The essence of the Simplicity Institute’s post-capitalist, degrowth paradigm

[this is taken from chapters 5 and 3 of the compilation: Post-Capitalist Futures: Paradigms, Politics, and Prospects]

Chapter 5. Collective Sufficiency: Degrowth as a Political Project
By Samuel Alexander and Brendan Gleeson (synopsis)

The degrowth movement calls for planned economic contraction of overdeveloped economies on the path to a steady-state or zero-growth economy. The deep decarbonization and resource reductions required for sustainable and equitable contraction would clearly require transformative shifts in the way economies are structured and resources distributed. This transition would also mean a cultural recognition that high consumption lifestyles are unsustainable and that only lifestyles of material sufficiency, moderation, and “living lightly” are consistent with social justice and ecological limits. This vision of a post-capitalist political economy and culture challenges us to lay the seeds for a politics and economics of sufficiency. Social movements will be needed to help create the support for these structural and cultural shifts.

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Re: prefiguring aspects of a degrowth economy … Below we state four key features of post-capitalism that we see emerging from the grassroots up, features which we feel must scale up for a degrowth economy to emerge:

. First, non-monetary forms of the sharing economy, whereby communities self-organize to share resources in order to save money, partially “escape the market,” and avoid significant amounts of production. Indeed, this is a key feature of why a degrowth economy could still thrive even when contracting: produce much less but share much more. This is part of what efficiency means in a degrowth economy. Societies can create common wealth through sharing.

. Second, a degrowth economy is likely to require a transformation of the household economy, away from merely being a place of consumption and into a place of production and self-provision. On this topic there is no better place to look than the work of permaculturist David Holmgren, whose vision and insights here are indispensable. By producing more within the household and community, less time is needed to work in the Leviathan economy. This strategy is about escaping capitalism in order to erode it, thereby building the new economy within the shell of the old.

. A third key feature of a degrowth economy involves significant localization, moving toward a bioregional economy where local needs are predominantly met with local resources, shortening the chain between production and consumption (see the work of Ted Trainer and Helena Norberg-Hodge).

. Finally, we’ll note that any post-capitalist economy is going to require new modes of production, moving away from profit-maximizing corporations toward an economy where worker cooperatives, community-based enterprises, and not-for-profit models are the dominant forms of economic organization, paying people living wages but reinvesting surpluses back into the community. Again, there are various ways to imagine such alternative economic arrangements. Experimentation will be required as societies pursue the goal of creating economic and social systems in which more wealth and power are held in common.

Chapter 3. Ecosocialism from a Post-Development Perspective
By Anitra Nelson (synopsis)

Historically, the dominant current in anti-capitalist critiques has been socialism. It has been revived in the twenty-first century in ecosocialist thought and practice, which has been challenged to embrace post-development perspectives and novel post-capitalist futures. A comparison of three works — the 2001 Ecosocialist Manifesto, the 2008 Belem Ecosocialist Declaration, and the 2017 Combined Strategy and Plan of Action of the First Ecosocialist International — shows that ecosocialism embraces diverse visions, from state-oriented and market-regulating plans for transformation to grassroots community-based modes of production.

[But if we say that the cultural diversity we’d expect to see after a bioregional reorganization of society will also figure to include diversity in regard to economic relations, then the extents of social, public, and private enterprise will figure to vary considerably.]