Peripatetic walk presenting different degrowth authors

Peripatetic walk (edited by Filka Sekulova)

Method

The session presented some of the currents within the degrowth umbrella using a method called “Peripatetic walk”, as inspired by the teaching while walking, or so-called “peripatetic school”, of Aristotle (peripatoi means walking in greek). This method resembles an excursion which the group undertakes with multiple short breaks in between. The peripatetic walk is an excursion through ideas, teachings, debates or any type of content presented at different physical locations. These have been carefully selected to illustrate, provoke or facilitate an argument, or a discussion. The peripatetic walk uses the landscape as a way to connect the theory of degrowth to reality. It provides material substance to the ideas.

The excursion can incorporate presentations of up to 10-15 minutes with 5 to 10 minutes questions and answers afterwards, while the walking parts between the various presentations should be no shorter than 10 minutes so that participants have the space and time to reflect and rest after each talk or discussion. The Can Decreix peripatetic walk took place over entire day, from 11.00 until 19.00 in the afternoon and included seven interventions. Each focused on a different author whose writing has served as an inspiration for degrowth.             

How did we do it in practice?

 The kick-off took place in the context of Can Decreix. The ideas of radical monopoly (Illich) and the critics of technology (Ellul) were presented at the washing machine of Can Decreix. The idea of simple living of Thoreau was presented at the vineyard, close by to Can Decreix.

The group then walked to the upper neighborhood and stopped in front of a rich house which could be used as an illustration for voluntary simplicity. There the “Social limits to growth” book by Hirsch was presented. Thedebate focused on inequality and social comparison. Next the group walked to a place where stone query where the physical limits to growth and the concept of peaks (oil, minerals) was explained, together with the writings of Meadows, Roegen and Odum.

The walk carried on for a bit longer until reaching the hotel of Belvedere, an old building representing the early stages of economic growth, representing a decadent epoch. There the critics of development as given by Latouche were presented, as well as the ideas of Polani on markets.

After ten minutes of walk the group ended up in front of the local municipality where the group discussed the ideas of Castoriadis and Graeber on democracy, autonomy and self-institutionalization.

After a short lunch break at the beach, the group started walking towards Portbou. In the middle of the walk, once reaching the abandoned police station at the border between France and Spain the group had a discussion on open localism, followed by a short discussion on deep ecology next to a stone ruin in the nature. The group eventually reached Portbou using the ‘contrabandista’ trail.

The peripatetic part of the walk finished at the emblematic memorial of Walter Benjamin, with a  short reflection on the possible links between his writings and degrowth. At the Walter Benjamin hall, Eduardo Maura Zorita of University Complutense at Madrid presented the many links between degrowth and the ideas of Walter Benjamin.

Some selected summaries of the material presented at the peripatetic walk in Can Decreix and related events

Hirsch and the social limits to growth, by Giorgos Kallis

Above a certain level of economic growth, which satisfies basic material needs, a rising proportion of income goes to so-called “positional goods”  said Hirsch. Exclusive real estate with a vista, like the house we are sitting in front of, an expensive car, a rare painting, a degree from a top private university; these are all positional goods. Access to such goods signifies one’s position in society and depends on relative income. Unlike normal goods, the more of a positional good our peers have, the less is the satisfaction we derive from it. Positional goods are inherently scarce since scarcity is their essence; by definition, not everyone can have high status, own a rare painting or the most expensive car. Economic growth can never satisfy the desire for positional goods. Worse, growth makes positional goods less accessible. As the material component of the economy becomes more productive, positional consumption, inherently limited as it is, gets more expensive. Witness the rising price of a house with a vista or the life-costs of a degree from a top University. Positional goods signal therefore the social limit of growth, i.e. a limit on what growth can deliver to society, as compared to limits to growth, i.e. limits to the continuation of growth.

