A degrowth open letter circulating recently – ‘Degrowthers of the World, Unite: A proposal for degrowth academics, activists, and practitioners to join forces as equals’ [reproduced below] – calls for solidarity, but it is partial and contradictory, so we’re not signing up. As we are all for solidarity, self-organisation and degrowth, we thought it would be useful to explain why.
While the letter refers to class it focuses on a narrow quasi-class war where academics play rich and famous capitalists and ‘activists’ are idealised as workers and lumpen proletariat. Its initiators call for a stream of income to flow from academics to activists as payment and for activists to gain merit and status. There are several problems with this framing.
Activist-scholars
Many apparent academics identify as ‘activist scholars’. An activist scholar researches, writes and talks on matters about which they are passionate, wearing their hearts on their sleeves. They are the jokers in the academic pack. Sometimes they are celebrated for being activist scholars but more often than not they are challenged, denigrated, even persecuted for their honesty. This means they miss out on plum jobs and are treated with suspicion, as if not real academics. Perhaps this marginalisation is justified – activist scholars often adopt ways of researching such as militant research, activist research and experimental research, working alongside and in movements, and working on movement research outside of paid hours. They act irrespective of – and do not aspire to – ‘status’ and ‘merit’, taking up ethical rather than self-interested positions. In short, they chose not to sit on their derrières in ivory towers.
The academic workplace
Conditions and incomes in academia proper are akin to current hospitality and creative industries in as much as they are highly casualised, characterised by a competing stars elite and a host of underpaid insecure workers. The average Australia university has less than one in three academics in secure employment, with office space, who is replaced by someone when they are sick. Most are precariously employed, hot desk and have to work (or catch up after) when they’re sick. One of us has lived their entire ‘academic’ life like this, with a reserve set of skills to support other work. Even the most secure ‘continuing’ staff can be retrenched. Per hour academic payments seem decent but academic work requires a lot more unpaid labour. It usually takes at least double the time one is remunerated for to mark essays. Insecure workers notoriously agree to substandard pay rates and conditions often because they, like artists and activists, are attracted to work that can be inspirational and radical in its own right.
In short academics are workers. Worker struggles, and conditions for academics in universities is typical across the world. We all live in late stage capitalism. In the most prestigious and comfortable university in Australia, where over 70 per cent of staff members were casuals or on 1–3 year contracts in 2018, it took the union, a casuals network, a wage theft dispute, rallies and occupations, to force the University of Melbourne to make $45 million remunerative back payments by the end of April 2023. And academic activists are renowned for campaigning for other, as well as their own, causes. During the Israeli war against Gaza, Palestine, universities became and have remained centres of protest by both students and staff, leading to expulsions, derision and even violence.
In Australia university workers make up fewer than 2% of the workforce. Picking on academic income streams seems a risky business decision. Why not re-frame the solidarity initiative proposed as ‘all with a decent income’ instead of focusing on not so rich and well-regarded academics?
Institutionalising resistance
The rise of the paid, professional, unionist is enough to show that activists being paid for activism risks the outcome of mirroring and prolonging – not overturning – capitalism. Similarly, the development of environmental non-government organisations from activist movements has demonstrated co-option, institutionalisation and split volunteers and paid organisers into two camps. These examples show that questions around which activist campaigns and strategies should be supported, and how much time should be spent on those various activities competing for attention, will preoccupy both paying and paid participants in the solidarity proposal made. Substantial numbers of degrowth activists have scratched their heads about formalising the international degrowth network for these reasons – that it might end up in these ineffective, mainstreaming and time-consuming acrobatics. Would such institutionalised professional activists be able to speak better with ‘the masses’ than what happens now, with the degrowth movement, in fact, gaining quite a bit of traction?
What about all the more-than-workers?
