Chapter 8 outlined the trajectory we seem to be on, a descent into a time of great troubles and breakdown which many people think is likely to end in a total collapse of “civilisation”. This chapter discusses the way we could get through to the very different post-capitalist society sketched in the previous chapter. It is not a prediction that we will be able to do that. It indicates the kind of activities we need to focus on to maximise our chances.
As Chapter 8 argued, this society is incapable of rationally and deliberately analysing our situation accurately and facing up to making what would be seen as the very unpalatable changes necessary to save itself. There is no way we can now get off the path of descent. But if enough of us work hard and are very lucky it is possible that eventually a satisfactory new society can be built as the old one crumbles.
Let’s proceed as if the troubles will come upon us in a relatively gradual and non-chaotic way. That is, let’s assume we descend into a Goldilocks depression, one that is not so savage as to eliminate all hope of reconstruction but severe enough to get rid of the old ways and jolt people into realising what the new ways must be, and into determining to establish them where they live.
The “revolutionary” path will not be that assumed in the typical socialist discussion of strategy. It takes for granted that salvation must involve first getting rid of capitalism and taking control of the state, either by democratic electoral means or by violent overthrow. However the typical socialist path involves seriously mistaken means to mistaken goals.
The major premise in socialist transition thinking is that we have to work hard to get rid of capitalism, and that this will very likely involve violence and damage. But Simpler Way strategic thinking holds open the possibility that we might have to make little or no effort to do this, because capitalism is well into its death throes; it is getting rid of itself. As Marx saw, its contradictions are intensifying and will eventually kill it. Its fundamental commitment to the ever-increasing accumulation of wealth is now generating accelerating problems of resource access and undermining the ecological and social conditions the system depends on. It is generating extraordinary levels of wealth for a few and immiseration for most, and discontent about this is probably the factor most likely to bring it down.
There is nothing we can do to affect this trajectory, and it is not likely to be a pleasant one. The implication for socialists to consider is the possibility that working here and now to take state power off the capitalist class is a mistake. That is not what we should be working at here and now. Yes, seeing the capitalist class no longer in control of the state is a major long-term goal, but trying to bring that about in the near future via electoral or other means is futile; it is not going to create the prerequisites for system change, which are to do with transformation of ideas and values.
Consider again the mistaken logic in the socialist approach. There are only two ways that the control of the state for Simpler Way purposes could come about. The first is via some kind of coup whereby power is seized by a vanguard party which has the intention of implementing The Simpler Way, and then converting to it the masses that don’t understand it and don’t want it. This is not even worth discussing. The second path would be via the election to government of a party with a Simpler Way platform. But that could not happen unless the (cultural or ideological) revolution for a Simpler Way had previously been won. A Simpler Way party could not be elected to control of the state until after it had persuaded the majority of people to its ideas and proposals. Thus the revolution would be essentially constituted by the shift to widespread acceptance of the Simpler Way vision. Taking state power would then become conceivable, but as a consequence of the revolution. Obviously the initial task is to work on achieving the monumentally big and difficult cultural change from the consumer-capitalist mentality to the Simpler Way world view. Nothing can be achieved unless and until this is done. This is the arena to which our efforts must be directed now and for as long as we have left before the crunch.
This suggests a strategic principle that socialists cannot comprehend; i.e., “Do not fight capitalism; ignore it to death”, and instead get on with building elements of its replacement. Socialists cannot build their intended new system while the old one is in place, but we anarchists can start building elements of the new one here and now, and doing so is central in our revolutionary strategy. The agent of change in this revolution is not the working class, it is citizens of any kind, and the revolution will not be led by a determined “vanguard party” willing to use force to take the state, or trying to take it via electoral means.
Essential to this departure from standard socialist transition doctrine is the recognition of the centrality of the awareness-raising task. This is emphasised in the strategic thinking of some notable anarchists of the past, including Tolstoy, Gandhi and Kropotkin. (Marshall, 1992). Versions of this “turning away” strategy are increasingly being endorsed and practiced, for instance among the large-scale Andean peasant movements, the Zapatistas and the Rojavan Kurds. (Trainer, 2020c. See also Appfel-Marglin, 1998, p. 39; Post Carbon Institute, 2009; Mies and Shiva, 1993; Benholdt-Thompson and Mies, 1999; Korten, 1999, p. 262; Rude, 1998, p. 53; Quinn, 1999, pp. 95, 137; Rai, 1995, p. 99; Pepper, 1996, pp. 36, 305; Bookchin, 1980, p. 263).
