The podcast starts in German, but the interview starting after 42 seconds is in English.

About the authors and their positions

Ashish Kothari is a member of Kalpavriksh, which has been working on environment and development issues in India since 1979.

He is also on the steering committee of the ICCA Consortium, a global network of organisations and movements working in territories and areas conserved by indigenous peoples and local communities; has been on the boards of Greenpeace International and Greenpeace India; and is a member of Beyond Development, a global working group set up by the Rosa Luxemburg Stiftung. Kalpavriksh currently coordinates the Vikalp Sangam (‘Alternatives Confluence’) process in India, under which principles and values related to ecoswaraj are being evolved. It also coordinated the Peoples’ Sustainability Treaty on RED and manages the RED e-list and blog (soon to be launched as a website).

1. What is the key idea of Radical Ecological Democracy?

Ecoswaraj as a response to the social and ecological bankruptcy of the currently dominant development and governance system

The multiple crises that humanity is facing are becoming increasingly visible: in the form of disasters related to ecological damage, the stark inequalities between a tiny minority of ultra-rich and the vast numbers of desperately poor, the health epidemics related to both deprivation and affluence, mass refugee migrations in many parts of the world, and the scarcity of several once-abundant resources. Countries like China and India are fast joining the already-industrialised nations in putting even more stress on the planet, or in colonizing less powerful regions of the earth. In such a situation, there is an urgent quest for alternative pathways for well-being that are sustainable, equitable and just.

Coal mining in Maharashtra (Image: Ashish Kothari)

There is no doubt that as a species we have to downsize if we are to respect the limits; not only for ourselves but —just as importantly— for the millions of other species that co-inhabit the earth with us. It is timely, therefore, to talk of degrowth in the context of humanity as a whole, and most certainly in the context of the Global North which is overconsuming and overdumping.

But is degrowth, or the reduction of material and energy uses for human use, a valid and viable strategy for the Global South, i.e. countries and populations (including some in industrialized countries) that have not reached an excessive or even acceptable level of prosperity? Perhaps not. What is needed is for these regions to find their own home-grown visions and pathways of change. I will talk here of one such example: ecoswaraj or radical ecological democracy (RED), which is emerging from practical and conceptual processes prevalent in many parts of India.

India currently sees itself as entering into the elite league of economic superpowers. Along with China, it has enjoyed the world’s highest growth rates in the last couple of decades. But this has come at a horrendous cost to the environment, and to hundreds of millions of people who are directly dependent on the environment (Shrivastava and Kothari 2012). It has also created an increasing schism between the rich and poor, so that 1% of the population now owns more than 50% of the country’s wealth, while at least two-thirds of its people remain deprived of basic needs, and employment scarcity is staring at a hundred million young people who have recently joined the workforce.

The problem lies partly in the growth fetish. An economic policy that assumes that growth will magically translate into the poor rising above the poverty line and everyone getting productive jobs is fundamentally flawed. It ignores the fact that many of the gains of growth could be cornered by the already rich, that mechanization may offset any new job generation, and that inflation may make things even worse for much of the population. This is compounded by the increasing withdrawal of the state from basic services (the trend being to privatize them) and the serious inefficiencies and corruption in whatever service delivery that still exists. All of this is built on top of a deeply hierarchical society, with unthinkable oppression and exploitation of ‘lower’ castes, women, and the landless.

Ecological suicide is as much a part of the history of ‘development’ as are deprivation and inequalities. The global story of humanity crossing several planetary boundaries is mirrored in India. Two reports, not from environmental activists but from the very institutions that otherwise champion unbridled growth, have admitted as much. The Chamber of Indian Industries (along with the Global Footprint Network) said in 2008 that India is already consuming twice as much as its natural resources can sustain. The World Bank reported in 2013 that environmental damage (it took into account a limited set such as impact on people’s health) is knocking 5.7% off of GDP growth. If all impacts of such damage were to be accounted for, even using the limited methodology of environmental economics, we would possibly be in what is actually a negative growth phase.

Communities and citizens in India are, however, not taking all of this lying down. At any given moment in the last couple of decades, there have been several hundred small to large resistance movements, from a few families refusing to part with their land for the industry, to thousands of people protesting a mega hydro project; from dalit (so-called ‘untouchables’, the lowest in the caste hierarchy) and women’s demands for basic human rights, to students protesting the decline in public support for educational institutions. Simultaneously, people are also coming up with innovative, positive transformations in their lives, on their own or with support from civil society organisations and occasionally even governments. It is from both the resistance and the reconstruction (sangharsh and nirman) initiatives that the idea of ecoswaraj or radical ecological democracy (RED) has emerged.

An anti-dam rally in Hemalkasa in Maharashtra (Image: Ashish Kothari)

The term swaraj can be loosely translated as ‘self-rule’ —though it is much more than just a governance concept— and refers to a combination of individual and collective autonomy, mutual responsibility, rights, and responsibilities. Although older than him, the concept was popularised by Gandhi as part of India’s freedom struggle against British colonial power, and is referred to in his seminal book Hind Swaraj as a civilisational ethos comprising the elements mentioned above. I have added ‘eco’ to integrate the principle of ecological wisdom and resilience into this political and cultural ethos. Ecoswaraj or RED envisions a society in which all people and communities are empowered to be part of decisions affecting their lives (radical or direct democracy) in ways that are ecologically sensitive and socially equitable. Below I will further explain this concept and refer to its various key elements.

2. Who is part of the Radical Ecological Democracy movement, what do they do?

Ecoswaraj or RED is an emerging framework for communities and organisations exploring alternative visions and pathways

Community Radio mobiliser of the Deccan Development Society in Telangana (Image: Ashish Kothari)

In the drylands of Andhra Pradesh and Telangana in southern India, small farmers — including dalit¹ women— of the Deccan Development Society have transformed their lives by reviving organic farming using their own seeds, achieving full food sovereignty, collectivizing resources and labour, securing basic rights, forming cooperatives or companies to negotiate better returns, forming community-run media (films, radio), and throwing off the traditional social stigmas associated with them. In the forested landscapes of Maharashtra in central India, several communities such as Mendha-Lekha back control over their surrounding forests, initiated sustainable harvesting of bamboo and other forest produce, converted the earnings into enhanced energy, livelihoods, and food security, and in at least one village, turned all private lands back into the commons. City-level or national associations in Pune, Bangalore, Delhi and elsewhere are fighting for the right of hawkers, rickshaw-pullers, waste pickers, and other marginalized sections to spaces and services of the city, and enhanced conditions for livelihood and living. Learning and educational institutions such as the Adivasi Academy in the indigenous regions of the west Indian state of Gujarat, and SECMOL in the high-altitude region of Ladakh, provide opportunities that —unlike mainstream education— enable students to remain connected with their cultural and ecological roots while also learning modern subjects and skills.

SWaCH wastepicker cooperative member in Pimpri Chinchwad, Maharashtra (Image: Ashish Kothari)

These are just very few examples of communities, government agencies, businesses and individuals showing ecologically sensitive, socially equitable pathways to food and water security, enhanced livelihoods and jobs, nature and natural resource conservation, manufacturing and services, and other sectors of economy and society. For these purposes, a range of alternative media, arts, and other aspects of human creativity are being pressed into service. And it is not only those in desperate situations or crises that are acting. Increasingly, the middle classes in some cities are also asserting their desire to live more responsibly, e.g. by mobilising to revive urban wetlands, moving towards full recycling of their waste and decentralised water harvesting and by asserting their right to be a part of city planning through participatory budgeting.

There is not the space to describe any of the above in detail, and I and others have done so in several publications elsewhere (Shrivastava and Kothari 2012; Kothari 2014; Kalpavriksh 2015; see also www.alternativesindia.org and the blog ‘Resistance and Reconstruction’ at indiatogether.org). Of course, these initiatives are not perfect (for instance equity for traditionally unprivileged groups is weak in many), there are huge gaps in coverage, and for the most part they are small and scattered. But they increasingly show the potential of alternatives, and several have demonstrated larger spread by influencing policy changes and networking. For instance, over a dozen Indian states now have policies or programmes to support organic farming (even the central government included it in its 2016 budget for the first time), undoubtedly influenced by the examples demonstrated by farmers and by the increasing urban demand for healthy food. Similarly, grassroots successes in renewable energy have prompted governments to significantly enhance financial support for it, though often in flawed ways (e.g. letting them be controlled by large corporations).

Having visited, documented, or supported several such initiatives, and having been a part of resistance movements in the last 35 years, I believe that the most important task is to learn the essence of these initiatives, and to see if the values and principles emerging from them can suggest a cohesive framework for challenging the currently dominant mindset and practice of growth-centred ‘developmentality’.

A confluence on alternative energy as part of the Vikalp Sangam process, held at Bodh Gaya, Bihar, March 2016 (Image: Ashish Kothari)

 In a series of dialogues and confluences starting in 2014, called Vikalp Sangam (‘Alternatives Confluence’), several hundred practitioners and thinkers (not exclusive categories, of course!) have discussed such a framework and agreed on the following crucial elements or pillars of a transformation² :

1. Ecological sustainability and wisdom, including the conservation of nature (ecosystems, species, functions, cycles) and its resilience, ensuring that human activities are based on environmental ethics and are within planetary limits.
2. Social well-being and justice, including lives that are physically, socially, culturally, and spiritually fulfilling, where there is equity (including gender equity) in socio-economic and political entitlements, benefits, rights and responsibilities, and where cultural diversity is celebrated and promoted. Attempts to bring back ancient Indian beliefs in ‘enoughness’, voluntary simplicity or austerity, without falling into the trap of bigoted religiosity, are part of this.
3. Direct democracy, where decision-making starts at the smallest unit of human settlement, in which every human has the right, capacity and opportunity to take part; envisaging larger levels of representative or delegated governance that are downwardly accountable, defined on the basis of ecological and cultural contiguity and linkages (‘ecoregions’ or ‘biocultural’ regions).
4. Economic democracy, in which local communities have control over the means of production, distribution, exchange, and markets; where localization is a key principle and larger trade and exchange are built on it. This is the basis of several initiatives at producer companies and cooperatives, and producer-consumer linkages in fields such as food and crafts. The re-invention of non-monetised exchanges (barter and other forms) and local bazaars, infused with equity principles that may have been weak in the past, has to be part of this process.
5. Knowledge commons, where the generation, conservation, transmission and use of knowledge (including traditional and modern forms) are collective processes, not confined to formal sector ‘experts’ or to state or corporate run institutions.

It is important to note that the above does not fit into any prevalent political or economic ideology. We use ecoswaraj because the Gandhian concept of swaraj (and the Gandhian economist Kumarappa’s ‘economics of permanence’) has many aspects that are relevant, but learnings and struggles based on Marxist ideas, those of the dalit leader BR Ambedkar, those of Rabindranath Tagore (see for instance City and Village), or MN Roy and others are also essential parts of the heritage of these initiatives. Crucially, though, indigenous visionaries, communities and others base their actions and thoughts on their own diverse situations, and what emerges is a set of common values that transcend any particular established ideology. Such values include: collective working and solidarity, respect for diversity and pluralism, the dignity of labour, empathy and respect for the rest of nature, simplicity, equity and justice, rights with responsibilities, self-reliance, and others.
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1 India’s most oppressed group, so-called ‘untouchables’ or harijans, struggling to overcome centuries’ old marginalization. In this sense, dalit women are doubly disadvantaged as gender hierarchies too remain strongly entrenched.

2 These are embedded in a framework of elements, values, strategies, and other aspects of a holistic alternative vision evolving in the Vikalp Sangam process, pl. see http://kalpavriksh.org/images/alternatives/Alternativesframework4thdraftMarch2016.pdf; this builds on the Peoples’ Sustainability Treaty on Radical Ecological Democracy, at http://www.radicalecologicaldemocracy.org/ . It should be noted that the initiatives on which such a vision is based do not necessarily use the term ecoswaraj or RED themselves. This term originated in our work, and though it is gaining acceptance, it is not meant to impose a uniform label on the diverse ways in which people articulate principles or worldviews themselves.

3. How do you see the relationship between Radical Ecological Democracy and degrowth?

The principles of ecoswaraj and degrowth resonate, and there is potential for further cooperation

From what limited understanding I have of the concept and practice of ‘degrowth’, I believe that in many of the above ways, RED resonates well with it. But there may also be crucial differences, given that a blanket proposal for degrowth is unlikely to be appropriate or acceptable within the Global South for whom deprivations of basic needs is a reality. It is therefore a crucial agenda for all of us to look at both commonalities and differences of alternative approaches including ecoswaraj, degrowth, buen vivir, solidarity economies, and others. A beginning was made as a civil society initiative towards Peoples’ Sustainability Treaties in relation to the Rio+20 conference, but much greater networking and collective work will be required in the coming years.

Some of the crucial questions that could be posed as part of such work include: What are the historical factors that are common to the experiences of the Global North and South (e.g. colonialism and capitalism), and what are the crucial differences (e.g. spiritual traditions, cosmovisions)? What are the principles of process that underlie initiatives striving for an alternative to currently dominant systems? Which of these are common to the Global North and South (e.g. those of solidarity and collective action), and which are different (e.g. the environmentalism of the marginalised oriented towards survival and basic needs vs. that of the relatively well-off oriented towards reducing unsustainability). What are the commonalities and differences in ethical values? Of course, these questions should be posed and answered not in abstraction, but on the basis of an understanding of practical initiatives grounded in different settings.

This kind of collaboration is also important for us to collectively advocate fundamental alternatives to the ‘green economy’, ‘green growth’ and even ‘sustainable development’ agendas that are being promoted globally (and which through the Sustainable Development Goals received ‘official’ sanction at the highest UN level in late 2015), showing that there are other viable pathways that do not restrict themselves to capitalist or state-dominant frameworks (Kothari et al 2015).

For this it is necessary to work more closely together, pro-actively understanding each other’s contexts and initiatives. It would actually be fascinating for joint teams of practitioner/activist researchers to move around looking at a range of grassroots initiatives and try to address the kinds of questions I’ve mentioned above. Some of this will be part of a new project on environmental justice of the Transformative Knowledge Network of the International Social Science Council being co-coordinated by the Institute for Environmental Science and Technology at Universitat Autónoma de Barcelona, Spain and Kalpavriksh, India. One part of this project is to examine and have a dialogue of alternative frameworks and worldviews emerging from environmental and social justice movements in different parts of the world.

4. Which proposals do they have for each other?

The diverse set of locally embedded frameworks can inspire each other

Each alternative worldview or framework arises within a particular socio-cultural, ecological, economic and political context, and cannot be replicated or applied as it is to another context. I do believe, however, that broad principles and values, and learnings about process, can be fruitfully applied. The emphasis of the degrowth ‘movement’ on the need to scale down, for instance, can be useful in the context of classes within the South that are over-consuming, or overall for economies in the South (such as China and India) that may already be unsustainable in some aspects. Similarly the North may have much to learn from indigenous traditions and others in the South that continue to show ways of living within nature, where some aspects of simple living still survive, or where holistic knowledge systems combining experiential, spiritual, and scientific elements are still strong. This is the case for instance with many indigenous peoples that still live within their natural habitats.

Craftswomen of Bajju Village, Bikaner in Rajasthan (Image: Ashish Kothari)

The deepest meanings of swaraj, with its complex integration of freedom, collective responsibility, self-reliance and autonomy, could be something many Northern democracies and human rights regimes could learn from. This would be particularly important in order to find alternatives to the extreme individualism and social alienation from which the Global North suffers and which even lead to superficial solutions like recycling without questioning over-consumption.

Conversely, there is much in the solidarity economy models emerging in Europe and elsewhere that we in the Global South could gainfully absorb. In particular, initiatives like digital commons, cafes and non-profit shops run cooperatively by urban youth, and social enterprises³ , and others that are in the ‘modern’ sector may be of interest to the growing numbers of such youth in the south that are looking for gainful sources of employment in urban contexts. And of course there is plenty of exciting scope for southern worldviews to engage with each other; imagine the power of buen vivir and sumac kawsay and swaraj and ubuntu and myriad other such worldviews coming together into an internally diverse but coherent whole, presenting something attractive enough to engage people currently mesmerized by the consumertopia?

To reiterate, a more systematic attempt at teasing out the commonalities and differences in the various worldviews or frameworks, in this particular case degrowth and ecoswaraj, is urgently needed.
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5. Outlook: Space for visions, suggestions or wishes

We do have opportunities to move this agenda forward

It is not easy to envision ideal futures in any detail (beyond the generic wish list of sustainability, equity, justice, peace, etc.). But envision them we must if we are to keep hope alive, find our bearings, and guide grassroots practice. However, the even harder task is to figure out specific and workable pathways to reach such a future, for these have to contend with the complex web of problems we are currently enmeshed in. Most challenging is the powerful resistance to fundamental change by those who occupy positions of power, not only within governments but also in the private sector, and within the dominant sections of society (which in the Indian context is uniquely characterized by caste as much as class, gender, and other forms of inequity and discrimination).

As high as these hurdles are, the growing number and reach of peoples’ initiatives to resist the system and create alternatives are a source of hope. Peoples’ movements and civil society organizations (including progressive workers’ unions) will have to be the primary agents of change. At times, sections and individuals within government, political parties, and academic institutions have taken the lead or assisted communities and civil society organizations, and we must continue to push such institutions to play a stronger and more effective role. Over time, as communities become empowered through decentralization, political parties will feel greater pressure from their constituencies to reorient their focus towards issues of well-being based on sustainability and equity. But my feeling is that we cannot rely on political parties alone, for they are part of the DNA of representative democracy that itself needs to be transformed into radical, more direct forms of decision-making.

One great opportunity provided to our generations is the historical conjunction between the local and the global. At one level are the localization movements, examples of which I have cited above or in referred texts. At the other is the growing mobilization around global issues, such as climate change, the global financial system, the industrial monopolies on food and agriculture, and the hegemony of multinational corporations. The conditions of the contemporary world are fostering mutually-reinforcing local and global mindsets. More than ever before, we are members both of immediate communities and also of the community of humanity, or —even broader— the community of life, just as local ecosystems are part of one global ecological system. Greater awareness of our interdependence comes with each new global crisis, and with it the possibility of greater common cause. If the emerging movements around the world, based on multiple but overlapping worldviews (old and new) and transcending orthodox ideological standpoints, can come together, then there is much hope that pathways to a saner future will be forged, and walked.

Literature and links

Links

> Vikalp Sangam – Alternatives India
> Radical Ecological Democracy – Webpage

Applied as well as further literature

Kalpavriksh. 2015. Vikalp Sangam: In search of alternatives, Poster exhibition available in book form. <https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B-fW5lp3Tj9YMTg0NkdHcTVyZms/view?pref=2&pli=1>

Kothari, Ashish. 2014. Radical Ecological Democracy: A path forward for India and beyond, Development, 57(1), 36–45. <http://www.palgrave-journals.com/development/journal/v57/n1/full/dev201443a.html>

Kothari, Ashish., Demaria, Federico. and Acosta, Alberto. 2015. Buen Vivir, Degrowth and Ecological Swaraj: Alternatives to sustainable development and the Green Economy, Development, 57(3–4), 362–375. <http://www.palgrave-journals.com/development/journal/v57/n3-4/full/dev201524a.html>

Shrivastava, Aseem. and Kothari, Ashish. 2012. Churning the Earth: The Making of Global India, Viking/Penguin India, Delhi.

Degrowth is not only a label for an ongoing discussion on alternatives, and not just an academic debate, but also an emerging social movement. Regardless of many similarities, there is quite some lack of knowledge as well as scepticism, prejudice and misunderstanding about the different perspectives, assumptions, traditions, strategies and protagonists both within degrowth circles as well as within other social movements. Here, space for learning emerges – also to avoid the danger of repeating mistakes and pitfalls of other social movements.

At the same time, degrowth is a perspective or a proposal which is or can become an integral part of other perspectives and social movements. The integration of alternatives, which are discussed under the discursive roof of degrowth, into other perspectives often fails because of the above mentioned scepticisms, prejudices and misunderstandings.

The multi-media project “Degrowth in movement(s)” shows which initiatives and movements develop and practice social, ecological and democratic alternatives. Representatives from 32 different fields describe their work and history, their similarities & differences to others and possible alliances. From the Solidarity Economy to the Refugee-Movement, from Unconditional Basic Income to the Anti-Coal-Movement, from Care Revolution to the Trade Unions – they discuss their relationship to degrowth in texts, videos, photos and podcasts.

The project was run by the “Konzeptwerk Neue Ökonomie” (Laboratory for New Economic Ideas) in Germany, so most of the authors are from there. However, there are a couple of clearly international perspectives and most of the movements work far beyond the national level.

The post Degrowth in Movements: Radical Ecological Democracy appeared first on P2P Foundation.

Originally posted on Degrowth.de

Activists of the Nyéléni movement protest against food speculation on the occasion of the meeting of the finance ministers of the G20. (Photo: Anna Korzenszky)

About the authors and their positions

We see ourselves as part of the movement for food sovereignty and are writing from the perspective of the Österreichische Berg- und Kleinbäuer_innenvereinigung ÖBV – Via Campesina Austria¹(Irmi Salzer) and the agro-political group AgrarAttac (Julianna Fehlinger).

We are mainly active in Austrian networks and participate in the Nyéléni movement for food sovereignty. We are also involved in the European Nyéléni process and are thus connected to partners throughout Europe. Irmi Salzer is an organic farmer in Burgenland and Julianna Fehlinger is sometimes a community farmer and sometimes an alpine farmer.

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1. What is food sovereignty?

The right of all people to democratically decide how food is produced, distributed and consumed

Food sovereignty as a concept was first presented in 1996 at the World Food Summit of the Food and Agriculture Organisation of the United Nations (FAO) by La Via Campesina² , a global organisation of small farmers, rural workers, fishing communities, and landless and indigenous peoples. Since then, food sovereignty has evolved into the political leitmotif of a growing number of social actors from the widest possible range of societal groups fighting for the transformation of a global food and agricultural system dominated by industrial interests and focused solely on profit.

At the beginning of the 1990s, small farmers’ movements (at first mainly in Latin America and Europe, then in the rest of the world) realised that, in light of the globalisation of agricultural markets and the increasing political power of institutions such as the WTO in the agriculture sector, it was necessary to form a globally active alliance of farmers. By founding La Via Campesina they sought to oppose through a strong transnational movement the neoliberal tendencies that were restricting the lives and survival chances of millions of small farmers and worsening the situation of hungry people all over the globe. As an answer to the technical term ‘food security’ that was coined by the FAO and that fails to address a number of questions, the young movement developed the concept of ‘food sovereignty’. Food sovereignty addresses the power structures in which our food system is embedded; it addresses the conditions of food production and distribution; it asks about the consequences of our production methods for future generations; and it places the people who produce and consume food products at centre stage.

The principles of food sovereignty

Food sovereignty can be understood as a framework that must continuously be ‘filled up’ through concrete, local measures. Food sovereignty cannot be defined from the top down and for all time, but can only be shaped through a collective process of dialogue. Throughout the Nyéléni process (Nyéléni is the name used by the global food sovereignty movement to refer to itself; see below), the attempt has been made to define the main principles of food sovereignty based on the wide range of realities of both the farmers and the ‘eaters’. Such principles include valuing food producers, the primary importance of feeding the population (instead of producing for export), the establishment of local production systems and the strengthening of local control over food, the development of knowledge and skills, and, last but not least, working with nature instead of against it.

60 – 80% of all food in the Global South is produced by women. (Photo: Tina Goethe)

Food sovereignty encompasses the rights of individuals, communities and institutions (including states), as well as a responsible relationship with nature, animals and other human beings. In the prevailing agricultural and food system, a majority of producers are denied their right to democratically participate in all political areas contingent to the production, processing and distribution of food products. International trade agreements, agricultural subsidies, GMO legislation, hygiene regulations, directives regarding access to markets, production regulations, etc. are on the whole adopted without the people directly affected having any right to participate in the process. The right to democratically choose and monitor agricultural, food, fishing, social, trade or energy policies is a necessary first step in order to enforce other rights such as the right to food, education and access to resources.