Nevertheless, what sustains the desire for growth in wealthy economies is precisely the dream of access to positional goods. Consider pundit Daniel Ben-Ami who in a book against degrowth defends the dream of “Ferraris for All”. Let us assume away peak oil or climate change since in theory technological progress could supersede such limits. Let us assume away also the congestion if everyone had a Ferrari, a congestion that would make Ferraris slower than bicycles. In theory, cities and highways could be rebuilt to accommodate 7 billion Ferraris running at full speed. The fundamental limit of Ben-Ami dream is that if everyone had a Ferrari, then a Ferrari would no longer be a “Ferrari”. It would be the equivalent of a Fiat Cinquecento, a car of the masses. Aspirations would have shifted to another, faster car, which would signify wealth and position. Those without access to the new model would remain as frustrated as those who do not have a Ferrari today. The pursuit of positional goods is a zero-sum game. Yet this is a zero-sum game with a substantial social cost (imagine the resources wasted in reconfiguring territories or cleaning up the air for 7 billion Ferraris). The personal and public resources wasted in such zero-sum positional games could be used beneficially elsewhere. In fact, in affluent societies a rising proportion of social income is spent on private, positional consumption, while public goods that would improve the quality of life for all are left to deteriorate. Positional consumption increases also the cost of free time, making leisure less attractive, undermining sociability and reducing the time devoted to family, friends, community or politics.

Degrowth, politics and democracy by Christos Zografos

The objective of this presentation has been to present some links between degrowth and politics, specifically the politics that can be relevant for pursuing degrowth transitions. I started by asking one question; then, briefly presented some main approaches on answering that question, which can be found within the degrowth literature; and, concluded with asking some new questions that emerge when we look closely at the answers offered in that literature.

The presentation started by trying to answer the question: How to achieve degrowth transitions? I begun answering this by explaining why is this question relevant? This is so, because we all agree that getting there (degrowth) is good, but we have discuss less which is the best way of doing this, i.e. the whole issue is underspecified. Putting some theoretical nuance and empirical experience on the table could facilitate discussions and help move forward with degrowth transitions. The question how best to achieve degrowth transitions effectively translates into the question “what social action and politics are best for degrowth transitions?” In our 2012 Special Issue (SI) in the journal Futures (which I presented here) we have two approaches:

Reform the current system and act within that system’s boundaries; press/ convince state to reform. This is the approach of Ott (action of concerned citizens in liberal deliberative democracy, which create arenas for meaningful dialogue between state-private interest-civil society); and, Deriu (e.g. democratise knowledge through popular learning to convince state to reform)

Only outside capitalism and the liberal state you can pursue degrowth: support for semi-autonomous initiatives. This is Trainer (new non-capitalist micro-economies with inclusive decision-making that will make mainstream economy shrink and become obsolete – although criticism for TT and Green parties as they don’t seek to challenge capitalism and seek to operate within it); and, Boillat et al. who favour co-operative solutions (Cuban agro-ecology model favouring small, self-managed producers, i.e. self-managed socialism, with decision autonomy; socialism a good context to pursue degrowth as it does not favour/ permit capital accumulation, but need for more political democracy)

If we look closely at those two reactions, we observe that the what action question becomes also a question of “what scale in which to pursue transition?” Or else, the “what politics?” question has two dimensions: “what sort of action” and “at what scale”. Inspired by Illich and Ellul and their criticism on technology’s negative implications for democratic decision-making, including its constraints on autonomy as this may be understood through Castoriadis (i.e. technology as a sort of heteronomy), many in degrowth (including Latouche and most SI contributors) favour the local level as an arena to pursue degrowth transitions. More specifically, the local level is seen to allow more participation in and more democratic control of decision-making, i.e. a more legitimate sort of decision-making.

But the question then emerges: can local level sustain itself/ operate “outside capitalism [and liberal democracy]” as the Simpler Way (Trainer) and the Cuban agro-ecology experiment suggest? How autonomous can local level action really be within such a powerful context (i.e. capitalism and liberalism)? Can change at the margin really make a system obsolete? Or should we rather follow the Gaelic roots of the word slogan (remember: degrowth as a good, unifying slogan) as “war cry” and “wage war” at the system supporting growth (liberal state capitalism)?

