Many people are now calling for transition to a very different kind of society. I think most of them are mistaken about how we’ll get there, especially people in the Ecovillage, Transition Towns and Degrowth movements.
These movements are essential to the transition but they have given little thought to the question of strategy, of how the new ways they are for can be achieved. In my full discussion of the question I argue that most of the thinking on the issue is mistaken.
It’s necessary to begin by making clear the staggering enormity of the change that is required if we are to get to a sustainable and just world. If the goal is a society in which all the world’s people could live well on an equal share of resources, then we in rich countries would have to reduce our per capita consumption probably to around 10% of present levels. Exaggerated? Here’s the basic arithmetic.
The World Wildlife Fund’s “Footprint” measure indicates that the amount of productive land required to meet the demand of the average Australian is around 7 ha. So if the 10 billion people likely by 2050 rose to our “living standards” we would need perhaps 70 billion ha …but there are only 12 billion ha of productive land on the planet. If we leave one-third of it for nature there would only be 0.8 ha per capita available. These numbers indicate that Australian’s today are using around 9 times the per capita amounts that would be possible for all to use in 2050.
This means the quest for growth is now not just absurd, it is suicidal.
In addition, we have a grossly unjust economy. It lets the market determine what is to be produced and who is to get it, which means that it produces mainly what richer people want, because they can pay more for things. It has developed poor countries into a form that enables a net flow of several trillion dollars wealth from them to rich countries every year.
So we need transition to a very different kind of society.
The magnitude of the required degrowth sets an insoluble conundrum for this society. It is a society that cannot make reductions of this order. It can make trivial moves in the right direction by recycling and improving efficiency etc. but such “reforms within/to the system” cannot make anything like a sufficient difference. Degrowth is totally incompatible with a capitalist economy. It is by nature a growth system, it must have constant increase in the amount of investing and business turnover.
To reduce economic turnover by a large amount would involve phasing out most factories, industries, trade, investment, and jobs. What do you think the owners of capital will say about that? What are you going to do with the people and towns in industries that are to close? The task has to be seen in terms of enabling people who have to produce a lot to earn a lot to buy lots of things they need, to transition to a very different kind of economic system in which they can scale purchasing down greatly. Such a society cannot be highly industrialised, urbanised, globalised, affluent, driven by market forces and profit or by obsession with consuming, property and getting richer.
Even most Degrowth advocates fail to grasp the enormity of what they are asking for. They state a long list of utopian dream demands that can never be achieved in anything like this society, yet mostly these are put as policies they want the government to adopt.
First, what must be the goal?
There is only one basic social form that can enable a society that has undergone a sufficient amount of degrowth. I label it The Simpler Way. Most people would live in small and highly self-sufficient and self-governing communities in control of their zero growth local economies in which market forces played only a minor role. Town assemblies would decide major economic issues, for instance setting up co-operatives to ensure that no one was without work. There would be many committees looking after things like orchards, youth affairs, recycling, old people and the many commons such as the fish ponds and workshops. Working bees would maintain our many systems. Most people would be able to get to work on foot or bicycle. Because we would be living very frugally, content with what is sufficient, and because many things would be “free” from the commons most of us would need to work for money only two days a week.
The town would have many small businesses and farms within it and nearby. Many things would be produced by craft and hobby technologies. Not far away in the region there would be many other towns, and small factories and farms supplying locally. Relatively little would need to come in from big national mass production factories such as steel, irrigation, irrigation pumps and cement, and even less from the global economy.
These communities could not function satisfactorily unless there had been huge cultural change. Individualistic obsession with competition for wealth and property would have to be replaced by a collectivist/cooperative outlook, the desire to contribute to the welfare of the town and to derive life satisfaction from community, the relaxed pace, the beautiful town and landscape, and from seeking enjoyment in non-material pursuits. The conditions would automatically reinforce these good values. Everyone would realise that their quality of life depended on whether or not the town was thriving, so they would contribute to that.
The integration and proximity within such settlements enables intensive recycling, overlapping functions, reductions in overheads and transport, and synergism. For instance, a study of the supply of eggs found that production via backyards and local poultry co-operatives could reduce resource and dollar costs to around 2% of those within the conventional supermarket path. There is negligible dependence on the infrastructures and inputs that path involves, such as agribusiness, factory farming, industrial infrastructures, feed mills, energy, ship and truck transport, fertilizer production, waste removal and treatment, packaging, marketing, supermarket operations, IT systems and expensive personnel. No machinery, chemicals, accountants or advertising executives are needed. Local production enables recycling of manures to nearby gardens and methane digesters, reducing if not entirely eliminating the need for fertilisers, poultry feed production and ”waste” removal.
