Sufficient degrowth cannot be achieved without enormous and radical transition to some kind of Simpler Way.
Note ~ This is a summary of this longer article published in Medium, 20 March 2024.
I published Abandon Affluence and Growth in 1985. It was widely ignored, as were all other attempts to draw attention to the absurdity of pursuing growth ... until around 2000 when the Degrowth boom took off. The movement is now extremely inspiring, marking the surge of discontent with the old system and the demand for better ways.
However, I see the movement as involving some confusions and mistaken initiatives. Following is an attempt to help clarify the way ahead.
The current focus of the movement
“Degrowth” is not a good descriptor for the movement that has emerged. The movement is asserting a wild variety of criticisms of and alternatives to the present globalised, industrialised, urbanised, financialised, neo-liberal, sexist, grotesquely unequal, extractivist, imperialist etc. world order. Thus, the term Degrowth has become “... a rag-bag of utopian dreams”. A more accurate title might be the “Finally Fed Up With Capitalism” movement. This is highly desirable because it shows that discontent with consumer-capitalist society is finally boiling over. Many of these proposals actually have nothing to do with the reduction of economic growth or could easily be implemented within an economy that continues to be about growth, such as monetary reform, making trade more equitable, and housing justice.
But Degrowth should be seen in terms of a concern to reduce resource consumption and environmental impact, which means it is essentially about one thing, which is reducing the GDP. Many sub-goals and domains should be seen as possible implications of Degrowth for various sub-fields. At present the impression is given that if you are for Degrowth then you are for all of the above goals.
The global situation
Even among Degrowth advocates there is little realisation that the multi-factored global predicament cannot be resolved unless there is an extremely big and difficult revolution whereby most of the elements within our present economic, political, and cultural systems are scrapped and replaced by radically different systems. The crucial point here is that the new lifestyles and systems must be materially very simple.
There is no possibility that the per capita levels of resource consumption in rich countries can be kept up for long or ever extended to all people. This is the basic cause of the big global problems, including resource depletion, environmental damage, the deprivation of billions in the poor countries, and resource wars,
There is a strong case that if we are to live in sustainable ways that all could share then rich world per capita rates of consumption must be reduced by around 90%. The common response is the claim that technical advance will enable GDP growth to be “decoupled” from resource and environmental impact. But there isnow overwhelming evidence that apart from in some limited areas this is not happening and is not going to happen. If GDP is increased, impacts increase.
The goal must therefore be to shift to lifestyles and systems that enable all to live well on a very small fraction of the per capita resource and environmental impacts we in rich countries have now.
The (unrecognised) Degrowth conundrum
The Degrowth literature does not recognise the stunning enormity of this “degrowth conundrum”. Degrowth of the magnitude argued above means phasing out, writing off, scrapping, most of the present amount of factories, corporations, transport, trade, investment, industry, financing, and profit-making. Much Degrowth literature assumes that all we need is policy change within the existing system.
The most obvious consequence is that capitalism will have to be scrapped. It is a growth system. Its fundamental nature is about investing capital to accumulate more capital to invest in additional productive ventures. If growth even slows the system sickens.
The path to a solution must be framed in terms of enabling people who presently have to produce, sell, buy and consume a lot in order to live satisfactorily, to transition to lifestyles and systems in which they do not have to. This cannot be done other than via a transition to some kind of Simpler Way.
The required alternative
Over many years I have put forward a The Simpler Way vision, and introduced visiting groups to it at our environmental education site, Pigface Point. Following is an outline.
The basic element in the required sustainable social form must be most people living in small, highly self-sufficient and self-governing, cooperative local communities, willingly embracing far simpler lifestyles and systems (see this article for the detailed account). This enables huge amounts of resource, environmental and dollar costs to be avoided. Our study of egg supply shows why. We compared the dollar and energy cost of eggs supplied by the normal supermarket path with eggs from backyards and village cooperatives. The dollar and energy costs of the former supply path were found to be in the order of 50 to 200 times those of the latter path.
The supermarket egg has a vast and complex global input supply chain involving things like fishing fleets, agribusiness, shipping and trucking transport, warehousing. But eggs produced by integrated village cooperatives can avoid almost all of these costs, while enabling immediate use of all “wastes”. It is the same in many other domains such as other food items, dweling construction, clothing supply.
These settlements must be in control of their local economies. They will have town assemblies, many committees and working bees. They will organise a needs-driven economy besides the profit-driven sector. The Pigface Point video includes a model of a typical suburb before and after these kinds of changes have been made.