One note of caution before further proceeding: of course this does not have to be an either/or choice: indeed, most social movements or initiatives pursue both, i.e. changes at the local level (or margin) and systemic ones. Nevertheless, it is also true that when it comes to dedicate energy, the dilemma often does emerge, so knowing the relative merits (in terms of pursuing transition) of each route, could indeed be useful.

Further reading:  Cattaneo, C., D’Alisa, G., Kallis, G., & Zografos, C. (2012). Degrowth futures and democracy. Futures, 44(6), 515-523.

Karl Polanyi, by Irina Velicu

The following are excerpts from Velicu, Irina. “Moral versus Commercial Economies: Transylvanian Stories”, in New Political Science: A Journal of Politics and Culture, 36 (2), May, 2014.

“Historically, the production of a market society has depended on the commodification of valuables such as land and labour and the counter-movement we are still witnessing nowadays has been the invocation of elements of ‚moral economies’ as a basis for collective mobilization. Polanyi's argument about 'fictitious commodities' (land, labour and money), as prerequisite for a market society to develop, is still valid. He shows how land, labour and money have been projected as commodities which eventually translated into a suicidal process of subordination of society to the market:

A market economy can exist only in a market society and must comprise all elements of industry including labour, land, and money. (...) But labour and land are no other than the human being themselves of which every society consists and the natural surroundings in which they exist. To include them in the market mechanism means to subordinate the substance of society itself to the laws of the market (...) labour, land and money are obviously not commodities" (...) since they are not actually 'produced' for sale.[1]

            Consequently, these 'fictitious commodities' along with the imposition to view them as ‘commodities’, as the organizing principle of society, had to be made available for purchase. Besides painful social dislocations and pauperization of peasants, history showed us that this process also meant a separation of society into the economic and the political realm: the liberal utopia. Polanyi's argument is that the market formation had not been a 'self-regulating' process but rather a planned one as the state itself played an essential role in this ‘great transformation’. If it was not for the state (facilitating but also pressured by society to tame or alleviate the violence of marketization through social legislation), the market would have had destroyed itself in a never-ending expansion: "Laissez-faire was planned, planning was not".[2] Global economy just as national economies has depended on regulatory institutions (including lenders of last resort) to exist. In the course of history, both war, colonial crimes as well as peace and cooperation have been organized by finance capitalists to change or to maintain the status quo. (...)

            Polanyi’s argument is first of all moral, thus, its relevance for the case we are looking at: it is simply wrong to treat nature and human beings as objects to be disposed, sold, alienated through the market. While economy should be seen as submerged in social relationships (one does not wish possession of material goods for their own sake but to safeguard social status), the economic system should be seen as merely a 'function of social organization'.[3] But the emergence and contemporary expansion of industrial/market societies have attempted to alter this situation. The semi-rural Rosia Montana closely resembles what Polanyi describes as the enclosures which based the beginning of the Industrial Revolution:

Enclosures have appropriately been called a revolution of the rich against the poor. The lords and nobles were upsetting the social order, breaking down the ancient law and custom, sometimes by means of violence, often by pressure and intimidation. They were literally robbing the poor of their share in the common, tearing down the houses which, by the hitherto unbreakable force of custom, the poor had long regarded as theirs and       their heirs.

Ecofeminist degrowth or Barbariy by Amaia Orozco[4]

The financial breakdown in 2007-2008 was not the beginning of the current crisis. Before that moment, diverse critical perspectives were arguing the severe crises were in place: a global ecological crisis that implied that the physical limits of the planet had already been surpassed; a social reproduction crisis affecting the Global South where the emotional and material expectations of reproduction were at risk or denied for the largest part of the population; and a care crisis affecting the Global North, where despite the good performance of market indicators, day-to-day life was increasingly difficult, specially due to the difficulties to combine employments with care needs and responsibilities. In such a context, those critical perspectives were arguing that the financialization of the economy was not the sole problem, and that the way back to “production-led” growth, based on employment, consumption and a strong presence of the Welfare State was neither possible nor desirable. Both feminism and ecological approaches consider that “production” should not be the aim of the economic system; that the very notion of “production” is deceitful. Why so?

