The alternative?

The Simpler Way answer to this question has been detailed in various places (e.g., TSW: The Alternative) and will only be briefly summarized here. The only way to get per capita resource use rates right down while ensuring a good quality of life for all is through transition to settlements in which are core elements are;

• Most people live in communities that are mostly small in scale, closely integrated, highly self-sufficient and self governing, running their own local economies through cooperative and participatory processes.

•  Local resources are devoted to meeting local needs, with low dependence on imports from the national economy.

• Profit maximization does not drive economies.

• Mostly simpler ways and technologies, low intermediate and traditional technologies.

• High levels of community, cooperation and social cohesion. No unemployment; all have a livelihood. Committees oversee areas such as aged care, youth welfare, water recycling, orchards, leisure provision.

• Extensive development of commons providing many free goods especially “edible landscapes”.

• Large cashless, free goods and gifting sectors.

• Little need for transport, enabling bicycle access to work and conversion of most suburban roads to commons.

• For many, the need to work for a monetary income only one or two days a week.

• Predominantly collectivist values, prioritizing the welfare of the locality.

• Above all, non-material sources of life satisfaction, contentment with frugal material “living standards”

Thousands now live in these kinds of conditions within the global Eco-village Movement.(See GEN). The Remaking Settlements study (Trainer 2019) derives estimates supporting the claim that these procedures could cut the energy, dollar and footprint costs typical of a Sydney suburb by more than 90%, while improving all dimensions of the quality of life. Reductions of this magnitude are achieved by the Dancing Rabbit Eco-village in Missouri. (See Lockyer, 2017.)

Beyond these settlements there would still be “state” bureaucracies dealing with railways for instance, some large scale and mass production industries, such as for steel and cement, universities to train professionals, and (some small) cities. (For the detail see TSW: The Alternative.)

To summarise, when the discussion begins with an understanding of the situation in terms of biophysical limits, the logically inescapable conclusion is that only settlements of this general kind can enable a sustainable and just society. This transition goal is unlike those motivating previous revolutions.

This society cannot solve the problems.

The conventional assumption is that the major global problems can and will be solved by the institutions and processes of our present society, such as by parliaments implementing effective policies in line with international agreements to cut carbon emissions, and ordinary people accepting legislated adjustments in their circumstances. But from the perspective of The Simpler Way this expectation is now clearly mistaken. Given the foregoing account of the magnitude and nature of the problems, the institutions and political process of this society are not capable of rationally facing up to and making the enormous and disruptive changes required. Consider the following reasons:

1. The enormity of the changes required.

If rich world volumes of production and thus consumption of resources must be cut by up to 90%, then most of the present quantities of industry, transport, travel, construction, shopping, exporting, investing etc. has to be phased out. How is this going to be done? It cannot be a matter of closing a coal mine and transferring the workers to other jobs; because the amounts of work and jobs have to be cut dramatically. It has to involve the creation of totally new social structures and procedures, whereby most people can live well without producing or consuming anywhere near so much as before. This could not be done unless there was widespread and more or less universal public acceptance of radically new systems and arrangements which would be immensely disruptive and would generate a vast amount of disputation and resistance.

2. There isn’t time.

Even if the understanding and the will existed, changes of the huge and radical nature required would take many decades. They involve reversing what have been some of the fundamental drivers of Western civilization for the last two hundred years. Yet it is probable that the following three main global threats each give us no more than ten years if they cannot be eliminated'

2a. Carbon.

According to the IPCC the “carbon budget” to limit temperature rise to under 1.5 degrees will have been exhausted within about twelve years. (Irfan, 2018.). But energy demand is likely to rise 55% to 890 EJ/y by 2050 (Minqui, 2019) and the International Energy Authority (IEA 2018, p. 7) expects carbon emissions to increase until 2040. There is no possibility of achieving the 1.5 degree goal. In addition that budget only gives a 67% chance of remaining under 1.5 degrees, meaning that to have an acceptable chance the budget would have to be much smaller.

2b. Oil.

It is likely that a major and permanent collapse in oil availability will occur within a decade. (IEA 2018, Energy Skeptic, 2019,) It is generally recognized that the availability of conventional petroleum peaked around 2005 and has declined significantly since then. World supply has continued to increase, due to the remarkable rise in output from the advent of “fracking” in the US tight oil regions.

However there are reasons to expect this source to peak and decline soon. Almost none of the major producers has made a profit in any year of operation, while the industry has accumulated a debt over one quarter of a trillion dollars. This is despite extremely low interest rates, without which the industry might not have begun. At some point in the near future lenders are likely to cease providing the large sums needed to maintain output as wells rapidly deplete.