In an era of intersectionality the letter appears a little bit privileged, European and male-centred. Where and how are the caring concerns and commoning interests of women, people of the Global South, and those with disabilities – to name just a few – represented in this workerist proposal? Such groups tend to challenge transactional worker and payment relations. We are not minorities. We want to change the world of paid work not replicate capitalist practices in supposed resistance. We don’t want to rely on an income stream from other workers. If all ‘registered’ members had to support such a proposal, wouldn’t this make the degrowth movement look like a tithing cult? We want a world replete with social and ecological values, a culture of autonomy and diversity.
What is degrowth?
Degrowth is about challenging capitalism and the practice of paid work, and about transforming work itself. Over the last 50 years various forms of activism for ecological and social change have evolved models to take account of needing to sustain ourselves in the here and now while trying to transform the world, in effect living as revolutionaries. Most involve part-time work, living as modestly as possible in terms of ecological footprints, collectively creating caring households, cultures and communities that express degrowth approaches, collaboratively spreading ‘the word’, campaigning, protesting, and winning others over.
Supporting degrowth activities
Change happens in various places and in mysterious ways, so experimentation and learning are central. University courses can be useful sites of knowledge and skills sharing, as are prefigurative degrowth formations. Already existing prefigurative hybrids seem more revolutionary in developing fair and nimble forms of solidarity and support than the initiative proposed. Prefigurative hybrids are a range of experimental organisations and activities forging practices that express degrowth ecological and social values directly, where relations between people and Earth are constructive, respectful and strong. They include forms of cooperative, collective and collaborative activities that disrupt notions of paid work and other forms of commodification. They emphasise quality, sociality and environmental efficiencies.
Prefigurative hybrids show and spread frugal abundance, conviviality, convivial technology, self-governance and autonomy in open (connected, outward looking) localised economies. Some are based primarily on degrowth, others secondarily, yet more – such as permaculture, eco swaraj, buen vivir – are degrowth aligned or have similar goals and prefer a pluriversal self-identity. Beyond reading descriptions and analyses of them, you can donate to them at their sites. All these practitioner activities engage with activists, students, researchers, governments, unions, real people – basically anyone with or wanting to know about degrowth values and goals. A little sample follows: degrowth formations Cargonomia and Haus des Wandels, the network of networks Global Tapestry of Alternatives, and alternative ‘thinktank’ Laboratory for New Economic Ideas (Konzeptwerk Neue Ökonomie).
There is a diversity of activist giving and taking to support degrowth activist needs and activities. ‘Passing around the hat’, seeking project support through crowdfunding, and voluntary donations have many benefits. Anyone can give voluntarily according to their means at the time, and make selections according to perceived need and specific cause. This saves time compared with decision-making processes of applications and selections; and fitting in with workplace conditions and payment systems regulated by nation states.
Due to the urgency and critical nature of our current circumstances we believe the established ad hoc system has more benefits than the recent proposal. Both of us have engaged in activism, are activists, and supported our own and other worthy activism monetarily through these means – including aligning ourselves with certain Global South causes.
Finally
We understand the frustration with having to tolerate rock star degrowthers while a lot of us get worn out with our shoulders to the wheel.
Perhaps we should have more festivals of degrowth rather than conferences?
We completely endorse an open, practical and strategic conversation about pulling together more effectively and efficiently.
Though critical, we hope our contribution constructively assists in this arena of debate.
Anitra Nelson and Terry Leahy, August 2024
Degrowthers of the World, Unite: A proposal for degrowth academics, activists, and practitioners to join forces as equals
By: Vlad Bunea, Félix Garnier
08.07.2024
An open letter presented by Félix Garnier at the Pontevedra Conference on June 19th 2024, at the open mic session.
Colleagues, friends, fellow humans,
There is increasing frustration among degrowth activists that the general trend of the degrowth movement remains heavily European-centered, and overly academic. Thousands of degrowth activists struggle in the shadows of capitalism to contribute to the movement, while having to make ends meet on little income, or no income whatsoever. