CHAPTER 5

The Degrowth Project: A Work in Progress

Degrowth ideas and practices are shared and developed via a horizontal, multi-layered and open network of activists who experiment with degrowth ways of living and working, as well as advocating and campaigning for degrowth. Often stumbled upon by newcomers as a provocative slogan – a challenge to decolonise growth imaginaries – the concept of degrowth is based on a range of physical and social science theories that aim to address unsustainable and undesirable planetary, political and economic developments. In the first decades of the twenty-first century academic work, and even policy discussions, on degrowth have blossomed.

Consequently, the key challenge for this movement in the 2020s is to address the question: How might the numerous proposals made by various degrowth advocates consolidate into one cohesive degrowth agenda with clearly identifiable steps towards transformation? In short, what is the degrowth project? Given the diverse nature of the degrowth movement – and the complex variety of contexts within which activists are trying to bring about change – the answer is still up in the air, as is the case with any utopian quest. In short, the degrowth movement does not have a set holistic vision but, better, a constructively open approach to this question.

By way of comparison, even if aligned to degrowth in certain ways, the ‘steady state economy’ school puts forward a distinctly different and rather academic vision of a stationary economy substantially spelt out in quantitative economic modelling and regulated by the state.¹ In contrast, degrowth strategies and vision are more anti-economic, qualitatively focused and institutionally radical, as characterised by open relocalisation.² Therefore, the agenda for degrowth is open, and local autonomy allows for great variety within the application of degrowth principles of frugal abundance, respect for Earth’s limits, and solidarity to meet the basic needs of all people, including beyond-material needs of communality, creativity and power. The vision, then, is the fulfilment of such criteria in a multiplicity of ways that has been referred to as ‘pluriverse’.³

In this chapter we analyse some key methods for achieving degrowth that simultaneously create the necessary preconditions of radically reducing material and energy throughputs within over-producing and over-consuming societies. Representative initiatives discussed overlap and interact to create dynamic living systems of degrowth evolving locally, at least in embryo, as prefigurative formations. Preconditions include strong reductions in inequity glocally, frameworks for substantive democracy and the will to radically alter our economic processes.

This is a tall order at a point in history when powerful and inequitable capitalist economies and states dominate the planet. Despite slogans of freedom, opportunity and choice that are promoted as accompanying capitalism, these states are at most enjoyed by the few who are wealthy. In contrast, the vast majority have little freedom because spare time is curtailed by working for sufficient income to meet basic needs; opportunities are limited given that unemployment and precarious employment are more frequent than secure work and incomes; others rely on welfare payments that severely constrain their opportunities; and producers decide what is on offer to consume, with low incomes restricting choices further (Figure 5.1).

Most significantly for the discussion here, living within capitalism one cannot choose a rational and appropriate future such as degrowth. The way forward for degrowth means running against the grain of capitalism, breaking down cultural barriers and encountering political, economic and physical resistance. The movement has to take account of these harsh contexts for change while trying to be constructive, confident and optimistic. Unsympathetic and oppositional contexts make the already political content of degrowth even more politicised and heighten the significance that the movement gives to ‘autonomy’. The degrowth movement’s use of the word ‘autonomy’ draws substantially from the work of Cornelius Castoriadis, along with Ivan Illich and André Gorz. Castoriadis was a twentieth-century Greek-French intellectual, an economist, social critic and psychoanalyst. As such, autonomy refers to collective self-organising governance with cultural relocalisation for the benefit of humans and ecosystems, and use of convivial tools creating post-industrial and post-development formations.

Figure 5.1 Fuck work

Artist: Josh MacPhee

Thus, this chapter discusses key challenges in taking stock of the movement in 2020. We analyse a representative suite of proposals in terms of their fitness for purpose. We discuss challenges of a co-created agenda that entails reforming traditional structures and lively grassroots efforts creating direct democracy, needs-oriented economies and rich degrowth cultures. A cultural transformation, as in mass awareness, understanding and will, must be strong to support a non-violent deconstruction of current politico-economic conditions. So, we go on a journey where the project itself is a mirage, a reflection that appears when we are up close to any reflector but annoyingly disappears unless we position ourselves correctly and remain focused.

As for the degrowth project itself, the question for the movement is not so much how far we need to ‘degrow’ as how might we best ‘degrow’. Just as significantly, the degrowth movement is committed to making experiences of degrowth desirable, comforting and emancipatory. To be inclusive and international are aims that go hand in hand. Arguably, global actions of degrowth that have focused on international conferences and movement alliances have developed more slowly than the multiplicity of local formations-in-the-making, which exhibit great diversity and common principles. Yet engagement between global movements with similar perspectives not only exists informally, among activists, but also has been a formal and productive goal.⁴

On the one hand, there are those who believe that ‘the lack of monolithic definitions or unique policy pathways is a conscious choice of the degrowth community, which wishes to avoid the traps of the reductionism it confronts’.⁵ On the other hand, the act of floating a degrowth proposal can attract support, direct trials and experiments, and guide ways forward. Proposals do not need to be emphatic, ‘do-or-die’ affairs. In this vein, a central proposal for an ‘unconditional autonomy allowance’ has emerged in France as a pathway, which includes a suite of measures on how to achieve a society in which we voluntarily and democratically decide on our basic needs and how to fulfil them sustainably.⁶ We use this proposal to show how a series of actions might, in combination, gain momentum to create a degrowth future.

However, prior to outlining the unconditional autonomy allowance mobiliser, we summarise certain contextual challenges about agency for degrowth and a degrowth culture of inclusion at this particular point in history.

