The International Journal
ofINCLUSIVE
DEMOCRACY, Vol. 6, No. 4 (Fall 2010)
De-growth, the Simpler Way and Inclusive Democracy
TAKIS FOTOPOULOS
Although, of course, I agree with many of the
points raised by Ted Trainer’s useful contribution to the
de-growth debate, as this was hopefully made clear by both
my older debate on the matter with Serge Latouche[1]
and, also, my “stirring” paper to the Barcelona Conference
this year[2],
yet, I think there are certain important points which need
further clarification.
Market and growth
At the outset, his
claim in the extract below, according to which I support the
view that growth and the market are “separate things,” is
false:
Fotopoulos rightly
criticises the de-growth school for not realizing that one
cannot scrap growth without scrapping the market.
However, I believe the case for this claim is
stronger than he makes it seem.
He can be taken to be saying that growth and the
market are separate things, for instance when he says growth
and the market are
“(…) the two fundamental components of the
system.”[13] and
“(…) opposite sides of the same coin.”[14] It seems to me more appropriate to
say that there is basically only one factor here, the
market, because it logically entails a commitment to
growth.
However, apart from the fact that the above text (I suppose
inadvertently) misquoted me, in fact, I did not claim that
growth and the market are “(…) opposite sides of the same
coin,” but exactly the opposite! Namely, that “the
market/growth economy and the concentration of economic
power are opposite sides of the same coin.” The very fact
that I deliberately used the term “market/growth economy” to
describe the present system signifies that, far from seeing
them as “separate things,” I see the growth economy as
identical with the market economy. This is of course in
accordance with the view I always expressed in my writings
that the growth economy is simply the inevitable outcome of
the dynamics of the market economy[3].
Furthermore, as the following extract from the “stirring”
paper mentioned above shows, I use exactly this argument to
show why “de-growth could not be seen as just a matter of
changing values and imaginary significations”:
The question is: has there ever been a system of market
economy, in the Polanyian sense, whose dynamic had not led
to maximisation of economic growth —barring the periods of
unwanted economic crises like the present one— whether this
was a capitalist market economy, or even a “socialist”
market economy like the one in today’s China? If the answer
is negative —as it should be— then this is a strong
indication that de-growth could not be seen as just a matter
of changing values and imaginary significations, or of
“abandoning a faith system, a religion,”[4] and that,
instead, de-growth is simply non-feasible within a system of
market economy (...) It is, therefore, obvious that a degrowing
market-based economy and society is non-feasible, not only
because de-growth deprives it from its basic dynamics on the
production side, but also because it deprives it from its
justification in the eyes of citizens, who, today, have been
transformed into consumers.
In other words, in my analysis, economic growth is just the
main symptom of a catastrophic (economically, socially and
ecologically) system of allocating resources, and not the
cause of it. The cause is the market system itself.
Having said that, I do not agree of course, as Ted
does, with the usual Marxist analysis of over-accumulation
as the cause of the chronic as well as the present deep
capitalist crisis. As I tried to show elsewhere,[5] this
approach has hardly any relationship to the present reality
of an internationalised market economy. For a start,
although it is true that the unequal distribution of income
and wealth and, therefore, of economic power is at the root
of the economic crisis characterising a market economy, the
cause of this crisis is not that inequality creates a crisis
of under consumption or overproduction —the traditional Left
argument. As the consumerist boom in the West has shown in
the last half of a century or so, underconsumption is not
the problem of capitalist societies at the centre (for
various reasons transcending the scope of the present
article), and in fact it is not even the problem in the
capitalist periphery, with the creation of a “new North” in
the South, as part of the globalisation process we have
seen in the first section. Second, it is not true that the
surplus produced and appropriated by capital cannot find
outlets in production and spills over into financial
speculation where it is absorbed in speculative bubbles. Although this may be true in the case of a
nation-based market economy it has very little to do with an
internationalised market economy. In fact, most of the
surplus which is used today for financial speculation comes
from the sovereign funds of such capitalist “miracles” like
China and India, as well as Russian, Arab and Latin American
billionaires —i.e., from countries in which the extreme
inequality in the distribution of income and wealth, in
combination with the overexploitation of their labour faces
(or their natural resources) and the effective absence of
welfare states has created lots of surpluses, which their
elites, instead of investing them domestically for an
improvement in the “social wage” of their impoverished
workers, prefer to invest in Western financial markets
(particularly US ones) and speculative bubbles.
