SUBSISTENCE.

The use of the term “subsistence” is ambiguous and confused. The following comment focuses on the meaning that is very important in the discussion of the economy. The economy assumed in The Simpler Way is a subsistence economy.

The term is commonly taken to indicate a situation in which very poor tribal or peasant families barely survive by just producing enough to feed themselves. “Modernisation” and “development’ are essentially thought of as requiring the replacement of subsistence economies.

However if we consider what the economies of tribes and peasant villages were like before being impacted by Western society we see that these were typically complex, integrated at the village level (as distinct from being about an isolated family), and satisfactory and effective in meeting needs.

Following are the characteristics of a subsistence economy as the term is used here.

• The crucial themes is producing with the intention and expectation that the product will be used by the individual or his community to satisfy need, not with the intention of selling it to receive money. The focus is not on the production of commodities, items to be sold into the market in order to be able to buy products from the market.

• Subsistence is best thought of at the communal level, not that of the individual. In the subsistence economies of tribes, monasteries, peasant villages and communes the intention is to produce what members of the community want and to distribute those things to them via mutually beneficial procedures. These may involve selling but if so the point is only to facilitate exchange and accounting. There can also be trade between communities, and trade with an external conventional/modern economy, but these are minor elements and are engaged in to secure small quantities of locally unavailable items and are not engaged in to accumulate monetary wealth.

• The concern is to suffice, to produce just enough for a satisfactory life. Production, work, sales and consumption are minimised rather than maximised. Non-market and non-monetary processes are maximised, such as production within households, mutual exchanges, giving and assisting. Modern economies are obsessed with a fierce determination to maximize, income, profits, sales, GDP, trade, investment, wealth…

• Non-market considerations such as tradition, rights and justice take precedence in production, distribution and development decisions. The distinction between this situation and the modern economy is enormous. In a capitalist economy the only consideration is the maximization of profit, income, and monetary wealth. This is the basic cause of most of our problems. Many bad things happen because the moral, social, ecological etc costs involved can be ignored because the only factor that has to be taken into account by an investor, seller or purchaser is what will maximize monetary benefit to him. (Governments curtail the process and stop the market having effects that are too destructive, but this is the extent to which “socialist” principles restrain the operation of raw caplitalism.)

• The overriding element is that production is not carried out in order to make profits or accumulate wealth, or to invest a surplus in order to increase wealth or capital stock. Accumulation is the defining characteristic of capitalism, and shows its essential link with growth. Subsistence economies are stable and their participants are not seeking to accumulate.

• In a subsistence economy capital is of little or no importance. Development depends on whether the community has the labour, land, stone, timber, seeds, knowledge etc. necessary for the project, not on whether a sum of money can be obtained.

• Subsistence therefore involves independence from the global economy and its sources of capital, and the resulting debt and entrapment.

• A major characteristic of subsistence economies is security. Communities are independent of the normal national or international economies, being able to produce necessities for themselves, having inter-dependence and mutuality, and focusing on effectiveness and sufficiency rather than efficiency and maximising. These provide high levels of safety in the face of adverse natural events or the devastation that the fickle and predatory national and international economies can inflict. What matters is being able to continue to provide, to get by, no matter what happens and no matter if production is “inefficient’.

The Simpler Way is based on an analysis of the global situation which stresses the coming era of intense and irremediable scarcity. Growth and affluence society is grossly unsustainable and unjust and there is no possibility of maintaining the levels of resource use typical of rich countries today must be replaced by mostly small, localized and highly self-sufficient economies run by participatory processes, and based on a culture of frugal, cooperative non-material values. The argument is that we can live well in these societies. These economies are well-described as subsistence economies according to the above list of criteria.