Only when these rights are enforced is it possible for producers to fulfil their responsibility regarding natural resources such as the soil, and biodiversity and the climate, so that future generations are also able to produce high-quality foods.

Food sovereignty means we must act in solidarity. Transnational solidarity, networking and mutual support are necessary to fight against exploitation and domination mechanisms. Local resistance and local alternatives must be completed through a global perspective.
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2. Who is part of the food sovereignty movement and what do they do?

Food sovereignty has been developed since the 1990s as an alternative for the Global North and South. At the beginning, the debate around food sovereignty was mainly led by La Via Campesina. However, La Via Campesina recognised early on that a profound change and democratisation of agriculture and food systems can only be achieved if the movement sought to form alliances beyond those with producers, and to forge ties with other movements. Thus, the first International Forum for Food Sovereignty, the Nyéléni Forum, took place in Mali in 2007. Together with initiatives and organisations connected with environmental, human rights,consumer protection,women’s, and also urban movements, the principles of food sovereignty were developed, and common goals, opponents and demands were identified. Since then, both regional forums (for example the Europe Forum for Food Sovereignty in Krems, Austria in 2011) and national forums have been held. Based on the common principles of democratisation, solidarity, local control, and greater care for the environment, movements for food sovereignty are continuously seeking to both create and advance alternative practices.

Activists from Nyéléni Austria, the Austrian movement for food sovereignty. (Photo: Christopher Glanzl)

With regard to production models, adaptable (resilient) agro-ecological production methods are tested that, for example, use open-pollinated, non-GMO seeds, reduce agricultural dependence on oil and are based on natural cycles.

In the area of food supply, producer-consumer networks are constructed, e.g. by replacing traditional markets with relationships based on solidarity (Community Supported Agriculture – CSA), or by ensuring that producers earn a living wage through collective buying. Participatory Guarantee Systems (PGS) are trust-based certification systems that replace state control and supervision, and alternative education networks enable knowledge sharing on an equal footing, creating a collective space for all those involved in the agricultural and food system.

Food sovereignty in theory and practice – shared meal composed of locally produced food at the Nyéléni Austria Forum 2014. (Photo: Christopher Glanzl)

In order to stop the competition for land and soil and allow access to land for everybody who wants to farm it, models are being developed that remove land from the capitalist cycle of exploitation and promote the use of land as a commons.

The food sovereignty movement demands global social rights and dignified work conditions for all people—irrespective of their social origins or gender— throughout the agriculture and food system.

‘Food sovereignty’ (in Portugese) is written on the ground using soil colors at the 5th International Conference of La Via Campesina in Maputo, Mosambique. (Photo: La Via Campesina)

Through emancipatory processes, citizens should be empowered to participate actively and equally in shaping the political framework of the agriculture and food system. In this respect, the actors in the Global South and North face both similar and dissimilar political and social problems. The diversity of the groups coming together under the ‘big tent’ (Patel 2009) of food sovereignty is a strength, but also a challenge for the global food sovereignty movement.

Democratisation and the right to have rights

In order to enforce the right to democratic participation in the agriculture and food system, it is necessary to create conditions that do not arise of their own accord in our societies marked by exclusion and domination. Low-income people, migrants and women are often particularly shut out from participation. The food sovereignty movement is therefore fighting for conditions that enable all people to demand and enforce their social, economic and cultural rights and their right to participate in decision-making processes.

3. How do you see the relationship between food sovereignty and degrowth?

Working together against false alternatives and for social-ecological transformation

In the German-speaking world, degrowth and food sovereignty are closely related, being often supported by the same activists and similar initiatives (such as Community Supported Agriculture, urban gardening, ecological agriculture, food co-ops, the occupation of fields) or are based on the same approaches for alternative paths (e.g. subsistence, unconditional basic income, commons, environmental and climate justice). All these approaches and initiatives are areas of experimentation for both food sovereignty and degrowth. In both movements, the combination —mainly non-institutional— of science, social movements and practical (collective) experience plays an important role.

Both food sovereignty and degrowth envision a new type of prosperity and well-being, one that includes social-ecological forms of production on the one hand, and a comprehensive democratisation of society (and the economy) on the other. In both cases the aim is to create new values that enable a good life for all based on solidarity and ecological living. Both movements should only be thought of in global terms and not just from a national perspective. One recent example of a coming together of both perspectives and movements is the 2016 campaign started by Attac Germany and Aktion Agrar with the title Kühe und Bauern nicht verpulvern! (roughly ‘Don’t throw farmers and cows down the drain!’), in which discourses about post-growth are combined with those surrounding food sovereignty.

The concept of food sovereignty has a history of more than 20 years and is constantly being reformulated through concrete struggles in both the Global South and the Global North. The degrowth discourse (as a widely debated concept) is younger and more clearly shaped by academic currents from the Global North. It has been taken up by many activist groups and grassroots initiatives and has developed a huge mobilisation potential in recent times.

In the following section we would like to establish certain criteria for analysing the possibility of bringing together degrowth and food sovereignty³ .

Analysing power and domination structures

We consider that the fruitful currents of the degrowth movement are those that clearly label the profiteers of the capitalist model of accumulation and study the growth imperative of capitalist market economics. The concept of food sovereignty only has a limited capacity to expose the forces behind this growth imperative and to understand the social consequences that would result from overcoming it. Food sovereignty’s main focus of fundamental criticism is the profit mentality that fails to take human needs into account or that creates needs in order to increase demand and consumption. The market is thus revealed as being a poor mechanism of allocation and distribution (the most current example being the crisis in the milk market). In order to advance the food sovereignty movement, the degrowth debate should be capable of showing why the economy has to grow under capitalism, which type of growth must be reduced and which domination structures are directly embedded in the growth imperative. It is therefore important to understand power not only in terms of possession but also as a social force, as a relationship of power.

A joint study of social and ecological crises

In the degrowth movement there is both a social and an ecological current of growth criticism. Only when it is possible to bring together the questions and points of criticism of both currents and to translate these into common perspectives and demands, i.e. when degrowth seeks to achieve a social and ecological —a social-ecological— transformation, will degrowth be able to enrich the food sovereignty movement. The food sovereignty movement itself is constantly seeking to maintain a balance between these two points.

The world is not a commodity – positioning ourselves against capitalist enclosure

Current capitalist dynamics seek to turn increasing areas of society into marketable commodities. In addition to labour, which became a commodity at the beginning of capitalism, and certain aspects of processed nature (such as food products), other aspects of nature (such as greenhouse gases) and of society (especially care work) are increasingly being turned into commodities. Positioning ourselves clearly against these processes and seeking to achieve the organisation of such areas as commons is an important step for a joint path of degrowth and food sovereignty.

Together against false alternatives

The main arguments of both degrowth and food sovereignty are already firmly anchored in the general world views of many critical citizens —and both movements can take advantage of this situation. Most of these individuals would agree with both the sentence: ‘We live on a finite planet on which there cannot be infinite growth’ and with criticism of industrial agriculture and factory farming systems. The essence of both degrowth and food sovereignty, however, is that they seek to politicise people and to show clearly that supermarkets selling organic products contribute as little to saving the world as so-called ‘green growth’. To this purpose, it is necessary to escalate the economic and sociopolitical perspectives of progressive sectors of society towards questions of wealth distribution and not let them stagnate in moralising anti-consumerism. This is the only way to leave behind false alternatives (such as the ‘green economy’, critical consumption and organic certifications) and approaches too deeply rooted in pragmatic politics, and to work on utopias, such as degrowth and food sovereignty.

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4. Which proposals do they have for each other?

Focusing the criticism of growth on production and addressing dominance relations in the use of resources

Weder Wachsen noch Weichen! (roughly ‘We won’t grow and won’t yield either!’) is one of the main slogans of the European farmers’ movement. It is a criticism of the change in agricultural structures that exerts massive pressure on small farms and has been causing farm abandonment for decades. This structural change is intrinsically tied up with the liberalisation of agricultural markets and the industrialisation of agriculture. The slogan refers to the farms themselves, which —in order to continue enabling a farm-based agricultural system— should neither grow (in terms of area farmed) nor cease to exist. In this sense, growth does not refer directly to the concept of gross domestic product (GDP) growth, criticised by the degrowth movement when placed at the heart of economics and politics. However, both types of growth are closely related. For its part, the type of growth alluded to in the slogan,opposed by the farmers’ movement, refers to increasing efficiency per man hour —not per surface area— on the farms. According to the agro-industry, the whole of agricultural production must and will grow and become more efficient thanks to the structural change in the agricultural industry, supposedly in order to ‘feed the world’s hungry’. However, the World Agriculture Report has clearly shown that in terms of surface area and units of energy invested, smaller, agro-ecological farming systems are much more efficient than industrial-economic agriculture based on monocultures and factory farming. In addition, small farms are more capable of adapting to the needs of people and thus ensuring a sufficient food supply for all.

Currently, due to the elimination of the milk quota in April 2015 and the crisis in prices for agricultural products (especially milk, but also pork), the above-mentioned slogan is once again being increasingly heard. We see this as an opportunity to carry out a debate that is critical of growth and that addresses the production side of the problem and not, as is usually the case, only consumption. Food sovereignty has a wealth of experience in the area of direct involvement with agricultural and food politics, and this can be of value for the degrowth movement.

Within the food sovereignty movement, there is often insufficient systematic thought given to the concept of growth. The movement mainly addresses the negative consequences of these policies for agriculture and food in general, but questions such as why economic growth is absolutely necessary in capitalism and its importance as a tool for keeping society content (a growing pie makes it easier to solve problems of distribution…) are barely touched upon. Yet such a debate would significantly increase the movement’s capacity for action.

Subsistence, social romanticism and resource quotas

Subsistence or self-sufficiency is recognised by segments of the food sovereignty movement as a positive concept when it refers to the regionalisation of food production. However, it is not seen as an end in itself. Especially in the Global South, subsistence and semi-subsistence agriculture are often insufficient to provide food producers with a good life. Thus, the main focus of the movement for food sovereignty is on the creation and strengthening of local and regional production and distribution systems and on recuperating community control over such systems —and individualistically abandoning society is seen as a form of depoliticisation. The movement is based on collective action and solidarity, and no demands are made for (individual) self-restraint and frugality. In addition, the movement does not content itself with the creation of anti-civilisational parallel societies-slash-alternative projects. At the Europe Forum in Krems in 2011, the Nyéléni movement set forth the following strategy of action: Resist – Transform – Build alternatives. Significantly, these three strategies are applied simultaneously and with the same degree of priority. In our opinion, degrowth’s sufficiency-oriented current and focus (at least in certain segments) on individual changes in behaviour could especially benefit from such a politicisation.

Traditional peasant production of cheese. (Photo: Gunther Naynar)

A return to former ways of living, often preached about in moralistic undertones by segments of the degrowth movement, is not a vision shared by the movement for food sovereignty. Ambitions of this nature filter out historical dominance relations and reduce the question of ecologically and socially just economics to measurable indicators (such as the ecological footprint) or otherwise tend to be unrealistically romantic. Although the small-farm agriculture of the past centuries in most of Europe generally followed the principles of a circular economy, it was also highly hierarchical and patriarchal in its organisation. In addition, advances in communications technology have opened up historical opportunities for transnational solidarity movements. A fruitful connection between the innovations of modernity, on the one hand, and traditional cultural technologies as well as social forms of organisation (e.g. commons), on the other, must be the goal of any emancipatory movement.

The demand for a system of quotas for resource use, often heard in the context of post-growth movements, is considered especially problematic in the food sovereignty movement. Anybody studying the finite nature and protection of resources such as water and land must always take into account the associated power relations, mechanisms of exclusion, and questions of distribution. For example, what does the obligation to reduce CO2 emissions mean for the one billion people on this planet who don’t have access to electricity? Individual —and in the worst case marketable— resource quotas are authoritarian and technocratic pseudo-solutions that fail to address relations of power and do not help us achieve a social-ecological transformation. They are based on a monetary view of nature and life, and only further their commodification.

5. Outlook: Space for visions, suggestions or wishes

‘A good life for all!’ –through solidarity and mutual learning among social and ecological movements

The starting point for common emancipatory movements must be solidarity between the individual struggles involved and the realisation that future successes will be founded on a complementary relationship between the movements. We must therefore be open to learning from each other and sharing experiences. In addition, this requires a continuing debate on the dominant nature of capitalist growth (Brand 2015).Production and consumption must be analysed in regard to their ‘nature as capitalist, patriarchal, racified or post-colonial social relations’ (Brand 2015: 34) in order to create the foundations for a social-ecological transformation based on solidarity.

The goal of fighting for a good life for all seems to us to be the most important common message of the emancipatory movements. The definition of a good life is developed on a daily basis in the complementary social movements and their struggles.

Activists of the Nyéléni Austria movement call for resistance. (Photo: Christopher Glanzl)

Once again, the so-called ‘liberation from excess’ cannot be the goal of emancipatory movements. To date, this has only been possible through the postcolonial exploitation of the countries in the Global South and especially of the lower social classes of the Global North and South. The most important social struggle in our capitalist society is the one between poor and rich; and the homogenising question of how all our societies can free themselves from excess is in our eyes a cynical one. Now that so many people are waiting at the gates of Europe to participate in some of the excess, it is made especially and brutally clear that hardly anybody in Europe is prepared to give anything up, or is able to do so: On the one hand, most people are benefiting less and less from excess due to the reductions in real wages; on the other hand we see a clear case of grandfather policies. So as not to admit this openly, those fleeing from other countries are simply treated as criminals. The fact that this strategy is even possible is in our opinion due to the enormous social inequality advanced by global neoliberal politics. For their part, those who we believe should really be collectively liberating themselves from their excess simply fade into the background.

In addition to a relationship based on solidarity between different social and ecological movements, we would also like to speak out in favour of the simultaneous application of diverse political strategies. As mentioned above, the movement for food sovereignty seeks to enable a transformation through three different but complementary and reciprocal strategies: Resist – Transform – Build alternatives.

Although, in light of neoliberal-capitalist land grabbing, the destruction of the foundations of life, and the violent exclusion of more and more people, it is urgently necessary to develop common strategies and build up common alternatives, it is probably unrealistic and from our point of view not even desirable to join energies into a single, unified movement. Social movements need to take each other into account and complement each other in a context of solidarity. But each movement must fight its own battles.

Links

> Österreichisches Forum für Ernährungssouveränität
> Meine Landwirtschaft – Kampagnenseite
> Solidarische Landwirtschaft
> Uniterre – Schweizer Bauerngewerkschaft
> Nyéléni Europe – Bewegung für Ernährungssouveränität
> FIAN International – Menschenrechtsorganisation mit dem Fokus Recht auf Nahrung
> La Via Campesina International
> afrique-europe-interact – transnationale Initiative zu Migration, Flucht und Landwirtschaft
> Hands on the Land for Food Sovereignty – Kampagne gegen Landgrabbing

Lead photo: Tina Goethe

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Degrowth is not only a label for an ongoing discussion on alternatives, and not just an academic debate, but also an emerging social movement. Regardless of many similarities, there is quite some lack of knowledge as well as scepticism, prejudice and misunderstanding about the different perspectives, assumptions, traditions, strategies and protagonists both within degrowth circles as well as within other social movements. Here, space for learning emerges – also to avoid the danger of repeating mistakes and pitfalls of other social movements.

At the same time, degrowth is a perspective or a proposal which is or can become an integral part of other perspectives and social movements. The integration of alternatives, which are discussed under the discursive roof of degrowth, into other perspectives often fails because of the above mentioned scepticisms, prejudices and misunderstandings.

The multi-media project “Degrowth in movement(s)” shows which initiatives and movements develop and practice social, ecological and democratic alternatives. Representatives from 32 different fields describe their work and history, their similarities & differences to others and possible alliances. From the Solidarity Economy to the Refugee-Movement, from Unconditional Basic Income to the Anti-Coal-Movement, from Care Revolution to the Trade Unions – they discuss their relationship to degrowth in texts, videos, photos and podcasts.

The project was run by the “Konzeptwerk Neue Ökonomie” (Laboratory for New Economic Ideas) in Germany, so most of the authors are from there. However, there are a couple of clearly international perspectives and most of the movements work far beyond the national level.

The post Degrowth in Movements: Food Sovereignty appeared first on P2P Foundation.

Degrowth in Movements: Environmental movement

About the authors and their positions

The authors are either voluntary or full time active in the environmental movement.

Franziska Sperfeld leads projects at the Unabhängigen Institut für Umweltfragen e. V. (UfU) [Independent Institute for Environmental Issues], including projects relating to the development and future of environmental associations. Prof. Kai Niebert is professor for science and sustainability education at the University of Zurich and president of the German League for Nature German League for Nature, Animal and Environment Protection (DNR). Theresa Klostermeyer and Hauke Ebert head projects on environmental and social justice at the DNR.

1. What is the key idea of the environmental movement?

The destruction of nature at the heart of the environmental movement

The roots of the environmental movement lie in the protection and conservation of nature and heritage; it has fought against the consequences of industrialisation since the beginning of the 19th century and was borne out of a romantic concept of nature. Associations such as the Bund für Vogelschutz (Association for the Protection of Birds), the Bund Naturschutz Bayern (Bavarian Association of Nature Conservation) or the NaturFreunde (Friends of Nature) were founded at the turn of the century. During the 1960s, people’s living conditions were also taken into consideration, particularly due to a marked deterioration of natural resources (water, air, ground, etc.). The resulting ‘modern’ environmental movement progressed through six stages:

Historic development of the modern environmental movement; Brand 2008: 219 ff., own addition for the phase from 2007 onwards.

Opposition to nuclear energy has shaped the identity of the environmental movement since the 1960s. During the 1970s and 1980s, environmental NGOs were often associated with an eccentric alternative lifestyle, stylised by shapeless woollen jumpers and wrinkled apples. The ‘modern’ environmental movement has tried to actively distance itself from this view.

Since the sustainability principle was introduced on the back of the Brundtland Report published in 1987, intra- and inter-generational justice have been influencing factors behind the environmental movement. The report Zukunftsfähiges Deutschland (‘Sustainable Germany’) and its follow-up publication, Zukunftsfähiges Deutschland in einer globalisierten Welt (‘Sustainable Germany in a Globalised World’), published by BUND and Misereor, together with Brot für die Welt and the Evangelischen Entwicklungsdienst, shaped the movement’s identity during this time. They were able to break down the concept of sustainability for local applications and personal lifestyles. Both studies described significant concepts that are now understood to be part of the degrowth debate: They outline concepts of ‘dematerialisation’ and ‘self-limitation’, and promote a holistic subsistence strategy while emphasising the living-environment economy. Furthermore, the studies focus on the importance of regional and global public assets as part of shared, responsible use and in contrast with private and state ownership.

Opposition to nuclear energy has shaped the identity of the environmental movement since the 1960s. During the 1970s and 1980s, environmental NGOs were often associated with an eccentric alternative lifestyle, stylised by shapeless woollen jumpers and wrinkled apples. The ‘modern’ environmental movement has tried to actively distance itself from this view.

Since the sustainability principle was introduced on the back of the Brundtland Report published in 1987, intra- and inter-generational justice have been influencing factors behind the environmental movement. The report Zukunftsfähiges Deutschland (‘Sustainable Germany’) and its follow-up publication, Zukunftsfähiges Deutschland in einer globalisierten Welt (‘Sustainable Germany in a Globalised World’), published by BUND and Misereor, together with Brot für die Welt and the Evangelischen Entwicklungsdienst, shaped the movement’s identity during this time. They were able to break down the concept of sustainability for local applications and personal lifestyles. Both studies described significant concepts that are now understood to be part of the degrowth debate: They outline concepts of ‘dematerialisation’ and ‘self-limitation’, and promote a holistic subsistence strategy while emphasising the living-environment economy. Furthermore, the studies focus on the importance of regional and global public assets as part of shared, responsible use and in contrast with private and state ownership.

The sustainability agenda (Agenda 21) agreed by the UN in Rio de Janeiro in 1992 also generated much food for thought and many positive initiatives, both in politics and in practice. However, looking back, we can ask the question whether the sustainability concepts that were set within a global economic system, which focuses on the circulation of goods and consumerism, could ever be expected to be of use.

The latest developments in environmental NGOs highlight one thing in particular: The movement is differentiated and many organisations act in a highly professional manner, which is particularly reflected in their campaigns and ability to mobilise. This is proven by large demonstrations: e.g. 100,000 people campaigning for a nuclear phase-out in 2010; 20,000-50,000 people involved in a campaign over the past six years demanding a new, sustainable agriculture; and 250,000 people supporting the broad coalition between trade unions and critics of globalisation against undemocratic free trade (TTIP). These events also prove the fundamental malaise within society in relation to practices that threaten our existence and the policies that support these practices.

The central focus of the environmental movement continues to be the destruction of natural resources. Thematically, this is now very broadly distributed: from the use of nuclear energy, climate change, loss of biodiversity, resource use, pollution, and consumption patterns. However, the weakness behind this criticism is that it mostly focuses on symptoms of environmental and natural crises, and rarely examines the underlying causes. However, a few organisations have put forward very strong conceptual designs for the transition of society. This does not mean, however, that these designs are well-received and followed within the broader movement.

2. Who is part of the environmental movement, what do they do?

Heterogeneity, differentiation and niches

The environmental movement is heterogeneous in every respect —there is both a plethora of institutional stakeholders and diverse legal forms and structures. Research carried out by the science centre in Berlin in 1998 identified 9200 environmental organisations. Statistics for the year 2014 list 8665 associations related to environmental and nature conservation (see Association statistics 2014). Furthermore, approximately 1800 environmental foundations are currently active in Germany, and this figure is increasing rapidly (see The Federal Association of German Foundations 2009: 5). Statistics relating to other legal forms, such as non-profit LLCs and cooperatives, are unavailable. Furthermore, there are citizens’ initiatives that have no legal status, yet they often deal with topics relating to the environment, nature conservation, traffic and noise, and town planning, and are estimated to have over one million members (see Wolling/Bräuer 2011: 4 f.). This shows that the environmental movement stretches far beyond the large associations with 5.5 million members, even though these associations are the pacesetters and backbone of the movement.

Throughout Germany, there are many significant associations and foundations, including Greenpeace, the Naturschutzbund Deutschland (NABU—Nature and Biodiversity Conservation Union), the Worldwide Fund for Nature (WWF), the Bund für Umwelt und Naturschutz Deutschland (BUND —Friends of the Earth Germany), the NaturFreunde (Friends of Nature), Robin Wood and the Deutsche Umwelthilfe (DUH—German Environmental Relief). Many associations organise themselves under the auspices of the Deutscher Naturschutzring (DNR—German League for Nature, Animal and Environment Protection), which they set up together in 1950. Yet, the various organisations within this relatively manageable group are still organised very differently: The WWF acts as a foundation without a member/activist base; Greenpeace is coordinated and controlled internationally by a small group of members but has different groups and campaign teams in different Federal States and cities; NABU and BUND work as campaign and project organisations —both on a Federal level and a communal and regional level, and are also organised democratically throughout the Federal States.

Wildlife sanctuary (Photo: Public Domain, KRiemer )

The different organisation models are an expression of the differentiation in the environmental movement. Thematically speaking, the large organisations cover almost every single question that is associated with the protection of the natural environment and natural resources —yet with different priorities. In contrast, there are smaller organisations that have found a niche within individual themes. As an example, traffic-related matters are covered by Verkehrsclub Deutschland (VCD—Motor Club of Germany) and forestry-related matters are handled by the Schutzgemeinschaft Deutscher Wald—Forest Conservation Society of Germany. As before, traditional nature conservationists form a large part of the environmental movement. With a systematic viewpoint on the environment and sustainability concepts, they have now become a little more modern, however. In addition to traditional nature conservation, modern and pragmatic environmental protection and the political ecology movement have become intertwined. The environmental movement of the 1970s had more of a left-libertarian profile. Nowadays, the movement is also represented by traditionalist-conservative, ecological-capitalist, ecological-socialist and anarchist-libertarian standpoints (see Brand 2008: 231).