            According to the productivist approach to the socioeconomic system, the economy is lead by companies that invest capital to produce goods and services that people need in order to access wellbeing. Households can afford market consumption thanks to the wages they get by sending some family members to the labour market. This is the virtuous and upward spiral of economic growth. We can live better and better by producing more and more. The only active population is entrepreneurs and the workforce. The rest of the society is passive and dependent. Broadly speaking, people’s lives depend on the good performance of the market economy (that can be improved thanks to the action of the State, according to Keynesian approaches). And the whole society depends on the work performed by those who are engaged in the labour market. This is the kind of growth to which society must return, assuring that the financial system serves the “production” process.

            From an ecological standpoint this picture of the economy is criticized because it denies that the economy is an open subsystem that operates within a closed planet. The economy extracts materials from the biosphere and uses energy to transform them. This process generates large amounts of waste. All this happens within a planet that does not exchange materials with the outside: it does not receive new materials, most of the used energy comes from non renewable sources and the waste cannot be sent way. All this imposes very serious limits to the “production” process. Indeed, this limit have already been reached and surpassed. Moreover, the very notion of production is twisted: we do not really produce any new thing, we just extract and transform. However, the availability of an artificial way of measuring and cumulating “wealth” (money as a means for accumulation) allows us to believe that we “produce” something new, that we create wealth and that unlimited growth is possible. Then we forget that nothing can grow in an unlimited way within a limited planet. The critique to “production” is conclusive: production does not exist; it is a anthropomorphic fantasy that leads society to the destruction of the planet.

The feminist critique reveals the “hidden other” of production: reproduction. It asks whether wages and commodities are directly transformed into human lives. It reveals the enormous amount of unpaid work that transforms, adapts, maintains and supplements goods and services that come from the “production” sphere. This unpaid work guarantees embodied well-being for specific persons, with particular needs and desires. This social reproduction process is the very basis of society and of enterprises. When workers enter the production process they are asked to have all their needs met and to bring with them no responsibility for others’ lives (to act as self-sufficient subjects). Who is then in charge of solving all those needs? Who is responsible for the needs of life that do not stop while the production process goes on? This is the sphere of carework/unpaid work/invisibilised work, however we name it. The economy comprises all the processes that sustain life, whether they occur within the market or outside from it. Moreover, the very distinction between production of goods and services and social reproduction of people is deceitful. Any production of goods and services should be used for reproducing social life. Simultaneously, a very wide range of goods and services are produced in the social “reproduction” sphere. The distinction is meaningful only when the production process is led by a distinctive logic, different to the aim of sustaining life: the logic of capital accumulation. This distinction is at the very basis of capitalism and linked to the distinction between the public sphere and the private-domestic sphere, which is also distinctive of industrial societies.

            The feminist critique brings to light all the processes that sustain life and satisfy needs/desires. It asks what the driving force within each one of them is. In non capitalist markets, money is a means to make exchange easier. The final aim is to obtain commodities that satisfy needs. But in capitalist markets capital/money (K) is invested to produce commodities (C) that will later be sold allowing to make a profit, to gain a bigger capital than the initially invested money (K’ should be bigger than K). Thus, the satisfaction of needs (and the “reproduction” of social life that it allegedly allows for) is a means for a different end. This is so at best. At worst, and easily, destroying life is more profitable than sustaining it (for example: exporting food from starving societies) or the impact of the whole process is rather destructive of life (for example a highly polluting industry). From a life sustainability approach many market processes could be said to be anti-economic. But from a capital accumulation logic they are highly “productive” (the lead to economic growth). Therefore, under the capital accumulation logic, life is attacked. This logic leads to the exploitation and destruction of the planet. It puts human life at risk: although it can be argued that many dimensions of life have been commodified, there are always dimensions of life that cannot become profitable (mostly, those more closely linked to the vulnerability of human existence: infancy, old age, illness, sadness, even death…). Beyond that, the lives of many people are not profitable for the capital accumulation logic. These are what could be named as leftover life dimensions or even leftover lives. This is why feminists argue that the conflict capital-waged labour is deeper: it is a conflict between the process of capital accumulation (and valorisation) and the sustainability of life. This conflict is structural and cannot be solved. When claiming that capital is at odds with life, we understand life from a holistic perspective (all the dimensions of life), a collective approach (the lives of all the world’s population) and in integral terms (understanding that human and non-human life is a unity).