On the other hand, the ultimate cause of the chronic
economic crisis for the ID project
is the growing concentration of economic power in
fewer and fewer hands, an event that results in a huge and
growing concentration of income and wealth. At the same
time, the immediate cause of the present crisis is the
opening and liberalisation of markets for the needs of the
internationalised market economy, which led to the financial
bubbles and the almost bankruptcy of the private banks and
financial institutions that was averted by the massive flow
of taxpayers’ money to their vaults, destroying the remnants
of the welfare states, if not leading to the informal
bankruptcy of some states in the semi-periphery (Ireland,
Spain, etc.). This, in turn, has led to the
“austerity”
programs in one country after another to reduce the huge
budget deficits and debts created by the massive outflow of
state receipts towards financial institutions and a growing
recession in the West, while the Eastern paradises of China,
India, etc. still enjoy high growth because of the huge
surpluses they have accumulated in the past twenty years or
so, which they still use to further boost US demand (by
buying state bonds, etc.) and also for infrastructure
projects domestically to match any decline in world demand
because of the recession.
So, contrary to the Marxist view of overaccumulation adopted
by Trainer, in the present internationalised market economy,
the more capital surplus a country has, the higher its
growth rate is and far from any shortage of outlets for
investment, in fact, there is a shortage of funds for
investment, both for real investment as well as financial
investment. This is another reason why the de-growth project
which does not rule out the capitalist market system is
completely incompatible with it, not only because the
market’s dynamic necessarily leads to more growth, as we
have seen above, but also because the masses of unemployed
and low-wagers that a de-growth policy would create in a
capitalist market economy will lead to a social insurrection
against de-growth, which could be much bigger than the
emerging mass social unrest against the capitalist system
that is blamed for its inability to create more
growth —not less!
Similar arguments could be brought forward about the
Simpler Way, particularly as it also adopts private firms,
which can never be effectively controlled by the community
or society at large, as long as the means of production and
distribution are not owned and controlled by the community
itself, as it happens in the case of
demotic enterprises,
owned and controlled by the
demos (the citizens’ assembly) and the worker’s
assemblies, envisaged by the ID project.
Direct Democracy and Inclusive Democracy
Next,
Trainer identifies the “classical Anarchist conception of
radically participatory democracy” with Inclusive Democracy:
Despite their significant differences, Fotopoulos, Bookchin,
the Eco-feminists and Chomsky centre their critique of
society and their recommendations for a satisfactory society
on power and the domination by elites, and thus they argue
for what Fotopoulos refers to as “direct democracy”. This
seems to be simply the classical Anarchist conception of
radically participatory democracy, whereby all citizens have
an equal say in decisions, no individuals or agencies have
power over the citizen level, and issues involving larger
regions or groups are dealt with via delegations and
federations without citizens relinquishing power.
However, the identification of the ID project with “the
classical Anarchist conception of radically participatory
democracy” is simplifying and wrong. First, the classical
conception of democracy, and likewise the anarchist
conception of direct democracy has nothing to do with
various versions of
“participatory democracy” promoted today
by sections of the Left, including supporters of the
de-growth project, which imply some sort of mix of direct
democracy with representative
“democracy”
—a contradiction in
terms! Second, these classical conceptions of democracy
represent only a component of the Inclusive Democracy
project, as we shall briefly see below. In other words,
direct democracy, as understood by Trainer is either just a
procedure for taking decisions or, at best, a kind of
political system which aims to integrate polity into society
but which does not imply anything as regards the
society-economy, and the society-Nature relationships.