It must be mentioned that, although there is a relatively vague common consensus to preserve natural resources within the movement, the reasons for becoming active are highly personal. A large proportion continues to account for personal consternation based on infrastructure developments, or the proverbial ‘love of nature’. This regularly results in friction within the environmental movement in relation to future questions and discussions on societal change, such as discussions on nature conservation versus renewable energy.

3. How do you see the relationship between the environmental movement and degrowth?

Reflecting on our own efficiency as a starting point for determining common pathways?

The environmental movement is increasingly at a loss as to whether it has the right answers to hand for conserving natural resources. This self-criticism is best expressed in the words of a pioneer of the American environmental movement: ‘We have won many victories, but we are losing the planet’ (Speth, 2014). Smart CSOs (2015), an international network of representatives from civic organisations, describes the challenges facing the environmental movement as follows:

• Focus on symptoms rather than causes;
• Professional specialisation on specific topics;
• Adaptation to the system;
• Focus on specific “bogeymen”, hiding the fact that environmental organisations themselves are part of the system;
• Dependence on donors and project funds, which are mostly geared towards short-term goals rather than long-term systematic change;
• The ‘5-before-12 syndrome’, which leaves no time for reflection and neglects the fact that any kind of change and adjustment takes time.

As the environmental movement is very heterogeneous, the economic positions also differ greatly. This does not necessarily manifest itself in policy papers —these are often surprisingly unanimous. However, cooperation with economic partners, business models, thematic focuses, etc., is very diverse. As a consequence, a policy change towards a degrowth society is not seen as a priority throughout the movement. A belief in technical solutions, also known as green growth strategies, is also enshrined in parts of the environmental movement. However, large swathes of the movement are increasingly of the view that it is crucial for the movement to deal with scenarios for a degrowth period as a growth compulsion often initially creates problems relating to environmental destruction, or exacerbates these problems. Many approaches to this problem area were devised, such as ecological farming, an energy and heat transition, calling for a stop in using additional land, etc. Successes in these areas can be traced back to the environmental movement.

As a consequence, there are also impulses from the environmental and nature conservation scene that correspond with the focus of the degrowth movement. Together with trade unions and churches, member organisations of the German League for Nature, Animal and Environment Protection (DNR) therefore drew wider attention to the debate on social-ecological transition during a Transition Congress in 2012; for visitors, the event almost exclusively dealt with institutionally embedded stakeholders. However, it is important to remember that at the fourth Degrowth Conference —held in Leipzig in 2014— there were surprisingly few representatives from established environmental associations, yet there were many young people in attendance. Apparently there is a structural problem here: Due to their character and constitution, environmental associations are seemingly unattractive to the clientele of the degrowth movement, and the environmental association scene is therefore alien to them.

A few smaller and larger projects that promote social-ecological transition have already originated from environmental associations. Many of these projects want to broach the subject of degrowth, to explore it and to make it tangible, or to offer practical support for local groups undergoing the transition. However, there are only a few isolated examples of dedicated, openly expressed criticism of growth in lobbying activities, public outreach work and large campaigns led by federal associations.

BUNDyouth members in front of a ‘free’ shop; BUND Blog City.Country.Happiness. (Photo: Helge Bendl)

The subject of post-growth does not have its origin in the economic and social criticism branch of the environmental movement. It is therefore necessary to seek out alliance partners with the corresponding economic expertise or to forge topic alliances —as was already established at the Transition Congress in 2012 or as part of individual projects. For the degrowth movement in turn, the expertise offered by the environmental movement is worth its weight in gold if detailed concepts are required, such as explaining how sustainable practice can work. Furthermore, larger and smaller environmental organisations alike can use their experience of the political arena, as well as their experience translating difficult matters into manageable routines and understandable messages.

4. Which proposals do they have for each other?

Could the degrowth perspective act as a compass for the environmental movement?

Our market economy functions for only one reason: It is based on permanent exploitation. Either we are exploiting nature by contaminating it with CO2, waste or harmful substances; or we are exploiting people by letting them work for starvation wages; or we act at the expense of people in the future by leaving behind an ecological and social debt the size of a mountain. None of these three variants are viable for the future.

The symptoms of this exploitation system have pointed to several different stakeholders. Exploitation of resources became a problem handled by environmental associations and social injustices of recognition and redistribution were handled by trade unions as well as social associations. This contracting division of responsibilities must be overruled by a systematic approach to environmental problems. The weight behind the environmental movement can be of use since environmental associations were once in a position to initiate large social projects, such as the nuclear phase-out and energy transition. However, they were only successful when they joined forces with other social powers.

So that degrowth is not seen as an elite project for a reduced group of environmentalists, distributing resources fairly is an essential requirement. A wider social majority will only accept change if this change does not result in yet more injustices. This represents the political dimension. We must therefore be united, but we also imperatively need a new language and way of thinking that makes it possible for other social groups to connect with this change. Degrowth, shrinking, negative growth, décroissance —the environmental movement is also seeking a language that makes the transition of the economic system comprehensible. In contrast with successful campaigns led by environmental associations, there are currently too few concrete political or conceptual alternatives. Degrowth does not represent an alternative concept, it simply criticises an existing one. The problem is that as soon as we negate an idea, we unintentionally reinforce it. This is particularly dramatic in the case of growth criticism since the notion of growth is —culturally speaking— positively charged. Up is better than down; more is better than less. Negating these ideas creates fear, particularly among those who already feel left behind.

The environmental movement was founded on the basis of preventing anything worse from happening and to offset existing environmental damage. In this sense, the movement has acted educationally for a long time. But it now needs to successfully undergo two transitions to become systematically effective: It must become an agenda-setting movement and it must consider the entire society. To do so, the movement must know where it wants to see Germany, Europe and the state of the planet in ten, twenty or even fifty years’ time.

The environmental movement urgently needs a compass that points to those activities that support the introduction of systematic change. There are therefore several opportunities waiting to be seized by the environmental movement by following the growth critique: Degrowth has a mission statement and could therefore further crystallise the sustainability triangle —based on economy, society and environment— and the very vague notion of a great transition. This means that the topic of distributive justice, which has been left ignored for a long time now, and questions of social participation could be combined. This would give rise to an important, macrosocial discourse and also has the potential to make the lifestyle attempts of the environmental movement attractive, liveable and financially viable for many more people.

The fractures within the change are a significant acid test for the environmental movement, particularly in the case of the energy transition. Certain renowned conservationists, for example, have publicly declared that they are leaving large environmental associations to found their own monothematic associations for nature conservation, as they no longer feel there is a balance between nature conservation and environmentally friendly energy production. Here, it is clear how it makes (excessive) demands on some people that one cannot be allowed to play out against the other with the aim of using limited planetary resources sustainably. The degrowth movement calling for more sufficiency could have a unifying effect here. Because not every kilowatt hour from coal-fired electricity nor every barrel of oil that is used today can and should be replaced by wind turbines and more bioethanol in the future at the expense of people and nature. In some parts of the movement, this complexity leads to a defensive stance (‘The only thing that matters is species conservation’), but excessive demands (‘What should we do?’) and appeasement (‘But we’re already doing all that’) can also be seen.

What can now be expected of the environmental movement? While certain organisations have set themselves the task of communicating the social-ecological transition to their members, supporters and donors, others are continuing to follow the well-worn path. A review and readjustment of the work carried out by organisations, large and small, is required: Of the work we are doing, what is transformative? In contrast, what supports an economic system based on growth? In an ideal world, these questions would be contemplated at the beginning. This change of perspective can also change views of your own efficacy and trigger a change in the organisations.

The biggest question still remains: How will degrowth be received from now on within the broader movement? Is it translatable and is it a completely new turning point for the environmental movement as well —beyond academic discussions and nice niche projects that will be accused of tending towards a new, apolitical eco-conservatism?

5. Outlook: Space for visions, suggestions or wishes

The aim? To create a sustainable Anthropocene

The environmental movement has achieved a lot in recent decades: It has increased the number of designated conservation areas in Germany, it has enshrined animal protection as a national objective within the constitution and has successfully phased out nuclear energy. It has managed to turn environmental, nature and animal protection issues into an integral part of the public debate as policies for a better future. At the same time, however, we are experiencing how —as a consequence of unrestricted growth— biodiversity has declined dramatically in Germany; far too much land is being used; and there are still no answers to Peak Oil (the maximum rate of oil extraction), which we have already exceeded. These developments show that we still need —perhaps now more than ever— forward-thinking people in environmental, nature and animal protection. But their task has now changed. Nowadays, it is no longer imperative for them to push for recognition that environmental, nature and animal protection policies have a place in society. Instead, it is more important to transform the movement into an agenda-setting movement and to fight for effective long-term environmental, nature and animal protection. But how can environmental NGOs become an effective agenda-setting power?

In 2016, the Anthropocene Working Group within the International Commission on Stratigraphy (ICS) found enough evidence to prove that we have left the last interglacial period known as the Holocene and entered the epoch of mankind, the Anthropocene. The official recognition that humans are a geological force —together with the physical impossibility of never-ending growth— could result in a political acceptance of mankind’s responsibility towards the environment. The rapid acceleration of (over)using natural resources is key to people realising their power to both influence the world and to cause destruction: Since the 1950s, all data has shown a sharp increase in the exploitation of natural resources (see Steffen et al, 2015). These trends have only been slightly slowed by smaller and larger economic crises. Environmental, nature and animal protection organisations see this as good grounds to create political pressure to act based on science.

Twelve indicators of the earth’s system—trends from 1750 to 2010; from: Steffen et al, 2015: 87.

However, rapid acceleration also brings another controversial discovery to light: As scientific evidence shows people are having an exponentially increasing influence on the earth’s system, the —somewhat homoeopathic— effect of current policies also becomes clear. Data on the great acceleration clearly shows that current environmental and sustainability policies, which came into effect in the 1970s and gained further momentum at the Earth Summit in Rio at the beginning of the 1990s, would not have made a shred of difference to the level of destruction. Any slow-down in global trends were only ever caused by economic crises: The oil crises in the 1970s, the collapse of the Communist dictatorship in the East and the 2009 financial and economic crisis have all slightly flattened the graphs on resource consumption. The political successes of environmental NGOs associations could, no matter how important they have been locally, not have halted the accelerating rate at which resources have been consumed, and have instead shifted this consumption in time and to a different territory.

The constraints of shaping social development become clear if the influencing stakeholders only seek to organise within their limited disciplines and spheres: in ministries sorted by policy area; in individual associations (on a civil-society level); in individual specialist areas (within science). As a result, the Federal Ministry for the Environment, Nature Conservation, Building and Nuclear Safety (BMUB) is trying to improve the quality of the environment with a budget of €4.6 billion, while the German government is spending €52 billion on subsidies harmful to the environment and climate. As long as a lifestyle that destroys nature and the climate is being subsidised, trying to live a sustainable life is like swimming against the stream. And while environmental scientists are describing planetary boundaries in one lecture hall, they have no influence on the business administration students in the neighbouring lecture hall who are still learning about and teaching growth models. A society that can free itself from its growth compulsion and become sustainable cannot become a reality under these conditions.

To have a chance of success, an alternative, positive concept must be devised —both conceptually and linguistically— that not only speaks to satisfied wealthy classes. To do so, environmental NGOs must realise that a focus on social justice, equality, and the rights of low-income earners is also necessary. We do not need an economy that shrinks, nor do we need negative growth. We need a society, and by extension an economy, that understands that it can escape from being dependent on growth —a society that is grown-up.

We will only achieve this if we also change our notion of sustainability. The environmental movement’s greatest mistake was to accept a concept of sustainability where ecology, economy and social issues —in supposed equal balance with each other— can be dealt with separately. But the fact is that environmental and social issues are always ultimately consigned to the sidelines in pursuit of economic growth. To break away from being dependent on growth, we must understand sustainable economy as an economy that serves the people of today and tomorrow, and eliminates hunger and poverty. But that can only happen within our planetary boundaries.

Literature and Links

Links

Movum – Briefe zur Transformation, herausgegeben vom BUND, der Deutschen Umweltstiftung, euronatur, dem Forum Öko-Soziale Marktwirtschaft und dem Deutschen Naturschutzring
Stadt.Land.Glück – Blog des BUND über Projekte zur kommunalen Suffizienzpolitik
WELTbewusst erLEBEN – konsumkritische Stadtführungen von Jugendlichen für Jugendliche (BUNDjugend)
Beweg:günde – Wanderungen zu Orten des sozial-ökologischen Wandels (Naturfreundejugend und BUNDjugend)
Portal zur ökologischen Gerechtigkeit/Lust auf Zukunft – Vernetzungsportal von Projekten für sozial-ökologische Gerechtigkeit und Transformation (Deutscher Naturschutzring)
Freiraumeroberung – Projekt zu interkulturellen Aspekten einer sozial-ökologischen Transformation (NaturFreundejugend und Aleviten)
Greenpeace: Wachstums-AG und Wachstumspalaver – Thesenpapier mit Konsequenzen für die eigene Arbeit und Checkliste für Kampagnen, Positionierungen und Veränderungen bei GP selbst (S. 13)

Degrowth is not only a label for an ongoing discussion on alternatives, and not just an academic debate, but also an emerging social movement. Regardless of many similarities, there is quite some lack of knowledge as well as scepticism, prejudice and misunderstanding about the different perspectives, assumptions, traditions, strategies and protagonists both within degrowth circles as well as within other social movements. Here, space for learning emerges – also to avoid the danger of repeating mistakes and pitfalls of other social movements.

At the same time, degrowth is a perspective or a proposal which is or can become an integral part of other perspectives and social movements. The integration of alternatives, which are discussed under the discursive roof of degrowth, into other perspectives often fails because of the above mentioned scepticisms, prejudices and misunderstandings.

The multi-media project “Degrowth in movement(s)” shows which initiatives and movements develop and practice social, ecological and democratic alternatives. Representatives from 32 different fields describe their work and history, their similarities & differences to others and possible alliances. From the Solidarity Economy to the Refugee-Movement, from Unconditional Basic Income to the Anti-Coal-Movement, from Care Revolution to the Trade Unions – they discuss their relationship to degrowth in texts, videos, photos and podcasts.

The project was run by the “Konzeptwerk Neue Ökonomie” (Laboratory for New Economic Ideas) in Germany, so most of the authors are from there. However, there are a couple of clearly international perspectives and most of the movements work far beyond the national level.

The post Degrowth in Movements: Environmental movement (NGOs) appeared first on P2P Foundation.

Degrowth in Movements: Strengthening Alternatives and Overcoming Growth, Competition and Profit

About the authors and their positions

We write this text as editors and coordinators of the project Degrowth in Movement(s) with Dennis Eversberg. We see ourselves as part of the degrowth movement in Germany and Europe.

Corinna Burkhart first discovered degrowth during her studies through an internship at Research & Degrowth and has been working for Konzeptwerk Neue Ökonomie¹ since 2014. Dennis Eversberg is a sociologist and scientific collaborator at the DFG-funded Research Group on Post-Growth Societies at the University of Jena, where he studies the social composition, motivations and practices within the degrowth movement. Matthias Schmelzer is an economic historian and activist who works as a scientific collaborator at the University of Zürich and as a freelance collaborator at Konzeptwerk Neue Ökonomie. Nina Treu cofounded Konzeptwerk Neue Ökonomie in 2011 in Leipzig and has been carrying out work related to degrowth since 2014.

This text only answers questions 1 and 2 of the project. Questions 3, 4 and 5 are planned to be answered in autumn 2016 after a collective evaluation process with the authors in order to complete the general goal of the project.
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1. What is the key idea of Degrowth?

Overcoming growth, competition and profit – for a social-ecological and globally fair economy and way of life

The guiding economic and social principle of ‘higher, further, faster’ forces us into a social order of permanent competition in all areas of life. On the one hand, this leads to imperatives of social acceleration that overwhelm and exclude a great many people. On the other hand, this obsession with economic maximization is destroying the natural basis of human life and the ecosystems of plants and animals.

Degrowth represents a transformative path towards forms of economic activity and social (self-)organization centred on the welfare of all human beings and the preservation of the ecological basis of life. This requires both a fundamentally different way of interacting with each other on a daily basis as well as a profound cultural transformation, and the overcoming of capitalist ways of production with their imperatives of competition, growth and profit. Degrowth is not a finished model or plan that can be designed and then implemented —it is far more about re-politicizing the main aspects of our lives and economies in order to jointly conceive, test and fight for alternatives. The common values of this transformation are awareness, solidarity and cooperation. The goal: a life of dignity and self-determination for all human beings. And to make this possible, it is necessary to develop social practices and concepts in which humans see themselves as part of the planetary ecosystem and live accordingly.

A poster which is part of the game and education method “Game of good life”. (Image: Konzeptwerk Neue Ökonomie)

Degrowth is a movement explicitly focused on the highly industrialised countries of the Global North, even though social movements from the Global South are important allies and partners —for example, those discussions shaped by indigenous traditions such as buen vivir, post-extractivism and the grassroots ecological movements of the poor. Rich countries must reduce their consumption of raw materials, resources and land, as well as their emissions and waste production, to a level that is sustainable in the long run and that allows the countries in the South to have equal access to development opportunities.

Alternatives envisioned by the degrowth movement

The following concepts for an alternative society are central to the degrowth movement:

• A focus on a good life for all and therefore on the satisfaction of concrete human needs. This includes concepts such as slowness, ‘time prosperity’² and conviviality, in other words, quality in human relationships and the greatest possible freedom from all forms of domination.
• An emphasis on the changeability of social orders and an orientation towards sufficiency — instead of a fixation on technological novelties and increased efficiency— as strategies for solving ecological problems. From the point of view of degrowth, the idea that it is possible to completely decouple economic growth from the use of resources has been refuted by history and is technologically and politically unrealistic. This makes it necessary to search for alternatives beyond the concepts of ecological modernization and green growth.
• A truly collective political process to decide what products and services there should be more of and —especially— what there should be less of in the future. From the degrowth perspective, areas which could be dismantled are e.g. the fossil-fuel and industrial sectors, the military, the arms industry and the advertising sector, and individual and air transport. Areas that could be expanded, on the other hand are e.g. social and collective infrastructures, an ecological circular economy, decentralised and renewable energy sources existing as commons, care work, education and a solidarity economy.
• A redistribution of income and wealth on a national and global level, and a transformation of social security systems. In addition to an unconditional basic income —not only as money, but also in the form of social infrastructure— many are demanding a maximum wage.
• A focus on the reproduction of life, where the production and processing of goods is subordinate to human welfare, instead of the other way around. A potential first step in this sense would be a radical reduction in wage labour for all.
• Freedom from the one-sided Western development paradigm, in order to enable a self-determined shaping of society and a good life in the Global South.
• An expansion of democratic forms of decision-making in all areas, including the economy, in order to enable true political participation. Testing and practising of grassroots and consensus-oriented processes are fundamental to the movement.
• Regionally-based, but also open and interconnected economic circles. Because international trade deepens social divisions and prevents ecological sustainability, it is necessary to move towards a deglobalization of economic relations. However, degrowth does not stand for cultural isolation, homogenous ‘bioregions’, or economic protectionism for the sake of competitiveness, but for open forms of democratic relocalisation.

All these elements share the central idea that changes towards a socially just and ecologically sustainable society and economy at a global level are only possible through a combination of different strategies: In this sense, science and research are just as important as activism and practical projects that seek to provide alternatives in the here and now.

Degrowth is also far more than just a criticism of economic growth —it is about creating the conditions for a good life for everybody. Thus, conservative, racist-nationalist and sexist currents of thought that also criticise growth go against the essence of degrowth and its fundamental orientation towards a good life and equal rights and freedoms for all human beings worldwide; there is no place for them in degrowth.

The full courtyard of the University of Leipzig during the Degrowth Conference 2014. (Image: CC-BY-SA, Eva Mahnke)

A brief history of the degrowth movement

Now an international movement, the beginnings of degrowth can be found in France in the early 2000s. However, the concept of economic growth has been the subject of criticism for almost as long as it has existed. Since the 1970s, both the widely-read study, The Limits of Growth (1972), and the work of a wide range of intellectuals and economists such as André Gorz, Nicholas Georgescu-Roegen or Claudia von Werlhof have contributed significantly to the development of this current of thought.

In 2002, the publication in France of a special edition of the magazine Silence on the subject of décroissance (French for ‘degrowth’) sparked a new wave of debate surrounding the criticism of growth; and the first International Conference on Degrowth for Ecological Sustainability and Social Equity took place in Paris in 2008. During the conference the English word ‘degrowth’ was used, leading to its subsequent adoption in the international scientific debate. After this, international conferences on degrowth took place in Barcelona in 2010, in Venice in 2012 and in Leipzig in 2014. Since the first conference in 2008, the number of attendees has risen continuously and has included scientists from a wide range of areas as well as activists and practitioners. The conferences are a meeting point and a place of debate, learning and networking for the degrowth movement; and at the same time, they provide it with greater public attention. So far, the most important events for the degrowth movement in the German-speaking countries have been the degrowth conference in Leipzig in 2014 with more than 3000 participants, the Beyond Growth?! congress in Berlin in 2011 organised by Attac, and the recently created Degrowth Summer School, which took place for the second time in 2016 at the Climate Camp in the German Rhineland.³
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Critical self-reflection as a path to anti-capitalism: socially homogenous, but diverse in its contents – and critical of capitalism

The degrowth movement in Germany is highly decentralised, and has neither a formal network nor an organizing centre. Rather it is composed of a great diversity of individual and collective actors.

There are, firstly, certain organizations that work directly in the context of the degrowth movement, for example the Netzwerk Wachstumswende together with the Förderverein Wachstumswende⁴ , or the Konzeptwerk Neue Ökonomie, which maintains the German degrowth web portal and initiates and supports projects listed there. Since the Beyond Growth?! congress in Berlin in 2011, there has also been an Attac working group with the same name that is active throughout Germany —and some local Attac groups work on the subject as well. In addition to these relatively large or well-known groups and institutions, there are also many smaller, generally local, actors working in the area of growth criticism and alternatives to growth. This has become especially apparent thanks to the positive response to the degrowth conference in Leipzig in 2014 and the wide range of events it hosted. Furthermore, a variety of individuals or departments in other large organizations not solely focused on degrowth, such as political foundations and environmental organizations, also contribute actively to the degrowth debate through events, participation in discussions, or publications. Finally, many ecologically-oriented economists also study the subject of degrowth, particularly in the context of the Vereinigung für ökologische Ökonomie (VÖÖ) (German Society for Ecological Economics) and the Vereinigung für ökologische Wirtschaftsforschung (VÖW) (German Association for Ecological Economic Research). Last but not least, the Institut für ökologische Wirtschaftsforschung (IÖW) (Institute for Ecological Economy Research) maintains the blog www.postwachstum.de, and since 2008 the University of Oldenburg has regularly hosted lecture series on the post-growth economy.

On the whole, the greatest amount of progress in the degrowth movement has been achieved thanks to the large, grassroots organizational teams involved in the international degrowth conference 2014 in Leipzig and the Degrowth Summer Schools in 2015 and 2016 in the lignite-mining region of the German Rhineland.

Degrowth in Europe

In addition to the above actors in the German degrowth movement, there has also been a growing degrowth movement in other regions, especially Southern Europe. For example, the international conferences started in Paris in 2008 were then continued by the group Research & Degrowth (R&D), which is active in Spain and France. R&D works mainly in the area of science, is especially active in Barcelona and surroundings, and seeks to promote the dissemination of degrowth ideas in the academic world. In France, the movement mainly revolves around the periodicals Silence and La Décroissance; as well as the Parti pour la Décroissance (‘Party for Degrowth’), which in addition to its political activities is also active in the dissemination of information. In Italy, the group Rete per la decrescita (‘Network for Degrowth’) conducts scientific research, whereas the Movimento per la Decrescita Felice (‘Movement for Happy Degrowth’), strongly rooted in local groups, promotes the idea of voluntary simplicity and seeks to provide an example of an alternative, ‘good practice’. Eastern European groups working for degrowth have received increased attention and acquired momentum thanks to the degrowth conference in autumn 2016 in Budapest. Furthermore, there is an ever-increasing range of research in addition to small-scale practical projects in various European countries (e.g. Can Decreix⁵ in France) related to a greater or lesser degree to degrowth.