In addition Ahmed (2017) presents a very persuasive case that most Middle East oil producing nations are encountering such serious ecological, food, water, population growth and climate problems that their capacity to export could be largely eliminated within ten years. Meanwhile the amount of energy it takes to produce a barrel of oil is increasing significantly. Despite these alarming observations the precariousness of the petroleum situation is attracting little attention.

2c. Debt.

After remaining more or less stable for two decades, global debt has doubled in the last two, is now equivalent to around three times global GDP, is far higher than before the GFC, is accelerating, and is regarded by various economists as inevitably bound to crash soon.

Many other increasing difficulties will weigh against the prospects for dealing with the major problems in the short time available. Resource and environmental costs are rising. What might be the cost of stopping the loss of insect, bird, marine, mammal, plant and reptile species.

            3.  We do not have political institutions capable of making changes of the magnitude required.

Our systems are fairly good at making small changes, but changes which impact on large groups can easily be blocked. In addition the failure to compensate impacted groups properly guarantees resistance. This is due to the self-interested, competitive, individualistic ethos built into our culture and political system.  We refuse to share burdens appropriately. We dump them on the groups who can’t avoid them.  If a venture or whole industry is to be phased out those workers lose their jobs and have to move and the firms have to close, inflicting immense monetary and psychological costs. Miserly compensation might be given but there is no interest in sharing all the costs equally among all people in the nation, who are to benefit by the restructuring. Is there any wonder why people fight so hard against restructuring and why it is so difficult for governments to get big changes through.

5. Effective action could not be taken unless governments were predominantly “socialist”, but that is regarded as totally unacceptable.

The required restructuring could not be carried out in any society like the present one unless powerful centralized states could drive them through despite strenuous resistance. Needless to say it is not likely that readiness to accept “socialist” governments with the required powers is going to emerge any time soon. Resistance can be expected to be especially fierce on the part of those with most to lose and most power to thwart De growth, viz. the rich. A sufficient amount of De growth would mean the elimination of most of the investments yielding their wealth.

6. The conventional world view is totally against the required changes.

The dominant world view takes for granted that solutions to problems must involve high-tech “end of pipe” fixes that deal with the effects of unsustainable practices, as distinct from moving away from the practices that generated the effects. “Minerals getting scarce … then mine the moon.” The world view also takes it for granted that individual and national progress equals getting wealthier, that purchasing is the key to the good life, that competitive self-interest is socially progressive and collectivism is mistaken, that luxury and indulgence are attractive, and thus that frugality and self-sufficiency are not.

In addition modernity has developed structures and systems that would now make it very difficult or impossible to implement the necessary solutions, notably evident in the modern city where high rise and freeways have eliminated backyard fruit and vegetable gardening and have made energy-intensive transport, water, sewer, power etc. systems essential. Nations have become heavily dependent on trade to secure things they once made for themselves, meaning vast commitments to air and sea transport systems. Settlements have become leisure deserts meaning that resort must be made to energy-intensive globalized sources, including international holiday travel. Even more difficult to reverse would be lifestyle habits and skills. Large numbers now know little about sewing clothes, growing food, keeping chickens, making and fixing things and other aspects of frugal self sufficient living, and few see such activities as attractive.

Perhaps most problematic is the absence of any idea of ordinary people taking control over the running of their own neighbourhoods and towns.  Councils and state governments decide what is to be done and they look after maintenance and attend to any problems that arise.

But these reasons pale beside the most powerful one.  

7. There is not even the capacity to recognize the fundamental nature of the predicament and therefore what has to be done to solve it.

To repeat, the essential cause of the global sustainability predicament is over-production and over-consumption, i.e., the commitment to affluence and growth when the planet’s limited resources means that pursuit of that goal is generating the major global problems and leading us towards terminal collapse. This is why there is resource depletion, environmental damage, Third Word poverty and armed conflict.  However very few people understand this and the almost universally held supreme goal among governments, economists and publics remains strong commitment to limitless increase in production and consumption. The self destructive irrationality of this has been heavily documented over the past fifty years by various scientists and others who have elaborated the basic “limits to growth” case in a now vast literature, but the mainstream has more or less totally ignored this information and has little or no grasp of the situation

These seven considerations constitute an overwhelmingly strong case that this society is not capable of dealing with the predicament. Its decision making institutions are not able to analyse the situation accurately, face up to it, work out viable strategies, mobilise to achieve them, almost totally remake its economic, political, geographical and cultural systems, deal with the equity problems, or shift to a world view which contradicts and repudiates affluence and growth, globalization, high-tech salvation, complexity etc. Thus the fundamental premise in Simper Way transition theory is that there is no prospect of achieving transition to a sustainable and just society deliberately and rationally via the official policy making institutions and processes. The problems will not be solved. The only way a satisfactory society might be achieved is discussed below.