AGENCY FOR DEGROWTH: TAKING STOCK

An agenda for degrowth means taking stock of where and who we are, and what we might become. The first question, then, is one of agency. In the mainstream of the Global North, degrowth has emerged as an option for the future, even if unconsciously, that is, simply implicitly. As discussed in chapter 4, in terms of everyday practices and popular consciousness, decreasing use of resources and greater environmental awareness around waste and unnecessary consumption has grown. With the rising awareness of the ecological limits of the dominant growth-addicted system, people are voluntarily downsizing, decluttering, reusing, repurposing, repairing and sharing more. They are setting up an array of initiatives such as repair cafés and action groups to practically enhance sustainability by reusing materials and equipment, and minimising use of plastics or banning them. We observe ecologically friendly changes with people eating less meat and more locally grown, seasonal and organic produce, as well as changes in other consumption habits. Environmental policies and regulations related to producing common goods and services have been introduced that include sustainability criteria for housing. In terms of environmental sustainability achievements, local initiatives and non-violent direct resistance have been impressive, especially set against international governmental inaction on climate change.

Indeed, climate action, namely reducing carbon emissions is a remarkable example of the kind of change that the degrowth movement is all about.⁷ The movement for climate justice offers degrowth activists a great opportunity for strong interventions with the potential to catalyse greater acceptance of degrowth ideas and practices. The climate justice movement calls on governments and citizens to take care that measures to cut carbon emissions do not impinge on the livelihoods of those on lower incomes; people with low levels of consumption are the least responsible for the rise in the level of carbon emissions in the atmosphere. The climate justice movement emphasises the disproportionate responsibility for carbon emitting activities in the Global North while many people and lands in the Global South are more vulnerable to the impacts of climate change. This approach follows principles developed by the more long-standing and holistic degrowth movement, offering an opportunity for advocates and activists to promote degrowth.

A 2020 Guardian survey of respondents to the simplistic question: ‘Climate, inequality, hunger: which global problems would you fix first?’ had a minuscule 3 per cent voting for work and economic growth – in the last place – while the majority (54.1 per cent) gave their first choice to ‘saving the planet’. The second choice was for equality (14.5 per cent) and ‘end poverty and hunger’ (13.3 per cent) a close third. This internationally accessible online survey ran from mid-January with tally results as at 22 February.⁸ If this survey is any indication, the vast majority of people favour degrowth concerns with the environment, equity and satisfaction of basic needs – the exact reverse of economic and political elites’ preoccupations with the economy and jobs at the expense of ecological considerations. Other international polls show that environmental issues are gaining greater traction; a 2019 Guardian poll conducted in eight European and North American countries showed that the climate crisis was of greater concern than migration or terrorism.⁹

Similarly, French polls cited in the last chapter showed a strong swing explicitly in favour of degrowth. While degrowth is not yet the subject of other national polls, a 2015 survey of readers of the reputable From Poverty to Power Oxfam (UK) blog showed similar levels of support: 80 per cent regarded degrowth ‘a good idea’ even if 38 per cent did not like the word itself.¹⁰ Last but not least, in January 2020, the Edelman Trust Barometer report found that ‘more than half of respondents [56 per cent] globally believe that capitalism in its current form is now doing more harm than good in the world’ with an ‘alarming’ growth in distrust within ‘the mass population’.¹¹

Moreover, governments adopting sustainability policies throughout all sectors and regions have inspired, and been encouraged by, cultural and practical changes showing greater respect for the environment and concern to act in more ecologically friendly ways. State action includes advice to householders on reducing consumption and waste, environmental footprint assessments, and applying targets for reduction. Limits and rationing, such as temporary or permanent water-saving regulations, are being accepted as rational in many regions. Undoubtedly, frustration with current impasses in terms of mainstream responses to our environmental crises prompted the Post-Growth Conference at the European Commission in September 2018, an indication of influential people wanting to learn about degrowth.¹²

Conversely, the drivers of growth and commensurate degradation of Earth continue apace as states perversely promote growth, with targets to increase GDP and ‘sustainable development’ rather than adopting ‘sustainable degrowth’ and ‘post-development’ perspectives.¹³ Thus, the radical political, economic and cultural transformations necessary seem like pipe dreams in the face of a very global capitalist mega-machine imposing its destructive agenda. Consequently, it seems to many in the degrowth movement that there is a massive gap between aspirations for radical and desired change and our strategic capacity to achieve change. Institutions, groups and people aiming for change tend to feel weak, isolated and depressed, as encapsulated in the mid-1990s line that it has become easier to imagine the end of the world than the end of capitalism.¹⁴

Beyond cultural barriers, such as the advertising that infiltrates our media and surrounds us in urban built environments, and the denigration of environmental advocates as ‘trouble-makers’, there are real, material and social inequalities – a power imbalance that seems to reduce anti-capitalists’ capacities for attracting support and enacting change. So the degrowth movement is challenged to create a vision of alternatives that a growing number of people might find both sensible and attractive enough to appropriate and drive. The degrowth movement needs to effectively deconstruct the social and material barriers to degrowth messages and activities that accumulate in everyday life like a blanket of alienation. How can degrowth advocates and activists successfully puncture all those psychological, symbolic, cultural, economic and social barriers that create the daily dissonance within which most people feel trapped?

Capitalism has always created scarcity and inequities, through private and exclusive enclosure. The degrowth movement stands for the opposite: equality and openness, revealing genuine individuality. We want to create radical and frugal abundance through sharing while maintaining ecological sustainability that is an insurance for such abundance in the future.¹⁵ It stands to reason, then, that the agenda of the degrowth movement must be welcoming. Beyond being provocative and visionary from an idealistic standpoint, the degrowth project needs to be clear, simple, subtle and practical. The movement favours voluntary measures and action, deconstructing and reconstructing out-of-date institutions without force but, rather, with non-violent action. Above all we need to work for inclusion.