On the other hand, the Inclusive Democracy project
explicitly attempts to integrate but also transcend the
classical democracy/autonomy tradition, as well as the
socialist tradition that aims to integrate the economy into
society, and the
“new social movements” among which is the
ecological movement, which aims to integrate society into
Nature. This is why it talks not just about direct (or
political) democracy but also about:
-
economic democracy,
which implies not just citizens having an equal say on
economic decisions but also collectively owning and
controlling the means of production,
-
democracy in the
social realm, which implies self management at the factory,
office, university levels by working people, students and
teachers, etc., and
-
ecological
democracy, which implies that the democratic institutions
themselves create the necessary conditions for the abolition
of the instrumentalist view of Nature according to which
Nature is seen as an instrument for growth and development,
i.e. the view which prevailed in modernity as an inevitable
ideological by-product of the rise of the market economy
and, through its dynamics, of the growth economy.
What is the rationale for a new society?
An even more important point raised by Ted’s analysis
concerns the rationale for a new society. For him, “the case
for radical political transition derives primarily from an
understanding of our ecological/sustainability problem” and
he then goes on to describe how the characteristics of the
form of society required for this transition (what he calls
“Τhe Simpler Way”), in fact, coincide with several of the
main features of an Inclusive Democracy:
From The Simpler Way perspective the crucial need for this
political form can be seen when the coming ecological
situation is understood.
In the conditions of intense scarcity ahead, a viable
and satisfying society will
have to
be based on
principles of frugality, self-sufficiency, simplicity,
localism, mostly small firms and farms, cooperation, many
low-technologies (hand tools, earth building, crafts,
gardening…) and non-material satisfactions.
It will have to have per capita GDP and consumption
of resources that are a small fraction of those taken for granted in rich
countries today. It will have to be made up of mostly small local
economies drawing on local resources to meet local needs.
None of this will be viable unless the economy is under
local control and run to meet needs as distinct from being
run to make profits.
However, to my mind, it is historically, theoretically and
politically wrong to conclude that “the case for radical
political transition derives primarily from an understanding
of our ecological/sustainability problem,” and not from the
realisation of the role of the main institutions of
modernity, the capitalist market economy system and its
political complement in representative
“democracy,” in
creating corresponding power structures and relations which
inevitably led not only to the present catastrophic
ecological crisis but also to a multidimensional crisis in
general, i.e. a crisis which is also political, economic and
social.[6]
It is obviously this wrong conclusion that leads Trainer to
criticise writers like myself, as I mentioned above, on
centering our “critique of society and our recommendations
for a satisfactory society on power and the domination by
elites”.
Thus, first, such a conclusion is historically wrong,
because it does not provide any explanation of the
historical causes of the ecological crisis. Clearly, it is
not accidental that this crisis began developing only with
the parallel rise of the capitalist market system, about two
hundred years ago, and its political complement,
representative “democracy”. In other words, the
ecological/sustainability problem is only the inevitable
consequence of the dynamics of the capitalist market system
and its political complement and not the cause of the
present crisis. It was the drive to profit, through
maximising economic efficiency and competitiveness, which
led to the continuous need for expansion and economic
growth. This is how economic growth became the main motive
of the ruling elites in modernity, whereas, of course,
economic growth has never been the main motive of any
pre-capitalist ruling elite. And it was within the context
of the development of the capitalist market economy into a
growth economy, which culminated in the post-WWII period
with mass production and mass consumption, that the growth
ideology flourished, which was shared also by the statist
form of modernity (Soviet statism as well as Western social
democracy), through the Enlightenment idea of Progress,
common in both liberalism as well as socialism.[7]
Second, this
conclusion is theoretically wrong, because it assumes away
the role of the hierarchical structures and of the ruling
elites in determining (either directly, through their
control of the means of production, or indirectly, through
their control of the political process, the mass media,
culture and so on) how we produce, how we consume and even
how we think. In other words, if we accept this conclusion,
the political motivation to change society and move from the
historically dominant heteronomous society to a new
autonomous society, which would institutionalise people’s
self-determination (the implicit or explicit aim of all
previous major revolutions), is simply reduced to the need
to re-organise production and consumption and do the
corresponding changes at the political and social levels, so
that we can deal with the ecological threat, the energy
scarcity problem, etc. However, the ecological crisis as
well as all other aspects of the present multidimensional
crisis, are only symptoms and not the causes of a much
deeper problem: the problem created by the fact that in a
heteronomous society it is not society itself that takes all
important political and economic decisions (which affect
also our relation to the environment) on the basis of a
democratic rationalism, namely, a rationalism founded in
democracy as a
structure and a process of social self-institution. Clearly,
there are rational ways to organise our production and
consumption, our society in general, in a way that does not
create blatant irrationalities like the ecological crisis,
or the chronic economic crisis created by an irrational
economic system that innately creates inequality and
poverty, with most of the Earth’s inhabitants being unable
to meet even their basic needs. However these fundamental
irrationalities are structural, i.e. are created by the
system itself and not by some aberration of it, as a result
of the fact that its basic institutions, i.e. the capitalist
market system and representative “democracy” have a dynamic
that leads to accumulating over time concentration of power
at all levels. This means that it is the system itself which
is the ultimate cause of every aspect of the
multidimensional crisis, and therefore of the ecological
crisis, since it always promotes, by its own structure, the
partial interests of elites rather than the general
interest. On the other hand, if we accept the argument
promoted by Ted Trainer, which on this it is similar to the
argument promoted by the de-growth supporters, we can sort
out all irrationalities of the system and even open the way
to a new society, just by understanding the importance of
the ecological problem and what has to be done to sort it
out.
