that allowed us to just produce as much as we need for comfort and provided for everyone.
- Housing costs far too much, and many can never expect to own a house. This economy doesn’t meet urgent needs at all well.
- The lack of community. Neighbours don’t know each other, there are few local support networks. Neighbourhoods don’t get together to solve problems, such as organise activities and responsibilities for bored teenagers.
- Kids and computers; spending all that time in front of a screen. There are better things for them to do in a thriving village.
- Urban restructuring and decay…what’s happening to our town or city? Over-development … the death of the high street and the country town…because the neo-liberal doctrine says there must be freedom of enterprise, meaning that giant corporations are free to take all the business opportunities and destroy little shops and whole communities and drive urban sprawl.
- The occurrence of unemployment. This is avoidable and inexcusable. A satisfactory economy would eliminate it.
- “Retirement” means being dumped into irrelevance and boredom in expensive “retirement homes”. It’s not like that in a good village.
- Discontent with government; but governments cannot solve the problems consumer-capitalist society is generating…they just manage the problems.
- Social breakdown; drug and alcohol addiction, homeless people, suicide, depression, eating disorders, insecurity on the streets, pub violence…these are largely consequences of a competitive society that dumps many who can’t succeed in competition against the fittest. A good society would provide for all, e.g., make sure all had a livelihood.
- Many now fear that a time of great troubles is coming; the global economy is deteriorating, especially due to accelerating debt that can’t be repaid. Our best security would be in more self-sufficient resilient communities.
The concern would always be to link these themes to the big general limits issue if possible… these problems people are feeling are being caused by a socio-economic and cultural system that is fundamentally flawed and we have to eventually replace it, or the problems will get worse. We also try to point out that the growth-and-affluence socio-economic system we have is the basic cause of those more distant problems such as ecological destruction and the poverty of most people on earth… because all that producing and consuming is depleting resources, destroying the environment and depriving most of the world’s people of their fair share. We can’t solve any of these problems unless we eventually develop a society that is not about growth and greed.
Individuals can get into these kinds of discussions easily but it is probably more important to team up with like-minded friends to work together on the following sorts of projects.
Focus the community garden on the revolution
As was argued above, make sure your community garden etc. is a powerful educational device, crammed with display boards, dioramas, models, signs etc. portraying the big revolutionary picture, and full of people eager to explain it all to visitors.
Organise occasional small scale neighbourhood events
Set up a public meeting to discuss how can we improve our neighbourhood, or what future directions we’d like for our town. What are our problems? What is our future in view of global trends? What would make us more resilient? Here’s what people in the degrowth movement are thinking.
Organise a table and display boards at the shopping centre on a Saturday morning. Behind the table set up a large map of the suburb completely redesigned to be more sustainable, with most streets dug up and replaced by gardens. People would be stunned; what’s this all about? Is the Council going to rezone us? We explain that this is the kind of long term future many are saying we need to move towards to make our locality sustainable. Country towns are dying all around the world. Come to the public meeting to discuss possibilities for our town’s future.
This map could be a centrepiece for many activities, such as school visits. Even better would be a multi-piece diorama representing the suburb now and how we could remake its geography. The map could have overlays indicating how the new geography would include energy sources, animals, industries, materials sources, gardens, farms, etc. One of these could represent social relations with many people presently separate and isolated, youth with no contribution to make, etc., and another might indicate how elaborate community could be around here, and how little there is now. Another might point to the huge amount of resources we have in our suburb that are being wasted, most obviously the time spent watching TV for “leisure”… and what that could be producing via working bees. The core theme would be, look at all the exciting things we ordinary people could be doing to develop and run a great community here. There are movements in other countries doing these things.
We are not saying let’s bring the bulldozers in tomorrow; we are saying these are ideas to think about for the long term future viability of our town in view of what’s happening in the global economy. Look at what some towns are doing.