INCLUSION

Classifications of degrowth advocates and activists as ‘primarily middle-class, relatively highly educated young whites’ might well be correct but there is little hard evidence one way or the other.¹⁶ Even, if correct, such characteristics need to be rationalised and put into context. Activists can almost always be charged with being non-inclusive by the very nature of the case. If you are a total victim of the system, you will be trapped by socio-cultural and economic circumstances that give you no time, energy or even inclination to explore beyond survival within the current system. If you do make a great effort to join the movement, you might not feel comfortable with other activists who seem relatively privileged in terms of time and money, and you might feel resentful that you’re risking a lot more than your fellow protesters to devote time to degrowth campaigning and other activities. If you have ventured this far, you might well find it is too wearing and dispiriting to keep participating.

In a degrowth transitionary initiative or prefigurative formation, say a food cooperative or a community supported agriculture collective, participants can become disappointed that the project’s membership is not representative of the whole spectrum of socio-cultural diversity. It is always a challenge, especially within a deeply anti-systemic movement such as degrowth, to have wide representation if only because the movement does not attract entrenched agents of the system, whether they be passive victims or self-interested agents. At the same time, one finds that many degrowth activists do not fit the caricatures bandied about by journalists, politicians and critics. These include caricatures of wealthy, urban and well-connected graduates; layabout, unemployed, so-called professional protesters; and, even worse, ‘environmental terrorists’. For those willing to speak out about their daily problems, degrowth cultures engage in collaborative listening, problem-solving and caring to support other activists in their everyday challenges. Mutual aid abounds.

Embedded in the movement’s attention to reducing inequality is acknowledgement of greater misery in the Global South and a need to reduce inequalities between the Global North and Global South. Often this is expressed as a call for Global North shrinkage, not only to respect Earth’s limits but also to allow for all people in the Global South to meet their needs. Moreover, the degrowth movement strongly supports and calls for the self-determination of all peoples. Decreasing consumption in the North has been challenged because perceptions of a ‘North versus South dichotomy is counterproductive insofar as it glosses over the fact that a substantial part of the elites and the growing middle classes in the South live a Western, growth-oriented mode of living’.¹⁷ Furthermore, by what mechanism can decreasing consumption in the North translate to improving the conditions of those in need in the South? Centuries of capitalist imperialism have effectively frozen skewed trading relations, imposed exploitative relations on Earth and a multiplicity of peoples, imprinting inequity writ large.¹⁸ For several centuries growthism has been a major force worldwide depriving Indigenous peoples of their lands and cultures.¹⁹

From another vantage point, many peoples in the Global South already practise degrowth, both consciously and unconsciously. Indeed, degrowth advocates of both the Global South and disadvantaged regions of Eastern Europe have had some similar experiences and, equally, face some similar challenges.²⁰ Chapters in collections on housing and food for degrowth show how citizens of Vanuatu unconsciously practise degrowth by building simple and appropriate structures collectively; how architects in South India run counter-growth, to build using degrowth criteria associated with tools, work and materials; how Kenyan women in cities maintain traditional food choices, preparing and sharing household knowledge skills and tasks to counter strong commercial influences; and how food self-provisioning in Central Europe expresses degrowth values and relationships.²¹ Global North activists are learning from Global South degrowth activists, incorporating their wisdom, engaging and sharing models for moving forward. The First North–South Conference on Degrowth was held on 4–6 September 2018 in Mexico City with the motto ‘Decolonizing the social imaginary’.²²

Degrowth activists are frequently well-meaning people from various backgrounds and many pay a price for their activism, which they feel acutely in their daily lives. ‘Coming out’ as a proponent of degrowth often separates them from certain people while, at the same time, enabling and emboldening them to act against the great challenges of inequality and unsustainability. If the degrowth movement stands for decreasing inequalities at the very base of the distinctions between Global North and Global South, then being an active member and advocate of an anti-systemic movement such as degrowth can be argued to be a declassing experience. The elite and managers of capitalism spurn those who would challenge the system they command as traitors to their class and bureaucratically organised unions and workers feel uncomfortable with the idea of working less and in alternative ways, for both experience and tradition tell them that they must fight to be workers, to remain employed, to get a fulltime wage and a bigger slice of the pie. Being a degrowth activist sets one apart from traditional class identities as the movement fights for a class-free world.

The degrowth movement exists in a broader context of much more subtle and critical discourses of class identity than a middle-class sandwiched between a proletariat and ruling class. The big brush ‘99%’ represents a plethora of identities and struggles, with precarity a characteristic of rising numbers of income earners (e.g. in Australia 1 in 4 workers is a casual).²³ This so-called precariat is a heterogeneity of the aspirational, the dispossessed, would-be salaried workers, radical anti-capitalists and conservatives. They are a cluster of marginalised people who only share insecurity, and experience it variously. The degrowth movement of protest and action is replete with radically disruptive analyses of class politics that go well beyond bureaucratic unions and parties yet selectively collaborates with sympathetic unionists and politicians in radical networking and actions.

Agendas of inclusion and radical transformation set the degrowth movement within current activism that seeks – with certain difficulties and self-criticism but also great cohesion – to combine a rich diversity of multiple struggles in a future where all humans can flourish diversely. This polity punctuates and confuses class analyses. Prominent activist-scholar Angela Davis has usefully cast the vision of such transformative movements as ‘antiracist, anti-capitalist, feminist, and abolitionist’ giving ‘priority’ to grassroots movements ‘that acknowledge the intersectionality of current issues – movements that are sufficiently open to allowing for the future emergence of issues, ideas, and movements’.²⁴ Thus, the 2016 international degrowth conference in Budapest prompted the 2020 publication of a ‘dictionary of social movements and alternatives for a future beyond economic growth, capitalism, and domination’ in which degrowth appears ‘in Movement(s)’.²⁵

Many current activists are students who have a fluid and uncertain class identity. Sometimes, irrespective of their class of origin, they are automatically considered middle class based on the assumption that they will qualify to fill professional positions. However, having a doctorate no longer means immediate employment as it did in former generations. Sometimes students are marginalised within analyses as neither reflecting their class background nor the class position that they are expected to occupy – written off as neither one thing nor another. Moreover, in the 2010s, as in the late 1960s, students have periodically risen to shake political elites with internationally newsworthy calls for greater democracy, direct representation and independence.

The degrowth movement represents such uneasily categorised ‘change-makers’, incidentally illustrated in this comment on student degrowth activists by degrowth academic Giorgos Kallis:

There is a vibrant community and this is an irreversible fact. In Barcelona 20–30 of us meet frequently to read and discuss degrowth, cook and drink, go to forests and to protests. We disagree in almost everything other than that degrowth brings us together. In the fourth international conference in Leipzig, there were 3500 participants. Most of them were students. After the closing plenary, they took to the shopping streets with a music band, raised placards against consumerism and blocked a coal factory. Young people from all over the world want to study degrowth in Barcelona. If you experience this incredible energy, you find that degrowth is a beautiful word.²⁶

Even if systemic and cultural reasons exist for the degrowth movement not being or seeming inclusive, it is still a challenge that those within the degrowth movement want to overcome, if only to develop an agenda that incorporates everyone and addresses their basic needs. This is where a platform mobilised by an unconditional autonomy allowance (outlined in more detail later in this chapter) and sharing work and care, can demonstrate ways in which the degrowth movement could apply measures of equity, whether through state reforms or local degrowth group activities in a vast variety of places. A tension between strategies of state pressure versus grassroots action remains in play, but together they create a non-violent scissor movement for deconstruction without force. Thus the degrowth platform is realistic and has the central goals of reducing inequality as well as reducing production and consumption. Moreover, the degrowth culture assumes that the democratic skills of listening, engaging with and re-evaluating any such platform ensue.

This discussion on inclusion shows why our project is, and must remain, a work-in-progress. Being inclusionary necessitates being open to adopting widely supported enhancements, and even reframings, of our agenda. The movement’s attention to reducing inequality and Global North advocates incorporating Global South activists’ concerns means a permanently adaptable approach. Simultaneously, the degrowth agenda must highlight key principles and be framed clearly, to illustrate its ‘alternative’ culture embracing diversity, sharing economic and social burdens, and operating through self-governing processes and institutions that preserve autonomy yet operate globally, in other words the degrowth movement strives to be ‘glocally’ embedded.

REPOLITICISING SOCIETY AND RESOCIALISING POLITICS

Prevailing political and economic elites in growth-oriented economies have been seen to reinforce inequalities and govern and manage their affairs with little transparency. There has been a rise in that type of populism that sees the masses seemingly voting against their interests, as in the 2019 election in the UK won by the Brexit-trumpeting Boris Johnson and the supposedly protectionist Donald Trump who became the US president early in 2017. Such bombastic leaders who aren’t scared of ‘saying what they think’ typically promise a return to ruling the world in their external negotiations, harking back to the imperial grandeur of a simpler age of national pride and economic security, decorated with racist overtones and closed border policies. Such leaders break with the two oppositional party forms typical of representative democracies of the twentieth century by flouting party discipline and policy platforms and, instead, seeking cross-class support and personally making policy decisions on the run.

Similarly, the French yellow vest movement illustrates a rising divide that is ‘beyond class’ in that it cannot be easily explained in a class analysis. The main drivers in identifying as a yellow vest are subjective defiance toward ‘the system’, the elite, and belonging within a more broadly and contemporarily defined ‘other’ than class (interpreted as reflecting personal economic interests).²⁷ Neoliberalism has strengthened individualism and economic competition. ‘Fraternisation’, a key word of the yellow vest movement, rapidly politicised those who had been depoliticised by neoliberalism. The yellow vest movement began with a narrow campaign rejecting a top-down undemocratic, humiliating and fake carbon tax. Yet the yellow vests ended up debating policies to set a maximum income and blockading hubs of the US multinational Amazon, one of the global ‘Big Four’ technology companies.

The yellow vests and unions were originally suspicious of one another but later joined forces in strategic and respectful ways.²⁸ The main learning, for the degrowth movement, from the yellow vest and other populist movements, is to recognise a clear need to create trust, informal solidarities and to repoliticise society while resocialising politics. This includes overcoming that state of meaninglessness identified in Castoriadis’ concept of ‘insignificance’ (and its threat of incipient barbarism) by facilitating cultural and political re-empowerment.²⁹

Within the current conjuncture, the degrowth movement has made interventions in, and alliances with, compatible political and environmental movements of the twenty-first century and degrowth activists have developed formations at the level of the collective sphere (chapter 3). However, at least from the point of view of certain French degrowth advocates, greater support might well rely on an approach in which an unconditional autonomy allowance acts as a mobiliser, a transitional path, with some preconditions already under way dependent on where you live.

AN UNCONDITIONAL AUTONOMY ALLOWANCE

The unconditional autonomy allowance refers to a monetary income and/or in-kind right for all, from birth to death, to ensure a decent and modest, frugal, way of life. Moreover, the unconditional autonomy allowance constitutes a mobiliser in the transition toward sustainable and desirable models of degrowth societies and must be complemented with local deliberation over production and distribution.

This approach incorporates a suite of schemes such as an unconditional basic income, an acceptable maximum income, work-sharing and free access to basic services. Associated changes involving regulation include a sharp reduction in advertising sales of goods and services, and staged reductions in uses of resources such as energy and water. Radical regulation of advertising – representing more than US$560 billion in 2019, with North America the largest market – would move from initially heavily taxing advertising to, ultimately, banning it.³⁰ This measure is advocated by the UK Special Patrol Group (Figure 5.2).

Such policies, regulations and structures assume a central state or well-established level of governance based on subsidiarity, prioritising power at a local level. Indeed, proponents of an unconditional autonomy allowance approach sensibly argue for working with reforming current structures to initiate and facilitate a degrowth transition. For instance, more substantively democratic, participatory and direct forms of governance – techniques often referred to as ‘deliberative democracy’ – are assumed to evolve as organisational supports. In this, proponents take a primarily institutionalist approach, given that the Regulation School has influenced the French degrowth movement.³¹ It is also a proposal meant, like the word ‘degrowth’ itself, to serve the purpose of encouraging discussion and debate, ‘flying a kite’.

Figure 5.2 AdHack Manifesto

Source: Special Patrol Group (UK)

Perhaps the most significant aspect of this unconditional autonomy allowance proposal is that it is meant to assume, as well as inspire, grassroots activities such as agricultural and non-agricultural productive cooperatives that are oriented to satisfying local basic needs, that is, substantially self-provisioning cooperatives; local production and repair of simple, appropriate and convivial tools and goods in maker cooperatives; and community-based exchange systems, involving local currencies, sharing and gifting. As in theories and practices of social and solidarity economies, many of these economic ideas of degrowth proponents draw on theories of Karl Polanyi that aim to ‘reembed’ the economy via twenty-first-century movement practices of active democracy and the degrowth concept of open relocalisation.³²

OPEN RELOCALISATION

Open relocalisation places humans and ecosystems at the centre, as substitutes for where monetary value and capitalist enterprises stand within capitalism. Human needs and ecological limits are key determinants of degrowth practices, which revolve around human relations with one another and with nature, and where coexistence is central. People’s needs encompass autonomy, power, and transparent and respectful collaboration in co-producing and sharing what is produced so as to fulfil basic material needs and beyond-material needs. The degrowth movement openly accepts people’s responsibility for one another and for nature more generally. Advocates and activists acknowledge a need to live as modestly as possible, and see co-production and sharing as ways to live more efficiently and effectively, that is, more securely.

The degrowth movement’s current organisation persists as a horizontal, multi-layered and open network of activists. Consistent with this form, many degrowth advocates envisage a future based on governance at the most local, immediate and decentralised level possible, an organisational principle of ‘subsidiarity’ where considerable power exists at the grassroots level. In this model, production and distribution of basic needs is highly collective and localised around sufficiency. This concept of grassroots governance complements a transformation of gender relations based on sharing responsibilities and expectations of ‘care’ not only in social spheres but also in environmental, ecological, spheres. Healing Earth, regenerating nature and facilitating ecological well-being is most easily, effectively and efficiently conducted at a discrete local level.

Localised self-provisioning has environmental and social benefits – ecological efficiencies, community-based autonomy, cultural richness, self-governance, caring for one another and celebrating in frugal abundance. Processes of direct democracy are implicit in the concept of an unconditional autonomy allowance because deliberations on what ‘basic needs’ might be need to be specified locally, that is, within the context of how they can be met – even if basic needs can be defined by certain universal generalities. A ‘commoning’ approach means deciding how to collectively manage local means of production, from land and tools to the effort expended on productive activities. All of these elements cluster together in the holistic notion of ‘open relocalisation’.

Significantly, certain degrowth grassroots activists are explicitly anti-state, or non-state-oriented, having encountered too many statist barriers. They believe ardently in a grassroots revolution that might effectively take over all the remaining necessary functions of the state by supplanting its rationale for power locally and establish the existing horizontal, open and multi-layered network on a firm institutional base.

Consequently, the following pieces of the unconditional autonomy allowance jigsaw puzzle can only sketchily show how a variety of concrete schemes might come together. These measures rely on, and would drive, a cultural transformation, perpetually decolonising growth imaginaries and propelling institutional, economic and political transformation. They are seen as ways to achieve an emancipatory, democratic and peaceful transition towards societies that are ecologically sustainable, desirable, relocalised but connected, open, convivial and autonomous. Key questions remain across every formation and over time: What basic needs do we need to produce? How do we produce them with optimal ecological and social benefits?

There is no magic recipe but a large range of pathways within which a universal autonomy allowance offers a coherent convergence of complementary levels and approaches.

AN UNCONDITIONAL BASIC INCOME

A key barrier to both self-empowerment and collective empowerment arises from the demands of our economic system, that is, the necessity of working to gain our basic needs and to repay debts that arise because average incomes are not sufficient to cover the costs of education and further training, buying a car or owning a dwelling. For most, the risks of losing a job or being demoted mean a rat-race world, marginalising personal involvement in political action. For repoliticisation, degrowth must show how people’s essential needs can be met in alternative ways, that is, that forced employment is not necessary to fulfil the basic conditions for a dignified life. Solidarity can deconstruct alienation, offer hope and develop trust. To open discussions and debates in this direction, we propose an unconditional basic income.³³

An unconditional basic income would offer every individual enough in money or in-kind goods and services, for a decent life from birth to death. The idea is not new. More than two hundred years ago, the English-born Thomas Paine – who spent many mature years in the US and some years in France during the era of the 1789 French Revolution – propagated the idea of a basic income as restitution for loss associated with the institution of private property. He argued that a minimum income was necessary for any citizen to accomplish the republican principles of freedom, equality and fraternity.³⁴ Likewise the proposal here links the rights of citizens to political autonomy and influence, with the necessary fulfilment of their basic needs. The provision of an unconditional basic income is an act of solidarity, a refusal to abandon anybody, and assures the dignity of everyone.