The inadequacy of common transition theories.

If the foregoing account accepted, little space needs to be given to assessing the merits of conventional, green and Left thinking about transition strategy.  Conventional strategies are only to do with lifestyle and legislative reforms to and within the current system and thus fail to grasp that the problems cannot be solved unless there is change from the growth and affluence system that inevitably generates them.  This also rules out almost all green thinking, parties and campaigns as these are not concerned with fundamental system change.

These points yield a core element in Simpler Way transition theory.  They help to explain how capitalism will be got rid of … it will get rid of itself.

Now what aspects of transition strategy do Marxists and the general Left get wrong. Unfortunately, just about all of them. Firstly they get the goal wrong. They have a long and unblemished record of striving to free the forces of production from the contradictions of the capitalist mode of production so that the throttles in the factories can be turned up enabling “…everyone to have a Mercedes.” Indeed Leigh Phillips (2014) and Greg Scharzar (2012) insist that socialism must embrace the Ecomodernist ultra tech-fix faith, saving the environment by moving agriculture to skyscraper greenhouses, adopting nuclear power, and boosting economic growth.

Now to means, that is, transition strategy.  The standard “Marxist” model assumes means whereby the ruling class is overthrown by a determined vanguard party willing to use force. The goal is to take state power, in order to then dive the necessary changes through from the new centre. In most if not all revolutionary movements in recent history this was probably the only option.  But the goal in those cases was basically to take control over the productive apparatus and then to run it more effectively and justly, getting rid of the contradictions previously interfering with output and distribution. However that can no longer be the goal. The goal now has to be reduce output and “living standards” and that goal cannot be achieved by the state or by force. It is a cultural problem, not primarily an economic or redistributive problem. It cannot be achieved unless people understand and willingly accept simpler lifestyles and systems. The state cannot give or enforce the world view, values or dispositions without which such structural changes cannot be made. No amount of subsidies or information or secret police can make villagers cooperate enthusiastically to plan and develop and run thriving cooperative, self-governing and frugal local economies.

“But…”, at this point the Eco-socialist would surely insist, “… if we had state power we could facilitate that change in consciousness, help people to see the need for localism etc..” Consider the logical confusion in this response.  No government with the required policy platform, one focused on transition to simpler systems and lifestyles and decimating the GDP, could get elected…unless people in general had long before adopted the associated extremely new and radical world view. Again, if they had done this so strongly that they were prepared to elect a party with the required platform then the revolution would have already been won!  The essence of this revolution is in the cultural change, and if that is achieved then the taking of state power and the changes thereby enabled will best be seen as consequences of the revolution.

Marxists take it for granted that capitalism has to be eliminated before the new society can be built … on the rubble. But in this new kind of revolution it is not necessary or wise to try to get rid of the old system as a step that can be taken prior to or separately from building the new one that. Simpler Way theory assumes the necessity for ”prefiguring”, building the new within the old, which is a central element in Anarchism.

These challenges to Marxist theory lead to a major Simpler Way tactical principle again contradicting standard radical left strategic doctrine; i.e. do not confront capitalism. The historically unique situation we are now entering presents us with the need for a non-confrontational strategy, one that involves turning away and “ignoring capitalism to death.” 

The Simpler Way strategy (in the present early Stage 1 of the revolution; see below) is to gradually build the alternative practices and systems which will enable more and more people to move out of the mainstream, to spurn consumer society, and to secure more of their material and social needs from the alternative systems and sources emerging within their neighbourhoods and towns. People will come across to The Simpler Way because as the ecological and financial crises intensify and seriously disrupt supply to their supermarkets they will increasingly come to realise that this is their best, indeed their only option. 

This “turning away” strategy is now widespread, for instance among the large scale Andean peasant movements, most notably the Zapatistas. (Appfel-Marglin, 1998, p. 39. See also Relocalise, 2009, Mies and Shiva, 1993,  Benholdt-Thompson and Mies, 1999, Korten, 1999, p. 262,  Rude, 1998, p. 53, Quinn, 1999, pp. 95, 137, Holloway 2002 p. 254.)

What will happen?

The noose will tighten, hopefully slowly but probably too fast.   We will soon enter a time of great and terminal troubles, very likely within two decades but probably well before that in view of the combined oil and debt situation. Many factors are gathering momentum and interacting to increase our difficulties.