Alliances and cooperation

In addition to the groups directly carrying out growth-critical work, there are, both in Germany and in other regions of the global north, close ties with and within the alternative economies scene: commons, solidarity economies, transition towns, common good economies, sharing economies, plural economies, common gardens, free and swap shops, etc. — and often the borders between these movements and degrowth are not necessarily clear-cut. There are also noteworthy instances of cooperation with scientific institutes, development aid organizations and political foundations, and individual representatives of political parties.

Publishing and practicing

Degrowth is, on the one hand, a proposal for profound societal transformation; and in this sense, much of the work focuses on firing up social and academic debate through publications⁶ , websites, events and conferences. On the other hand, degrowth is also the common element of a great many hands-on projects, where it manifests itself through concrete political and everyday practices. Thus, the large degrowth events are organised by grassroots organizational teams —the food is regional, organic and vegan and is prepared collectively, and financing comes exclusively from politically compatible organizations. Typical practices in degrowth circles are, for example: mobility that is as ecological as possible, cooperation with vegetable co-ops, living in common housing spaces or other alternative forms of living, and participation in direct actions.

 

The general consensus in the German degrowth movement

A survey carried out with participants at the degrowth conference in Leipzig in 2014 provides information on the ideas and ideals of those individuals that are practically active within the degrowth spectrum.⁷ The study shows that the people active in the degrowth scene are mainly from student, academic and urban middle-class circles; the majority are between 20 and 35 years old; most are white; and many of the younger individuals become politicised through degrowth. Irrespective of any other possible differences between them, the people that see themselves as part of the degrowth movement share a common, growth-critical vision. This vision can be summarised in general terms as follows:

Growth without environmental destruction is an illusion. Therefore, economic shrinkage in the industrialized countries will be inevitable. This includes that we will have to abstain from certain amenities we have grown used to. The transformation towards a post-growth society needs to be peaceful and emerge from below; it amounts to overcoming capitalism, and female emancipation must be a central issue in the process

(see Eversberg/Schmelzer 2015).⁸

Currents in the post-growth discourse

At the same time, the growth-critical discourse is characterised by the heterogeneity of its contents. Still attempts to categorise the diverse actors critical of growth are made. In the German post-growth debate, it is possible to distinguish through the texts of certain key figures the conservative current, represented prominently by Meinhard Miegel, the social-reformist current, represented by Angelika Zahrnt, and the sufficiency-oriented current, personified mainly by Niko Paech. In addition, there are also feminist and anti-capitalist currents —although these, unlike the previous cases, revolve less around specific individuals. The differences mainly reflect typical positions found within the post-growth spectrum that can be read about in many books and articles. It is important to note, however, that the post-growth debate cannot be unequivocally equated with degrowth as a discourse and movement. For example, discussions and events in recent years have shown that in particular the conservative current of criticism à la Miegel is not reflected in the younger and more international degrowth scene.

Political and content-related currents in the degrowth movement

Another way of describing the range of contents and internal tensions within the degrowth movement is provided by the aforementioned survey, which reveals five main currents: Sufficiency-oriented Critics of Civilization, the moderate Immanent Reformers, a transitory group of Voluntarist-Pacifist Idealists, the Modernist Rationalist Left and the Alternative Practical Left (for a detailed overview see Eversberg/Schmelzer 2016). This shows the diversity within the degrowth movement with regard to, among other things:

• content and perspective (from a closeness to nature, to techno-optimism, to radical anti-capitalism);
• forms of organization (from large organizations, to alternative projects, to associations of activists);
• political practices (from petitions, to direct action, or even to dropping out of society altogether)
• political backgrounds (from a low level of politicization, to alternative circles, to the classic left-wing).

Demonstration “enough is enough for all” at the end of the Degrowth Conference 2014 in Leipzig. (Image: Klimagerechtigkeit Leipzig)

This breadth of interest provides the degrowth movement with a wide range of potential alliances and many degrowth activists also see themselves as a part of other movements and currents of thought —among others, those represented in the project Degrowth in Movement(s). Degrowth is thus often seen as a common ground or platform; a collective space for both action and debate.
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Literature and links

Degrowth is not only a label for an ongoing discussion on alternatives, and not just an academic debate, but also an emerging social movement. Regardless of many similarities, there is quite some lack of knowledge as well as scepticism, prejudice and misunderstanding about the different perspectives, assumptions, traditions, strategies and protagonists both within degrowth circles as well as within other social movements. Here, space for learning emerges – also to avoid the danger of repeating mistakes and pitfalls of other social movements.

At the same time, degrowth is a perspective or a proposal which is or can become an integral part of other perspectives and social movements. The integration of alternatives, which are discussed under the discursive roof of degrowth, into other perspectives often fails because of the above mentioned scepticisms, prejudices and misunderstandings.

The multi-media project “Degrowth in movement(s)” shows which initiatives and movements develop and practice social, ecological and democratic alternatives. Representatives from 32 different fields describe their work and history, their similarities & differences to others and possible alliances. From the Solidarity Economy to the Refugee-Movement, from Unconditional Basic Income to the Anti-Coal-Movement, from Care Revolution to the Trade Unions – they discuss their relationship to degrowth in texts, videos, photos and podcasts.

The project was run by the “Konzeptwerk Neue Ökonomie” (Laboratory for New Economic Ideas) in Germany, so most of the authors are from there. However, there are a couple of clearly international perspectives and most of the movements work far beyond the national level.

The post Degrowth in Movements: Strengthening Alternatives and Overcoming Growth, Competition and Profit appeared first on P2P Foundation.

Commons: Self-organised (re)production as a socio-ecological transformation

About the authors and their positions

We, the authors of this text, Leslie Gauditz and Johannes Euler, are active in the Commons Institute which, among other things, promotes the creation of knowledge and the education on Commons.

We are about 30 years old, with a middle-class background and make our living in academia. We were brought together by the fact that we both practise commoning, and reflect and write about it. In order to give Commoners from our circles the opportunity to collaborate on this text we sent preliminary versions to our mailing lists. Several people have contributed to its development with very helpful comments.

However, this text still reflects our personal view on the Commons movement, and is shaped by our specific position within this movement and the discourses that belong to it.

1. What is the key idea of the Commons?

Commoning: a different way of living and acting together – within capitalism but with a trajectory past it.

Commons are products and resources that are created, cared for and used in a shared way in a great variety of forms. The term has increasingly come into use again over the past decades – “again“ because Commons as concept and praxis are ancient and exist worldwide (see Bollier/ Helfrich 2016). In the German speaking areas the traditional and widely used term “Allmende”, that denotes the shared cultivation of meadows and woods, has been known since the Middle Ages. Today, the research on the shared use of natural resources is mainly connected to the name Elinor Ostrom who received the Nobel Prize for economics for her research in 2009. Ostrom (1990: 58-139) collected best practice examples: self-chosen regulations and locally adapted conflict resolution strategies were some of the design principles of the long-lasting self-governed institutions she described. Differing from Ostrom other authors assume that the main shared features should be looked for in the actual social arrangement, the Commoning, rather than in the institutions and regulations (see Euler 2016; Meretz 2014a).

An ancient irrigation system, cooperatively administrated in Naters, Switzerland. (Image: Johannes Euler)

The spread of knowledge-centred digital Commons (such as Wikipedia) and the development of free software (such as GNU/Linux and LibreOffice) played a decisive part in the rising attention paid to the Commons in the past years.

Currently, Commons can be understood as a concept based on equality and self-governance that is in conflict with the capitalist logic of commodities (see Meretz 2014a). Instead of an exchange of goods it relies on voluntary contributions. In them, there is no equivalent to the division of labour into care activities (that is caring for other people and the environment) and the productive activities as well as the division of production and usage processes which are common in capitalism: for example urban Commons gardens are usually not about producing food for sale but, next to ecological food production, also about cooking, eating and celebrating together. This is not to say that exchange or said division phenomena do not exist in Commons projects. However, Commons mainly work according to a different logic; both aspects are at odds with this logic and are brought in from the capitalist world outside.

We would like to stress that there are no universal blueprints for organising Commons together. We assume that the manners and rules in different times and contexts adapt to the needs of the people involved and thus vary. Nevertheless, we can point out common features. Regarding this it is important to clarify that commoning does not just deal with collective property but rather it breaks with the exclusionary logic of property as such. Instead of excluding others by the means of abstract law (property), Commons concern the actual physical (and potentially inclusive) discretionary options of possession (actual use). Essential to this is a focus on the needs of those affected by the commoning processes, or those taking part in them.¹

The logo of the licence system “Creative Commons”.

The Commons perspective looks specifically at a type of shared living in which people have a great influence on their own living conditions and choose the activities they pursue mainly according to how much pleasure they give, and how crucial they regard them to be.² For example Wikipedia came about because people valued a freely accessible and self-organised form of knowledge and enjoyed writing. Although they may occur, imposed, hierarchical and exclusive organizational structures are quite in contrast to such motivations and are mostly rejected. The aim is to realise rather than valorise one’s own potentials.

For the long-term the self-organising Commons point of view can be the foundation of a society beyond market economy and state. Core principles are: contribution instead of exchange; actual use instead of property; share all that you can (Habermann 2015); use all that you need.
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2. Who is part of the Commons movement, what do they do?

The social movement as part of the Commons world: Who produces what how, why and with which effects, and who uses it (up)?

While there is no Commons umbrella association, there are visible networks such as the Commons Strategies Group and the P2P Foundation, the Commons-Institute in the German speaking countries and the School of Commoning in Barcelona. Which persons actually devote themselves to promoting the Commons world and represent it publicly, who hence makes up the Commons movement, is not easy to determine as there are no systematic studies. Thus this text serves not least a reflection on ourselves as authors: do we even want to speak of a Commons movement? We definitely do not claim to give a comprehensive overview; even less so about what is happening in other parts of the world.

Book-exchange in Büsum in the North of Germany. (Image: Johannes Euler)

Commoning can be found in any imaginable social context and connected to various resources – such as air, seeds and water but also caring for those in need, digital technology, housing, cooking, art and music, modular bicycle construction and means of production. This is due to the fact that it is not inherent to the nature of a resource whether or not it is a Commons. Instead it essentially depends on the way humans deal with them and with each other (see Acksel and others 2015; Helfrich 2012; Euler 2016). If we look at the currently prevailing definitions of social movements (e.g. della Porta/ Diani 1999), they are united by a more or less pointed focus on a connecting self-image (or rather an identity) and the intentional direction of activities towards societal transformation and/ or a political goal. Movements are further identified according to their protest behaviour. Answering the question for the Commons movement thus depends on the political action repertoire and who subjectively sees her/ himself as a Commoner³ – so it depends on who could be considered being a constitutive part of such a movement.

Commoners are people who ”move something”. The only thing we can say for certain about the Commons movement from our point of view is: it is a global movement that is internationally connected as well as locally active. But Commons are more than “just“ a social movement. On the one hand it is possible that Commoners do not explicitly pursue the transformation idea and the critique of capitalism, are not networked accordingly, and neither know nor use the term Commons or claim no Commons identity for themselves. On the other hand there are Commoners who act in a conscious separation from the capitalist commodity and valorisation logic. These we want to call activists and identify them as being the movement. They aspire for a transformation of the world according to Commons principles, organise themselves in respective groups and/ or networks and engage politically.

For many activists it is more important to prefiguratively set an example than to demonstrate on the streets. This means that it is a concern for those who make up the Commons movement to create spaces in which aspects of utopian aims can be lived through their actions in current decision making processes and interpersonal relationships: “In my own life I practise what I want to see in the greater whole.” The important part is that the social practises of commoning, whose rationale undermines the capitalist logic, are in themselves aimed at changing society.

Currently we can make out many movements all over the world for protecting the Commons and resisting enclosures. However, we also need a certain reference to the common features in the struggles for Commons as well as to other alternative economic movements. Even if a lot is moving towards Commons, the bigger picture will hardly change if the similarities between these activities are not recognized.
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3. How do you see the relationship between Commons and degrowth?

The Commons and the Degrowth movement contain each other, and differ in focus and strategy

When we were asked if we wanted to write a text that would put the movement and the concept of Degrowth in relation to Commons, we questioned what its strategic significance might be: this project is called “Degrowth in movement(s)“. Would a Commons contribution not create the impression that Commons are a part of the movements close to Degrowth? Or is it also the other way round: Degrowth is a part of the movements close to Commons? It is a matter of the prerogative of interpretation, a question of the framing, and of the levels: Which theme is overarching and which is a cross-section, and what do we need this interpretation for? We assume that a Commons world is a world beyond growth imperatives – but does the Degrowth movement also automatically include Commons into its considerations in the same way?

In the article “Degrowth: In Movement, Strengthening Alternatives and Overcoming Growth, Competition and Profit“ (Burkhart and others 2016) that is part of this publication, the Degrowth movement is (amongst others) characterized based on the participants of the Degrowth conference in the German city of Leipzig in 2014. At the time many people took part who could rather be placed in the ”Commons“ corner. Hence there were a number of contributions on Commons in the conference program, and Commoners gave several of the plenary talks. The false impression associated with this may well be criticised. However we cannot rule out that the same would happen similarly in the opposite case because in the end, from our point of view, Commons and Degrowth in some way contain each other.

An urban garden in the self administrated “Gängeviertel” in Hamburg. (Image: Leslie Gauditz)

If Degrowth means that we humans have to free ourselves from the bonds of the growth imperative, and if Commons activists advocate more commoning in the world, we have to ask ourselves: which growth do we need to free ourselves from? What do we need more of? How could this come about? Who is promoting it? On the level of the actors there seems to exist a high degree of mutual recognition and sympathy. Especially the critical and progressive part of the Degrowth movement that was strongly represented at the conference appears to harmonize with the part of the Commons movement that is critical of capitalism. Both aim at breaking with old patterns that are founded in the logic of today’s social system and have effect into (and through) the individual foundations of acting and thinking. Degrowth circles denounce growth imperatives. The Commons movement criticises the valorisation pressures in the present society. It is obvious that these are two sides of one and the same coin.

As Degrowth was formed as a counter-movement criticizing the growth model, an idea for an alternative of its own was initially not at the centre of attention. Considering commoning however, one can imagine a world in which our living conditions are (re)produced in a non-capitalist way, beyond the growth imperative. Hence commoning is often seen as an integral part in framing a post-growth society. Especially the considerations on Buen Vivir – living well – that are often drawn upon in the context of Degrowth (see Acosta 2016 ; Muraca 2014) show remarkable similarities with the Commons concepts and principles.

However we can also determine differences. Degrowth circles focus on resilience and sufficiency. In relation to the ecological boundaries of the planet these are rather implicitly included in Commons than vigorously discussed among Commoners. From a Commons perspective one can argue that parts of the Degrowth movement are not critical enough towards the capitalist logics of valorisation, and also depend too much on steering mechanisms of the state. In a way this is a different problem focus (also based in the theory) as well as a different approach in regard to the choice of a strategy for transformation.

Which proposals do they have for each other?

Learning from each other: ecological cycles, critique of state and domination, sustainable technology and self-realisation.

What is missing in the Commons perspective and which impulses can it receive from the Degrowth movement – and vice versa? One field in which the Commons movement can learn from Degrowth is concerned with the ecological cycles in a global context. The description and analysis of local and practical knowledge is strong and deeply founded with Commoners. Yet, the Degrowth academics are relatively stronger in pursuing the research on the planetary boundaries and global ecological cycles. Particularly when looking at the point that activists of the Commons movement consider a Commons world a possible reality, an exchange on this point is fruitful and could prevent inappropriate optimism as well as unrealistic scenarios.

Connected in diversity. How can we draw our common future? (Image: CC – SA, Sarah Klockars-Clauser)

In the other direction the Degrowth movement could let itself be inspired by the Commons perspective. Degrowth is often about abstract indicators on CO2-Emissions, economic growth or resource depletion from which the movement derives its critique of consumerism and demands for the global North to denounce. From a Commons perspective, qualitative differences and structural systemic necessities for change come to the fore. The criticism is voiced towards a consumption that does not seek to fulfil needs, but instead aims for status and / or the production of added value; and there is a general assumption that a full and enjoyable life is achievable for everyone. This means that the primary target is not an individual renunciation but, on the premise of a collective self-development of all, to find an answer to: who produces what how and why, and uses it (up).

Against the backdrop of the principle “contribution instead of exchange“ the Commons discourse fundamentally criticises the logic of money and exchange. There is a discussion on whether a reform of the monetary systems helps to transgress this logic or rather helps to strengthen it. A long-term Commons vision would be a social system that frees itself from exchange as a societal mode of mediation. In addition there is a basic critical attitude towards state institutions – not only because market and state are blamed for playing a substantial role in various enclosures, but also because Commons do not work in a centralized way. This is also a significant delineation of the Commons movement against a Marxist state centred communism. Locating Commons beyond market and state infers that Commons activists want to break with the principles of the market economy as well as the nation state. It can be said that their normative foundation is a fundamental rejection of any form of domination. A greater consideration of such discourses that critically debate state and market as socially determining institutions could enrich the Degrowth movement and contribute to shed light on structural obstacles to a post-growth society.

A fundamental critique of technology, which is present in the Degrowth context and takes its lead from authors like Ivan Illich (1998), is used constructively within contemporary Commons circles by asking: which form of technology corresponds to human needs, and who benefits from technology to what end? Among others, the strong roots in the digital world and a great participation of tech-savvy people from hacker- and maker-spaces as well as the Open Hardware circles form the basis for certain optimism towards technology (see Siefkes 2013). Critique of technology and optimism go hand in hand: while the one deals with criticising current-day technologies that are seen as problematic, others develop new ones that work according to different principles like modularity, repairability or resource conservation – principles that are also compatible with Degrowth demands. For example the project Open Source Ecology has taken it upon itself to develop fifty industrial machines that a small village needs for its inhabitants to lead a sustainable, yet relatively self-sufficient good life.

As mentioned in the beginning, there seems to be a lot of Degrowth in Commons, and a lot of Commons in Degrowth. Similarly, other currents that are united in this project find themselves sharing a lot with the two movements. Many of the inspirations are discussed and put to practise in Commons contexts. Perspectives that aim for equality of humans and nature as they are found in environmentalist and animal-welfare circles as well as various justice discourses play a role; so does the aim of human equality as demanded by No-Border groups who aspire for a world without national borders. Many sovereignty movements in particular (e.g. for food sovereignty) have a lot in common with Commons as their aim is to regain the power to determine one’s own living conditions.⁵ However, sometimes Commons activists relate to other transformation efforts fairly critically; for instance when the means suggested for implementation stand in contrast to the respective aims (e.g. when hierarchically organised political parties promote Commons). Similarly they criticise approaches and ways of handling things that reproduce or manifest without reflection the logic that needs to be transgressed – exchange, valorisation and money – as well as hierarchies and oppressive conditions (e.g. the reform of the money system through an alternative exchange medium such as Bitcoin).
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 6. Outlook: Space for visions, suggestions or wishes

Together on the way to a post-capitalist world: emancipatory, need-oriented, resource-conserving and without growth compulsion

A transformation perspective that anticipates the path to a Commons society is described as a “seed form” approach (see Meretz 2014b). This term offers an important reference point, especially in the German-speaking countries. More simply put: it is the idea that a consistent practise of Commons can spread in the here and now while it could, simply due to the current crisis prone societal system, be able to become the logic that determines society in the future. Hence the potential of a Commons society is already a seed within the current commoning that is not yet fully developed. At the same time, Commons projects are always in danger of being usurped. Fights to defend, re-establish and negotiate commonly managed resources are necessary as long as the hierarchical nation state and the capitalist market with their respective logics are dominant. These struggles will be more successful if they take place in the context of a strong, shared and most of all emancipatory movement.

One viable post-capitalist vision is that of a world that is not hierarchical but self-organised like a network of functionally differentiated connection nodes; a world in which everyone’s needs can be met through Commons. This world would also be marked by autonomous and responsible activities that give joy and meaning without over-using resources or destroying eco-systems. The Commons movement puts its trust in the human potential and translates the concept of sustainability into the language of human needs: there is a need to preserve the planet that can only be met if we organise our individual and collective satisfaction of needs in accordance with the boundaries of the planet. Commoning is a practical way to deal with human and non-human nature that is not built on an abstract growth compulsion but acknowledges that we humans are a (re)productive element of the earth.

An Occupy Wall Street activist. (Image: CC BY 3.0, David Shankbone)

Literature and links

Links

> Weblog keimform
> Weblog CommonsBlog
> What is Open Hardware? – Blogpost about Open Hardware

Applied as well as further literature

Acksel, Britta u. a. 2015. Commoning: Zur Kon-struktion einer konvivialen Gesellschaft. In: Konvivialismus. Eine Debatte. Adloff, Frank; Volker Heins (Hrsg.). Bielefeld: transcript. 133-145.

Acosta, Alberto 2016. Buen Vivir: Die Welt aus der Perspektive des Buen Vivir überdenken. Degrowth in Bewegung(en). Degrowth Webportal. <https://www.degrowth.de/de/dib/degrowth-in-bewegungen/buen-vivir/>

Benkler, Yochai 2006. The Wealth of Networks: How Social Production Transforms Markets and Freedom. New Haven: Yale University Press.

Burkhart, Corinna; Eversberg, Dennis; Schmelzer, Matthias; Treu, Nina 2016. Degrowth: In Bewegung, um Alternativen zu stärken und Wachstum, Wettbewerb und Profit zu überwinden. Degrowth in Bewegung(en). Degrowth Webportal. <https://www.degrowth.de/de/dib/degrowth-in-bewegungen/degrowth/>

Della Porta, Donatella; Diani, Mario 1999: Social Movements. An Introduction. Malden/Oxford/Melbourne: Blackwell Publishing.

Euler, Johannes 2016. Commons-Creating Society: On the Radical German Commons Discourse. Review of Radical Political Economics 48(1): 93-110.

Habermann, Friederike 2015. Commonsbasierte Zukunft. Wie ein altes Konzept eine bessere Welt ermöglicht. Aus Politik und Zeitgeschichte 35-37/2015: 46-52.

Helfrich, Silke 2012. Gemeingüter sind nicht, sie werden gemacht. In: Commons: Für eine Politik jenseits von Markt und Staat. Helfrich, Silke; Heinrich-Böll-Stiftung (Hrsg.). Bielefeld: transcript. 85-91.

Helfrich, Silke; Bollier, David; Heinrich-Böll-Stiftung 2016: Die Welt der Commons. Muster gemeinsamen Handelns. Bielefeld: transcript.

Illich, Ivan 1998. Selbstbegrenzung: Eine politische Kritik der Technik. München: C.H. Beck.

Ostrom, Elinor 1999. Die Verfassung der Allmende: Jenseits von Staat und Markt. Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck.

Meretz, Stefan 2014a. Grundrisse einer freien Gesellschaft. In: Aufbruch ins Ungewisse: Auf der Suche nach Alternativen zur kapitalistischen Dauerkrise. Konicz, Tomasz; Rötzer, Florian (Hrsg.). Hannover: Heise. 152-182.

Meretz, Stefan 2014b. Keimform und gesellschaftliche Transformation. Streifzüge 60: 7-9.

Muraca, Barbara 2014. Gut leben: Eine Gesellschaft jenseits des Wachstums. Berlin: Wagenbach.

Siefkes, Christian 2013. Freie Quellen oder wie die Produktion zur Nebensache wurde. In: „Etwas fehlt“ – Utopie, Kritik und Glücksversprechen. Jour Fixe Initiative Berlin (Hrsg.). Münster: Edition Assemblage. 255-272. Access: 22.06.2016. < http://keimform.de/2013/freie-quellen-1 >

Degrowth is not only a label for an ongoing discussion on alternatives, and not just an academic debate, but also an emerging social movement. Regardless of many similarities, there is quite some lack of knowledge as well as scepticism, prejudice and misunderstanding about the different perspectives, assumptions, traditions, strategies and protagonists both within degrowth circles as well as within other social movements. Here, space for learning emerges – also to avoid the danger of repeating mistakes and pitfalls of other social movements.

At the same time, degrowth is a perspective or a proposal which is or can become an integral part of other perspectives and social movements. The integration of alternatives, which are discussed under the discursive roof of degrowth, into other perspectives often fails because of the above mentioned skepticisms, prejudices and misunderstandings.