This notion of the conflict between capital and life can be shared by diverse heterodox perspective. Feminism goes on: if the conflict is no solvable, which process is guaranteed? The answer for capitalist societies is tautological: the process that is protected is the accumulation of capital. Collective structures are at its service. Capitalist markets are at the epicentre of the whole socioeconomic structure: their needs define the organization of time, space, what is produced, how, what for… Their needs are the main force defining how resources are used… The existence of a social responsibility for guaranteeing the accumulation process implies that there is not (and cannot be) a social responsibility for sustaining life.

But life must go on… Without life there is no society, and no markets. How is the responsibility for life sustainability sorted out? Feminism argues that this happens through a three-fold movement. First, this responsibility is not collective: it is private. Rather it is privatized: located within the private-domestic sphere (not in the public domain) and solved by using privately available means (either money to buy in markets or time to perform unpaid work). The leading institutions within this private-domestic sphere are heteropatriarchal households. These households are scenario of cooperative conflict, and are driven by unequal gender relations. Therefore, households are not only a economic institution, but the main and final economic institution that deals with the capital-life conflict and that closes the economic process, trying to sustain life within a system where life is threatened.

Second, the responsibility for sustaining life is feminised in a triple sense: subjective, material and symbolic. It is feminised because it is linked to a gendered construction of subjectivities: the construction of hegemonic masculinity is linked to a productivist ethics, according to which identity, social recognition and success are linked to employment. Hegemonic femininity is linked to a reactionary ethics of care: self-identity and social recognition as a good woman are linked to the responsibility of guaranteeing others’ wellbeing, to ensuring others’ life, even if it requires renouncing to personal wellbeing. This reactionary ethics of care guarantees that there are subjects who sacrifice their lives trying to fix all the damage caused by the accumulation logic. This gendered construction of subjectivity has serious material consequences: the bulk of the invisibilised carework that sustains life is performed by women. The sexual division of labour is inherent to capitalism. And, finally, it is feminised in a symbolic sense. The very distinction between production and reproduction is linked to a heteropatriarchal epistemology that understands the world through a series of gendered hierarchical dichotomies: growth is opposed and superior to stagnation; production goes beyond than social reproduction; the market economy is a more advanced (civilised) system than a subsistence economy; waged labour is superior to carework. These dichotomies linked the preferred term to masculinity and the inferior one to femininity.

                Third, the responsibility for life sustainability is invisibilised. Working in this sphere does not provide access to citizenship, which is acquired thanks to the presence in the public sphere driven by the capital accumulation logic. Moreover, this sphere is deprived of the capacity to generate political conflict. It does not allow for political empowerment. Being responsible for sustaining life is not the basis for the construction of political subjectivity. Invisibility is related to lack of power. It is a multidimensional condition (lack of names, data, collective regulation of working conditions, political demands and organisations…) that finally means that what happens in this sphere is not a political collective concern. The subjects that lead this sphere are deprived of power to question the whole structure. Then, the conflict disappears, because it is hidden in the socioeconomic spheres that “do not exit”. The socioeconomic system looks like an iceberg: capitalist markets are fully visible, fully powerful; they impose their conditions to the whole structure. This requires the existence of other spheres that try to sustain life while life is being attacked; theymust do so in a hidden way so as to guarantee “social peace” and avoid that the conflict explodes. The socioeconomic system then is unsustainable at a multidimensional level (because it attacks life). And it is unjust and unequal: power and resources are gathered around a few hands: those of the only life that deserves such a name within the hegemonic discourse. The only life that is worth living, worth being sustained day-to-day and rescued in times of crisis: the life of the white, capitalist, self-made, heterosexual man. The notion of what a life worth living is (self-sufficient, consumerist, market-driven, anthropomorphic) can be achieved only by him and thanks to diverse levels of others’ precarious/bad-living, as well as to the exploitation of non-human life.

