Between Capitalism and Subsistence

At the Degrowth 2014 Conference in Leipzig, we were discussing the issue of postgrowth practices in production and consumption, how those are developing within business and consumer contexts and transform each other. Production and consumption appears to coevolve in front of a degrowth, postgrowth or “transitions” reference frame, with emerging concepts like the sharing of products, collaboration for producing and distributing energy and food, subsistence work and subsistence tools in Fabrication Laboratories, the rise of commons-based thinking and so forth. At the same time traditional companies operating within a classical capitalist setting are hijacking these ideas and turn them into business cases, especially within the so-called sharing economy. Capitalizing the results of post-growth practices e.g. copying a social innovation like carsharing might not harm its potential for transforming the economy in both production and consumption. However, there is a thin line between results and foundations and if the very foundations of post-growth practices are capitalized, they lose their transformative potential e.g. with patents on (new or traditional) seeds or software. This essay is a short summary of some of the results of the workshop titled “Walk the Line: Transformative Practices for Postgrowth“.

The line to be walked here is between new forms of cooperative economic action and established forms of competitive economic action. Localized production for subsistency, collaboration and sharing of common-pool resources can be organized with the help of digitalization (IT, mobile internet) – or commercialized via the same means and sharing reduced to a “supermarket” relation between a (distant) producer and a (more or less defined) consumer. Although value creation is, in both cases, depending on the active role of the consumer, real “prosumption” is only taking place in the cooperative framework unless there would be a sharing of value returns including monetary returns in the competitive framework.

  • Cooperative economic action is being based on reciprocity and some form of redistribution of value, power and decision; on democratic governance in a cooperative culture (note: you don’t have to be a cooperative to work like a cooperative); and being, at least partially, autonomous from markets and more oriented to self-sustaining.
  • Competitive economic action, on the other hand, is based on the accumulation and use of (mostly monetary and production) capital under a market governance regime. It follows an economic logic, the bedrock of neoliberalism that knows and accepts no other reasoning.

Whereas cooperative economic action has a more local orientation towards subsistency, sufficiency and civic empowerment, competitive economic action is focused on efficiency, growth, and division of labor. The greatest differences can be found in their perspectives on economic action itself. In a cooperative framework economic action is carried out with a clear social orientation, it has a clear social purpose: to maintain local communities, uphold social cohesion, foster civic and economic democracy, thus turning consumers into citizens. In a competitive framework economic action is carried out with a purely economic orientation, with an emphasis on efficient means and instrumentalization. Consumer “democracy” comes before civic democracy.

In our discussion in Leipzig, the requirements for transformation and the level at which this transformation could start – individual/firm, industry, society in general – where considered to be essential. While there is some work on postgrowth macroeconomics and individual lifestyle change, the meso-level of groups and organizations, also market interaction, appears to be still in its infancy. At the same time different actors have different transformative power resources to set a degrowth agenda on their respective level. It remains open however who “should” or is “allowed to” initiate transformation and set the agenda: actors with most power, actors with the “right” mindset, or unconventional cross-sectoral alliances between these actors.

Connected to that is the use of language and how semantic frameworks are applied in the transformation discourse on degrowth. The language we use determines our understanding of the issues at stake and what problem solutions might be considered acceptable. Herein lies the risk of falling into the same mental traps that are created by the existing economic logic/growth paradigm and its particular economist logic, for example the necessity for “scaling up” solutions to business models. Scalability of transformative practices and new solutions can be a good thing to pursue; however when talking about scalability we most likely discuss it in economic turns: volume, sales, market diffusion. Can we think differently about scale and scalability without crossing the line from cooperativeness to old-school competitiveness? What about a social scale and the possibility to diffuse a certain social organization of how to produce and collaborate? Such a perspective on social scalability instead of purely economic scalability fits a novel paradigm on scaling, focusing on diffusion of collaborative social innovation approaches.

When we look at business and probably more traditional business logics, transformative practices appear to be often rooted in some form of entrepreneurial values behind a start-up enterprise. If that is the case then how this spirit be maintained when scaling up, how can this enterprise not become corrupted by going mainstream and “selling out”? Great hopes may be placed on the idea of bridging organizations as hybrid institutional set-ups for promoting postgrowth transformation, new forms of cross-sectoral alliances i.e. bridging between business, civil society, politics and others and also cross-cutting different logics in a kind of organizational polyphony. It remains open to the test of reality what kind of organizational/legal forms are best fit for this polyphonic, cross-sectoral bridging: cooperatives, transformed shareholder organizations, organizational hybrids.

One example for a possible transformation of practices, and a transformative practice in itself, can be observed in the merger of collaboration and circular economy. Collaboration, as part of a cooperative economic framework, and the ideas of a circular economy and cradle-2-cradle approaches would make up an interesting combination: localized (re-)production of products that are part of a larger circular loop, maybe even in combination with some relogistics from traditional companies. A collaborative circular economy might act as an example how to build larger systems with cross-sectoral alliances between local initiatives like repair cafés and makerspaces, as well as traditional industries thus enabling those to become transformative and be transformed towards postgrowth while at the same time foster civic engagement and produce social capital (as a side effect) on the local level. Scaling up this type of solution would mean to adopt and diffuse a certain type of transformative social organization through and within which practices can change for a degrowth society.

So where does a viable and liveable postgrowth economy thrive on a continuum between capitalism and subsistence? Almost certainly it will be much more on the side of subsistence and practices of self-production; however it will also entail some characteristics of capitalism, most notably entrepreneurship and managerial risk-taking. If there really is some kind of “degrowth capitalism“, it will paradoxically be both unlike capitalism – small-scale, collaborative, not for profit – and yet very much like the essence of it – entrepreneurial, innovative, wealth creating.

Take-aways and food for transformative thinking:

  • Beyond economics: blending a social orientation and the collaborative creation of social and environmental added value with entrepreneurial action.
  • Cross-sectoral alliances: hybrid institutional settings between business and civil society, between local and global levels of production and governance, between producers and consumers as co-creators of economic, social and ecological value.
  • Social scalability: new paradigm of scaling-up building on collaboration and focusing the diffusion of new types of social organization for meeting needs.
  • Protect and survive: creating protected spaces for social experiments and connect them to ‘translation’ actors (i.e. cross-sectoral hybrids) for social upscaling.
  • Collaborative creation: sharing, joining and collaborating as controlled exit strategies for a postgrowth economy.
  • Transformative imaginaries: connecting common understandings about the legitimacy of practices to transformative narratives beyond economics – money talks but imaginaries sing!

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Do the math! * Time limit is exhausted. Please reload CAPTCHA.

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.