This idea recently re-entered political debates and has been experimented with in a variety of places.³⁵ It has many supporters, particularly within younger generations, as offering an opportunity to avoid forced employment in a system that they reject and as security to launch meaningful activities, such as establishing a degrowth future. Like any measure, an unconditional basic income can be distorted and co-opted, for example, the measure proposed by Milton Friedman was really a ‘negative income tax’, which aimed to support capitalism and make it more efficient.³⁶

The unconditional basic income is distinct from social security measures such as unemployment, sickness or disability benefit, or a retirement pension, because there is no eligibility requirement to be actively looking for work, to be ill, to have a disability or to be retired. Moreover, even if an unconditional basic income is effective and coherent in terms of a degrowth agenda, it is only a mobiliser within the degrowth project, which requires other measures to be applied in unison, specifically an acceptable maximum income and unconditional basic services.³⁷

ACCEPTABLE MAXIMUM INCOME

In as much as paid work exists, and currently working for money is the primary way many people satisfy their basic needs, an acceptable maximum income is a degrowth demand.³⁸ This is more than a cap on wages and salaries but would extend to income from other sources, including inheritance, with grandfathering or similar staggered application. In the degrowth movement a 1:4 difference between minimum and maximum incomes has certain support. This would sharply reduce current inequalities. Research from 2017 by Credit Suisse highlighted that the world’s richest 1 per cent own 50 per cent of wealth, and in the UK the wealthiest 1 per cent own around 25 per cent of UK wealth in contrast to the poorest 50 per cent with less than 5 per cent.³⁹

The degrowth movement advocates fairer distribution as more effective than redistribution even if redistribution remains a useful tool for reducing inequalities. Of course, initial measures in mainstream economic contexts are specific to monetary relations typical of capitalism. Beyond monetary measures, the movement proposes techniques common in highly developed welfare states, emergencies and socialist countries – access to a set amount of goods and services per capita either at a set price or gratis.

UNCONDITIONAL BASIC SERVICES

Unless an unconditional basic income is supplemented with special benefits for those with special needs, for example, associated with ill health, then health and associated support services need to be free.⁴⁰ In other words, unconditional basic services must be part of the degrowth package. They would include products such as water, energy supplies and access to decent housing, health, education and funeral services. Degrowth advocates acknowledge a need to de-commodify what is too important to be administered by an irrational market. After all, why do we pay the same price for a litre of water for drinking, cooking, food gardening and washing ourselves, clothes or dishes as for a litre of water to wash a private car, fill a private swimming pool or water a golf course? Shouldn’t we reserve certain sectors to supply basic needs to all?

If this principle seems simple, questions around how to achieve the free supply of those goods and services necessary for dignity abound. In terms of quantity, there would be a basic per capita maximum allowance, depending on the region. For instance, given that, for climatic and other reasons, some regions have a lot more water available to them than others, there would be greater per capita allowances in areas with fewer ecological limits or future sustainability risks. Democratic re-appropriation of water management might initially proceed via a progressive pricing system based on principles of free access for a reasonable usage and extra costs for extra usage or misuse, measures that would be applied using meters. Similarly, ultimately, energy supplies would focus exclusively on local renewable sources, such as solar thermal, relatively low-tech and crafted for territorial energy sovereignty.

Following the principle of diversity, the degrowth movement has a liberal approach to the design and implementation of an unconditional autonomy allowance. It might be delivered by a variety of institutions, in-kind, through use of formal or alternative monies. As such provincial, local or even state governments, regional degrowth formations or commoning might organise production and distribution based on a right to access maximum amounts.⁴¹ Those self-governing commons producing for collective needs would decide on the definition and constitution of ‘basic needs’, not a simple material assessment but, following the kinds of criteria established by scholars such as Manfred Max-Neef, incorporating non-material basic needs comprising criteria such as ‘dignity’.⁴²

BASIC NEEDS

Already basic need provisioning is evolving in situ and being debated. The right to land and housing has been highlighted by political squatters who occupy buildings to create social spaces as well as accommodation, where feasible incorporating productive activities based on methods such as agro-ecology and permaculture activities to fulfil basic needs.⁴³ Re-appropriation of land can occur through state requisition. Christiania in Copenhagen developed a commoning system for housing, later modified towards a more mainstream model as a condition of the settlement’s ‘normalisation’, that is, legalisation, by the state. This case highlights struggles between state and activists seeking autonomy and freedom from market forces.⁴⁴

More conventional paths to create housing pointing in the direction of a degrowth future include eco-collaborative housing models such as community land trusts, cooperative housing, cohousing and ecovillages strongly oriented to ecological and social justice.⁴⁵ In Zurich, where cooperative housing has an impressive twentieth-century history and accounts for more than one quarter of apartments, the New Cooperatives movement is specifically oriented to sustainable futures, with careful consideration given to building and living sustainably.⁴⁶ An extract from a radical proposal for future consumption appears in Box 5.1, demonstrating how distinct a sustainable city or rural town might look like in a degrowth driven future. Eco-collaborative housing models share an orientation away from the monetary values and relationships of markets towards land and housing allocated through systems of self-governance based on use rights and social and material production to fulfil basic needs.

Housing with sufficient land or a community-based enterprise, such as community supported agriculture, both contribute to provisioning of relocalised, seasonal, organic and sustainable food production based on agroecology, organic and permaculture principles and highly plant-based diets. Complementing such food and housing initiatives, maker workshops and repair hubs focus on making and using appropriate, convivial tools, applying open-source knowledge and creating low-tech, handmade or home-made furniture, utensils and clothes, operating on the basis of sharing and recycling (see Box 5.2). As indicated in the text of both Box 5.1 and 5.2, walking, cycling, scooting and a modest amount of train travel are favoured forms, which necessitate extensive changes in infrastructure and settlement planning. All such initiatives arise in contexts where an onerous system of monetised production and exchange turns citizens away from mainstream trade and financial arrangements towards local community-based currencies or similarly alternative exchange systems.