The multi-media project “Degrowth in movement(s)” shows which initiatives and movements develop and practice social, ecological and democratic alternatives. Representatives from 32 different fields describe their work and history, their similarities & differences to others and possible alliances. From the Solidarity Economy to the Refugee-Movement, from Unconditional Basic Income to the Anti-Coal-Movement, from Care Revolution to the Trade Unions – they discuss their relationship to degrowth in texts, videos, photos and podcasts.

The project was run by the “Konzeptwerk Neue Ökonomie” (Laboratory for New Economic Ideas) in Germany, so most of the authors are from there. However, there are a couple of clearly international perspectives and most of the movements work far beyond the national level.

The post Degrowth in Movements: Commons appeared first on P2P Foundation.

Global Resistance to Fossil-Fuelled Capitalism

1. What is the key idea of the climate justice movement?

We are not all in the same boat: The climate crisis as a crisis of justice

What is climate change about? First and foremost, justice! The best symbol for this process is not the sad polar bear, but New Orleans destroyed by Hurricane Katrina in 2005. There, the majority of the wealthy white population succeeded in fleeing from the floods and the ensuing chaos, because they (for the most part) owned their own cars, which they could use to leave the city. The mostly poor black population largely remained behind, and was subjected to the government’s incompetent and repressive disaster management for several weeks. Burned into our minds are images of African-Americans, standing on rooftops, signalling to the helicopters flying over the city that they need help —and yet being wantonly ignored.

Black inhabitants of New Orleans call for help after hurricane Katrina while securing themselves on the roof of their house. (Image: World Socialist Web Site)

We often think of ourselves as being all in the proverbial ‘same boat’. Unfortunately, this is not true. If we are all in the same boat —let’s say, the (space)ship Earth— then there are several classes on this ship, and in the event of an accident, the lower decks are flooded first. And just like on the Titanic, there are lifeboats available for those who can afford them. Another example is rising sea levels. They are rising for everyone, but in Bangladesh people are being flooded, while in Holland floating cities are being built with resources accumulated there while using the global environment as a dump, all without a second thought.

In summary: On average, those who have contributed least to climate change suffer the most, while those who have contributed most suffer the least. The latter usually have sufficient resources to protect themselves from the effects of climate change. They have accumulated these resources, this wealth, precisely through those activities that have driven climate change. This central fact, which, by the way, applies to almost all so-called ‘environmental crises’, is perhaps best described as ‘climate injustice’. That is why the call for mere climate protection does not go far enough. What we need is climate justice.
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2. Who is part of the climate justice movement, what do they do?

From the environmental justice movement to the climate justice movement

In order to understand the demands and requirements of the climate justice movement, it is worth taking a look at the history of social struggles, in particular the emergence of the environmental movement in the USA in the 1960s, which was first and foremost a movement of the white middle class for the white middle class. It originated in relatively privileged ‘white’ city districts and towns, and fought to keep these communities free from air pollution and to prevent the inhabitants’ children from being poisoned by chemical plants and power plants. As understandable as these demands were, they had a regrettable effect. Instead of such plants being closed down, they were simply moved; from the richer communities to the poorer ones, populated mostly by African Americans, Hispanics, Native Americans and other marginalised groups. The struggles of the liberal environmental movement did not lead to the solution of the problems they had criticised — instead, they were simply shifted a few steps further down the ladder of social power.

The fight for environmental justice is a fight for your own life. Material from the website “beautiful solutions”. (Image: Wake Forest University)

Resistance to environmental and climate racism

The communities of colour, suddenly oppressed by a whole range of polluting industries, did not merely become passive victims. Instead, they organised themselves, accused the environmental movement of ‘environmental racism’, and began their own movement for environmental justice. Analytically, this means: If apparent environmental problems are not seen as social problems, if there is no awareness of how a single polluting factory is embedded in broader social structures of domination and exploitation, not only are these problems impossible to solve, but existing social inequalities will be exacerbated.

In the 1980s, as the debate on climate change began to gain momentum, the idea developed that the problem was above all technical —that the concentration of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere had to be reduced and eliminated through certain mechanisms. In the 1990s, this in turn facilitated the development of so-called market mechanisms to combat climate change. Without opening up the entire critical debate on these impressively ineffective environmental policy tools (Altvater/Brunnengräber 2007; Moreno/Speich Chassé/Fuhr 2015), they are based on a technical logic that does not take social structures into account; i.e. that because every CO2 particle is the same, it does not matter who saves CO2 where and under what conditions.

In economic terms, it is actually best to save CO2 where it is cheapest, and that is easiest in the global south, where everything is cheaper on average. So, we could give money to development aid organisations to protect forests from deforestation, so as to protect the climate, while we in the global north continue to burn fossil fuels. However, this idea has a huge catch: the forests which were suddenly to be saved from excessive deforestation were often home to indigenous peoples who have excelled at sustainable forest management for thousands of years. And these peoples were threatened by expulsion from their ancestral lands, so-called ‘green grabbing’ (see Heuwieser 2015) through the market mechanisms negotiated in the 1990s as part of the Kyoto Protocol. In the context of these negotiations, the story of environmental justice was once more taken up. In response to the ‘climate racism’ of official climate policy, American activist for indigenous peoples and founder of the Indigenous Environmental Network Tom Goldtooth, who himself comes from the environmental justice movements, for the first time formulated the demand for climate justice. Thus began the fight to construct climate change as a question of human rights and justice.

The next step in the development of the climate justice narrative was the publication of the Greenhouse Gangsters vs. Climate Justice report (Bruno et. al. 1999). The report focused on fossil fuel energy companies; and instead of suggesting solutions at the individual level (for example, ethical consumption), it focused on major structural transformations. In addition, the struggle for climate justice was quite explicitly described as a global struggle. The report also put forward the movement’s most important policy framework to date, namely a critique of the Kyoto Protocol’s market mechanisms as ‘false solutions’.

This image was made by the Ingham County Health Department in Michigan (USA) and shows topics connected to environmental justice (Image: Jessica Yorko, Environmental Justice Coordinator, Ingham County Health Department)

A global movement for climate justice is created

In Bali in 2002, the organisations that would later become the core of the movement, and articulate the Bali Principles of Climate Justice, met for the first time. In 2004, several groups and networks which had long been working on a critique of market mechanisms in general, and emissions trading in particular, came together in Durban in South Africa and founded the Durban Group for Climate Justice. The final breakthrough came at the 13th Climate Change Conference in Bali in 2007. The aforementioned network of critical organisations provoked an open conflict with the politically more moderate Climate Action Network, whose cosy lobbying strategy had been shown to be something of a flop. One result of this conflict was the founding of the Climate Justice Now! network in 2007. The press release announcing the formation of this new actor articulated a number of claims which still apply to the climate justice movement today. Later translated into a sort of founding manifesto, the press release demanded:

• that fossil fuels be left in the ground, and replaced with investment in suitable, safe, clean and democratic renewable energies;
• the drastic reduction of wasteful overconsumption, especially in the global north, but also in terms of southern elites;
• a massive transfer of funds from North to South, under democratic control, based on the repayment of climate debt (…);
• resource conservation based on human rights and enforced under indigenous land rights, with control of energy, forests, land and water driven by these communities;
• sustainable, small-scale farming and food sovereignty.

To achieve these goals, the movement has made use of a wide range of instruments, from the publication of clever reports and day-to-day political work in communities particularly affected by climate change, through civil disobedience (for example coal mine blockades), to the militant struggles of the Ogoni in the Niger Delta.

In summary: the climate justice movement is a descendant of the environmental justice movement. Like the environmental justice movement, the climate justice movement originated in the global south (see below), and aims to focus less on technical change and more on basic social structures. I would venture the following definition: Climate justice is not so much a state of affairs — e.g. the fair distribution of the costs of a potential solution to the climate crisis— but more a process, namely the process of struggling against the social structures which cause climate injustice. If we heed this broad definition, we can even say that many of the struggles for climate justice are not necessarily being fought under the banner of climate justice, but are represented as struggles for land, water, and other basic needs and human rights.

USA: Indigenous peoples and communities of colour as supporters of resistance

The fact that the climate justice movement arose in the US also structures the way that the project’s social base is viewed. On average, alleged ‘environmental problems’ hit the most socially vulnerable the hardest. In the US, this usually means the communities of colour, among which Native American communities are once again generally the most marginalised. Thee groups designated in the USA and Canada as First Nations see themselves as part of a global indigenous network which is most affected by environmental disasters. In addition to this, they live (on average) in places where the highest biodiversity is concentrated, and their socio-ecological practices —for example, forest use— are highly sustainable. Our survival may also depend on them, as learning from them could mean learning real sustainability. This is why so-called ‘frontline communities’ or ‘affected communities’ (often indigenous communities) are the main supporters of the resistance, the famous ‘revolutionary subject’ of the climate justice movement.

These ‘frontline communities’, often communities of colour in the USA, thus join forces with typically white and/or otherwise privileged ‘allies’ (see Moore/Kahn-Russel 2010). With regard to these activists, we tend to find the social milieus we have been expecting in this part of the world since the emergence of the so-called ‘new social movements’ from 1968 onwards: younger, more mobile, better educated, and often slightly more ‘alternative’ than the social average.

Boreal forests are destroyed by the expansion of Tarsands (Image: Dru Oja Jay, Dominion)

The view of Europe: The role of allies, and differences from the environmental movement

The European wing of the movement, which does not have the US’s tradition of environmental justice struggles to fall back on, and which is dealing with different social structures, is significantly more represented by the white and privileged than the movement in the US. This is quite logical to a certain extent: in the global north, there are simply fewer affected groups or ‘frontline communities’ —with a handful of exceptions, such as the villages in the Lusatia region and the Rhineland which still fall victim to the madness of lignite mines. Most of us act, globally speaking, in the role of allies.

In Europe, the climate justice movement differs from the broader environmental movement in two main elements: firstly, through its conceptual anti-capitalism, including a clear rejection of all varieties of green capitalism (green market economy) (see Müller/Kaufmann 2009); and secondly, through its focus on the tactics of civil disobedience (often mass civil disobedience) and deliberate rule-breaking, in contrast to the more legalistic tactics of traditional environmental organisations. Examples of this type of climate activism in the global north are the civil disobedience campaigns at the climate summits in Copenhagen (2009) and Paris (2015), but above all sit-ins and blockades of coal power plants and coal mines, airports and other places where climate change is generated. Of the above-mentioned key demands made by the climate justice movement, the central one is: ‘Leave it in the ground!’ —fossil fuels must be left in the ground!

3. How do you see the relationship between the climate justice movement and degrowth?

Climate justice and degrowth: United against fossil capital!

There is a positive, fairly close relationship between the climate justice movement and the degrowth movement, something which should come as no surprise to anyone after the Degrowth Summer School at the Rhineland Climate Camp in 2015. The reason for this is obvious: they have a common enemy, namely the fossil fuel-based energy system.

Protests at the climate summit in Posen/Poznan (Poland) in 2008: Juana Camacho Otero of Friends of the Earth Columbia at the global action day. (Image: Friends of the Earth International)

On the side of the climate justice movement, the argument is quite clear: Climate change, as explained above, is a deeply unjust phenomenon. Behind this are a number of social structures, but the key driver of climate change is an energy system that has been based on fossil fuels since the Industrial Revolution. After the COP21 climate summit in Copenhagen in 2009 demonstrated to the climate change movement and its more radical climate justice wing that little should be expected from ‘the powers that be’ in the fight against fossil fuels, they began to focus on local and national energy struggles (see Müller 2012; Bullard/Müller 2011). The core of the climate (justice) movement now consists of fighting for a rapid phasing out of fossil fuels, opposing fracking and the development of gas infrastructure, and campaigning for the development of democratically controlled, largely decentralised renewable energies.

From the perspective of degrowth, the argument is a little more complicated, due to the ‘political polyvalence of the growth-critical paradigm’ (Eversberg / Schmelzer 2016). In other words, there are a wide range of political positions on the degrowth spectrum, some of which are more critical of capitalism than others, and some which concern themselves with environmental issues to a greater or lesser extent. Nevertheless, Eversberg and Schmelzer describe degrowth as having a perspective of transformation which is predominantly ‘critical of capitalism’, and which has abandoned the idea that sustainable development is possible in the context of a capitalist economy. Although there are also non-ecological reasons to be interested in the topic of degrowth, it appears that many people become involved with the issue due to the constantly escalating socio-ecological crises with which we have been confronted in recent years.

And so we come to the crux of the matter: If the post-growth movement is first and foremost about the destruction of our natural resources, then it also has to be about capitalism, because capitalism has an in-built microeconomic compulsion towards infinite growth. The growth dynamics of capitalist production are not explained through oft-cited metrics such as gross domestic product, but through the microeconomic behaviour of individual companies, which are driven by market forces to invest money today in order to make more money tomorrow —companies that don’t achieve this don’t survive. If this is not mere speculation, then the result is the following correlation: money => commodity production => consumption => more money, followed by the re-investment of at least part of this money. Or in summary: M => C => M’. This microeconomic equation represents the general formula for capital, and it expresses the compulsion to act felt by each businessperson every day. From an ecological point of view, this means that this necessary additional daily profit must come from somewhere ‘in nature’. If every day more workers convert more raw materials into commodities by using more energy, then M => C => M’ also means a continuous rise in global resource consumption (see Müller 2014). This is the nature of capitalism.

And capitalism would not have developed in this way, perhaps would never have arisen at all, if it had not entered into a quasi-symbiotic relationship with fossil fuels (coal at that time) in 18th century England (see Malm 2016). I do not believe that a form of capitalism based on renewable energies is impossible, but the capitalism which exists today, and which has already passed several ‘environmental limits’, could never have existed without fossil fuels. Whether we speak of fossil capital or fossil-fuelled capitalism, capitalism is the root of our global need for growth, and its motor runs on fossil fuels —precisely those fossil fuels which are also driving climate change.

4. Which proposals do they have for each other?

Better together: The weaknesses of one are the strengths of the other

Accordingly, the climate justice movement can provide the degrowth movement with something that the latter occasionally lacks: a common, antagonistically structured field of practice. This has nothing to do with the now somewhat tedious question of whether degrowth is a movement or not, given that it has no identifiable opponents. I accept the argument of Eversberg and Schmelzer (2016) that the target of the post-growth movement is not a single sector or institution or external process, but the ‘imperial mode of living’ as a whole, which we in the global north have —at least to a certain extent— internalised. This is not about the academic definition of a movement, which is ultimately irrelevant anyway, but about the motivation of the people involved, and the need to create conflicts so that the movement can develop transformative potential beyond articles in the culture section and niche day-to-day living practices. In 2015, the Ende Gelände campaign brought more than 1,000 people together (and over 4,000 people in 2016!) in an act of mass civil disobedience, namely the peaceful occupation of a lignite mine. This action created a conflict which the campaign then won, thus generating an enormous sense of collective empowerment (see The Laboratory of Insurrectionary Imagination 2015). It is this collective empowerment that enables the creation of a type of antagonistic identity construction, without which major social transformation is almost certainly impossible.

Ende Gelände activists in the lignite mining region Lusatia claim the democratisation of energy production and much more. Image: CC BY-NC 2.0, Ende Gelände 2016 / Fabian Melber.

In turn, the degrowth movement can offer the climate justice movement something that it lacks: a narrative that will have strong appeal in parts of Europe and the global north. Exhibit 1: The fourth Degrowth Conference succeeded in gathering together approximately 3,000 people in Leipzig, while no other social movement I am aware of can muster more than 2,000 (even in Berlin); I would hazard that a conference on climate justice would find it difficult to attract even 1,000 participants. Doubtless this success is in part due to the amazing work of the organisers. But it is also an indicator that the degrowth narrative is attractive to more than just the ‘usual suspects’ who attend social movement events. (This impression is reinforced by the fact that many of the participants had never been to a social movement conference before.) Exhibit 2: The culturally important (albeit politically somewhat irrelevant) German parliamentary commission of inquiry on ‘Growth, Prosperity, Quality of Life’ from 2011 to 2013 shows that criticism of growth has even ‘infected’ conservative and liberal cultural milieus. Exhibit 3 (from my own experience): When I try to convince my conservative grandfather of the climate justice narrative, and of the fact that the wealth we have accumulated in the global north is —in reality— a great debt that we should return to the global south, he usually ignores me. When I present him with perhaps the central point of degrowth reasoning, namely that you cannot have infinite growth on a finite planet, he is forced to agree. On this basis, we can then start a conversation critiquing capitalism. In this story, my grandfather is representative of many people in the global north who have little interest in ‘climate justice’, but who share the unease that the degrowth movement is able to formulate.

5. Outlook: Space for visions, suggestions or wishes

Strategy, strategy, strategy!

Politically speaking, the climate justice movement reached a new peak in May 2016. In the second round of Ende Gelände, this time held as part of a global campaign entitled Break Free from Fossil Fuels, which led actions against fossil fuels and in favour of energy democracy on five continents, we achieved a number of significant successes. By gathering together approximately 4,000 participants in a highly tactical and strategic act of civil disobedience in the field of climate action, we have set new standards; the level of international participation in the act itself, and the international coordination of the act in the context of the Break Free campaign are reminiscent of the degree of internationalisation which made the alterglobalisation movement so inspiring. More important, however, is the fact that this time we did not remain in the coal mine; instead we reacted to the tactical and political retreat of our opposition from the pit (Vattenfall and the Brandenburg Ministry of Interior) by playing off our political and moral strength and setting up the blockade on the tracks. ‘On the tracks’ here refers to the railway tracks in the Lusatia region that supply the coal-fired Schwarze Pumpe (Black Pump) power station with lignite from three opencast mines. This rail blockade was of prime importance because we in the global north do more damage to the planet through expanding our industrial and service sectors than through primary resource extraction (such as lignite mining): this primarily refers to power plants, factories and server farms, not to gold mines and coal mines.

Start of a group of Ende Gelände activists in 2016. Image: CC BY-NC 2.0, 350.org.

Why am I writing about this at the end of this text? Because this time something happened that very rarely happens in the social movements that I have experienced: They assessed their own strength realistically, and developed tactics and strategies which related this strength realistically to the scale of the challenge. So if I could articulate a wish to both movements (a somewhat strange task, I might add, as for me the two are not unrelated), it would be: Let us plan strategically, let us act wisely, and not merely expressively, because we are few, with scarce resources, and we have an enormous task ahead of us (the abolition of capitalism, saving the climate etc. …). Consequently: strategy, strategy, strategy. Without strategy, it’s all bullshit.

Literature and links

Links

• Ende Gelände
  Socio-ecological restructuring at the Rosa Luxemburg Stiftung
  Beautiful Trouble – A Toolbox for Revolution

Applied as well as further literature

Bruno, Kenny; Karliner, Joshua; Brotsky, China 1999. Greenhouse Gangsters vs. Climate Justice. San Francisco: Transnational Resource and Action Center. Accessed: 11.07.2016. <http://www.corpwatch.org/article.php?id=1048>

Dietz, Kristina; Müller, Tadzio; Reuter, Norbert; Wichterich, Christa 2014. Mehr oder weniger? Wachstumskritik von links (Reihe: Materialien). Berlin: Rosa-Luxemburg-Stiftung. <http://www.rosalux.de/publication/40728/>

Eggers, Dave 2011. Zeitoun. London: Penguin Books.

Elmar Altvater; Achim Brunnengräber (Hrsg.): Ablasshandel gegen Klimawandel? Hamburg: VSA.

Eversberg, Dennis; Schmelzer, Matthias 2016: Über die Selbstproblematisierung zur Kapitalismuskritik. Vier Thesen zur entstehenden Degrowth-Bewegung. Forschungsjournal Soziale Bewegungen 1/2016: 9-17. Access: 11.07.2016. <http://forschungsjournal.de/node/2821>

Focus on the Global South [without year]. What’s missing in the climate talks? Justice! Access: 11.07.2016. <http://focusweb.org/node/1301>

Heuwieser, Magdalena 2015. Grüner Kolonialismus in Honduras. Wien: Promedia-Verlag.

Kaufmann, Stefan; Müller, Tadzio 2009. Grüner Kapitalismus: Krise, Klima und kein Ende des Wachstums. Berlin: Karl Dietz.

Moreno, Camila; Speich Chassé, Daniel; Fuhr, Lili 2015. Carbon Metrics. Global abstractions and ecological epistemicide. Berlin: Heinrich-Böll-Stiftung. <https://www.boell.de/sites/default/files/2015-11-09_carbon_metrics.pdf>

Müller, Tadzio 2012: Von Energiekämpfen, Energiewenden und Energiedemokratie. LuXemburg 1/2012: 6-15. <http://www.zeitschrift-luxemburg.de/von-energiekampfen-energiewenden-und-energiedemokratie/>

Russell, Joshua Kahn; Moore, Hilary 2011: Organizing Cools the Planet: Tools and Reflections on Navigating the Climate Crisis. Oakland: PM Press.

The Laboratory of Insurrectionary Imagination 2015. Drawing A Line in the Sand: The Movement Victory at Ende Gelände Opens up the Road of Disobedience for Paris. Access: 11.07.2016. <https://labofii.wordpress.com/2015/08/23/drawing-a-line-in-the-sand-the-movement-victory-at-ende-gelande-opens-up-the-road-of-disobedience-for-paris/>

Header-image: 2014 People’s Climate March NYC, CC BY-NC-ND 2.0, Stephen Melkisethian

Author Tadzio Müller was born in 1976 and has been involved in the climate justice movement for a decade, before which he was active in the alterglobalisation movement.

As an activist, his main area of focus is the organisation of mass civil disobedience, for example, the successful Ende Gelände¹ protests. He currently works as an expert on climate justice and energy democracy at the Rosa Luxemburg Foundation.

Degrowth is not only a label for an ongoing discussion on alternatives, and not just an academic debate, but also an emerging social movement. Regardless of many similarities, there is quite some lack of knowledge as well as scepticism, prejudice and misunderstanding about the different perspectives, assumptions, traditions, strategies and protagonists both within degrowth circles as well as within other social movements. Here, space for learning emerges – also to avoid the danger of repeating mistakes and pitfalls of other social movements.

At the same time, degrowth is a perspective or a proposal which is or can become an integral part of other perspectives and social movements. The integration of alternatives, which are discussed under the discursive roof of degrowth, into other perspectives often fails because of the above mentioned skepticisms, prejudices and misunderstandings.

The multi-media project “Degrowth in movement(s)” shows which initiatives and movements develop and practice social, ecological and democratic alternatives. Representatives from 32 different fields describe their work and history, their similarities & differences to others and possible alliances. From the Solidarity Economy to the Refugee-Movement, from Unconditional Basic Income to the Anti-Coal-Movement, from Care Revolution to the Trade Unions – they discuss their relationship to degrowth in texts, videos, photos and podcasts.

The project was run by the “Konzeptwerk Neue Ökonomie” (Laboratory for New Economic Ideas) in Germany, so most of the authors are from there. However, there are a couple of clearly international perspectives and most of the movements work far beyond the national level.

The post Degrowth in Movements: Climate Justice appeared first on P2P Foundation.

Fighting for Care Work Resource

1. What is the key idea of the Care Revolution?

Care Revolution wants to shape care and self-care according to needs with a fundamental change in societal direction

Care Revolution activists are working for a good life in which all people’s needs can be met in full without excluding anyone or exploiting others. Building on insights from feminist politics, Care Revolution puts the fundamental significance of care work at the core of its social critical analysis and political action. From birth, people are dependent on the care of others, without which they could not survive. Beyond childhood and youth, and times of sickness and frailty, people are also dependent on others in their everyday lives. The possibility of getting help and support in a difficult situation is an important criterion for a good life. This also applies to the possibility of being able to care for others without having to be disproportionately disadvantaged.

Care work is an activity that all people carry out. They care for themselves, for their health, for their education, they cook for themselves or for other people, bring up children, advise friends, and care for relatives who need support. Some care work is paid, for example that carried out by carers or nursery school teachers. Most of this work however is done within families by women and is unpaid; often it is not considered to be work at all.