Finally, it is politically wrong because once one assumes
that the case for radical political transition derives
primarily
from an understanding of our
ecological/sustainability problem then one is bound
to end up with wrong (to my mind) political conclusions,
both on how this “understanding” will be brought about (i.e.
“the transition problem”) and also on what the aim of such a
transition should be.
The transition problem
As regards first the transition problem, the implicit idea
in such a social “understanding” of the ecological crisis,
which —according to this approach— should lead to a new
society is that once
“people” realise the magnitude of the
threatening crisis they are bound to adopt the principles of
frugality, self-sufficiency, etc. and start building
alternative institutions like the ones described by Ted
which look similar to the ID institutions.
Similarly, supporters of the
de-growth project, influenced by Castoriadis’s thought,
blame the
“imaginary of development,” which emerged at the
same time as part of the ideology of Progress and dominated
modernism in the aftermath of the Enlightenment.
However, as I have tried to show
elsewhere[8], the
Industrial Revolution assumed the particular form that we
are familiar with simply because it took place in a society
in which control of the means of production belonged to
minorities (merchants, landowners, etc.). Thus, it became an
integral part of the system of the capitalist market economy
that emerged at the same time, the dynamics of which
inevitably led to a continuous economic growth and
development, consumerism and a growing concentration of
income and wealth. This was inevitable because of the
paramount need of those controlling the means of production
to maximise profits
―through improvements in economic
efficiency (technocratically defined)[9]
and competitiveness― which was ensured, also, by the
minimisation of social controls over the market protecting
labour and/or the environment. It is, therefore, obvious
that the rise of the growth economy was not simply the
result of changes in values, the imaginary, or ideology, but
that it constituted, instead, the result of the dynamics of
a concrete economic system in interaction with the outcome
of social struggle. This is why the growth economy that
developed in the countries formerly of “actually existing
socialism,” although sharing several characteristics with
the capitalist growth economy (and leading to a similar
environmental disaster), was very different from it, as it
was not the result of the dynamics of the market economy.[10] All this
implies that the transition to a new society is not just a
matter of “understanding
of our ecological/sustainability problem”
―something that leads us directly to the issue of a
transitional strategy that I will consider briefly below.
Similarly, the transition to a new
society is not a matter of changing our
“social imaginary,”
which implicitly assumes that the rise of the
present sort of economy and society is just the outcome of
domination of specific imaginary significations or values,
as the de-growth approach suggests. Instead, as the ID
project suggests, the present socio-economic system is the
outcome of social struggle on the one hand and technological
(including organisational) and socio-economic developments
on the other. Furthermore,
the whole
idea that there is some kind of a class undifferentiated
“social imaginary” which determines the way we think and
behave, is wrong. The very claim that the ecological crisis does not make class and
race distinctions —equally affecting rich and poor, white or
black— is a myth, arising from the ignorance (deliberate or
not) of the “systemic” character of the ecological crisis
and its origins in the rise of the capitalist growth
economy. This myth clearly ignores the fact that the basic
aim of the capitalist growth economy is not to cover human
needs, but to reproduce the present concentration of
economic, political and social power in general at the hands
of the privileged social strata. Therefore,
as I put it elsewhere,[11]
instead of thinking in terms of a single social imaginary we
should think of a multiplicity of social imaginaries
expressing class divisions:
in every society characterised
by class divisions, and at every historical
“moment,” various
“social
imaginaries” co-exist side-by side, expressing the
main class divisions, and particularly the division between
ruling and ruled classes and groups, with dominant in each
case the imaginary of the ruling classes and groups, which
is then formulated accordingly in the
“dominant social
paradigm” and is legitimised through the socialisation
process (education, mass media, economic and physical
violence, etc.).