Doorknock “research”
Announce that you are from a group investigating the “progress” and problems of the suburb or town. Ask people how they see the issues, with a view to getting clearer about their thinking, informing them about our project, getting names to email and invite. Later this approach can unearth resources we can start using…someone has a spare shed, a truck or tools they would lend, spare time. Especially important will be using this approach to list skills that can be drawn on for community development, including people willing to teach knitting, recipes, crafts, gardening, grafting… We can test ideas…what do they think of the idea of organising working bees to improve the neighbourhood.
Organise an Alternatives tour
We work on making various items illustrative of alternative ways, within some of our houses or back yards. At Fred’s place we might make a mud brick dog kennel and an earth oven, and put together a set of impressive pictures of earth building. At Mary’s place we might build the chicken and rabbit pen, compost heap and gardens, and elaborate boards explaining the scope for urban food production and nutrient recycling and footprint reduction. Jack has a bee hive. Alice might have room for the diorama of the new suburban geography. Tom’s garage workshop might be able to illustrate the joys making things with hand tools, via the sturdy furniture and toys on show. Pat has a pantry stocked with preserves from her garden and that of friends and neighbours, enabling her to detail the monetary savings and the footprint implications.
We do not need much on the ground to be able to put on a very interesting and informative tour. That dog kennel and pictures enables us to drive home the enormous benefits of earth building; we don’t need to have a whole house to do that. These items are the pretexts, the illustrative devices we use to explain in detail far beyond them. We stack each site with display boards, and we work out a sequence that will best present our world view convincingly. We have handouts. Including further information and illustrative examples.
We organise walking tours around these sites, followed by a picnic. We get local teachers to bring their classes. We develop and improve our presentation all the time, and before long we are hosting visits from other suburbs, and making video versions of the tour available.
We door knock to find people who could help elaborate the tour, especially older people with skills such as how to bake a dinner, knit, grow things, produce fish, and do various arts and crafts, and who might have tools, bits of machinery, sheds, relics that we can add to the tour. Does anyone have a lemon or peach tree that produces too much for them, and that we could use to illustrate the power of “gleaning”… We invite them to join the venture. (Have a look at the tour we run at Pigface Point.)
Piggy-backing public issues
When a suitable issue comes to be focal in the local press for instance, we weigh in with commentary from our perspective. When the council proposes building a car park on that vacant lot, write a letter to the local paper suggesting why a community orchard would make more sense. When the issue is high on the public agenda it is more likely that a letter on it from our angle will be published. Watch for pegs to hang our message on.
“Sniping”, picking off likely converts
If you see someone in an influential position, a columnist or talk-back radio personality, who might be persuaded to our view, work on him/her over time. Form a sub-group to frame an approach, organise letters or phone calls, and deal with responses.
Make contact with schools and teachers
Look at the curriculum to find points where we can suggest material from our perspective. Offer speakers (e.g., some older people who can take in baked cakes, hand-made slippers and toys…). Invite the teacher to bring the class on our tour.
The ideal long-term sequence; taking control of our town’s fate
Here’s how I think the revolution has to unfold. It we ever get through to a sustainable and just world it can only be via a “Transition Towns” process. That is, our present towns and suburbs and neighbourhoods must gradually move towards being communities that are in control of their own systems and run these to provide well for all via stable and frugal highly self-sufficient and self-governing cooperative systems. These communities could have much private property, small private firms and a market sector, but would not let the market or investors determine what happened. They would run their town via assemblies, committees and working bees to attend to unmet needs and maximise the quality of life of all members and of local ecosystems.
How can we get there? Here’s what I see as the more or less ideal process to be worked for.
A cooperative community garden is set up, with participants recording time inputs and sharing in the produce. Then they set up another activity, let’s say a poultry pen. People who earned credits working in the garden can use them to get eggs and those who attend to the chickens and ducks can use their credits to get vegetables. Other activities are slowly added, maybe a mini bakery (located in participants’ homes), a house cleaning service, bike repair, a fish group sets up small backyard tanks, a family starts bottling fruit and making jams. Another family sets up bee hives. The gleaning sub-group finds fruit trees in the town producing more than householders can use and organises collection.