This is the anarchist strategy of “prefiguring”; i.e., start building the alternative now within the old system. The point of prefiguring can easily be misunderstood. It is not primarily to bring more post-revolutionary ways into 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 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 localist preoccupations to the more distant Stage 2 problem of dealing with growth, the state, the market and the capitalist system. (See further below.) The point of prefiguring activity is, in other words, cultural and educational. Establishing small examples of the radical new arrangements is likely to be the best way to help people to see the desirability of those ways, and to see the need to abandon conventional ideas, systems and values. Only when there is widespread acceptance of the new world view will it be possible to make structural changes at the level of the state and the national and global economies.
But will the monster turn on and crush us, when it realises we are a threat? That’s conceivable, but it is by no means obvious that it will be able to do much about us. Rulers short of resources will be struggling to run failed states and to control chaotic, discontented masses, while we quietly build up our local systems.
As the globalised resource-intensive, capital-intensive, profit-determined system increasingly bogs down in trouble, and as conditions in existing cities and towns deteriorate, people will be forced towards going local and collective. Of course it is far from inevitable that they will smoothly adopt the ways outlined in Chapter 10 and there is a strong chance that they will not do so at all. The emergence of failed states and chaotic rule by gangs and warlords is likely. But the work now being done by people in many alternative movements is spreading the right ideas and this might get enough people to start developing alternative systems in their neighbourhoods, suburbs and towns in the time available.
The crucial sub-goal at this stage is helping towns to recognise the need to take collective control of the town, to work towards the town being able to think out what essential needs are not being met and to form the cooperatives and committees and working-bees that will provide as many basic goods and services as possible. This means working to build a needs-driven economy underneath the present profit-and-market driven economy. Sometimes this can be done by working with and within existing councils. Sometimes it is best done by ignoring officialdom as the Catalan Integral Cooperative has done.
Many of the things discussed above are being done by thousands of people living in Eco-villages and Transition Towns all around the world. Just glance through the Global Eco-village Network site. (In Senegal the government’s goal is to transform 14,000 villages into Eco-villages. St Onge, 2014.) Leahy and Goforth (2018) document similar inspiring alternative initiatives in African villages. The remarkable achievements of the Spanish Catalan Integral Cooperative movement and the Rojavan Kurds have been mentioned above. The Dancing Rabbit Eco-village in Missouri aims to become an example town of 500 living in these resource-cheap ways. In the poorest regions of the world millions are involved in radically alternative development initiatives, including Campesino, Ubuntu, Zapatista and Satyagraha movements. So there should be no doubt that these ways are both workable and desirable, and gaining strength.
It is very likely that as conditions deteriorate communities will come under powerful pressures to do these things. They will realise that their governments will not and cannot help them, because resources will be too scarce and they will be fixated on helping the business sector to “get the economy going again”. People will realise that they must get together to organise ways of providing what they need as best they can.
The task for revolutionaries here and now is to help us increase awareness of the unacceptability of capitalism and the existence of an attractive and workable alternative. That’s the most revolutionary action we can take now, in this early phase of the transition. Everyone can contribute, if only by raising the issues wherever possible in everyday discussion. In addition, there are many practical steps that can be taken. High among these is forming community gardens and co-ops primarily as educational devices, stacked with display boards introducing alternative visions for the town or suburb.
Our fate depends on the outcome of this race between our awareness-raising efforts and the slide towards system breakdown. The aim must be to attract enough people to the new vision to give us a good chance of establishing the new ways as the old ones disintegrate.
There will be two stages in this revolution. This book has mainly been about Stage 1, that is, the process whereby people come to realise that capitalism must be scrapped and that we must degrow to some kind of Simpler Way. But Stage 2 is about change beyond the town or suburb; it is about remaking the national and international scene.
The process is theoretically simple, which is not to say it is going to be easy to achieve. Local economies will become more widespread, elaborate and stronger as the global economy deteriorates. It will become increasingly obvious that scarce national resources must be deliberately and rationally devoted to the production of basic necessities to provide mostly to the local economies, 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. In general most of these can come from surrounding regions, including grain and dairy produce, tools and light machinery, various materials, appliances, glass and irrigation equipment (although the Remaking Settlements study finds that surprisingly little would need to be imported from outside the region.) However some will have to come from more distant sources, such as steel and cement. 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 a relatively few items to export into that economy to pay for the imports.
These conditions will generate the pressure from the local level that in time will force states to carry out revolutionary reorientation of national economies. There will always be some tasks and functions that must be coordinated or administered to some extent from more centralised agencies, such as allocating water use throughout a river basin, integrating communications and facilitating the movement of workers from moribund industries to new communal economies.
Thus, the survival imperatives emanating from the grassroots will force central governments to greatly increase intervention, planning, regulation and restructuring in the public interest. It might at first sight seem that this will mean the emergence of or need for greatly increased state power. On the contrary, we can make it 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 taking increasing power over the decreasing number of more centralised planning and decision-making processes, for instance by towns setting up their own farms, energy supply systems, welfare and employment services. We will take many functions off the state and tell it what it must do in the remaining areas, via our conferences and federations. We must work to make the state enable such initiatives and increasingly to tell it what to do, so that it increasingly becomes merely an administrative agency that implements decisions we will make at the local level.
So the goal is for communities to increasingly go around the state and take matters into their own collective hands, by establishing many of their own supply systems and service provisions, and forming regional federations. These will in time have developed the power to make the state do what we want, transforming it into a powerless executive agency administering relatively few activities, with all decision-making power located down at the town level.
At present the chances of this happening are not at all good, but the argument has been that this is the path that must be worked for. There is no other way to get through to the kind of post-capitalist society we need. Keep in mind that it envisages a transition that could be entirely peaceful and non-authoritarian.
A major issue that has not been addressed so far in this account is the likely response to the coming breakdown by the capitalist class and its associates. They will of course make strenuous efforts to preserve their situation, privileges and power. But the coming mega-depression will get rid of most, if not all of them. It will write off vast amounts of investment, debt, corporations, factories and assets. It will therefore clear away the system, and resource depletion alone will prohibit its reconstruction. More importantly, it will eliminate capitalism’s legitimacy.
In the early stages many bankrupt factory owners will be happy to join community collectives, transferring their assets to collectives. (This is what many did during the Spanish civil war.) What remains of capitalism is very likely to attempt to shift to its fascist form. Many regions, especially in the Third World will be cut adrift as plantations, sweat shops and mines cease to be profitable, and therefore will be liberated to follow the Zapatistas. Attempts to impose savage “austerity” on rich-world masses are likely. The outcome will depend on the extent to which people have come to clearly understand that their fate depends on how well they develop local systems. If in general this is not done in the short time left then the longer-term trajectory will be towards failed states, warlords, semi-feudalism and large-scale population die-off.
The supremely important thing we should all be doing is simply taking every reasonable opportunity to raise the issues discussed above. We cannot expect to see the capitalist system replaced with a sustainable and just one unless and until most people have come to think this is desirable. We should be constantly on the lookout for a chance to draw attention to the issues. A few words in passing can be enough to lodge or reinforce an idea. Let people know that you are not just expressing your own ideas but that there are now significant social movements working on these themes. Develop a stock of good summary outlines and arguments to be able to give or send to people who show an interest or with whom you get into an argument. (The Simpler Way website is intended to provide such material.)
It is important to connect with like-minded people. If there are not groups nearby dealing with related themes, such as a community garden, get a few people together and discuss how you might from time to time do something to feed into the thinking of local people. The aim is to encourage them to consider how they might start trying to do something about local needs. A small group might explore the possibility of an occasional community meeting for dinner and discussion, letter-boxing an outline of the venture and suggesting some themes. If nothing else such a gathering might introduce a few people to the longer-term vision of an alternative community-run town to get us through probably difficult times ahead.
A more elaborate venture would be to occasionally organise a table and posters at the shopping centre on a Saturday morning. Behind the table set up a large map of the suburb completely redesigned along the lines suggested in Chapter 10, with many streets dug up and replaced by gardens. Be ready to explain to puzzled onlookers, an to provide handouts. This map could be a centrepiece for many activities, e.g., school visits. Even better would be a multi-piece diorama representing your suburb now and how we could remake its geography.
The map could have overlays indicating how the new local geography would include energy sources, animals, industries, material sources, etc. One of these could represent social relations showing many people presently separate, isolated and bored with no contribution to make, and another board might indicate how rich community could be here. Another board might point to the huge amount of resources we have in our suburb that are being wasted (most obviously the time spent watching screens for “leisure”) and what these could be producing via working-bees. A core theme would be, look at all the exciting things we ordinary people could be doing to develop and run a great community here. Essential would also be clear indication of why we believe there is a need to think about these alternatives, i.e., some reference to the limits, unsustainability and justice themes and the coming era of big problems.
The table could also become a regular surplus and gift exchange centre where people can leave fruit from their trees, or clothes etc.
If and when sufficient participants become involved, door-knock “research” would become very useful. Announce that you are from a group investigating the “progress” and needs of the suburb. Ask people how they see the issues, what are the problems around here, with a view to getting clearer about their thinking and informing them about our project and getting names of those interested in joining an email list. Later this approach can reveal resources we can start using: someone has a spare shed, a ute or garden tools they could lend, spare time, surplus fruit from backyard trees. Especially important will be using this approach to list skills that can be drawn on, including people willing to teach knitting, recipes, crafts, gardening, grafting or bee keeping. We can test ideas; what do they think about organising working-bees to improve the neighbourhood? Even if no activity can be organised, ideas have been introduced.
Another theme might be working up lists whereby households might be able to provide various things for themselves via home-made and cheaper ways. Similarly a list of people with relevant skills and willing to share them could be drawn up, e.g., how to use local roadside “weeds” in cooking.
If and when enough people have become involved, a valuable device to organise is an occasional “alternatives tour day”. We work on setting up various items illustrative of alternative ways, within some of our houses or back yards. At Fred’s place we might make a mud brick dog kennel and an earth oven, and put together a set of impressive pictures of earth building. At Mary’s place we might build the chicken and rabbit pen, compost heap and gardens, and elaborate boards explaining the scope for urban food production and nutrient recycling and footprint reduction. Alice might have room for the diorama of the new suburban geography. Tom’s garage workshop might be able to illustrate the joys of making things using hand tools, with sturdy furniture and toys nearby. Pat has a pantry stocked with preserves from her garden and that of friends and neighbours, enabling her to detail the monetary savings and the footprint implications. And Alf produces fish in his small backyard tanks.
We do not need much on the ground to be able to put on a very interesting and informative tour. That dog kennel and the pictures enable us to drive home the enormous benefits of earth building; we don’t need to have a whole house to do that. So these items are the pretexts, the illustrative devices we use to explain in detail the alternative ways that could be adopted. We stack each site with lots of display boards, and we work out a sequence that will best present our world view convincingly.
We organise walking tours around these sites, followed by a picnic. We get local teachers to bring their classes on the tour. We develop and improve our presentation all the time, and before long we are hosting visits from other suburbs, and making electronic versions of the tour available.
We door-knock to find people who could help elaborate the tour, especially older people with skills and who might have tools, bits of machinery, sheds, relics that we can add to the tour. Does anyone have a lemon or peach tree that produces too much, and that we could use to illustrate the power of “gleaning”? We invite them to join the venture.
Another strategy is to “piggy-back” public issues. When a suitable issue become focal in the local press we weigh in with commentary from our perspective. When the council proposes building a car park on that vacant lot, we write a letter to the local paper suggesting why a community orchard would make more sense. When an issue is high on the public agenda it is more likely that a letter on it from our angle will be published. We watch for pegs to hang our case on.
Then there is targeting likely “influentials” to win them over to our cause. If you find a columnist or talk-back radio personality who might be persuaded to our view, work on him/her over time.
Make contact with schools and teachers. Look at the curriculum to find points where we can suggest teachers use material from our perspective. Offer speakers, for example some older people who can take along knitting, baked cakes, hand-made slippers and toys. Invite the teachers to bring the class on our tour.
Look for opportunities to get existing groups and campaigns to include these themes in their goals and messages. Many community gardens for instance could add displays and models explaining the issues and provide information and contact numbers. Persuade the local Men’s Shed to become the leading community fixer and chicken pen builder.
Be very patient; it all adds up, although you probably can’t see this happening. Every time a Simpler Way message is delivered it reinforces the theme in someone’s mind, or someone is hearing it for the first time. This is how the Berlin Wall was brought down! Extreme, surprising and apparently sudden changes are usually the result of a long process of slowly accumulating rethinking and desire for change, which can be invisible until the last minute, but when it reaches a critical level everything flips over.
Therefore we must be patient and not expect to see much, if anything, for our efforts, but be consoled by the probability that the discussion we had with the butcher this morning has added to the accumulating climate of opinion. The concern must be to just keep plodding away, seeing little for our efforts but knowing that we are contributing the crucial level of understanding and opinion, without which nothing significant can be achieved.
Ideally, the little group we form to start doing these things eventually grows to become the Community Development Co-operative, which develops and coordinates the new needs-driven economy of our suburb.
We need ways of keeping in touch and accumulating wisdom as we plod away at the task. We need to be able to share ideas on what seems to work and what to not spend scarce time on, and we need to be able to make new information available to people in other towns and suburbs. We need to build a sense of being in a big team.
There are obviously strong reasons for being pessimistic about the global situation, and about the chances of achieving the transition this book argues for. But there are also strong reasons for being optimistic. These alternative ideas and ways are rapidly gaining attention. Serious questioning of economic growth got going with the publication of The Limits to Growth in 1972, but it made little headway until around 1990. Since then however we have seen the emergence of Herman Daley’s Steady-Stage economics, the Global Ecovillage and Transition Towns movements. Above all there has been the advent and rapid expansion of the Degrowth movement. Publications such as Resilience, Symbiosis and ROAR, and agencies such as the Simplicity Institute are now spreading the ideas. On the other side of the ledger there is widespread and deep discontent with capitalism, increasing the readiness to consider alternatives. But much of this effort does not reflect a sufficiently clear understanding of the role of the capitalist economy in generating the global predicament. It is hoped that this book helps to change that.