Most importantly, lifestyles must be frugal, and systems and technology must mostly be simple. High tech and IT would be used in research medicine, communications etc., but would not be particularly important at the local level, where much production would be enjoyed in craft form. Because we would not be consuming so much, and many things would free from the commons, we would probably need to work for money only two days a week.
Evidence from existing alternative settlements shows how large the resource savings in such settlements can be. For Dancing Rabbit Ecovillage in Missouri they are around 10% of the US per capita average.
There could still be (small) cities, industrial centres, universities, high-tech hospitals etc. When unnecessary production is eliminated, there could be more socially useful Reseach and Development than there is now.
To summarise, sufficient Degrowth cannot be achieved without enormous and radical transition to some kind of Simpler Way. The Degrowth literature does not recognise let alone stress this.
Implications for Degrowth strategy
The movement has given very little attention to strategy ... the subject of my Dec. 2023 Environmental Values article. Much that might appear to be about strategy is actually about goals, notably the many statements of desired policies, and accounts of societies regarded as implementing Degrowth visions.
Centralisation, the state
Most if not all pronouncements explicitly or implicitly assume that strategy must focus on getting the state to implement desired policies. It is about pleading with government to implement Degrowth, or demanding that that it do so, either soon or in the more distant future. This assumes that the state is capable of implementing Degrowth policies ... and it is not.
This focus on the state as saviour is most evident within the Marxist/Socialist strand of the movement. Marx’s analysis of capitalism and its contradictions, dynamics and fate are of great importance. However his ideas on the present revolutionary goal and the transition process are seriously mistaken, due primarily to the advent of the limits to growth and to Marx’s neglect of culture.
Firstly, Marxists get the goal wrong. They are right about the need to get rid of capitalism, but they have a long record of striving to free the forces of production from the contradictions of the capitalist mode of production so that the throttles in the factories can be turned up enabling “…everyone to have a Mercedes.” The foregoing discussion shows that in most respects a satisfactory post-capitalist society must contradict the dominant Socialist vision deriving from Marx. It cannot be capitalist but nor can it be highly industrialised, or state-centred, or globalised, or energy-intensive or affluent or have a high or growing GDP.
The alternative social form outlined above cannot be initiated or run by the state. It is about small communities taking control of their fate and running their own affairs. They must do the thinking, discussing, decision making, implementing, and monitoring. They are the only ones who know the conditions, the history of the town, the people, and the needs. The state cannot make the right decisions for myriads of small towns and villages.
In addition, Socialist transition strategy is mistaken. It assumes that we must take state power in order to implement change to a better society. But the state cannot create viable local communities; these can only be built by people who have come to want to establish the alternative ways in their towns. Socialists will argue that if we had the state, we could enable that, but this would not be possible unless a government with a Degrowth vision had first been elected, by a public that held it. Obviously getting to that cultural situation must be the focus for strategy, meaning that trying to take state power is not the right goal here and now. Working to change ideas and values is the right goal. Degrowth is essentially a cultural problem. Degrowth strategy here and now must concentrate on how to bring about huge cultural change. If we can do that then the revolution has essentially been won and structural change will probably be very easy.
Simpler Way Transition theory
The Degrowth conundrum cannot be solved, in or by, this society. The full paper sets out several reasons for the claim that the global system is heading for a mega-breakdown. This might wipe us all out, but it will open the way for a desirable transition, because it will force people to see that their fate depends on whether they can build local, cooperative, self-sufficient and frugal communities.
So we have to take every opportunity to raise awareness. The best strategy is probably to get involved in “prefiguring” alternative ways, that is building some of the structures and processes the revolution is for, such as cooperatives, community gardens, community owned swap-shops, our own town employment and aged care arrangements etc. This is happening in many Transition Towns, and especially in many poor countries where tribal and peasant people are “turning away” from the consumer-capitalist system and cooperatively building their own arrangements. For a very. Impressive example of what’s possible see The Catalan Integral Cooperative.
As local communities take power over their fate the functions left for the central state will decline markedly, as will its power. Town referenda will increasingly make the big decisions and shift national policy to providing for the local communities, as distinct from growing the GDP. This is a classical Anarchist vision.
Our chances of success are not good but this is the path to be worked for.
For related material see The Simpler Way.
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ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Ted Trainer is a Conjoint Lecturer in the School of Social Sciences, University of New South Wales. He has taught and written about sustainability and justice issues for many years. He is also developing Pigface Point, an alternative lifestyle educational site near Sydney. Many of his writings are available free at his website, The Simpler Way.
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