It is, therefore, clear that moving to an ecological democracy and
de-growth or to a Simpler Way is not just a matter of “a
paradigm shift
to a concept of
“right-sizing” the global and national
economies”
as de-growth supporters claim,[12] or just of a change in culture in the form
of a cultural revolution, a change in the legal system, etc.
In fact, a change in culture at a significant social scale
is impossible within the present institutional framework of
a market economy and its political complement of
representative “democracy” because the institutions
themselves, and the way of living implied by them, have
created a corresponding kind of culture. Such a change in
culture at a significant social scale can only take place
within the context of a new political strategy that
comprises the gradual involvement of increasing numbers of
people in a new kind of politics and the parallel shifting
of economic resources (labor, capital, land) away from the
market economy, and this presupposes a universalist
political project, like the ID project, which explicitly
questions both the capitalist market economy and
representative “democracy” ―something that the de-growth
approach never does.
So, if we accept the ID premise
that the ultimate cause of every aspect of the present
crisis is the concentration of power at all levels, then the
obvious way out of this crisis is the abolition of power
structures and relations, i.e. the creation of conditions of
equal distribution of power among citizens. One way which
could bring about this sort of society is the strategy
proposed by the Inclusive Democracy project that involves
the creation of political, economic and social structures,
which secure direct democracy, economic democracy,
ecological democracy and democracy in the social realm. It
also involves the creation of a new social paradigm, which
has to become hegemonic for the reproduction of Inclusive
Democracy to be secured.
Furthermore, the Inclusive Democracy project offers not only
a meaningful and realistic way out of the present
multidimensional crisis, but also a way of building a new
globalisation, which is based on genuine democratic
structures. The creation of a new world order based on an
Inclusive Democracy involves the building of confederations
of local, regional and national inclusive democracies. This
will lead to a globalisation which will not be based on the
unequal distribution of power and the domination of
human being over human being and Nature, as under the
present globalisation, but, instead, on the equal
distribution of all forms of power between autonomous human
beings and the elimination of all forms of domination. It
will also be founded on a sustainable economic system, which
meets the basic needs of the planet’s population, through a
mechanism of allocation of resources between the
confederations, within a planetary confederal plan of
allocation of resources. Finally, meeting the non-basic
needs would be determined at the local level, in a way that
secures freedom of choice, whereas exchanges of surpluses
between confederations would be arranged through
multilateral agreements.
The starting point in the ID transitional approach[13] is the
recognition of the fact that the major problem with systemic
change has always been how it could be brought about, from
below, but by a majority of the population, so that a
democratic abolition of power structures could become
feasible. The ID strategy does offer a solution to this
crucial problem. The two main forms of activity suggested by
the ID project are: direct action and participation in local
elections, whose main aim however is not just the conquest
of power, but the rupture of the socialisation process and
therefore the creation of a democratic majority “from
below,” which will legitimise the new structures of
Inclusive Democracy.
Given this aim, it is obvious that
participation in national elections is a singularly
inappropriate means to this end, since, even if the movement
for an Inclusive Democracy does win a national election,
this will inevitably set in motion a process of
“revolution
from above”. This is because the rupture in the
socialisation process can only be gradual and in continuous
interaction with the phased implementation of the program
for the Inclusive Democracy, which, for the reasons
mentioned above, should always start at the local level. On
the other hand, an attempt to implement the new project
through the conquest of power at the national level does not
offer any opportunity for such an interaction between theory
and practice and for the required homogenisation of
consciousness with respect to the need for systemic change.