Faced to this situation, what does ecofeminist degrowth (or certain understanding of ecofeminist degrowth) propose? It assumes that we are already facing a transition and that the crisis is a civilization crisis that is taking us “elsewhere”. Then the question is not whether we want to change the system or not, but rather whether we want to handle this change and governing it by introducing ethical and political concerns. If we do not so, we are in our way to “barbarity”, to the explosion of social inequality, to the destruction of planet life and to the naturalisation of deprivation and precarious living conditions for the majority. Ecofeminism considers that in such a situation we indeed should try to govern the transition. We need a radically democratic debate on where we want to go: what is a life worth living, what is the kind of good-living (buen vivir) towards which we want to transit. We need a shared utopia that can guide the transition. This democratic debate must be leaded by critical perspectives, which should come together in this attempt. Feminism is one of the perspectives that should be present. It can enrich the radically democratic debate by ensuring that invisibilised work/processes/subjects are taken into account and that gender power relationships are questioned. This debate must deal with two issues: if we aim at de-centring capitalist markets and putting life at the centre, we must ask: (1) What is a life worth living/sustaining? What do we understand as good-living/buen vivir? And (2) how can we sustain that life? In this two-fold debate, diverse critical approaches are providing key insights. On the “what life” question, the degrowth movement argues that “less is more”: we can live better by consuming less and devoting less time to paid work. Ecologism argues that life must be recognised as ecodependent, challenging the distinction between human and non-human life. And feminism claims that life is vulnerable. Life is not out of magic, out of the blue. Life is possible but not certain. It must be cared for in order to exist. And the only way to take care of life is in contact with others. We are all and always interdependent. On the “how” debate, degrowth asserts that the spheres driven by the capital accumulation logic should be sharply decreased. Ecologism claims that we need to decrease our consumption of materials and energy and the generation of waste. Feminism maintains that households (the unit where the conflict is hidden) must be democratised and that we should build a collective responsibility for life sustainability, ensuring that this is no longer a private concern.

Let’s briefly discuss these proposals from a feminist perspective. Less is more, OK. But what is enough? That is: what makes a life worth living. This is not a question on adding up individual notions of happiness, but on the dimensions of life that should become a collective responsibility. This is the overall question. When addressing it we need to take into account two conditions of existence that refer to the limits of life. First that human life is ecodependent; therefore, that any notion of buen vivir should be possible within the limits of the planet, taken into account the availability of material and energy flows. The blind faith in technology (which yearns that technology will allow for de-materilising the economic process) should be abandoned and substituted by a guiding principle of sobriety.