“Day of invisible work” at the 1.May demonstrations in Freiburg in 2014.

Currently, more and more people face the increasingly difficult task of mastering the balancing act between employment and unpaid care work for themselves and others. They live with the constant threat of failing to meet demands. In their employment, they are confronted with increasing demands on flexibility from the company, continually rising performance pressure, as well as salaries, which are often too low compared to the cost of living. According to the neoliberal credo of individual responsibility, each individual is required to combine high professional requirements with increasing self-organisation tasks and the growing demands of familial care work.

This situation is aggravated by the fact that, in order to reduce costs, many state welfare services, for example in the health or education system, are being cut rather than expanded. It is primarily many women who suffer in this deficient state infrastructure as they carry out most of the socially necessary care work in the home alongside their paid employment. In high-earning families, part of this work is passed on to poorly paid migrant domestic workers who do not have social security. In this way, high earners solve their problems on the backs of those for whom even this precarious work means an improvement to their catastrophic position. State tolerance of these working conditions in private households, which fall below societal minimum standards, is aggravating a global division of labour that ignores the basic needs of care workers from countries in Eastern Europe and the global south.

Care Revolution as a political strategy

The obvious response that meets needs is to organise and carry out the work needed in families and institutions together and without discrimination. For those in the Care Revolution network, attending to people’s needs, space for empathy and solidarity, as well as genuine democracy in politics and the economy are essential. With the following steps, it is possible to come closer to the aim of good care and a good life:

• Sufficient income for all in order to secure a sustainable livelihood: This primarily means a substantial minimum wage without exceptions, an unconditional basic income and a significant improvement in pay for work in care careers.
• Sufficient time to be able to care for one’s close ones and oneself alongside paid employment, and maintain time for leisure. This primarily means a considerable reduction in working hours for full-time workers, special arrangements for people with a lot of care responsibilities, and a non-discriminatory division of care work between men and women.
• A social infrastructure that truly supports care and self-care: This primarily means an expanded and free education and health system, affordable accommodation, free local public transport and support for self-help networks and commons projects. This can be realised by redistributing societal wealth.
• Real involvement in societal decision-making: This means comprehensive self-governance, starting in the care sector. This can be effected via a council system that enables national coordination and democratic control. Many care projects, such as health centres, nurseries or educational establishments can also be organised decentrally with local self-governance in districts or neighbourhoods.
• Non-discriminatory society: This means that there is no exclusion, no discrimination and no privileges owing to one’s ethnic origin, nationality, gender, sexual orientation, physical ability or occupational skills.

Care Revolution’s aim is a society based on solidarity. Those in the Care Revolution network understand this to be a radically democratic society, oriented towards human needs and, in particular, towards caring for one another. In a society based on solidarity, the needs of all people in their diversity are met, without people from other global regions being discriminated against. Correspondingly, Care Revolution means that it is no longer profit maximisation but human needs that are the focus of social, and thus also economic action.

2. Who is part of the Care Revolution? What do they do?

Care Revolution network actors call for more time and resources for paid and unpaid care work.

In the Care Revolution network, there are initiatives from different areas of society and with different political priorities. These include organisations of caregiving relatives, disability groups, parent groups, migrant groups, ver.di and GEW trade union site groups in the field of care and childcare, social movement organisations, queer feminist groups and radical left-wing groups. In March 2014, sixty such initiatives came together in Berlin for the first time to prepare and hold a conference, which 500 people attended. Shortly after this, these and other initiatives founded the Care Revolution network. Currently, the network is limited to Germany, Switzerland and Austria.

Logo of the Care Revolution network.

Examples of groups represented in the network

A significant proportion of the initiatives represented by Care Revolution come from a feminist or queer feminist background. Some have fought since the 1970s, as part of the second wave of feminism, for a revaluation of unpaid reproductive work. Today, older and younger activists in the Care Revolution network again want to comprehend the feminist agenda as a more general form of social criticism, including through their struggles for improved care resources. Here, priorities are quite varied. Some highlight the gender gap in care work and demand recognition of this socially necessary work. Others are active in groups that combine anti-capitalist and feminist positions and discuss their own life circumstances in relation to structural crises. The latter involved Care Revolution in the Blockupy protests.

Women in Exile, which also participated in the first Care Revolution conference, calls for refugees to be housed in apartments rather than in camps where there is no privacy or protection against attacks. The initiative is demanding this for women and children as a matter of urgency but also calls for all camps to be dissolved. The initiative combines its public relations activities for this aim with informing refugees about their rights, and positions against racism and the migration regime.

In recent years, labour disputes regarding paid care work have made the headlines. These disputes have been innovative in various ways. For example, the ver.di site group and the staff council at Charité – Universitätsmedizin Berlin demanded a collective agreement regarding minimum employee coverage from the company that operates Berlin’s university hospitals. This labour dispute was supported by the association Berlinerinnen und Berliner für mehr Personal im Krankenhaus (‘Berlin residents for more hospital staff’) with actions to demonstrate solidarity; it did this explicitly in the interests of potential patients. On 1 May 2016, this collective agreement was achieved after over four years of disputes. A second example are the disputes in German municipal nurseries. In the 2015 strikes, there were calls for a societal revaluation of care work in nurseries and social services, as well as an increase in pay to reflect this. There were increased and partially successful efforts to gain parents as allies for this cause.

Care revolutionaries at the 1.May demonstration in Hamburg in 2015.

There are also labour-managed companies that support Care Revolution’s ideas. One example are the carers at Lossetal care centre, which is a working part of the Niederkaufungen commune. Other members of the commune, neighbours and relatives are involved as much as possible in the care facilities for care-dependent individuals and people with dementia in particular. This should improve quality of care. It is also an expression of the social objective that people in neighbourhoods should provide each other with mutual support. The care centre complements this with the required professional input.

In familial care work, the initiative Armut durch Pflege (‘Poverty through care’) can be mentioned. This initiative created the association Wir pflegen – Interessenvertretung begleitender Angehöriger und Freunde in Deutschland (‘we care – interest representation for accompanying relatives and friends in Germany’). The aim of the initiative is to give a voice to those affected by difficult situations and their demands, and to bring about material improvements for relatives who are carers, for example, through a substantial care allowance. As such, the association’s demands also relate to the human dignity of the people being cared for, which should not be dependent on their ability to pay. The organisation Nicos Farm pursues the same aims by different means: Children and young people who are dependent on lifelong care owing to a disability should also be able to have a dignified life if their parents themselves are in need of care or are deceased. The organisation aims to implement a project involving accommodation, employment opportunities and therapy at Lüneburger Heide in Germany.

Framework conditions for joint action

The Care Revolution conference in March 2014 was a moment where mutual interest, as well as the different needs and difficult situations were as evident as the desire for a joint explanation regarding the social suffering experienced. At the conference, the widespread weakness in the implementation of the individual initiatives became evident, as did the reasons for this: because no economic pressure can be established in that kind of care work, because the work is frequently carried out by isolated individuals, and because, in neoliberal discourse, completing care tasks is the responsibility of the individual. Above all, the conference underlined a desire to address these issues through joint action.

Moved care revolutionaries.

Cooperation between the different initiatives is not easy: There are real, varied struggles and alternative projects on care work. There is recognition of the similarities between them and the desire to support one another. However, individual, often existential battles are necessarily at the heart of the initiatives’ work. Activists’ lack of flexibility due to care responsibilities, precarious living conditions, and lack of time and money further impede joint action. Additionally, there is still a lack of experience of joint action actually resulting in more success. All of this is currently preventing Care Revolution from gaining more of a public presence.

Cooperation between the different initiatives is not easy: There are real, varied struggles and alternative projects on care work. There is recognition of the similarities between them and the desire to support one another. However, individual, often existential battles are necessarily at the heart of the initiatives’ work. Activists’ lack of flexibility due to care responsibilities, precarious living conditions, and lack of time and money further impede joint action. Additionally, there is still a lack of experience of joint action actually resulting in more success. All of this is currently preventing Care Revolution from gaining more of a public presence

3. How do you see the relationship between Care Revolution and degrowth?

Care Revolution and degrowth can fight for a society based on solidarity together

In terms of content, we see an important link between Care Revolution and degrowth in the fact that both concepts relate to prospects for a good life. This also applies, as far as we can judge, to the other movements that are represented by and brought together under the Degrowth in Movement(s) banner.

At first glance, there appears to be a fundamental contradiction in that degrowth places emphasis on ‘less’: It is about combining less use of resources with a good life for all where everyone’s needs are met. In this scenario, a necessary decrease in economic growth should not be a threat to standards of living but rather represent an opportunity. In contrast, Care Revolution is ultimately seeking more: More time, a more supportive social infrastructure and more material security are unavoidable prerequisites for an improvement in the position of care workers. For the health, care, education and childcare sectors, it is also about more employees and higher wages.

It gets politically interesting when these two aims are combined: less use of resources by society and more care resources. Then this is about reducing all areas that are destructive to humans and the ecological foundations of human life. Examples include armaments manufacturing, coal power stations or the current structure of individual transport. At the same time, it is about growing specific areas that are necessary for self-care and care for one another and creating the conditions for this. It is about developing concepts for how a reduction in soil sealing can be combined with an expansion of nurseries, how a reduction in the consumption of consumer goods can be combined with more material security and support for relatives who are carers, how more employees in healthcare and education can be combined with a societal reduction in working hours. In general, it means thinking about how a society can be structured to meet people’s care needs and preserve the ecological foundations for human life at the same time.

We believe that bringing together degrowth and Care Revolution is worthwhile because of the parallels between the two concepts. Both make one uncompromising demand of a desirable society: It must make a good life possible for all people globally and for subsequent generations. This premise brings with it the idea that a society that cannot guarantee this should be changed. Against this backdrop, degrowth and Care Revolution can meet precisely where they both place a pointed emphasis on anti-capitalism. For the degrowth approach, there is the central idea that an increase in the efficiency of energy and resource usage is not enough to sufficiently reduce consumption. Not only must production processes change but the production scope and the way one uses consumer goods must too. Mobility, access to washing machines, tools or libraries, as well as the use of gardens will have to be much more collectively managed in order to enable access for all. If successful, such a transformed economy would not mean a sacrifice, but would mean having other, richer social relations. This equally positive reference to the interdependence of human beings is very similar to Care Revolution’s thinking on care and care work. To be dependent on one another is a fundamental part of human life. As such, it is also immensely important to focus on human collaboration and solidarity in political actions and in the development of societal alternatives.

Poster for the action week Care Revolution in Erfurt in May 2016.

A joint effort with other movements is an especially attractive notion, as is fighting together. Both Care Revolution and degrowth can identify with the topic of ‘a society based on solidarity, a life based on solidarity’, which touches on the need for changes in societal institutions as well as changes in one’s own lifestyle. Both analyse the destruction of the human being as a social being and ecosystems in capitalism and contrast this with the principles of a society based on solidarity. As such, both are anti-capitalist projects at their core. If this is true, then both movements also pose questions about social transformation: How do individual struggles, experiments and political changes intensify to the point that an alternative to capitalism, based on solidarity, becomes reality? We consider the search for transformation strategies to be part of a joint project for needs-oriented social movements.

4. Which proposals do they have for each other?

Care Revolution’s strength is that very heterogeneous initiatives are calling for comprehensive social changes together.

One strength of the initiatives under the Care Revolution banner is their heterogeneity, as the topic of care speaks directly to people from different backgrounds with different political ideas, life concepts and desires. At the first conference in March 2014, it was impressive to see how this diversity was combined with mutual respect and curiosity.

We believe this relates to the fact that care has reference points in all social and political settings. Care addresses vital needs, which underlines the absurdity of wanting to treat, teach, advise or care for people according to the principle of maximum profit. People with different life experiences and different life situations are coming to the conclusion that society must be entirely redesigned, at least with regard to care. It is relatively easy to imagine alternatives in care as the necessary social infrastructure can largely be realised decentrally, in local districts or villages.

Nurseries, healthcare establishments and social centres can be organised with forms of direct democracy. All those directly affected by negotiations regarding care institutions can be involved. This is primarily possible because care workers of different kinds are meeting on a level playing field: both those for whom care is a career, and those who are involved in care within families or self-care. They can meet each other as experts who are pursuing the same aim of organising care well with different skills and interests. Experiences in the care sector and in struggles for better care conditions can also make comprehensive socialisation, which goes beyond the care sector, appear more realistic and more desirable. Freeing all areas of production and how we live together from the framework of valorisation and market competition is also a condition for protecting the ecological foundations of life.

Care Revolution action “DIE-IN” on the major shopping street “Zeil” in Frankfurt in 2013.

With regard to commons projects, we believe Care Revolution activists can learn a lot from movement approaches such as those who participate within the Degrowth in Movement(s) project. Unlike in the care sector where initial efforts are being made, there are already multiple projects there, where people are jointly developing and living out part of a more liveable future on a small scale. We are thinking here of community repairs, fab labs (public workshops equipped with 3D printers), communal gardens or the many projects in community-supported agriculture.

5. Outlook: Space for visions, suggestions or wishes

Needs-oriented movements can develop a liveable alternative to capitalism together where they combine their alternative projects and transformation strategies.

The different movements and practices under the Degrowth in Movement(s) banner have certain features in common: The centrality of human needs, attentiveness to life in general, the importance of real social relationships and fair social framework conditions make up a shared core, with quite different emphases. From this core, the consequences of capitalist development, which destroy the ecosystem as much as human beings as social creatures, may be criticised. Projects promoting a life based on solidarity can be brought together in discussion and in practice. Individual efforts can be linked and societal alternatives developed.

Strengthening these links to one another is perhaps what is most urgent. This involves the different movements developing a liveable alternative to capitalism through exchanging ideas. It is also about them finding a shared focus in their projects and in their solidarity-based lifestyle. If this is successful, the movements can achieve something together that each individual cannot.

Partial movements also have something to contribute. For example, if migrants are caring for people at home in miserable working conditions, this creates an opportunity for a needs-oriented movement based on solidarity with different reference points: the right of the person requiring care to be well cared for, the right of the relatives to not be solely responsible for care, the rights of the migrant carers to good working conditions and good pay, the rights of the migrants’ children or relatives and the people in their home countries who care for them. It is necessary to account for all these justified demands, which affect the care system here, as well as the unfair distribution of work globally. If movements focusing on migration, care or the global division of labour work closely together, they can support each other with a comprehensive overview of the situation.

Redesigning towns and villages based on solidarity also requires joint action. Organising a collective social infrastructure in districts entails removing the care sector from valorisation. Communal gardens require free access to land. Experiments in co-living, shared repair workshops, community kitchens or policlinics should not be restricted or impeded by the fact that their rental payments have to generate sufficient returns. Reducing private car use requires a correspondingly developed local transport network and thoughts on how urban sprawl and the spatial separation of life and work can be addressed. By bringing together the many individual projects, a new, more strongly contoured image of liveable towns could emerge; discussing necessary conditions should enable us to determine more clearly how a societal alternative could function. By the very different activists from different individual movements meeting and becoming politically active together, they can support each other in thinking of and practising alternatives without old and new exclusions.

Links

Interview with Gabriele Winker on the book ‘Care Revolution. Schritte in eine solidarische Gesellschaft’ (in German)
Care Revolution homepage
Care Revolution’s partners (including all groups and initiatives mentioned in the text)
Care Revolution regional groups
‘Her mit dem guten Leben für alle weltweit! Für eine Care Revolution’ (information on the Care Revolution conference in Berlin in 2014, in German)
Video documentation of Care Revolution actionconference in Berlin in 2014

Applied as well as further literature

Biesecker, Adelheid; Wichterich, Christa; Winterfeld, Uta v. 2012. Feministische Perspektiven zum Themenbereich Wachstum, Wohlstand, Lebensqualität. Berlin: Rosa-Luxemburg-Stiftung. <http://www.rosalux.de/fileadmin/rls_uploads/pdfs/sonst_publikationen/Biesecker_Wichterich_Winterfeld_2012_FeministischePerspe.pdf>

Fried, Barbara; Schurian, Hannah (ed.) 2015. Um-Care. Gesundheit und Pflege neu organisieren. Berlin: Rosa-Luxemburg-Stiftung.
<http://www.rosalux.de/fileadmin/rls_uploads/pdfs/Materialien/Materialien13_UmCare_web.pdf>

Praetorius, Ina 2015. Wirtschaft ist Care. Oder: Die Wiederentdeckung des Selbstverständlichen. Berlin: Heinrich-Böll-Stiftung (Schriften zu Wirtschaft und Soziales 6). <https://www.boell.de/sites/default/files/2015-02-wirtschaft-ist-care.pdf>

Winker, Gabriele 2013. Zur Krise sozialer Reproduktion. In: Care statt Crash. Sorgeökonomie und die Überwindung des Kapitalismus. Baumann, Hans and others (ed.). Zürich: Edition 8. 119-133. <http://www.tuhh.de/t3resources/agentec/sites/winker/pdf/Krise_sozialer_Reproduktion.pdf>

Winker, Gabriele 2015. Care Revolution. Schritte in eine solidarische Gesellschaft. Bielefeld: Transcript.

Degrowth is not only a label for an ongoing discussion on alternatives, and not just an academic debate, but also an emerging social movement. Regardless of many similarities, there is quite some lack of knowledge as well as scepticism, prejudice and misunderstanding about the different perspectives, assumptions, traditions, strategies and protagonists both within degrowth circles as well as within other social movements. Here, space for learning emerges – also to avoid the danger of repeating mistakes and pitfalls of other social movements.

At the same time, degrowth is a perspective or a proposal which is or can become an integral part of other perspectives and social movements. The integration of alternatives, which are discussed under the discursive roof of degrowth, into other perspectives often fails because of the above mentioned skepticisms, prejudices and misunderstandings.

The multi-media project “Degrowth in movement(s)” shows which initiatives and movements develop and practice social, ecological and democratic alternatives. Representatives from 32 different fields describe their work and history, their similarities & differences to others and possible alliances. From the Solidarity Economy to the Refugee-Movement, from Unconditional Basic Income to the Anti-Coal-Movement, from Care Revolution to the Trade Unions – they discuss their relationship to degrowth in texts, videos, photos and podcasts.

The project was run by the “Konzeptwerk Neue Ökonomie” (Laboratory for New Economic Ideas) in Germany, so most of the authors are from there. However, there are a couple of clearly international perspectives and most of the movements work far beyond the national level.

The post Degrowth in Movements: Care Revolution appeared first on P2P Foundation.

Rethinking the World from the Perspective of Buen Vivir

1. What is the key idea of Buen Vivir?

We will never create a perfect world.
And we should be aware of that.

Carlos Taibo, 2015

This article outlines the scope and limits of Buen Vivir, which can be translated as ‘good life’ or ‘good living’. This ‘good life’ has always been a pluralistic concept, namely ‘buenos convivires’: different ways of ‘living well together’. This is therefore not about opening the gates to a single, homogeneous, unrealisable good life but far more about people living well together in a community, different communities living well together, and individuals and communities living well with nature.

The good life should be considered as something that is undergoing a constant construction and reproduction process. It is not a static concept, and certainly not a backward one. Buen Vivir is a central element of the philosophy of many societies. From this perspective, it is a design for life that has global potential despite having been marginalised in the past.

In some indigenous communities, there is no concept analogous to the ‘modern’ Western concept of development. There is no concept of a linear life with a former and subsequent state (in this case underdevelopment and development). Nor are there concepts of wealth and poverty based on the accumulation or lack of material goods.

Agricultural diversity of the rural farms. Exchange of seeds Pedro Moncayo (Ecuador)

As such, Buen Vivir entails a world view that differs from the Western world view in that it has community and not capitalist roots. It breaks both with the anthropocentric view of capitalism as the dominant civilisation and with the different manifestations of socialism to date. The latter must be rethought from a socio-biocentric position and cannot be updated by simply changing the name.

The good life entails a process of decolonisation, which should also involve depatriarchalisation (see Kothari et al 2015). This necessitates a profound process of intellectual decolonisation on political, social, economic and cultural levels.

Ultimately, Buen Vivir is highly subversive. It is not an invitation to return to the past or to an idyllic but otherwise non-existent world. It should also not become a kind of religion with its own commandments, rules and functions, including political ones. We can understand Buen Vivir to be persons living in harmony with themselves, with other people in the community, harmony within the community and between humans and nature.

Reciprocity practices in the Andean and Amazonian regions

There are many examples of economic practices involving reciprocity, solidarity and responses based on social action in the Andean and Amazonian region. Without asserting their transferability or generalisability, the following is a brief list of some forms of economic relations in indigenous communities:

Giving thanks to Pachamama (mother nature) in the area of Suscal, with the Pachakutik flag of the political indigenous movement in Ecuador

• Minka (minga): A mutual aid institution in the community setting. It guarantees labour that serves the common good and meets the collective needs and interests of the community, for example, in the execution of projects, such as the construction and maintenance of an irrigation canal or road. It is thus a form of collective work.
• Ranti-ranti: Unlike the specific one-off barter economy found in the economic systems of some mestizos, here barter is part of a chain that leads to an endless series of transfers of value, products and work days. This is based on the principle of ‘giving and taking’, without delimiting this to time, actions or space, and is linked to certain ethnic, cultural and historical values in the community.
• Uyanza: This is a call for communities to live together and in unity. Uyanza also offers the opportunity to thank Mother Earth for her ability to regenerate and provide humans with her produce. It is also an institution of social aid, including families who have made their labour available on loan.
• Uniguilla: Bartering to supplement food and useful objects. This enables improved nutrition, with products from other regions and different ecological niches.
• Waki: In a person’s absence, his agricultural land is allocated to other communities or families, who cultivate the land. The produce is divided between the two families or communities. This system is also used for animal care and breeding.
• Makikuna: A form of support that involves the whole community, extended family, friends and neighbours. It is a type of moral support at the time a family requires it most, particularly in unexpected situations and emergencies.

2. Who is part of Buen Vivir, what do they do?

Buen Vivir: Indigenous movements fighting for alternative ways of life

The origins of Buen Vivir

The thoughts surrounding Buen Vivir have only recently entered public discourse, particularly in Ecuador and Bolivia; their emergence can be explained by the battles of indigenous communities, which particularly gained strength at the end of the 20th century. Associated values, experiences, practices and world views in general already existed before the arrival of the European conquistadors. However, they were silenced, marginalised or openly opposed. One should not forget that the good life is not unique to Latin America but has been practised in many different epochs and regions of Mother Earth.

Dance to honor Pachamama (mother nature) on the big seed exchange fair in Pedro Mocayo (Ecuador)

The best-known linguistic references to the good life take us back to the original languages of Ecuador and Bolivia: in the former, there is ‘Buen Vivir’ (Spanish) or ‘Sumak Kawsay’ (Kichwa) and in the latter ‘Vivir Bien’ (Spanish) or ‘Suma Qamaña’ (Aymara), ‘Sumak Kawsay’ (Quechua), ‘Ñande Reko’ or ‘Tekó Porã’ (Guarani). Similar notions exist in other indigenous cultures, such as those of the Mapuche in Chile, the Guarani in Paraguay, the Kuna in Panama, the Shuar and Achua in the Ecuadorian Amazon, and the Maya in Guatemala and Chiapas (Mexico). The African term ‘ubuntu’ (‘sense of community’) and the Indian ‘swaraj’ (radical ecological democracy) are other examples.

This diversity has resulted in numerous movements that further the ideas of the good life. However, one cannot speak of a single good life movement as such. Some groups, despite favouring, defending, articulating and promoting Buen Vivir, do not fly the Buen Vivir flag. Moreover, this is about experiences, values and practices that already exist in different parts of the planet and about gaining strength from different perspectives. There has so far been no effort to organise these processes in a more institutionalised way, in order to avoid rigid dogmatic visions and proposals, which ultimately suffocate the creativity needed to construct buenos convivires. In Bolivia and Ecuador, the concept of Buen Vivir has constitutional status, being included in the 2008 Constitution of Ecuador, and the 2009 Constitution of the Plurinational State of Bolivia.

