Contribution to GTI Forum Experiments in Movement Unity
The Situation
Are we lacking good alternatives to the status quo, alternatives that actually work and bring about a much-desired fundamental transformation to our economic and social order?1 Or do we have too many, and we are overwhelmed by their number, and we wander about, confused about how to establish a hierarchy of their importance? Why are so many anti-hegemonic organizations scattered in ideological clusters, and strategic hermetic Schrödinger-like boxes with probabilistic cats inside? Or perhaps the above is an incorrect perception of a much more hopeful reality, in which we are on the threshold of a major transformation of the status quo? We can daydream that if we only keep pushing and doing the things we are already doing, we will see a great revival of the human spirit; we will see humanity come to its senses and come back into planetary boundaries; we will see a massive expansion of social justice within the North and within the South, between rich and poor, with social classes and inequalities dissolved and all humans emancipated.
There is no shortage of clever assessments of why we are in this predicament, and what the path forward may be. And perhaps the strength of our struggles lies within our diversity and the pluriverse of ideas and solutions. There is something that binds us, fundamentally. And that is our material condition on Earth. We share the planet with its ecological boundaries. Nature knows no political borders.
We had the Occupy Wall Street movement. What happened with it? Why did it not bring down the status quo? Were they too disorganized, or lacking clear demands? Today, we have Extinction Rebellion, Fridays for Future, the Sunrise Movement, Just Stop Oil, and countless more actors. They continue with the blocking of streets, and with the shaming of Big Oil. These activities inconvenience some humans on their way to work, but gather tens of thousands of likes (and hates) on social media. Objectively, that may well qualify as a good thing in the eyes of an AI-enhanced historian from the year 2100. All these movements have barely made a dent into capitalism, including the resurgence of the labor strikes in the United States and the continuous social agitation in France and elsewhere. Capital is just too damned powerful to be taken down, because it is extremely well codified into law, tradition, and culture.2 Yet hope is brewing, and it lingers.
It seems that environmental movements, labor movements, and indigenous rights movements are all after the same common enemy, namely capital. In their struggle, these movements have sometimes clashed with each other: climate activists blocking access to mines for workers who have to put bread on the table for their families, drivers honking at indigenous water protectors trying to boycott precious pipelines, and more. What prevents all these movements and organizations from realizing they have a common enemy?
Degrowth Collective and Grassroots Formation
In order to bring humanity back into planetary boundaries, we need massive degrowth in the Global North, and just growth in the Global South. It is about averages, statistical distributions of climate risks and social risks, and historical responsibility for the climate crisis which lies overwhelmingly with the rich countries of the North, but also with the rich capitalist class in the South.
What should we do then? Jane McAlevey called the climate strike goals “brilliant and…uncompromising.” She also argued that “to halt and reverse the carbon economy…requires far more power and a serious strategy.”3
Degrowth Collective is an international organization that is focused on grassroots formation, while being mindful of the need for a holistic approach. DC is attempting to learn from the shortcomings of the past and present. Environmental, labor, and indigenous movements must unite in order to bring about a society focused on the well-being of nature and humans, and not just corporate profits. One of the aims of the Degrowth Collective is to subvert capital at its core: at the point of production. The single best method to slow down the flow of material and energy throughput that is required to stabilize humanity within planetary boundaries is with Global General Strikes. Workers still hold the power of shutting down production. Environmental and indigenous groups do not have this power, in spite of their historical attempts.
Educating workers that an ecological lifestyle is very well aligned with their interests and their well-being is a powerful strategy that deserves much consideration. DC and all like-minded groups can reach out to unions and workers, listen to them first, talk to them as equals, and find common narratives. There are fundamental common interests between workers and climate activists. It is only a matter of time until they both realize this on a large scale.
There are plenty of policies from the degrowth movement, with no shortage of technical papers and radical proposals, such as maximum income, work-time reduction, and economic democracy. All of these can be put on the table and fine-tuned, when talking to workers, and strategizing on how to raise demands.
Degrowth Collective is building power from the grassroots level. There are no bosses or presidents. Members do not tell each other what to do, but rather action evolves organically from self-accountability and careful attention to each other’s stories. Its governance is decentralized. Its aims are collectively determined. Its local groups are both autonomous, adapted to local conditions, and linked with the international network at the same time. Internationalism and local independence of groups are not disjunctive concepts. Groups can be linked in an international network to work together on global goals, while at the same time they can remain independent to address the needs of their local communities. And once we all realize that our common enemy is capital, and our common goal is a fair consumption space for all humans within planetary boundaries, we can move to strike and slow down the status quo, transform society, and create well-being for all.
The Larger Landscape of the Degrowth Movement
The wider degrowth movement, which advocates for a radical transformation of society and consumption patterns for the sake of life, well-being and autonomy, met in a hybrid format for the fourth time on August 28, 2023.4 Activists, academics, and practitioners approved the creation of the International Degrowth Network (IDN), the coming together of autonomous degrowth groups from around the world. Within IDN, several working groups are in the process of being formalized to compartmentalize work by area of responsibility: organizing, communications, outreach, research, activism, events, and geographical networking. A wide palette of theories of change are being explored for effectiveness, from top-down relentless policy advocacy, to bottom-up hard civil resistance, and culture formation such as promoting lifestyles of voluntary simplicity. Degrowth Collective, like many other degrowth groups, will be linked to IDN via sociocratic methods, while maintaining independent governance, and will focus on the formation of local degrowth chapters around the world.5
The working philosophy of Degrowth Collective is of careful nimbleness, which spans from flexibility of governance to adapting to local conditions. Specifically, if certain regions are heavily under-unionized, then the call for a general strike may come across as an echo in the desert. Who is going to strike? Or if certain places are reasonably unionized, are they going to strike while being mindful of the need for degrowth? When does civil disobedience come into the picture? If nothing else works in a certain place, when is more appropriate to quit capitalism altogether to start an ecovillage, and live life in line with voluntary simplicity?6 These are some of the burning questions that frame the work of Degrowth Collective. In a year’s time, both DC and IDN will be in a better position to report on their progress.
1. I do not speak on behalf of members of Degrowth Collective, in this article. I wish to thank DC member Aron Glazer for providing copy-editing on an early draft.
2. Katharina Pistor, The Code of Capital: How the Law Creates Wealth and Inequality (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2019).
3. Jane McAlevey, A Collective Bargain: Unions, Organizing, and the Fight for Democracy (New York: HarperCollins, 2021).
4. See https://degrowth.info/en/blog/the-birth-of-the-international-degrowth-network.
5. Database with degrowthers (groups, people, policies, papers, media, books, news, education, conferences, assemblies): https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/18Z7kTs0smhOU9S3DyGNJ_MBQeu3XKW2qdxa3unOEn6I/edit?pli=1#gid=0.
6. Samuel Alexander, Voluntary Simplicity: The Poetic Alternative to Consumer Culture (Whanganui, New Zealand: Stead & Daughters Ltd, 2009) See also: https://simplicityinstitute.org/ and https://samuelalexander.info/.