Second, life is vulnerable and interdependent. The current hegemonic notion of life idolizes self-sufficiency. We need to dismantle it by showing that this self-sufficiency is false; we are always receiving from others. The way to maintain the image of self-sufficiency is by denying what is being received. Thus, it has a hidden mirror: the neglected subjects who sacrifice their lives for the sake of others’ self-sufficient subjects’ success. At the same time they seem to depend on those successful subjects. This damaging dichotomy is gendered: self-sufficiency is linked to masculinity while subjugated dependency is linked to femininity. We must challenge the way in which interdependence is nowadays organized: it is neglected and therefore sorted out in terms of exploitation and inequality. We must settle it in reciprocal terms. To do so, we simultaneously need to question both the heteropatriarchal valuing system and the heteronormative and binary construction of gendered identities. At the same time that we recognize interdependence, we must defend autonomy (not self-sufficiency). Autonomy is precisely what has being denied to subjects who remained invisibilised and were labelled as dependent. The question is: how can interdependence be managed in terms of reciprocity and under conditions respectful to autonomy of all (individual and collective) subjects? The proposal of indigenous Latin-American feminists of avoiding an abstract and disembodied notion of good-living/buen vivir can be critical in this respect. They propose to link buen vivir to a particular land-body territory, which should be secure and autonomous.

Besides discussion on “what life” taking into account those two conditions of existence, we should also insist on two nonnegotiable ethical-political principles. One, universality: whatever we agree buen vivir is, it should be possible for everyone. Someone’s good-living cannot be met thanks to others’ bad-living. Two, singularity: good-living is not a homogeneous reality. We need to give room to difference and diversity (cultural, sexual, gender, ability…) and to ensure that diversity does not translate into inequality.

A final words about the “how”: The proposals by the degrowth and feminist movements should happen simultaneously. On one hand, the relevance of the spheres driven by a capital accumulation logic should decrease. Resources should be taken out from them. On other hand, household should be democratised. This means: giving room and promoting the diversity of households (trying to create ways of sharing life that are both committed to the diverse circumstances of life and freely chosen); the equal sharing of resources an work within households should be promoted; and, finally, we should take away from households many responsibilities, mainly those related to dealing with the vulnerability of life. At the end, the very responsibility that should be placed in the collective space is the responsibility of readjusting the socioeconomic system. It means: the final aim should be to build a collective, shared responsibility for life sustainability and for dealing with the vulnerability of an interdependent and ecodependent life. This means putting an end to the sexual division of labour. The resources taken away from the capital accumulation logic should be used to manage that responsibility. The question is what type of socioeconomic structures should assume this responsibility: the State? The Commons? Autonomous non-market structures? Probably, there is nor a single response. On one hand, the “State” could be democratised and become closer to the community and managed in more autonomous ways. That is, these possibilities are not mutually exclusive. On other hand, we need a diverse economy, that can deal with the diverse levels around awhich interdependency takes place: some dimensions of thee interdependency of life can be managed at the level of democratised households, while others require a higher level of coordination (the “community”) and others go further away (they need the coordination by the “State”). A principle of “relocalisation” or lessening the complexity of socioeconomic structures could act as a guiding criterion when defining these levels.

The culturalist roots of Degrowth: Critiques of development and praise for anti-utilitarianism, by Federico Demaria

This degrowth source derives from anthropology. Authors within this current perceive degrowth as a ‘missile word’, which strikes down the hegemonic imaginary of both development and utilitarianism. Latouche has been an important author in this stream of thought. Critics of development from the 1970s and 1980s include Arturo Escobar, Gilbert Rist, Helena Norberg-Hodge, Majid Rahnema, Wolfgang Sachs, Ashish Nandy, Shiv Visvanathan, Gustavo Esteva (Sachs 1992), François Partant, Bernard Charbonneau and Ivan Illich. The essence of this source is the critique of the uniformisation of cultures due to the widespread adoption of particular technologies and consumption and production models experienced in the global North. As Latouche (2009) puts it, the western development model is a mental construct adopted by the rest of the world. Degrowth considers ‘sustainable development’ an oxymoron and calls for disentangling from the social imaginary that it entails, and beyond this, it criticises the notion of ‘development’ itself.

The other face of this current in the degrowth movement is the critique of homo economicus, against utility-maximisation as the ultimate driving force of human behaviour. This critique was inspired by Marcel Mauss in the 1920s (Mauss 2007[1924]), and Serge Latouche, Alain Caillé and other members of the MAUSS (Mouvement Anti-Utilitariste dans les Sciences Sociales) (Caillé 1989). Other authors often quoted are social and economic historian Karl Polanyi (1944) and anthropologist Marshall Sahlins (1972).

