"The Future Is Degrowth" - 6. Making Degrowth real
Is degrowth achievable? How would we align social movements, technological change, the economy, and political systems? Who would make it happen?
Transformation will be material, economic, social. We need new ways to relate to each other - "relational revolution". But escalation of conflict is all the more likely when the changes proposed directly oppose the interest of the powerful.
Discussion about the degrowth is only in its infancy. Tensions underlying this discussion: on the one hand, degrowth proposes top-down policies (shortening working hours, etc). Even if there are ways for them to be carried out by municipalities, reforms still needs to be implemented "from the above". On the other hand, strong focus on bottom-up: small scale alternatives that function without the state (projects "from below")
-> Regarding this tension, there has not been many proposals for how to connect these different approaches.
=> This tension - bottom-up small-scale practices (ie. "nowtopias") and top-down concrete policy proposals - is the starting point for proposal on how we can approach the transformation towards a degrowth society.
-> Start with emancipatory strategies that starts with capitalism but are designed to overcome it:
- Interstitial strategies (eg. cooperatives) allow people to test changes to institutions.
- Symbiotic strategies: they aims at setting up forms of cooperation between different social forces.
- Ruptural strategies: mass movements attempting to overcome the dominant social system.
Top-down and bottom-up degrowth strategies rely on each other to be successful: top-down reforms allow expansion and scaling up of nowtopias. And without nowtopias, people will remain unable to imagine how radical reforms could improve their lives.
6.1 Nowtopias: autonomous spaces and laboratories for the good life.
< check out example: cooperative in Catalonia and Calafou - page 255 and 256 >
Calafou represents an "interstitial strategy", as it allows members to experiment with different ways of organizing housing, food supply, technology, currencies, and the revaluation of labour - away from exploitative, alienating system towards one that is needs-oriented and meaning-making.
-> Interstitial strategies seek to experiment with new institutions, infrastructures, or forms of organization.
-> Degrowth has fostered development of policy proposals that could help interstitial strategies to flourish.
Examples of "Nowtopias": collective enterprises, community-supported agriculture, alternative media, urban gardens, childcare, time banks, repair café, open-source hardware.
Broader lifestyle changes is also important, eg. "voluntary simplicity" (limiting consumption) or "time prosperity" (free time as underlying goal of the good life).
-> Nowtopias understand what constitutes political activity - more or less politically oriented. Eg. ecovillages push chnages to municipal policies but don't challenge state or capital. But ZAD (Zone à défendre) do, Zapista as well.
=> Importance of the development of these autonomous experiments that test and exemplify resilient self-sufficency.
Self-transformation can be seen as a starting point for social transformation.
For some, interstitial strategies (their concrete forms) are controversial: they don't foster the creation of a counter-hegemony, and keep capitalism and neoliberalism afloat. We can't have the state to give up responsibility if mutual aid (from citizens / neighbours) is flourishing.
6.2 Non-reformist reforms: changing institutions and policies
These reforms, that start with exising structures but go beyond growth-oriented mode of production, would trigger political changes, which are needed by interestitial strategies.
The phaseout of the fossil fuel-, profit-, stock market-driven sectors helps to multiply democratic and collaborative nowtopias. Basic income or expansion of municipal public services gives people time and space to get involved in political discussion.
These reforms would also promote the development of a mode of living based on solidarity, creating much more egalitarian society, structure around public abundance.
Non-reformist degrowth policies also would overcome dependance on growth by current institutions.
Some in the left want to change the state (or dissolve it), but the state remains the dominant actor on the world stage.
Some inspiring proposal (modelling a package of non-reformist reforms): proposals by Research & Degrowth, "Green new deal", etc. But these changes can only be implemented by shifting the balance of power in society and convincing people of the need for these demands to be realized.
-> Extremely difficult, that create great opposition from those with vested interest. => We need a counter-hegemonic strategy.
6.3 Counter-hegemony: building people power against the growth paradigm
The implementation of radical reforms depends on the establishment of a counter-hegemony in order to enforce ruptures in certain areas of society and around key conflicts. -> This counter-hegemony needs nowtopias to grow and gain strength.
What is hegemony: capitalist growth societies not only stabilize themselves through power of the state and the economic elites. They're also stabilized by the consent and consensus of the governed and subalterns, consensus primarily established in civil societies and the media. -> Hegemony is the system of power and domination that prevails, through ideas we live by ("growth is desirable") and our way of life.
Building up counter-hegemony can undo growth paradigm, reshape our imagineries, re-orient our economy towards well-being: it can be done through development of cooperatives, through engagement with mainstream media, nowtopias, social movements, etc...
Counter-hegemonic values are cultivated when people face effects of growth. destruction of nature etc, but it is only possible when these experiences of injustice are politicized though organized social movements, public debates. Social movements help prioritize people, and therefore boosts counter-hegemonic positions.