Box 5.1 A lifestyle menu

For reasons of ecology and justice, a typical Swiss lifestyle menu might look like this:

•   20m² of private living space

•  2.5m² of communal space (space shared with others so, e.g. 20 sharing = 50m²)

•   no cars

•   no flights

•   6 km train travel per capita daily, within Switzerland

•   a boat voyage of 1000 km yearly

•   15 kg meat yearly

•   20 L milk yearly

•   70 L water daily

•   3 hours internet weekly

•   1 printed newspaper daily shared between 50 people

The different factors are partly interchangeable: eat less meat, but enjoy a car trip, reduce your living space for a short-distance air flight and so on. On the whole these limits call for a completely different lifestyle, which requires a different residential, territorial and institutional setting, that is, a postgrowth setting.

(And, of course, there is no cap on sharing, reusing, creativity, friendship, love, care and so on.)

Source: Slightly adapted from New Alliance. A proposal. 2019. New Alliance site – https://newalliance.earth/a_proposal.pdf)

ALTERNATIVE FINANCIAL SYSTEM

In 2017, global debt amounted to US$184 trillion (nominal terms), that is 225 per cent of GDP, greater than US$86,000 per capita or 2.5 times the average per capita income. The richest countries were the most indebted, with the US, China, and Japan responsible for more than half of global debt, more than either of their proportionate shares of global output and double their combined contribution to world population (24 per cent). Meanwhile the International Monetary Fund confirms that private sector debt, which has trebled since 1950, is ‘the driving force behind global debt’, with China in the lead.⁴⁷ Capitalist growth and monetary debt are tightly integrated.

Box 5.2 Degrowth formation: Cargonomia

Cargonomia evolved when three pre-existing social and environmental enterprises in Budapest and its surrounds joined together as a degrowth formation-in-progress:

•   Cyclonomia DIY Bicycle Social Cooperative

•   Zsamboki Biokert, an organic vegetable farm and sustainable agriculture community education centre distributing vegetable boxes weekly to Budapest food communities

•   Kantaa, a self-organised bike messenger and delivery company

This formation is a self-organising focal point for individuals and communities interested and active in producing sustainable food, promoting and using low-carbon transport, bikes and a bike culture. Operating on sustainable, convivial and fair trade principles, food is distributed via direct marketing and by cargo bikes that are made by Cargonomia. Members can borrow such cargo bikes.

Cargonomia offers an open space for community activities directed towards sustainable transitions, conviviality and degrowth, hosting DIY and self-sufficiency building workshops, discussions and cultural events. Cargonomia produces research, for instance on care work, and members were key to organising the Fifth International Degrowth Conference in 2016.

The formation incorporates an open localisation approach, welcomes initiatives that will develop local production of basic needs, and aims to inspire and facilitate empowerment with concrete alternatives to standard profit-driven social and economic systems. In all these ways Cargonomia is developing towards the realisation of a degrowth future using an approach of open relocalisation.

Source. Adapted from data on Cargonomia website:

http://cargonomia.hu/?lang=en

The 2008 global financial crisis resulted in recessions, depressions and austerity. For instance, structural adjustments were imposed on Greece in a very violent and spectacular way, driven by the Troika, the International Monetary Fund, the European Central Bank and the European Commission. In the name of public debt, social programmes, health and education budgets were cut with severe impacts on Greek citizens. Movements such as the Committee for the Abolition of Illegitimate Debt (‘CADTM’) that focuses on Global South debts, have been calling for public debt audits for decades.⁴⁸

The full dimensions of debt include exploitation and extermination, involving slavery, war (as a business with associated industries) and the genocide of indigenous peoples. Degrowth proposals include establishing transparent audits of private and public debt, and moratoriums as necessary. Foreign debt has been an imperialistic tool to further economic interests. Especially in the case of default, terms and conditions of foreign lending or credit renewals have led to interference in domestic policies and to the imposition of capitalist political agendas, which have recently resulted in the de-development of European countries, such as Greece.

Money as a token of credit and implied debt is fundamental to capitalist economies where money ‘saved’ institutionally, typically in legal banks, is in fact lent out to gain interest. Moreover, banks create money through lending activities. In a competitive system of private firms producing for trade, bank loans and the interest they demand drive economic growth. Furthermore, the financial system and financialisation rampant this century means systemic pressure towards speculative bubbles, necessarily bigger – and with broader impacts – the more that the capitalist system expands.

The debts of capitalism include literally hundreds of billions worth of tax evasion hidden under the euphemism of ‘optimisation’. Moreover there are incredible levels of inequalities between large corporations profiting from the system and the smaller, local businesses that tend to contribute to society more fairly and appropriately. Beyond the inscrutable practices of big business are the hidden debts of the market economy – human and ecological debts resulting from exploitation and appropriation of limited social and environmental resources, destabilising ecological cycles and leading to extremely dangerous ‘tipping points’.⁴⁹

Driven by the necessity to instil a sense of responsibility for planetary and local limits, degrowth advocates ultimately argue for a radical takeover of the economic system. The degrowth movement envisages a new model of society based on principles other than growth and greed, a society which supports social and environmental justice and facilitates both redistribution and a desirable democratic transition. The movement seeks alternative governance of the financial and banking systems, aiming towards their democratic regulation or re-appropriation. Degrowth advocates and activists call for rethinking money creation, its governance and the role of the reserve bank. In terms of reforming the current system, one proposal is for full-reserve banking, zero or even negative interest for money creation for emancipation from a debt culture, from growth-driving dynamics and the associated devastating impacts on environments. Thus, the degrowth movement proposes community-governed and community-oriented banks in preference to current monetary and financial institutions.⁵⁰

ALTERNATIVE FORMS OF EXCHANGE

Those experimenting with creating fairer economic models have adopted a range of alternative forms of exchange considered more complementary to their activities and more expressive of their principles than formal currencies, which are generally issued or regulated with respect to their issue by state central banks. Alternative exchange systems allow credit for work and goods, arranged between members of a formal organisation. Alternative exchanges include community-operated non-speculative local currencies such as local exchange trading systems (LETS), based on a local unit of credit; community currencies, such as the Bristol Pound or Totnes Pound (2007–19); and time-banking based on a labour-hour as the unit of credit, such as Time Credits (UK). Time-banks allow multilateral exchanges of work using the measure of per-hour work, say one hour of plumbing, language tuition or childcare.