Many problems interact and compound, leading Mason to see them culminating in “The 2030 Spike”, the title of his book. (2003.). The likely trajectory is to a sudden catastrophic and irretrievable break down of the fragile and highly interdependent global economy, quite conceivably involving the mass die off of population. Many analysts have tried to draw attention to fact that these factors are heading towards an inevitable system breakdown, including Korowicz 2012, Morgan 2013, Kunstler 2005, Greer 2005, Bardi 2011 and Duncan 2013.

As has been argued the major determinant of our fate will be the peaking of shale or tight oil. This is likely within a decade or less, as US fields decline, and/or as investors give up on getting any dividends.

The second extremely important determinant of our fate will be the global debt, now standing at over $250 trillion, more than three times total global annual GDP and far higher than before the first GFC. That is a bubble that must soon bust.

The coming crisis might not be the last but it is difficult to see how descent into unprecedented and probably terminal global breakdown could be avoided. The situation will be chaotic and confused and will not be clearly understood by governments. There will be anger, blame, scapegoating, recriminations and attacks on the wrong targets. Class, racial and national tensions and conflicts will be fuelled and groups will scramble to defend their threatened interests.  The middle class will be willing to see the state take coercive powers and reduce civil liberties to maintain “order” and protect its property and privileges. Trade wars and protectionism will flourish. The intense interest in looking for someone to blame will lead immigrants and foreigners to be accused of “taking our jobs.” There will be a surge in readiness to call for strong leadership, ruthless if necessary. The climate will weigh heavily against quiet, sober, rational cooperative reflection on what is going wrong and what needs to be done. The situation will be ripe for fascist regimes to emerge, especially as the capitalist class would welcome and fund them. The most impacted regions are likely to see descent towards rule by local war lords.

The most likely outcome is sudden collapse into a catastrophic global breakdown of “civilized” society, probably accompanied by major armed conflicts from local to international. Because the resource base will have been depleted, along with the sophisticated and energy-intensive systems it depends on, there will be no possibility of reconstructing existing systems. Very large global population decline is likely.

Implications for Simpler Way transition strategy.

The following discussion is based on the assumption that the breakdown will not be as serious as it probably will be. The hope must be for a slow Goldilocks depression, one that does not eliminate the possibility of building simpler systems but is savage enough to jolt people into realizing that the old system is irretrievably broken and can not be restored and that their only hope is to organise cooperative local economies as fast as they can.

Almost all people, along with governments, media and official agencies, presently share and cannot question the growth and affluence mentality. There is no possibility that rational discussion of the situation will lead them to accept the need for De growth, frugal lifestyles and radically new settlements and economies. They will only attend to such themes when their taken for granted world crashes around them. Even then it is likely that they will not make the right response and complete and irretrievable chaos will prevail, but transition to a sensible alternative will not take place unless the present system goes through a major breakdown

However it is plausible that a Goldilocks event will lead most ordinary people to realize that they must work out what they can do in their neighbourhoods to collectively provide for themselves as far as possible. There would probably be a rapid surge in involvement in the Transition Towns initiatives that have been growing over the last two decades. Their circumstances will make it obvious that they must cooperate and work out how to convert their living places into gardens, workshops, co-ops, orchards etc. Surely they will see that they must set up committees and working bees and town meetings to sort out how to get by. Most important will be the enforced shift in mentality, from being passive recipients of government, accepting rule by distant officials, to collectively taking control of their own fate. Similarly there will be a rapid shift in expectations; people will realise that they cannot have their old resource-squandering self-indulgent affluence back. They will see that they will have to be content with what is sufficient, and will have to cooperate and prioritise the common good, not compete as individuals for selfish goals. (Ironically it is likely that the experienced community and quality of life will immediately improve.) Things like this are already happening where Neoliberalism has had its most destructive effects, for instance in Detroit and in Greece. A most impressive example, the Catalan Integral Cooperative is described in Trainer, 2018.

The heroic pre-figurers.

The chances of the right things being done have been greatly increased over the last three decades by the emergence of the Eco-village and Transition Towns movements. There are now thousands of people living in highly self-sufficient intentional communities, and involved in efforts to make their towns more self-sufficient, cooperative and self-governing. The government of Senegal has the goal of transforming 1,400 villages into Eco-Villages. (St Onge, 2014.) This practical phenomenon is being accompanied by a large literature elaborating the case for local alternatives.

This scene provides us with the answer to the general question of transition strategy.  What is to be done?  The answer is, build Eco-villages and Transition Towns.  This is the Anarchist principle of “pre-figuring”; that is, work on establishing the new systems here and now within the old. Don’t wait until the old system has been swept away and don’t prioritise fighting head-on against it. (Rai, 1995, p. 99, Pepper, 1996, pp. 36, 305, Bookchin, 1980, p. 263, Holloway, 2002.)