Thus, the
ID strategy involves the building of a mass programmatic
libertarian political movement, with an unashamedly
universalist goal to change society along genuine democratic
lines, beginning here and now. Therefore, such a movement
should explicitly aim at a systemic change, as well as at a
parallel change in our value systems. This strategy would
entail the gradual involvement of increasing numbers of
people in a new kind of politics and the parallel shifting
of economic resources (labor, capital, land) away from the
market economy. The aim of such a strategy should be to
create changes in the institutional framework, as well as to
value systems, which, after a period of tension between the
new institutions and the state, would, at some stage,
replace the market economy, representative “democracy,” and
the social paradigm “justifying” them, with an Inclusive
Democracy and a new democratic paradigm respectively.
This is because, as systemic change requires a rupture with
the past, which extends to both the institutional and the
cultural level, such a rupture is only possible through the
development of a new political organisation and a new
comprehensive political program for systemic change that
will create a clear anti-systemic consciousness at a massive
scale. This is in contrast to the statist socialist
strategy, which ends up with the creation of a clear
anti-systemic consciousness only with respect to an
avant-garde, or to the life-style activities which, if they
create any antisystemic consciousness at all, it is
restricted to the few members of various libertarian
“groupuscules”. However, the creation of a new culture,
which has to become hegemonic before the transition to an
Inclusive Democracy could be effected, is only possible
through the parallel building of new political and economic
institutions at a significant social scale. In other words,
it is only through
action to build the new institutions that a mass political
movement with a democratic consciousness can be built.
Such a strategy creates the conditions for the transition,
both the “subjective” ones, in terms of developing a new
democratic consciousness and the “objective” ones, in terms
of creating the new institutions which will form the basis
of an Inclusive Democracy. At the same time, the
establishment of these new institutions will crucially
assist here and now the victims of the concentration of
power and particularly, the victims of neoliberal
globalisation in solving the problems of inequality created
by it.
Thus, people who today are alienated from all forms of
power, particularly political and economic power, would have
every incentive to be involved in such a movement and vote
in local elections for the establishment of “democracy in
action” in their area. They will be fully aware of the fact
that problems like unemployment and poverty could only be
solved within the ID institutions (demotic
enterprises, demotic
welfare, etc.). They will also know that problems like
air/water/food pollution could only be sorted out
effectively, and at a massive social scale, if citizens
start taking control of local power within the ID
institutions rather than in the context of communes outside
the main political and social arena. They will finally know
that unless they get hold of political power at the local
level and then, through confederations of local IDs, at the
regional level, they will never be able to control their
lives. In other words, people will be involved in a struggle
for the establishment of the ID institutions not out of
hunger for an abstract notion of self-management or
democracy but because, through their own action, they will
be able to see that the cause of all their problems
(economic, social, ecological) has been due to the fact that
power has been concentrated in a few hands.
The objective, therefore, of an ID
strategy is the creation from below, of “popular bases of
political and economic power,” that is, the establishment of
local inclusive democracies, which, at a later stage, will
confederate in order to create the conditions for the
establishment of a new confederal Inclusive Democracy.
Therefore, a crucial element of the ID strategy is that the
political and economic institutions of Inclusive Democracy
begin to be established immediately after a significant
number of people in a particular area have formed a base for
“democracy in action” ―something that, most probably, could
only be achieved at the massive social scale required
through winning in local elections under an ID program.
The aim of the transition
Finally, Trainer raises the all important aim of the
transition to an alternative society and concludes:
when one focuses on the sustainability problem one realizes
that much more has to be done than just get rid of elite
power and we could eliminate elites and domination and have
a perfectly just and equitable world economy, while still
destroying the planet.
However, one could also say, paraphrasing this conclusion,
that:
when one focuses on the autonomy/democracy problem one
realizes that much more has to be done than just get rid of
the ecological problem and we could eliminate the aspects
of the ecological crisis which are destroying the planet, while
still destroying any meaning of life for the vast majority
of the world population which may well continue living
lives they do not in any way control and still
destroying millions of lives of others.