Schemes involving local exchange systems and currencies are long-standing and widely practised outside (as well as within) the degrowth movement, but often represent only a low proportion of the total exchanges or provisioning for each member. LETS involve multilateral exchanges with a central accounting system. Members are encouraged to be relaxed about being indebted to the system because all members are either in credit or in debt constantly. Frequently, a small amount of internal credit is withdrawn to remunerate administrators or associated costs. Currently, most alternative exchange schemes run in parallel, even in competition, with legal currencies – and have created headaches for taxation departments, especially when their members only agreed to pay sales taxes in their own currency! Degrowth activists have adopted and adapted a variety of differently organised and managed alternative currency schemes as appropriate for a degrowth transition.

More radical and comprehensive financial and exchange models created by activists from the degrowth movement and beyond include the Cooperativa Integral Catalana, which has evolved in the Barcelona region with their ‘ecoxarxes’, exchange nodes, operating complementary currencies.⁵¹ Informal economies of solidarity and reciprocity seem peculiarly appropriate for degrowth economies where production focuses on provision of basic needs in local economies. Others in the degrowth movement theorise over non-monetary exchange systems, including gift economies, where there is no form of monetary accounting at all – proposing wholly non-monetary economies based on direct democracy.⁵² Informal and lightly organised sharing schemes can be as simple as creating a space in an apartment or neighbourhood block where people leave what they don’t want for collection by someone else who can use it. At the other end of the spectrum of sharing models are fully collectivised communes with ‘one purse’ and high levels of self-provisioning.

For the purposes of degrowth, ideally the alternative community-based currency cannot be subject to the act of saving. It might have a use-by (expiry) date or automatically devalue over time, finally to become worthless. Ideally, it cannot be lent, especially as in the sense of invested. The primary driver of capitalist debt is investment borrowing. Thus, the currency system is designed to avoid speculation and simply promote exchange and circulation. In fact, any investment becomes the prerogative of the community.

Indeed, currently degrowth activist campaigns protest against investments in advancing Frankenstein-type dystopian transhumanism, so-called artificial intelligence and growth-oriented mega-infrastructure. They call for a moratorium on all such investments and, wherever possible, implementation of public deliberation on where to invest time, energy and resources in future. The degrowth movement calls for transparency in establishing key criteria of what constitute unbearable environmental and social impacts project by project. The movement argues for open and democratic determination of priorities and preferences for projects, and the upfront identification of those individuals and communities that projects would benefit (and disadvantage).

The unconditional autonomy allowance approach would integrate a complementary local currency based on a degrowth charter in order to promote and support local production, services and exchange. The charter would be universal in its general principles while each locality would have a unique currency. The goal would be to reintroduce close communal cooperation within regions to create more direct democracy and sustainability, reconnecting people, and co-creating trust and feelings of security. Strong relationships of obligation and solidarity, and principles of unconditional support for all to maintain a minimum level of dignity constitute the foundation for both participative democracy and a degrowth transition in which we all identify our basic needs and how to satisfy them in fair and sustainable ways.

CONCLUSION

In The Great Transformation (1944), economic anthropologist Karl Polanyi theorises that within capitalism the market economy has become the dominant ruling force. He argues that, in order to recover genuinely democratic political power and to manage economies in a more environmentally responsible way, we need to ‘re-embed’ the economy through the state exerting authority over the market. Driven by a need to decolonise our imaginaries, and to disarticulate capitalism – from ‘the top down’ with state measures and ‘from below’ with autonomous grassroots activities – the degrowth movement aims to re-embed the economy through democratic deliberation on our basic needs and how to fulfil them in fair, sustainable and convivial ways.

Degrowth and aligned movements offer a platform for dialogue, convergence within spheres of action (chapter 3) and appropriate strategies within which the unconditional autonomy allowance is but one proposal. The unconditional autonomy allowance blends an unconditional basic income, a maximum acceptable income and unconditional basic services with a set of radical reforms enabling us to re-embed the economy under direct democratic control along with social relationships of obligation and care, sharing, reciprocity and localised economies. These types of measures could evolve, and in certain places are evolving, always customised and adapted to local, regional, cultural and political specificities. In summary, the degrowth project envisaged in terms of an unconditional autonomy allowance covers various basic needs, as outlined in Appendix 2. The unconditional autonomy allowance mobiliser incorporates numerous measures, such as a maximum acceptable income, and could be implemented as a transitionary process that takes place step by step, as shown in Appendix 3.

As such the unconditional autonomy allowance proposal here does not stand for ‘the degrowth project’, but rather offers a sense and certain logic to proposals emerging in and around degrowth. In its soul and design, a degrowth project articulated around an unconditional autonomy allowance could be implemented in decentralised and relocalised ways, involving a revolutionary reformist approach based on dialogue, deep listening, consensual decision-making and appropriate action. It would be based on the logic of open relocalisation and how to change the world without either taking power or abandoning power. It would require cultural transformation and grassroots activities both of which are already under way, but all this demands structural, economic and political transformations yet to be born.