Concrete utopias and interstitial spaces are central to fostering a counter-hegemonic environment ("incubators" for counter-hegemony)
Quote from Giorgos Kallis, about alternative economic spaces:
They are incubators, where people perform every day the alternative world they would like to construct, its logic rendered common sense. Alternative commons are new civil society institutions that nurture new common senses. As they expand, they undo the common senses of growth and make ideas that are compatible with degrowth hegemonic, creating the conditions for a social and political force to change political institutions in the same direction.
-> Advancing visionary policies and experimenting with local alternatives form two sides of the same coin.
We need to create environment where degrowth ideas advance in the popular consciousness. We need to readjust mental infrastructures, develop an understanding of being part of society and nature.
Non-reformist reforms and the development of a counter-hegemonic common sense are also mutually reinforcing.
While national-level reforms may be initially difficult to achieve, people can organize with their neighbours and at the level of the municipality for initiatives that transform daily life. At national level, policies (eg. UBI, social-ecological tax reforms) can offer freedom, well-being. -> This helps build collective self-empowerment, and therefore develop counter-hegemony.
Degrowth perspectives should play a role in all social struggles aimed at undoing the imperial mode of living and fighting all kinds of hierarchies, discrimination, and power structures for a cooperative way of life.
But how will people organize? And how can we collectively shape and plan economic life at a community and societal level?
-> "Dual power": efforts to build movements and organizations that can make demands from the state, but don't fully rely on state to function. 3 components:
- Connections among different movements (eg. those for migrants, climate, racial justice, feminist) including resource-sharing.
- Need for organizing / building movements that have capacity to block/make demands from capital or the state (eg. strikes or blockades): support and pressure needed to push forward degrowth policies (these in power rarely care when you ask nicely)
- These movements must also have their own sources of power, rather than just the capacity to resist vested interests -> Solidarity and cooperative economy. Democratic structures within these movements are needed.
6.4 Confronting crisis: beyond "degrowth by design or by disaster"
Diversity of approaches not seen as a problem but as enriching and complementary. Big challenges ahead though: growing threat from authoritarian nationalist movements. Degrowth transformation also contradicts interests of national governments, geared to competitiveness and economic growth. They also have monopoly over legitimate use of force. Degrowth implemented in single country could lead to capital flight, geopolitical tensions, even armed conflicts.
We cannot ignore these challenges: that's why we need intentional, large-scale organization and mobilization to achieve the changes we need.
"Degrowth by design or by disaster" (downscaling will be planned and largely peaceful, or unplanned and violent). This implies dichotomy between design and disaster which is not necessarily true: in some cases, disaster can be an opportunity for design, or in other cases, for deepening repression
Role of crisis through interstitial, symbiotic and ruptural
"interstitial strategies" highlight the need to build up resilient communities. In some crisis (eg. after 2017 hurricane in Puerto Rico), local communities can collaborate democratically based on altruism, resourcefulness and generosity (read "proto-communist priciples" by Rebecca Solnit).
-> By setting alternatives now, they will be in place to support and inspire people when they've shaken out of their daily routines in moments of tremendous change.
When crisis happens, disaster capitalism / shock doctrine takes place. But the left can also take advantage of crises to respond and accomplish far-reaching changes.
The brunt of these crises are imposed on the poor, but non-reformist reforms could create opposite effect: bailing out the poor, erasing Global South debt, making bailout of companies on public ownership (eg. during the start of the pandemic, white paper promoting nationalization of fuel industries). These types of moment require effective popular pressure.
In moment of crisis, counter-hegemony can become especially powerful, when moments of unfairness become evident. Two key ways to organize:
- Build links with workers and community in the Global South (they're the most affected by unequal imposition of debt following a crisis).
- Campaign for expansion of the requirements for survival, demanding access to basic goods (expanding desire for a care-based economy)
But crisis also changed with risk (reinforces growth paradigm, capitalist hegemony). Rise of populist, who take advantage of declining rates of growth by building resentment between working and middle classes against migrants, in order to maintain a hierarchical status-quo.
-> This is an aggressive defense of fossil-fuel dependent imperial mode of living.
=> In these times of crises, it is imperative that degrowth appears as the necessary transformation that both expands people's freedoms and gets to the root of the crisis itself.
=> A formation of a counter-hegemonic common sense - one that is internationalist, antiracist, queer-feminist, and inclusive, and stands for global ecological justice - is one of our greatest tools in preventing a fascist resurgence today.
6.5 Is Degrowth achievable?
Degrowth is not a blueprint that needs to be followed. Rather, it is an invitation, a broad set of principles and ideas.
We don't have to call it degrowth, but it can be integrated in struggles and transformative practices.