In other words, it is not inconceivable that the
technological and organisational changes required to stop
the ecological catastrophe could perfectly be achieved even
within a world heteronomous society in which an enlightened
elite controls the economic process in a way that gives it
the power to implement the necessary changes to avoid an
ecological catastrophe, while still concentrating all
economic and political power in their hands. Whether this
will be a new version of the internationalised market
economy in which competition and growth are controlled at
the planetary level with the aim to avoid an ecological
catastrophe, or a different kind of a heteronomous society
altogether, does not matter. What matters is that this will
be yet another form of a heteronomous social system in which
people will not be individually or collectively autonomous,
in other words, free. But, freedom is the highest human
objective, even higher than mere survival! So, an Inclusive
Democracy could not just be the by-product of the choice for
a viable society. Even if an unequal society has created
(technologically) a sustainable society, the demand for an
Inclusive Democracy would still be there because it is
associated with the need for autonomy and freedom not just
sustainability!
Furthermore, the above extract from Trainer’s paper
makes clear that for him the creation of a society based on
collective and individual autonomy, as the society envisaged
by the ID project is, does not guarantee
that it would also be an ecological society. However,
as I replied to a similar argument put forward in the past
by David Pepper,[14] this is a
clear misconception of what democracy is about because, if
we see democracy as a process of social self-institution,
where there is no divinely or
“objectively” defined code of
human conduct, such guarantees are by definition ruled out.
In other words, an Inclusive Democracy cannot offer any
guarantees that the horizontal relations of equality and
respect for other human beings and Nature will finally
replace the vertical relations of domination. No guarantee
therefore that an Inclusive Democracy will be an ecological
society. The replacement of the market economy by a new
institutional framework of Inclusive Democracy constitutes
only the necessary condition for a harmonious relation
between the natural and social worlds. The sufficient
condition refers to the citizens’ level of ecological
consciousness and one can only hope that the radical change
in the dominant social paradigm that will follow the
institution of an Inclusive Democracy, combined with the
decisive role that a democratic Paedeia[15] will
play in an environmentally-friendly institutional framework,
would lead to a radical change in the human attitude towards
Nature. In other words, this problematique cannot go beyond
defining the institutional preconditions that offer the best
hope for a better human relationship to Nature. However,
there are strong grounds to believe that the relationship
between an Inclusive Democracy and Nature would be much more
harmonious than any society-nature relationship which could
ever be achieved in a market economy, or one based on
socialist statism. The factors supporting this view refer to
all three elements of an Inclusive Democracy: political,
economic, and social.
At the political level, one could reasonably expect that the
establishment of a political or direct democracy will by
itself have a very significant effect in reducing the appeal
of materialism —the precondition of consumerism— as it will
provide a new meaning of life to fill the existential void
that the present consumer society creates.
At the economic level, the establishment of an economic democracy would
mean that once the market economy is replaced by a
confederal ID, the grow-or-die dynamics of the market
economy will be replaced by the new social dynamic of the
new society: a dynamic aiming not at growth per se but at
the satisfaction of the Demos’ needs, as expressed by the
democratic decisions of the citizens taken either
collectively (as regards basic needs) or individually (as
regards non-basic needs). But, if the satisfaction of
community needs does not depend, as at present, on the
continuous expansion of production to cover the wants that
the market creates, and if the link between society and
economy is restored, then there is no reason why the present
instrumentalist view of Nature in which Nature is seen as an
instrument of growth will continue conditioning human
behaviour. In this context,
it does not seem right to argue, as Ted does, “it is not the
case that by getting rid of the dominant elite or the
disposition to dominate we would have got rid of the
obsession with affluence.” However, the obsession with
affluence far from being irrelevant to what the dominant
(economic) elite does, is very much induced by it. The
meaning of life promoted by the (elite-controlled) TV
channels everyday, by videos, news reports, even indirectly
by education is that success in life is measured by wealth,
i.e. by affluence. So, it seems reasonable to assume that by
getting rid of an economic system which innately promotes
growth and of a political and social system which promotes
affluent standards of living, as well as of the elites which
thrive on growth and affluence, we would have indeed taken a
decisive step towards their elimination.
At the broader social level, the establishment of a democracy at the
social realm is reasonable to assume that, with the phasing
out of patriarchal relations in the household and of
hierarchical relations in general, should create a new ethos
of non-domination which would engulf both Society and
Nature.