Above all, The Simpler Way would prioritise living with frugal sufficiency, happily embracing lifestyles and systems that minimise resource use. This does not need to involve any reduction in useful high-tech or quality of life. For example, beautiful small earth-built houses can be built for a tiny fraction of the cost of today’s housing. For the detailed account of TSW see The Alternative and the Pigface Point video.
This vision is Anarchist, not Socialist
Socialists get the main issue right; that is, capitalism has to be scrapped. But they are sadly mistaken about the alternative and how to get there.
Their thinking about the nature of the desired society is intensely centralist. They envisage a powerful state that runs things. But the above discussion rules this out. The state cannot make the right decisions for huge numbers of small communities with their differing conditions, history and people. These communities can’t work well unless their members feel cohesive, empowered and proud of their town. Yes we will eventually have a new “state” apparatus, but it will be much diminished, with relatively little to do other than serve the local communities, implementing decisions made at the grass level (e.g., by referenda.)
The new communities must embody several Anarchist principles, most obviously a thoroughly participatory democracy of equals via town assemblies seeking consensus decisions about what’s best for the town.
Socialists are likely to protest that being in control of the state would enable the new ways to be introduced and facilitated. But that could not be unless a state which has the intention of implementing The Simpler Way had previously been elected, and that could not happen unless and until most people had come to hold the new vision. So our revolutionary strategy here and now should not be focused on “taking the state”; it should be focused on helping as many people as possible to adopt the alternative vision, and to start building it. This is what the Anarchists call “prefiguring”.
If we are very effective in spreading our vision the revolution will have been won; structural changes such as getting control of the remnant “state” would then easily follow as consequences of the revolution.
So how do we get there?
Neither the situation we are in or the way out of it are understood by governments, elites or ordinary people. Even if understood, the astronomical change required could not be made by the decision-making institutions of this society. Can you imagine them trying to agree on which factories to close down, or what to do with the displaced workers, when at present they are all working frantically to increase production, consumption, jobs and the GDP? Do you realise that it would mean the end of capitalism? Most investment opportunities would cease to exist. There would be no interest payments on loans. Governments would have to decide how much of which few necessary items were to be produced, and which firms were going to produce them. That’s ultra hard-core “Socialism”.
So it is a complete waste time for Degrowth advocates to be demanding that governments implement the standard list of utopian Degrowth dreams (... except in so far as this is being done in order to increase awareness of the Degrowth campaign.)
Well then, how are we going to get there? How do we get rid of capitalism, determination of economics by market forces and profit, the quest for affluence and growth, etc? The answer is ... we don’t, and we can’t. These things will get rid of themselves.
We have begun to accelerate down into a time of great troubles which might be the end of us all. But it will clear the way for the building of the new ways. There are four main reasons why a mega-breakdown is underway.
The first is the multi-factorial biophysical overshoot that makes this society grossly unsustainable ... the increasingly serious problems of climate, soil depletion, sea rise, ozone depletion, soil and sea acidification, forest loss, chemical toxicity, loss of species, soil loss of carbon, population growth, fires, storms, droughts, floods etc. These will greatly increase difficulties and costs.
The second is the decline in oil availability likely to begin as fracking peaks, maybe around 2030. Renewable energy is not likely to fill the gap. Energy and therefore all other costs will probably rise dramatically.
The third is the coming collapse of the global financial system house of cards. Global debt is now three times global GDP, and is accelerating. It can never be repaid. Many now see the debt crash coming.
The fourth is the disintegration of social cohesion as people are increasingly impoverished and angry over what the system is doing to them. They are turning to authoritarian leaders promising to save them. This leads to fascism.
As Marx saw long ago, capitalism has contradictions built into its nature, and they will eventually destroy it. There is nothing anyone can do about our trajectory now (see the detailed TSW transition theory.) Our task is to try to get as many people as possible to understand the situation, to adopt the alternative vision, and to start building it. As governments and corporations increasingly fail to provide for us people will be forced by circumstances to come together in their localities to work out how to set up highly cooperative and self-sufficient alternative arrangements. This is happening now, as evident in Ecovillage, Transition Towns, Degrowth, and many related movements. But we must gear these more directly in order to help the mainstream to join us.
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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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