A major possibility is the formation of a house building subgroup. With (or without) council cooperation. Explore how our working bees plus local building expertise might make small mud brick granny-flat or tiny house dwellings for low income or homeless people. (The Neighbourhoods that Work group explains how governments could easily facilitate this, assisting homeless people to do the building while attending courses, ending up with their own little house.)
These initiatives would be creating an alternative needs-driven economy that enabled us to contribute to producing and getting important things, underneath/beside the existing normal profit-driven economy. We target needs that the mainstream economy fails to attend to. We are bringing unused resources and idle labour together to produce important things. Especially significant, we are enabling people dumped by the normal economy to produce and earn and contribute and enjoy a caring community. We are no threat to the town chamber of commerce; existing businesses would benefit, for instance when we sell fresh vegetables to the restaurants.
The co-op would need to pay normal money to get some things from the old/normal economy such as tools, so participants might use two forms of money.
As time goes by more activities are added, making it possible for some to get most of their basic needs met within our needs-driven economy. A “tax” might be introduced, payable in work time, whereby all contribute to the working bees that maintain and extend the project, e.g., building a shed for the bee keeper.
There is no limit to what might be done. A stunning example is the Catalan Integral Cooperative. It has thousands of people involved in elaborate food, employment, medical and legal etc. services, in systems that have nothing to do with the market or the state.
Again, the crucial point is that the people of the town must take collective control of their fate, by developing the capacity to produce and provide what the market system fails to do. The community garden is not simply intended to enable some individuals to enjoy gardening; it is about beginning the transformation of the town into a cooperative needs-driven economy we control. This outlook is extremely important, but at present it is not the driving force within many alternative movements.
In time this process will radically transforms the state. As more functions are performed by the cooperative sector the activities and power of the state will dwindle. Towns will start telling the state what to do, and eventually transform it into a powerless administrative agency as policy making gradually shifts down to the level where federations of towns form and determine policy.
Some important points to keep in mind:
It all adds up, although you probably can’t see anything happening. Every time a Simpler Way message is delivered it reinforces the theme in someone’s mind, or someone is hearing it for the first time. Extreme and surprising changes are usually the result of a long process of slowly accumulating rethinking and desire for change, which can be invisible until the last minute when it reaches a critical level and everything suddenly flips over. This is how the Berlin Wall was brought down!
People often put up with bad systems, especially economic systems, because they think there is no alternative. We are able to show that there is one.
Thus we must be patient and not expect to see much if anything for our efforts, but be consoled by the probability that the discussion we had with the butcher this morning has added to the accumulating climate of opinion. The concern must be to just keep plodding away, seeing little for our efforts but knowing that we are contributing the crucial level of understanding and opinion, without which nothing can be achieved.
Many are now deeply depressed by the state of the world, for instance as evident in the Deep Adaptation movement. The best way to deal with this is to plunge into helping to raise awareness of the way out of the global predicament. I have no doubt that the road ahead is going to be very difficult, and that our chances of making it are poor. But the best consolation is to know that you are making the most important contribution, which is helping to establish the alternative ideas and values without which we cannot make it. That’s what is to be done.
This revolution requires no heroic sacrifices at the barricades. It requires patient plodding at the task of spreading the new ideas and values. But it is in a sense an enormously heroic and historically momentous project. For over 10,000 years humans in Western societies have allowed themselves to be dominated by rulers who have mostly been driven by power and greed and have caused enormous havoc and suffering. Graeber and Wengrow in The Dawn of Everything puzzle at how we have become stuck on that sorry path, and describe societies that avoided it. Well, we are now entering a time when we might get off it at last. To realise that we are contributing to that liberation should be a huge morale booster.
Ed. note: A longer version of this piece with full references is posted at the Post-Growth Institute blog here.