The Ecuadorian constitution contains several fundamental ideas that emerged simultaneously and in a unique way in this small country: for example, the recognition of the rights of nature and of the fundamental right to water, which bans any form of privatisation of this essential resource, and the idea of leaving crude oil in the Amazon below ground. The constitution’s preamble sets out the aim of building a ‘new form of public coexistence, in diversity and in harmony with nature, to achieve the good way of living, the sumak kawsay.’

At the same time, we must be wary of falling into the ‘trap’ of accepting Ecuadorian and Bolivian official propaganda on the good life. At the government level, this concept has been compromised by being ranked below demands for concentrating power and disciplining societies, while capitalism has been modernised.

Buen Vivir in the context of Latin American history

Understanding the good life requires an understanding of the history and current situation of indigenous peoples and nations, fundamentally a process based on the principle of historical continuity. Buen Vivir is part of a long quest for alternative lifestyles, forged by the passionate battles of indigenous peoples and nations. What is remarkable about these alternative proposals is that they come from groups that have long been marginalised, excluded, exploited or even destroyed. Their long-disregarded proposals invite us to break with a number of concepts that have been taken for granted until now.

The proposals of Buen Vivir are gaining traction in a moment of crisis in the Latin American oligarchic national State, which is rooted in colonialism and neoliberalism, thanks to the growing organisational efforts of indigenous and other grassroots movements. The idea of being in harmony with nature, characterising Buen Vivir, promotes discussion on environmentally friendly alternatives.

The indigenous community in the broadest sense is pursuing a collective project for the future. The utopias of the Andes and the Amazon are currently shaping discourse, political projects and social, cultural and economic practice. This approach should not be exclusionary, however, and should not result in dogmatic visions. It must be expanded with perceptions from other regions of the world, connected to one another spiritually, and potentially also politically, in their fight for a transformation of civilisation.

Yasuní-ITT Initiative – on the difficulty of achieving global utopias

In addition to theories regarding large-scale change, there are also concrete examples, even at a global level. The Yasuní-ITT Initiative’s proposal to leave oil under the ground in the Ecuadorian Amazon was and remains an excellent example of global action that was started by the civil society of a small country. It should not be forgotten that the Ecuadorian Amazon region has been impacted by oil extraction for decades. Consequently, many indigenous people living in voluntary isolation have left the extraction regions for the last remaining forest areas. The indigenous population is concentrated and increasing in an ever smaller area that has already lost some of its original biodiversity. This has led to increasing resistance from these groups to oil extraction, which, in turn, has stimulated growing support from other movements in Ecuador and around the world.

In view of the highly complex situation, the Yasuní-ITT initiative has four aims: 1. To protect the land and thus the lives of the indigenous peoples who live in voluntary isolation; 2. To preserve the national park’s unique biodiversity (the Yasuní National Park has the highest biodiversity recorded on the planet); 3. To protect the global climate by not exploiting large amounts of crude oil, thus avoiding 410 million tonnes of CO2 emissions; 4. To take a first exemplary step toward a post-fossil fuel era in Ecuador.
And that is not all. In addition, there could be a fifth aim: That we humans find concrete solutions to the critical global problems resulting from climate change caused by us, and worsened by the latest period of global capital expansion.

A woman and a child catch the native Cachama fishes in the Amazonas area in Ecuador

In return for the Yasuní-ITT initiative Ecuador expected a financial contribution from the international community, with other countries, especially the more prosperous societies, taking on their share of the responsibility, depending on the environmental destruction they had caused. This was not conceived as compensation for continuing to act in line with the traditional concept of development (desarrollismo). Instead, the payment was meant to be the starting point for the creation of a new scenario in which the severe global imbalances caused by extractivism and economic growth would be stopped and reversed. Unfortunately the initiative has failed because rich countries have not shouldered their responsibility and Ecuador’s government did not respond sufficiently to the revolutionary challenge from civil society (see Acosta 2014a and b).
Nevertheless, one legacy of the initiative should be underlined: The emergence of a strong social movement of young people committed to defending Yasuní, who were well organised and united in their call for a transformation of civilisation.

Currently, there are many concrete alternative proposals, not to be discussed here for reasons of space. What is important is that these ideas have spread considerably in recent years, even beyond national borders ¹ , and that this dissemination is part of the long and complex emancipation process of humanity.
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3. How do you see the relationship between Buen Vivir and degrowth?

Furthering degrowth’s horizons with Buen Vivir

Degrowth in the Global North, post-extractivism in the Global South

We now face the essential challenge of ending the frenzy of economic growth or even achieving degrowth, particularly in the Global North. On a finite planet, there is no room for permanent economic growth. If we continue down this path, we will reach a situation that is no longer environmentally sustainable and is increasingly socially explosive. Overcoming this creed of economic growth, particularly in the Global North, must be accompanied by abandoning extractivism in the Global South. This means that we must develop and pursue post-extractivist strategies.

The relation between these two processes of degrowth and post-extractivism in the global context is obvious: If economies in the North are no longer to grow, demand must fall. In this case, it would no longer make sense for countries in the South to base their economies on exporting raw materials to the North. For this reason, and many others, it is important for poor countries to also take on degrowth in a responsible manner.

However, the convergence of the visions and actions in post-extractivism and degrowth does not mean that poor countries should sacrifice an improvement in their living conditions in order that rich countries continue their unsustainable level of consumption and waste. Not at all.

Buen-Vivir meeting in Intag, Cotacachi, one of the regions of Ecuador affected by industrial mining

Criticism of capitalism as a common denominator

The common denominator in these two perspectives is a severe criticism of capitalism, which involves the increasing commercialisation of societal fabric and nature. Exponents of both degrowth and Buen Vivir agree that the fundamental problem is the way in which progress, development and economic growth are understood and implemented. Both approaches complement each other conceptually: degrowth is a ‘missile word’, destructive, not constructive, while Buen Vivir is constructive at its core (see Unceta 2014).

A move away from capitalism involves transition through a variety of alternative practices. There are many such non-capitalist practices around the world. These include examples with utopian objectives that call for the harmonious co-existence of humans and the environment, combining the good life with degrowth efforts. This is ultimately about abandoning the failed attempt to pursue production-oriented development as a mechanistic one-way street of economic growth, a global mandate and a straight line. This is a radical change. It is not about implementing examples that have allegedly been successful in industrial countries in the Global South. Firstly, this is impossible. Secondly, these examples have not in reality been successful (see Tortosa 2011).

4. Which proposals do they have for each other?

Achieving a utopia in the indigenous world

The indigenous world was a victim of the conquista and colonisation. These exploitative and repressive processes continue to impact the current situation, colonial and capitalist influence still being evident in many different forms, precluding the possibility of a romantic approach to indigenous reality. The good life, as the sum total of practices that oppose colonialism and its consequences, encourages a certain way of life in indigenous communities – particularly in those that have not been absorbed by capitalistic modernity or that have decided to isolate themselves from it. There are also elements of Buen Vivir in communities that have ‘succumbed’ to modernity. Even in regions that are not directly connected to the indigenous world, community lifestyles are being developed that promote harmony among members and with nature.

Collaborative reforestation of mangroves in Salinas, Manabí (Ecuador)

In politics, or rather, in political decision-making, a different form of governance is being practised with Buen Vivir at community and ayllu level ² in broad areas of the Andean and Amazonian region with the aim of creating a horizontal society. This requires direct democracy, direct action and self-management instead of new forms of top-down and, even more importantly, instead of an individual ‘enlightened’ leader. With broad and participative debates, a consensus is reached by the community. A key element here is that the solution is not the State, and even less the market. Rather, another type of State is needed —a plurinational State as proposed by the indigenous movements in Bolivia and Ecuador³ — which is not hierarchical or authoritarian, and which is controlled from below at the community level. The big question that now arises is how politics can be regained as a dynamic space within society.

Our democracy can learn a lot from these experiences.

Buen Vivir in the urban space

Buen Vivir is not restricted to the countryside, although it originated there. However, today’s urban spaces are very far from dealing with the environment respectfully and with solidarity. One of the greatest and most complex challenges is to conceptualise the good life for and in cities.

In this respect, it should not be forgotten that many migrants living in cities maintain close ties to their original communities. One such example can be seen in the groups that have joined forces to [re]construct forms of Buen Vivir in the Bolivian city of El Alto. In other areas of the world, there are also many interesting practices and approaches. An example from the growing number of alternatives is transition towns, the aim of which is to hand control to communities in order to survive the challenge of climate change and create a post-fossil fuel economy. This movement is active in many countries and has much in common with Buen Vivir.

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2 Ayllu refers to the entirety of families by blood or by marriage.

3 Bolivia has not come far in this regard, and Ecuador even less so

5. Buen Vivir, an inspirational and diverse approach

Buen Vivir integrates various humanist and anti-utilitarian approaches from different regions (at least in theory). Since the beginning of the 21st century in particular, increasing and diverse protest movements opposing the classical understanding of development have gained momentum. The growing environmental movement should be highlighted here in relation to environmental destruction and the signs of exhaustion in nature (see Acosta 2012).

Buen Vivir approaches from the indigenous Andean and Amazonian region can be combined with other approaches to community life, for example, those of the Zapatistas or Kurds, as well as those of feminist, farming and environmental struggles. They all have many things in common with the flourishing degrowth movement.

Ritual to support people who were criminalised by the Ecudadorian government for defending their region and nature

The primary lesson is that there is no one true approach. Buen Vivir is not a synthetic, monocultural proposal. Rather, the good life takes on contributions and knowledge from other cultures that question the implications and requirements of the dominant form of modernity. It thus does not reject modern technologies as long as these are compatible with the creation of harmonious community relations with respect for nature.

Solidarity with both nature and the community is needed

New ethics are needed to organise life in self-managed community spaces without power relationships. The emerging society should be horizontal, open and non-sectarian. An economy based on these ethics will promote the reproduction of life and not capital, will secure the existence of all creatures and move beyond the current human-focused reality, in which humans are the rulers of the universe, in all its variants.

If we are moving beyond the exploitation of nature for the purpose of accumulating capital, there are even more reasons to stop exploiting human beings. We will have to recognise that human beings are creatures that are not individuals by nature but rather part of a community, and that we are that community. These communities, peoples, nations and countries should live in harmony with one another.

This dual solidarity – with nature and within the community – requires that we take the civilising step of recognising applicable human rights and the rights of nature without restrictions.

DiB – Buen Vivir from Raute Film on Vimeo.

Alberto Acosta is an Ecuadorian economist and a researcher at FLASCO Ecuador (Latin American Faculty of Social Sciences). He was previously Minister of Energy and Mining, president of the Ecuadorian Constituent Assembly and a presidential candidate in the Republic of Ecuador.

Degrowth is not only a label for an ongoing discussion on alternatives, and not just an academic debate, but also an emerging social movement. Regardless of many similarities, there is quite some lack of knowledge as well as scepticism, prejudice and misunderstanding about the different perspectives, assumptions, traditions, strategies and protagonists both within degrowth circles as well as within other social movements. Here, space for learning emerges – also to avoid the danger of repeating mistakes and pitfalls of other social movements.

At the same time, degrowth is a perspective or a proposal which is or can become an integral part of other perspectives and social movements. The integration of alternatives, which are discussed under the discursive roof of degrowth, into other perspectives often fails because of the above mentioned skepticisms, prejudices and misunderstandings.

The multi-media project “Degrowth in movement(s)” shows which initiatives and movements develop and practice social, ecological and democratic alternatives. Representatives from 32 different fields describe their work and history, their similarities & differences to others and possible alliances. From the Solidarity Economy to the Refugee-Movement, from Unconditional Basic Income to the Anti-Coal-Movement, from Care Revolution to the Trade Unions – they discuss their relationship to degrowth in texts, videos, photos and podcasts.

The project was run by the “Konzeptwerk Neue Ökonomie” (Laboratory for New Economic Ideas) in Germany, so most of the authors are from there. However, there are a couple of clearly international perspectives and most of the movements work far beyond the national level.

The post Degrowth in Movements: Buen Vivir appeared first on P2P Foundation.

Injecting Imagination into Degrowth

Labelled a ‘domestic extremist’ by the police and ‘a magician of rebellion’ by the press, John Jordan has spent the last 25 years merging art and activism.

He has worked in various settings, from Tate Modern to squatted social centres, from international theatre festivals to climate camps, and co-founded Reclaim the Streets and the Clown Army, co-edited We Are Everywhere: The Irresistible Rise of Global Anti-Capitalism (Verso, 2004), and co-wrote the film/book Les Sentiers de l’Utopie (Editions Zones, 2012). He now co-facilitates the Laboratory of Insurrectionary Imagination (Labofii) with Isabelle Fremeaux.

The Clandestine Insurgent Clown Army in action, G8 protest, Scotland 2005. (Image: CIRCA)

1. What is the key idea of artivism?

Artivism, merging the boundless imagination of art and the radical engagement of politics.

Artivism is not really a movement. It’s more an attitude, a practice which exists on the fertile edges between art and activism. It comes into being when creativity and resistance collapse into each other. It’s what happens when our political actions become as beautiful as poems and as effective as a perfectly designed tool. Artivism is the Clown Army kissing riot shields to push the police away; it’s the Yes Men secretly infiltrating the world’s media pretending to be corporate mouthpieces; it’s when flocks of flamenco dancers shut down banks promoting austerity in Spain; it’s when the Brandalism collective hacks hundreds of bus shelters in the midst of a state of emergency and replaces the adverts with radical messages. What it’s definitely not about is making political art, art about an issue, such as a performance about the refugee crisis, or a video about an uprising. It is not about showing new perceptions of the world, but about changing it. Refusing representation, artivism chooses direct action.

Proponents of direct action believe that to change things, it is best to act directly on the matter instead of asking others to do things for us. It is the opposite of lobbying and protest marches. Direct action is about transforming the world in the here and now, together. By breathing the spirit of art onto direct action, we can come up with irresistible forms of resistance. If you see a bulldozer cutting down a forest to build a new airport, you don’t write a song about it, you put your body in its way (maybe while singing!). The most beautiful thing, however, —the aesthetic goal— is winning: enabling the survival and continued abundance of the living forest and its ecosystems. With artivism, the beautiful and the useful overlap.

Artivism as an indiscipline

Some might prefer to call it ‘creative resistance’, and some ‘art activism’. Others, following the words of the German artist and co-founder of the Green Party Joseph Beuys, might call it ‘social sculpture’. The authors of Artivisme: Art, Action Politique et Résistance Culturelle (Lemoine & Ouardi 2010), however, simply say that artivism is an ‘indiscipline’, something with refusal rooted in its heart. In fact, it refuses to be contained by the problematic discipline of art or by the separate identities of ‘artist’ and ‘activist’ —labels that assume that artists have a monopoly on creativity and activists one on social change, suggesting that somehow other people are neither creative nor involved in changing the world!

Artivism treats social movements as a material. Their forms of action and alternatives are forms that our collective imagination can change and reinvent. In the same way that an artist might work with wood or paint, artivism might look at plans for direct action to shut down an open-cast coal mine and imagine how it could be made more powerful and theatrical. It might involve designing the layout of a climate camp so that it is more convivial and open as a place to welcome new people. It might involve inventing new ways of holding horizontal assemblies or designing a shared ritual for before going out to sabotage a military base with your affinity group. When, as Gerald Raunig writes, ‘art machines and revolutionary machines overlap’ (Raunig 2007), we get a moment of artivism.ç

2. Who is part of artivism, what do they do?

A rich, diverse and colourful movement, which can bring down empires in the most unexpected ways

The strategies employed by artivists depend on the political context of their work and are too numerous to fit here, but one brilliant handbook and website of tactics, theories and principles is Beautiful Trouble. One example from the book is how to create protests that do not look like protests as a key strategy for those working in repressive regimes or during states of emergency where public dissent is banned. The Orange Alternative did this wonderfully during martial law in Poland in the late 1980s. Despite protest bans, they called for a ‘Gnome’ gathering, to demand better ‘Gnomes’ rights’. When faced with thousands of young people wearing orange gnome hats, the regime’s soldiers did not know what to do, and the generals did not call the tanks in. For the first time since martial law was declared, a mass of people had taken public space back, had a great time doing it, and managed to spread a sense of confidence far and wide. Within a few years the whole of Eastern Europe was out in the streets. Some historians claim that the movements that brought down the Soviet Empire began with artists, guerrilla theatre and musicians opening up space for dissent (Horáková & Vuletic 2003). Humour has often been at the centre of artivist tactics.

Orange Alternative grafitti remains forty years later on the walls of Krakow. (Image: pnapora)

Another common tactic is reverse-engineering, which asks the hacker question: ‘What can this thing do?’. This involves hacking a daily object and turning it into a machine of resistance. You can reverse-engineer anything, including laws: Students at the University of Texas fought back against the new campus carry gun law by strapping on dildos! The organisers of Cocks Not Glocks explained that, although it is illegal to openly carry dildos on campus, they are ‘just about as effective as [guns in] protecting us from sociopathic shooters, but much safer for recreational play’. This also illustrates the principle of ‘put your target in a dilemma position’, which means that you put your opponent in a situation where they are forced to respond to your action. But whatever they do, they lose, by appearing either ridiculous or violent.

Those involved in artivism are as diverse as their tactics, some went to art school, others to theatre academies, some simply managed to avoid having their creativity sapped from them at school and want to apply it to political action. Artivism’s greatest strategies are perhaps innovation and confusion , as repeating the same tactics —the A to B march, the picket, the internet meme, the blockade, the protest camp, the riot— can quickly lose its impact. The most successful actions are often those where new forms are invented that manage to take the authorities by surprise. That is why movements need to constantly innovate their tactics faster than the authorities are able to respond to them; including, of course, tactics to protect protesters from police violence. In the last decade we have seen a range of creative shields, from the book-block shields made from giant books covers (the image of a cop beating George Orwell’s 1984 is unforgettable), to the Climate Camp’s shields with beautiful photographic portraits of those affected by the climate breakdown pushing through police lines to shut down the builders of a new runway.

Many popular tactics were originally invented by artivists, including Denial-of-Service (Dos) attacks for blocking the websites of opponents, now infamously used by Anonymous.

Creativity and crafting new forms needs time and attention, but given the urgency and speed of activism this is never easy. The spirit of art thus also brings a different rhythm to activism, one that is much more in keeping with the aims of degrowth; a de-accelerated, slower, more considered approach, but no less passionate.

Shields with portraits and tents hidden inside, Climate Camp, Heathrow, London 2007 (Image: Kristian Buus /Labofii)

3. How do you see the relationship between artivism and degrowth?

Opening up the space to dream: nurturing collective creative thinking and the spirit of play within the degrowth movement

At the moment, it feels as though artivists have made fewer connections with the degrowth movement than with other movements such as refugee support, climate breakdown, anti-austerity, alter-globalisation, etc. Why this is the case is hard to fathom.

Climate and the concept of the Anthropocene are huge themes in the art world at the moment. However, much of it is sadly part of a corporate elite using culture as a cheap research and development tool and an effective public relations exercise to promote green capitalism. Volkswagen consultants working with artists and ecologists during the Über Lebenskunst project at Berlin’s art centre Haus der Kulturen der Welt (2010-2012) to look at the future of transport is just one of many examples. At the recent COP21 (2015) in Paris, many big name artists played the role of ‘artwashers’ by creating work for a corporate greenwash event, Solutions COP21, which brought together some of the world’s biggest polluters, from fossil fuel corporations to car manufacturers, from industrial agriculture giants to builders of airports and motorways, for a fair to demonstrate that they had the real solutions to the crisis.

Human Cost, Unsanctioned performance by Liberate Tate in Tate Britain, London 2011 (Image: Liberate Tate)

Participatory pedagogy

The fact that the degrowth conferences of 2014 included an art thread together with scientific, economic and social threads is encouraging. More of these initiatives should be developed so as to break the ‘academic’ conference mould and include more creative forms of knowledge sharing as well as a more holistic approach. Artivists’ teaching practices tend to be more horizontal and based on participatory popular education models that seek to develop the shared critical knowledge already present, rather than a ‘top down’ knowledge transfer (via PowerPoint or a conference) from the knower to the students. Artivists tend to go beyond mere talking and listening —working and playing with the body and materials; engaging head, heart and hand equally. This should be a key pedagogic strategy —perhaps a return to the pedagogic idea of the ‘polytechnic’, where learning philosophy was no different from learning how to make a chair.

The process of making things together can be a good mobilising tool for developing strong affinity groups and bringing people into movements for the first time. After all, it may be a lot less frightening for first-time activists to attend a workshop to learn —as in the case of Tools For Action — how to make giant inflatable silver cobblestones for an action, rather than taking part in a big assembly discussing a campaign against a new fracking license.

Setting up transdisciplinary solutions workshops/laboratories around particular topics, where artists/designers would be brought in not as the ‘aesthetic communicators’ of the ideas, but as creative participants trying to find solutions in collaboration with other disciplines, would be an important step towards merging the degrowth movement with the spirit of artivism.

Creating spaces that nurture such creative thinking and playing as part and parcel of a movement process is key. The degrowth movement, despite its at times overly academic tone, could have the capacity and sensibility to embody this spirit, because at its heart are notions of a change in our culture towards qualitative rather than quantitative ways of being. Degrowth has been called ‘an example of an activist-led science‘. Perhaps one day we will be able to say that it was an activist-led art as well.

4. Which proposals do they have for each other?

Making degrowth irresistible: the role of desire and fantasy in creating a new culture

I write as someone living in a wood-heated yurt in a small commune on an organic farm in France, where degrowth is at the centre of our collective’s values. For us, degrowth is coupled with good living. As the French slogan goes: Moins De Biens, Plus de Liens —Fewer Things, More Relationships. But in popular mainstream culture degrowth is often misperceived as an activity that involves self-control (stop shopping, stop driving, stop flying, etc.) and privation (don’t want or buy new things, etc.), that calls for a return to the past (stop using fossil fuels/new technologies, etc.) where life was hard (grow your own vegetables, make your own bread, stay local, etc.) and happiness rare. In addition, degrowth is usually framed within an apocalyptic timeline of a planetary life support system collapse —not exactly making it the most desirable of movement imaginaries. Such caricatures of degrowth are a far cry from notions of abundance, pleasure and play that are often present in artistic processes and that are concepts that capitalism has taken away from us.

As with most traditional progressive politics, degrowth has a tendency to work in a scientific, ‘reality’-based manner. Much of the work seems to be passing on information, statistics, facts, economic analyses, etc. It often feels overly academic and heady and ignores emotions —Where is the dreaming and fantasy? While there have been spaces for other forms of intuitive learning, celebrating, etc. at the recent degrowth conferences, this is often seen as merely an addition to the ‘rational’ lectures and workshops.

Stealing fantasy back from capitalism

Capitalism has captured our fantasies with the spectacle of consumerism; its celebrities have become our mythological heroes, its video games our wild adventures. It promises us the fantasy of a better life that can always be even better. Fantasy itself is the fuel of the entertainment business, popular culture and most religions, and yet we fear it as a tool of politics. We distrust anything that might seem irrational and relegate it to the ‘arts programme’.

Artivism, however, recognises that politics has always been about fantasy, because at its heart is imagining what kind of future world we want. We have been able to use such tools, steal them back from popular culture and create what Stephen Duncombe, author and founder of the Centre for Artistic Activism, calls ‘ethical spectacles‘. There, we collectively perform our dreams via imaginative participatory actions, creating new realities via symbols and stories that construct a truth together rather than waiting for it to set us free. The degrowth movement could learn from this and acknowledge that successful politics are as much an affair of desire and fantasy as of reason and rationality. To leave all these powerful tools in the hands of capitalism is a mistake. As long as capitalism’s lures are perceived to be more fun and more able to speak to our desires than degrowth, we will fail to make the radical cultural changes that are so necessary, and buying an iPad will still be way cooler than riding a donkey.

Instead of artists flocking to apply their creativity to the movement, they continue to work in the advertising industries and other machines that reproduce capitalism’s desire traps. Without their creativity degrowth will remain a beautiful set of ideas rather than a new culture. The questions we must ask are: How do we learn to educate each other to desire differently? How can degrowth become as sexy as capitalism? And how can small really become beautiful? And, last but not least, how can we begin to sense the inherent violence of industrial civilisation, to really, deeply feel the crimes against life that it perpetuates, to shake off the anaesthesia, the numbness, and return to aesthesia, the senses?