Note again, the state cannot do these things. It can facilitate them especially by making resources available by diverting them from the most profitable ventures, changing laws relating to planning and cooperatives etc., and enabling non-profit public banks, mostly at the town level. However the state will do these things only if and when the new world view and goals have become sufficiently widespread.

The point of pre-figuring can easily be misunderstood. It is not primarily to increase the number of post-revolutionary ways in existence, and the assumption is not that just setting up post-revolutionary arrangements one by one will lead to these eventually having replaced consumer-capitalist ways. The main point is educational/ideological.  By becoming involved in the many emerging local initiatives activists are likely to be in the most effective position to acquaint participants and onlookers with the Simpler Way perspective, and with the need to eventually go on from the present localism preoccupations to the more distant Stage 2 task of dealing with growth, the state, the market and the capitalist system. (See further below.)

Only when there is widespread acceptance of the new worldview will it be possible to make changes at the level of the state, national and global economies. Thus in this revolution it is necessary to think in terms of two stages. The focal concern in the present Stage 1 is slowly building in our towns an “Economy B” under the old economy, whereby people can devote local productive capacities to collectively meeting as many local needs as possible.  The crucial sub-goal here is increasing the extent to which citizens take control of their town, as distinct from allowing their fate to be determined by distant politicians, bureaucrats, market forces and corporations.

Stage 2 of the revolution.

Following is a brief indication of how the latter stages of the revolution might eventuate, if we are lucky and if we work hard at it.

As local economies become more widespread and elaborate and as the global economy falls into greater difficulties it will become increasingly obvious that scarce national resources must be deliberately and rationally geared to the production of basic necessities, as distinct from being left for market forces to allocate to the most profitable purposes. There will always be items that towns cannot produce for themselves. Most of these can come from surrounding regions, including grain and dairy produce, tools and light machinery, materials, appliances, glass and irrigation equipment (…although the Remaking Settlements study finds that surprisingly little would need to be imported from further afield.) However some will have to come from more distant steel and cement works etc. It will therefore be necessary for all towns and regions to be able to import these few but crucial items from the national economy, and to be able to produce some of them to export into it.

These conditions will generate the pressure that in time will force states to carry out revolutionary change in national economies. People will become acutely aware that scarce national resources must not be wasted and must be devoted to providing settlements and regions with the crucial materials and manufactures they cannot produce for themselves. This will require planning to distribute to all towns the opportunity to produce and export some few items, so that they can pay for their importation of those few they need. There will also be some (few) tasks and functions that must be planned and administered from more central agencies, such as allocating water use throughout a river basin, coordinating nation rail systems, and facilitating the movement of workers from moribund industries to new ones, again bearing in mind that the total volume of producing going on will have to be cut to a small fraction of the present amount.

Thus the survival imperatives emanating from the grass roots will force central governments to greatly increase intervention, planning, regulation and restructuring. It might at first sight seem that this means the need for and emergence of greatly increased state power.  On the contrary it is likely to be a process whereby power is taken away from the centre, and whereby citizens exercise increasing control over central governments, via their town assemblies. The tone will shift from making requests on the state to making demands, and then to pushing in to take increasing power over the planning and decision making processes. (Versintjan and Herson-Ford, 2019, put a similar argument.)

It will be increasingly recognized that the local is the only level where the right decisions for self-sufficient communities can be made. Thus the remnant state-level agencies will in time become controlled by and servants of the towns and regions being run via the typical Anarchist processes involving thoroughly participatory town self-government. Eventually all significant decisions including the biggest, will be made by town assemblies voting on policy options brought down to the town level from conferences of delegates from towns and regions (drawing on professional expertise where appropriate.)

The chances of the transition proceeding as has been outlined here are not at all good, but the argument has been that this is the path that must be worked for. It is the only way we can get through to a sensible society. One of its merits is that it envisages a transition that could be entirely peaceful and non-authoritarian.

It should be evident that both the nature of the alternative society that has been sketched here, and the transition path to it, embody classical Anarchist principles. In the coming era of limits, scarcity and frugality only communities running on Anarchist principles can deliver a sustainable and just society, and the path to the establishment of those communities cannot be other than via pre-figuring and ordinary citizens building self sufficient, cooperative and thoroughly participatory arrangements within existing settlements.  Neither the new society nor the path to it can involve significant degrees of centralization. The appropriate world view is therefore Eco-Anarchism, rather than Eco-Socialism.