The conception of human beings as economic agents driven by self-interest and utility maximisation is one representation of the world, or one historic social construct which has been meticulously nested in the minds of many generations of economics students. Degrowth in that sense calls for more ample visions giving importance to economic relations based on sharing, gifts and reciprocity, where social relations and conviviality are central. The focus here is on the change in the structure of values and the change in value-articulating institutions. Degrowth is thus a way to bring forward a new imaginary which implies a change of culture and a rediscovery of human identity which is disentangled from economic representations (Bayon et al. 2010).

The reception of the degrowth idea in the social and political debate (with a focus on liberalism and anticapitalism, by Fabrice Flipo

Degrowth is a 40-yrs old idea, at least (Jevons, Mill etc. already...). Thus is as been already widely debated. Looking the most common arguments against degrowth can inform us about what stakes are, regarding implementation.

What is liberalism ? In french philosophy there is a sharp distinction between political liberalism and economical liberalism, which is not so clear in anglosaxon philosophy. Key features of liberalism are market, as a self-regulated entity, guided by the motive of profit, which justifies State’s non-intervention in private sphere, and sanctions consumers’s sovereignty ; regime is a representative democracy, with a parliament, and elected representatives ; and rule-of-law, that is, nobody, included governants and governements, can act out of law, and nobody can make justice himself. Rule of law is also a guarantee of stability, as law’s evolution is slow. Liberals fear revolutions and massive crowd movements, masses, passions etc. all phenomenas that are instrumentalisable by skilled politicians, leading to fascism or totalitarianism, through what is usually called « populism ».

Thus degrowth appears to be radically anti-liberal. To de-grow is obviously an anti-market behaviour, which is going to block the self-regulating virtue of market, therefore opening space for endless State intervention. But at the same moment degrowth movements are most of the time reluctant to see massive administrative bodies handling every corner of people’s life. There is frequently a sharp critique of representative democracy. There are also some support to civil disobedience, a kind of action which is not compatible with rule of law, unlike strike, which is a right. Degrowth constitues also a threat against consumer’s sovereignty, who is told by minorities how to consume and to live. With its anti-parliament tendency, degrowth can eventually lead to a new kind of populism, based on a new kind of secular religion.

With being so far from liberalism, one may conclude that degrowth is closed to its opposite, anti-liberalism. But this is misleading.          

What is anti-liberalism (anticapitalism) ? First we shall put apart political liberalism from economic liberalism. Some anticapitalists (socialdemocrats) favor the first one, along with criticizing the second one. Historically anticapitalism is based on class struggle, that is, capital and labor antagonism. This means that capitalists, those who own producting means, and « proletarians », who have no producting means, are unequal. Capitalists are doing nothing except stealing proletarians / salarees worktime, and putting them in concurrence, in order to lower wages. As salarees are also consumers, this explains why capitalism is subject to numerous crisis. The mechanism ais always the same : capitalists try to lower wages, in order to lower prices, to win makets, this lowers also purchasing power, leading to lower sales, and finally to bankruptcy. What salarees have to do is to struggle for their wages, and their working conditions. Ultimately they have to take control of capital, most of the time through the power of State. Anticapitalism historically sees capitalism as a revolutionary force, which has deployed « productive forces », where there was only animism, nature worship or religion, leading to development and progress. The true subject of this revolution is the working class, who is the real author of those tools.

This explains why degrowth isn’t favored by anticapitalists. De-grow is obviously opposed to the indefinie growth of massive tools, inclunding the « megamachine », that socialists historically saw as a new form of social link. Lenin and many other socialist leaders have favored productives forces, explaining that socialist way is more productive than capitalist way, where production is leaved to anarchy. More, degrowth movements, by criticizing the power of the State, are seen as being on the liberal side, not on the organisation (« socialist ») side. Technology is at the heart of the dissent.