Finally, the very decentralised character of an ID might also be
expected to enhance its environmentally friendly character.
It is reasonable to assume —and the evidence about the
remarkable success of local communities in safeguarding
their environments is overwhelming— that when people rely
directly on their natural surroundings for their livelihood,
they will develop an intimate knowledge of those
surroundings, which will necessarily affect positively their
behaviour towards them. However, the precondition for the
local control of the environment to be successful is that
the demos is
self-reliant, i.e., that the community depends on its
natural surroundings for its long-term livelihood and that
it therefore has a direct interest in protecting it —another
reason why an ecological society is impossible without
economic democracy. One should not also forget that the
economic effectiveness of the renewable forms of energy
(solar, wind, etc.) depends crucially on the organisation of
social and economic life in smaller units. Such a solution
is impossible within the framework of the internationalised
market economy, precisely because it is not compatible with
today's concentration of economic, political and social
power. This is why the alternative solutions, which are
being advanced today, are solutions, which supposedly
concentrate many advantages of renewable energy and at the
same time, do not require any radical changes in the
market/growth economy.
In conclusion
I do not agree that the need “for
scrapping representative democracy, as well as the market,
as well as growth, and as well as current levels of
affluence” could just be derived from “a more thorough
critique of consumer-capitalist society” as Ted argues.
The need for scrapping representative “democracy” and the
market and growth could only be derived as the critical
implications of the quest for individual and collective
autonomy, i.e. the quest for freedom itself. In other words,
they can only be the crucial demands of a universalist
antisystemic project and movement, and not of a monothematic
project and movement aiming at averting the threatening
ecological catastrophe. In this sense, the de-growth project
is completely inadequate to deal with the present deep
multidimensional crisis which gets worse every day.
Furthermore, despite the fact that The Simpler Way is
definitely much more advanced in this direction than the
de-growth project, as it explicitly raises the issue of
non-compatibility between the market economy system, growth,
and representative “democracy”, still, it suffers, also,
from the fact that it is a monothematic movement and this is
why it raises the issue of replacing the main institutions
of the present system that has led us to the present crisis
as a kind of
“far-reaching
implications” derived from the understanding of our
ecological/sustainability problem and not as the fundamental
demands of a universalist antisystemic movement.
This has important practical implications. It is exactly
because of the monothematic character of movements like the
de-growth movement or the Transition Towns movement that
such movements have always been reformist movements and
usually end up by being integrated into the system, as it
happened with the Green movement which is at present another
appendage of the system itself to support it even to its
criminal wars! In this sense, Trainer’s hope that, by
helping them to try to deepen their vision and extend their
goals, they may assume an antisystemic nature, is completely
unrealistic.
[2]
See
Takis Fotopoulos,
“Direct Democracy and De-Growth” (in this issue).
[3]
See e.g., Takis Fotopoulos,
Towards an
Inclusive Democracy: The Crisis of the Growth
Economy and the Need for a New Liberatory Project (London/NY: Cassell/Continuum, 1997/1998), pp.
62-63.
[4]
Serge Latouche, “Why Less Should Be So Much More:
De-growth Economics,”
Le Monde diplomatique
(December 2004).
[7]
Takis Fotopoulos,
Towards an
Inclusive Democracy, ch. 2.
[8]
Takis Fotopoulos,
The
Multidimensional Crisis and Inclusive Democracy,
ch. 1.
[9]
Efficiency is defined in a
market economy
on the basis of narrow techno-economic criteria of input minimisation/output
maximisation and not on the basis of the degree of
satisfaction of human needs, which is supposed to be
the aim of an economic system.
The usual definition of economic efficiency
in terms of technical efficiency, production efficiency and
exchange
efficiency, although supposedly
“neutral,” in
fact assumes away distributional aspects, so that it
is perfectly possible for a particular
allocation of resources to be
“efficient” and at the
same time incapable of meeting adequately (or at
all) even the basic needs of many citizens.
[10]
The
Multidimensional Crisis and Inclusive Democracy,
ch. 5.
[12]
See e.g.,
Declaration of the Paris 2008
De-Growth Conference.
[14]
David Pepper,
Modern Environmentalism (London: Routledge, 1996), p. 324.