More coherence is needed

What degrowth can bring to artivism and especially to the art world is the drive for coherence between thinking and living. Separating what we believe in from how we act in the world inevitably leads to suffering, and confusing role models. With many in the cultural field there is a chasm between their politics, aesthetics, ethics and everyday life. Many artists and cultural producers fly from conference to biennale, to carry out work about climate change, while others exhibit anti-systemic work in museums sponsored by banks. Not considering their life as a material to work on, a concept Foucault articulates as ‘a technique of life, an art of living’, they reproduce separations of capitalism. Instead of applying their creativity to questions of how we could travel without causing climate breakdown, how we could organise without domination, how we could grow our food without destroying our soil systems, how we might build new communes, they continue to live in constant contradiction between what they believe in and how they behave. Degrowth’s focus on holistic practices could change this.

5. Outlook: Space for visions, suggestions or wishes

Building a culture of resistance where art and activism are no longer separate from everyday life

One of the most urgent tasks is to build a culture of resistance. I don’t believe that we will be able to put in place solutions to the ongoing social and ecological catastrophe without acts of resistance. Those who profit from the present economic system will not relinquish their power. We need movements that are able to show desirable alternatives while being prepared to resist the current system. Without a shared set of values and behaviours, without a culture where acts of resistance (from protest to sabotage) are supported by a wider population than that which is actually ready to take part in them, we will not have the systemic change necessary to achieve justice and avoid the collapse of our life support systems on this planet.

That is why things like bringing degrowth and a climate camp together are key, because not everyone is going to be suited for the front line of resistance. But all these people need to feel part of a shared culture. Yet movements so often forget this and don’t see the importance of creating the material infrastructures and affective sensibilities that support resistance in the long term. Unfortunately, many in the transition town networks — or in other cultures of ecological alternatives such as permaculture et al. — while thinking long term solutions and material infrastructures, seem to think that our culture will be able to magically transition from capitalism to ‘something nicer, greener, etc.’ without resistance. I don’t believe this culture will somehow undergo a voluntary transformation to a sane, equitable and sustainable way of living. I think we have to undo much of this culture and rebuild entirely different ways of being and sharing our worlds and that this is what resistance is: confronting and dismantling unjust structures of power to make way for other cultures to flourish.

This is what a culture of resistance looks like
A culture of resistance is one based on sharing our material and emotional support with those involved in a movement of resistance.

A culture of resistance is when in winter 2015 in France citizens opened up their homes and farms to the 200 people in the tractor and bike convoy that rolled up from the zad occupation (an autonomous resistance zone against a planned airport in western France) to the COP21 in Paris, despite the state of emergency and bans on their movements. A culture of resistance is not the so-called ‘ecological’ philosopher Bruno Latour refusing to sign a letter against the building of the same airport because he fears his name being associated with radical ecologists.

Routes of the Underground Railroad, 1830-1865. (Image: public domain)

A beautiful example of a culture of resistance was the underground railroad that enabled slaves to escape the southern United States. It’s not the French government evicting refugees from their self-made Calais camps to force them into a prison-like set-up with no communal space. At the heart of a culture of resistance is refusing a culture of domination in favour of a definition of love that enables the other to be free.

Breaking down the separations

In the end I think that in the new culture that will come after the culture of capitalism and domination, the role of art and activism will change radically. Art as a thing separate from everyday life, a thing for the rich to collect and profit from, a thing to watch or to own, done by others, will be over. It will be seen as a verb rather than a noun; a way of doing, a certain quality of paying attention that anyone can practice in everyday life, not just the ‘artists’.

Perhaps the notion of the activist as someone who is a specialist in transforming society, will disappear too, as in a society of the commons, run with local assemblies and a confederation of commons rather than the hierarchical state, everyone will feel part of a process of social transformation, part of a practice of politics. In this society, politics will not be separate from ethics anymore. Aristotle saw the pursuit of the good of the political community as a branch of ethics, the pursuit of human good as a whole. This pursuit he called Eudaimonia, meaning ‘the good life’, and he believed it was the ultimate goal of all human beings. 2300 years later, perhaps the degrowth movement will bring us closer to this dream than ever before.

Links

The Centre for Creative Activism, based in New York
The Laboratory of Insurrectionary Imagination (Labofii) brings artists and activists together to co-design new forms of creative resistance
Interview with its co-founders of Labofii John Jordan and Isabelle Fremeaux

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Degrowth is not only a label for an ongoing discussion on alternatives, and not just an academic debate, but also an emerging social movement. Regardless of many similarities, there is quite some lack of knowledge as well as scepticism, prejudice and misunderstanding about the different perspectives, assumptions, traditions, strategies and protagonists both within degrowth circles as well as within other social movements. Here, space for learning emerges – also to avoid the danger of repeating mistakes and pitfalls of other social movements.

At the same time, degrowth is a perspective or a proposal which is or can become an integral part of other perspectives and social movements. The integration of alternatives, which are discussed under the discursive roof of degrowth, into other perspectives often fails because of the above mentioned scepticisms, prejudices and misunderstandings.

The multi-media project “Degrowth in movement(s)” shows which initiatives and movements develop and practice social, ecological and democratic alternatives. Representatives from 32 different fields describe their work and history, their similarities & differences to others and possible alliances. From the Solidarity Economy to the Refugee-Movement, from Unconditional Basic Income to the Anti-Coal-Movement, from Care Revolution to the Trade Unions – they discuss their relationship to degrowth in texts, videos, photos and podcasts.

The project was run by the “Konzeptwerk Neue Ökonomie” (Laboratory for New Economic Ideas) in Germany, so most of the authors are from there. However, there are a couple of clearly international perspectives and most of the movements work far beyond the national level.

Lead image, Clown Army – Polizei Gorleben Demo 2010 Dannenberg, by Simon Engel (Flickr)

The post Degrowth in Movements: Artivism appeared first on P2P Foundation.

About the authors and their positions

The whole text is written from the personal standpoint of the author. I will try to distinguish between the interpretation of the 15-M movement and the ideas we, that is the autonomous current, have today. 

I write with a perspective amid the 15-M movement in the city of Barcelona. This particular branch, or current, can be summarized by one of the 15-Ms motto “ningú ens representa” (nobody represents us).

Eduard Nus is a member of the Autonomy Reflexion Group and of La Base: ateneu cooperatiu in Poble Sec, Barcelona. He is currently starting to build autonomous bases in semi-rural places around Can Tonal de Vallbona.

Assembly on the so called “mushrooms square” in Sevilla on the 21st of May 2011.

What is the key idea of the 15-M movement

A heterogeneous movement with a common denominator

The 15-M movement was very heterogeneous. Nevertheless, the participants of the 15-M movement shared the following ideas as a common denominator:

• A critical stand on existing institutions (We are not commodities in the hands of politicians and bankers, nobody represents us, etc.).
• Opposition to the antisocial measures of the economic policies implemented by the government and, in a deeper sense, criticism of the commodification of life, the need to express outrage and the need to find responses to the crisis.
• Opposition to the competitive principle and the need put an end to the alienation and individualization of life, to which this system condemns us. With the words of our friend Pablo Molano, who has recently left us: A lot of people say that 15-M was an act of protest. It is true, but it was not just that. It was, and is, an encounter, a recognition and the abolition of personal and ideological barriers. We were one, because we were all and each with their own quirks, accepting each other.

To sum up, we can say that the central idea is that society and the people must be placed on top, and that political and economic institutions must be subordinate to them.

One of the posters calling to the first 15th of May demonstration in 2011 (Image: democraciarealya.es)

The context

The 15-M movement in Spain developed out of a long series of protests following annunciations by the central government with regard to major wage and labour cuts, more privatization of public services and a drastic erosion of the welfare system. In response to this, and seeing that the major trade unions failed to call for a general strike and were instead negotiating with the established powers, people started to demonstrate and organize themselves. In Barcelona, the Assemblea de Barcelona (Barcelona Assembly) was created, a gathering of activists who wanted to unite everyone who was affected and oppressed by the neoliberal measures implemented by the government. At the same time, other collective platforms such as Democracia Real Ya (Real Democracy Now) emerged online as well as a way to express the people’s outrage and their discontent with the governing elites. The following motto, which hung on the walls of an important squat building in Barcelona just a few days before the general strike, which then in September 2010 was called upon by the trade unions, nicely summarizes the collective mood of the time:

“Banks suffocate us. Employers exploit us. Politicians lie to us. CCOO and UGT¹ trade unions sell us. Fuck off!”

In the same vein, “Democracia Real Ya”, whose main motto was “We are not commodities in the hands of politicians and bankers”, called for large demonstrations in all major Spanish cities on May 15th. These demonstrations, apparently without prior planning, turned into permanent camps which occupied major squares in the main Spanish cities and thus starting a long series of protests. This plural and diffuse movement of citizen’s assemblies, which formed during the camps, was the beginning and the most important moment of what we know as the 15-M movement. In Barcelona, the camps remained there for several weeks until they were forcefully evicted by the Catalan police. Following this controversial act, they re-grouped in the neighbourhoods as part of a decentralization strategy. This consolidated existing projects and gave rise to new ones, but meant losing participation in town square occupations.

Some of the most important elements were the collective learning, the organic functioning, the general fraternal attitude and the almost forgotten feeling of having something in common. Again, something happened that had the force to unite us beyond the discourses of mass media and its alienating show. It was something that we, the people, shared, outside of the boundaries and regulations defined by the elites to avoid sectarian divisions and the prevailing individualism.

From the squares to the neighbourhoods

After the squares were evicted, the movement rooted in the neighbourhoods. At this time, two different projects started to emerge more clearly: one that wanted to plant the seeds for a new self-ruled society and the other that talked about a new constitution and the creation of new alternative political parties. The supporters of the first ones were few and without enough clear ideas or bases to create an anti-systemic movement or to change everyday life; so they continued to work in local projects as usual but with renewed energies and more people. To them, 15-M was a climax, but not a shifting point. The others, the majority, fell easily into a dynamic of demands, denouncement, compromise and cultural events. Requests to politicians were watered down to preserve the rights and welfare system of the previous years, as if this were possible.

On 27th of November 2011 the police evicts Plaça de Catalunya (Catalonia Square) in Barcelona and the demonstrators reoccupy it and rebuild the camp.

If we are very optimistic, we can consider 15-M as a turning in the context of a series of demonstrations and as part of a wider project that could become an alternative to the current system. The collective consciousness of the collapse in which we are immersed was not yet very distinct. The crisis was still very “new”, and the claims of the time were therefore very strongly focused on not losing what had been achieved until then. This meant ignoring that we were in the middle of a changing era, a civilization shift. After many affluent years, when all came down, people felt lost and upset, even betrayed. There weren’t any clearly discernible alternatives, let alone an organization to support them. Therefore, it was easiest to try to return to what people already knew.

The autonomous perspective within 15-M

As already mentioned, 15-M was a heterogeneous movement. The autonomous perspective within 15-M is an autonomous and local approach that existed before the 15-M mobilizations, and like many others, participated and was reinforced by it. From my point of view, 15-M was a climax in this current, not a shifting point. Also like other currents it is not an explicitly self-recognized movement.

This current shares the common points we’ve listed before, but we don’t think that the problem we have to face are bad rulers or evil bankers, but that it is something inherent in the capitalism-state system. To solve it we have to go to the roots of the system and deactivate it.

Autonomy and Heteronomy in history

We can analyse history as a struggle between autonomy and heteronomy. In a political sense, autonomy is the self-determination of the communities and heteronomy is the opposite. We understand autonomy in a broader sense, not only as a political regime, but also as a way of life, with regard to how we use time or resources, how we relate to each other and so on.

The history of the movement for autonomy goes back to Antiquity. It is the history of self-organization, of the commons, of neighbourhood assemblies, of countless revolutions. During history, different movements have continued the heritage of their predecessors, as we try to do nowadays. In Catalonia we are heirs of the libertarian movement of the first decades of the 20th century, and the workers struggle during the 1970s. We are also heirs of feminist, ecologist and anti-globalization movements, who influenced and nourished our practices, analyses and discourses.

In our country, the movement almost disappeared due to draconian repressions during the Franco dictatorship. After the end of the dictatorship, the resistance and any revolutionary approaches were minimized, especially during the period 1980-2000 and due to the growth of the welfare state. In the first years of the new millennium, it started awakening, little by little, especially within the anti-globalization movement. In the years before and during the 15-M movement, this autonomist movement became more visible, and neighbourhood assemblies started to form. Thanks to 15-M and the work that was done during the following years, as well as the relentless strengthening of the dynamics of the capitalist system, this current is more present now and starting to gain strength.

Today it is obvious that heteronomy is winning the struggle, and that we are facing a multidimensional crisis (social, economic, ecological, . . .). We are not only damaging the planet and other forms of life, we are even risking the survival of humanity.

In addition, it is clear that we must overcome capitalism not only as an economic system but also as a world view, a set of values and its associated lifestyles (or, should we rather say lifeless-styles?). Personal interest, selfishness, and commodification are central elements that permeate our relationships and attitudes. So if we want to change this system, we need to thoroughly rethink our strategy, proposals, discourses and practices: We need a new cosmovision of ourselves and the world.

The alternative

The consensus of the 15-M movement was to regain sovereignty over our lives. However, there are different proposals and visions on what sovereignty means and what could be the strategy to achieve it. In some cases, the proposals are revolutionary and in most cases, they are reformist.

From the perspective which I feel part of, the alternative is a society that is self-determined, self-managed and based on communal life and sovereign public assemblies, without the state or any dominating power. The alternative also implies another world view, our relationships with each other, with time, with nature. We think of communities rooted in a territory, self-reliant, mainly living of their own resources, and confederated with other communities. In this context, we find the ideas and practices of Democratic Confederalism² interesting, which are currently applied by a majority of the population in Kurdistan.

The idea of societal change, to achieve this alternative, is to build and defend a common life, another lifestyle with another world view, and a political and social movement that can spread, coordinate and defend this communal life. The idea is that this movement can also challenge the current system of domination with enough power to replace it, to end it.

There are different points of view on how to accomplish this shift from the existing system to this new stateless form without capitalism and other forms of domination. The most feasible for us is a transitory process allowing the new forms to be tried and tested within the current system; the construction of a “parallel society”, not only to create this “new world” here and now in a small scale but also to have enough power to resist and disable the existing one.
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Who is part of the 15-M movement, what do they do?

Concrete local and political action

We can identify 3 levels of participation within the 15-M movement:

• The core, consisting of the most committed and persistent activists. There are a few thousand of them all over the country and they are in charge of planning and coordinating actions.
• The active citizenship (hundreds of thousands), who participate in the multiple forms of collective expression.
• Outraged or unhappy citizens (2/3 of the population) who somehow sympathize with the aims and actions of the movement.

The movement is organized around specific actions, working areas and groups that are organized in committees and a general assembly (no matter how large³ ).

After the 15-M demonstrations and square occupations different projects and initiatives arose. At the beginning all the initiatives were based more on local and horizontal projects. With the new electoral processes after the 15-M mobilization came new parliamentary political projects in addition, which are considered to be the heirs of the 15-M movement. So we can differentiate two groups in the evolution of the movement practices:

1. Those who decided to participate in state institutions. Most of them think that the problem is bad rulers (such as the political party Podemos), and some of them think that the problem is the system but it is important to be in state institutions to slow the system dynamics (such as the political party Candidatura de Unidad (CUP) or some parts of Barcelona en Comú). It comprises few thousands of activist who are active on these platforms and the millions of people who vote for them in elections.
2. Those who refuse to participate in state institutions and continue with direct local work (many local projects, cultural centres, cooperatives, etc.). There are few thousands of activists who participate in these projects, and it is difficult to determine how many people sympathize with them. The 15-M was a nourishing moment for existing projects and for the creation of new ones. It was a moment that energized existing activists but also brought a lot of new people to the existing groups. Most of them became inactive a few weeks/months after the square occupations, but the few who remained considerably strengthened the projects.

Can Batlló is a neighbourhood project which has many years of history, but gained strength due to 15M mobilization and can now use a town hall building for neighbourhood activities. It is an example of neighbourhood projects in Barcelona.

The organization of this second option is very ephemeral, not formally organized and operates on two interrelated levels:

• Projects with a local perspective (what unites them is a territory) which aim to defend the neighbourhoods, to strengthen communities and breathe life into the commons.
• Thematic projects with a broader territorial perspective. What unites them is a common perspective, a struggle, an area of activity etc. Regarding such projects, it’s worth noting that in recent years there have been several organizational proposals (Process Embat, Apoyo Mutuo, …) to come together and give voice to the second kind of groups, the more autonomist ones. Also during the last two or three years there have been a number of gatherings to generate thought and reflection or to get organized. Awareness is growing about the need to build a more organized and coherent movement.

The strategy consists also in acting on these two levels, by looking at the long-term aspect (building a new world and ending with the existing order), but making everyday actions. We think that strategic awareness is of key importance in determining fate, evolution or stagnation, of different projects, and to give purpose and strength to each action.
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How do you see the relationship between 15-M and degrowth?

Inspiration from as well as advancing and implementation of degrowth ideas

We can talk about the 15-M as a movement of movements. Most importantly, all the social movements in Spain participated in it. The degree of involvement varied, some of them participated more actively, more enthusiastically or more sceptically, but we can say everybody was there. Most of the social movements sympathize with the 15-M movement.

The 15-M movement was influenced directly by the degrowth movement. However, due to the heterogeneity of the movement, and the fact that the degrowth perspective was shared only by a minority, it didn’t have an important presence. It is very difficult to describe the relationship between the two, as it was non-coherent and not continuous. For what I know it had a clear presence in some committees and working groups and no relationship with others.

The most distinct influence of the degrowth movement consisted in some practices and in bringing in the awareness of peak oil and environmental problems. However, this turned into something like an ecological label, rather than being established as a movement within 15-M.

In Catalonia the degrowth movement started around 2007, with an activist approach. After two years a crucial part of activists moved on to other frameworks or created broader movements, which considered the strongest degrowth ideas, but took them further. We want to highlight the Cooperativa Integral Catalan (Catalan Integral Cooperative) which started and is still supporting a lot of self-managed projects – it was created by degrowth activists – and the Democràcia Inclusiva (Inclusive democracy Action Group), a reflection and action group for inclusive democracy, which was also initiated by degrowth activists. From my point of view, in Barcelona, the academic section grew stronger than the activist section of the degrowth movement over the last years.

We believe that many of the basic ideas of the degrowth movement are related to the autonomous approach I feel part of. Practices related to the degrowth movement have been gaining strength as well. We can say that we were inspired by ideas and practices from degrowth in significant nuances, and we are therefore interested in the debate that might arise around those ideas. We very much welcome this publication because it allows us to delve into that debate.

Which suggestions do they have for each other?

Growth is not the only problem and lifestyle change is not a solution

From my point of view, the role of the degrowth movement has to be to participate in and contribute to other movements or struggles, but I don’t think of it as “The movement” of social transformation. We don’t want an ecological movement with a holistic perspective but a holistic movement with a strong ecological view. In order to achieve this, we think that it is also important that the degrowth movement doesn’t turn into a mainly academic movement.

The 15-M movement has implicit proposals in its practices that can be interpreted and applied to any social movement, including the degrowth perspective. Above all, we think that the degrowth perspective could learn from the 15-M movement concerning the multiple faces of the system and its ways of oppression, and how this translates to specific problems for the people. This knowledge can help to carry out an analysis and to broaden the perspective, allowing us to consider the fact that the strategy to overcome such oppressions can’t just consist of reforms.

I have identified a number of contributions from the degrowth perspective that the 15-M movement would benefit from adopting. You can probably find more with deeper and more extensive knowledge of the degrowth movement than I have. The most important ones I can identify, are the following:

• To understand and accept the planet’s physical limits, and the relationship between economy, ecology, energy, resources, etc.
• To understand the consequences of economic growth.
• Voluntary simplicity and changing our own lives.
• To offer people who are concerned about the specific environmental or economic crisis a certain anti-systemic perspective, a broader view and analysis, including different struggles or problems within a common analysis, identifying a common root.

Demonstrations in front of “La Caixa” a major bank, during the 1st “birthday” of 15M, during May 2012.

From our point of view, I would like to propose the following issues to the degrowth perspective:

1. Growth is a problem, but not the main issue: The degrowth perspective sees growth as the main problem of the system. We hence ask: Why do we have a growth economy? This is the key question. Growth is a big problem, but it is just an inherent feature of the current economic system. Growth is a consequence of a competitive scheme, whose purpose is the concentration of power and to serve private interests. In the words of Ted Trainer (Trainer 2010: 1): …we are dealing with extremely important initiatives, which are heading in directions that are admirable…but which are unfortunately mistaken regarding the nature of the global problem and the way out of it.
2. A market system implies growth: Growth is not only a consequence of a growth ideology, it is also caused by the dynamics of a market economy. This is obvious for projects such as some cooperatives. They don’t follow the growth ideology but have to grow to survive in a market economy.
3. Degrowth and capitalism: Degrowth within capitalism, particularly in a globalized economy, is an oxymoron. Capitalism requires growth to reproduce itself. When growth is not possible there is an economic crisis or a war, and a restructuring takes places, which usually implies more concentration of power, more inequality, and also more oppression towards the environment and/or the population.
   Proponents of the degrowth perspective have to ask themselves which social organizing system could cause a reduction in material consumption? Which social organizing system could reintegrate human life with nature? We think that this is impossible in a market economy. Which system could also end most structural oppression? We don’t think that this can be done if we maintain the nation-state system in which elites and hierarchies are a precondition to survive, as they control most of the things we need to survive: food production, health centres, energy production. All this implies that the growth economy cannot be overcome with reforms, nor with isolated projects.
   We need both a new collective imaginary and new values, as well as new institutions and public spaces, which can reinforce and maintain these values. These institutions must have structural elements such as self-reliance and local assemblies, and be empowered through direct relationships within the neighbourhood, as well as direct relationships with the things that sustain life.
4. It is not only a lifestyle manner: In order to end the problems of growth and the current system, it is ineffective that we think of it only as a matter of lifestyle, or as if we could solve those problems only by having a “better” lifestyle. We have to change our lifestyle, but if we want to achieve a societal change, we have to make this change of lifestyle as part of a political strategy. We need a broader social change strategy capable of connecting all actions we develop of establishing new social institutions and replacing the existing ones.

Outlook: space for visions, suggestions or wishes

Open-minded discussions and local projects to deconstruct the current system

Our wish is to integrate practices and some analytical viewpoints from degrowth could into a broader common movement, with the aim of changing society from its roots, to end domination in all its forms (political, economic, ecological, social…).

We learned many things during the 15-M demonstrations, however it wasn’t enough for the changes we want and need. Our opinion is that the 15-M movements didn’t go further because there weren’t enough clear ideas, practices, resources, examples, etc. There wasn’t enough focused strength that would allow to change people’s everyday life, what in turn would enable to build a broader movement that could change the world as we know it.

Therefore, our proposal is to continue working in two main areas:

1. share spaces of open-minded discussion, to build common narratives of how we analyse the world and also how we want to live.
2. create local projects where we can test the world we envision, from where we can showcase and rethink our ideas, from where we can defend what we are doing and where we can establish a common life that has the power to disable, to deconstruct the current system.

Links and literature

Links

Decocracia Real Ya platform website
15-M article on the 15-M Wikipedia
Can Batlló project website
La Base project website
CanTonal project website

Applied as well as further literature

Barcelona Assembly 2010. Statement about the Bank squat in Catalunya square (Barcelona).

Dalmau, Blai 2012. 15M balance towards emancipation (March 2016).

Fotopoulos, Takis 2005. Multidimensional Crisis and the Inclusive Democracy project. The International Journal of Inclusive Democracy.

Fotopoulos, Takis 2007. Is degrowth compatible with a market economy? (March 2016). 

GADI (Editorial Team of the Catalan ID Group) 2010. “Spain: Beyond the general strike”. The International Journal of Inclusive Democracy 6 (4).

Trainer, Ted 2010. De-growth is not enough.

Photo by Tom Raftery

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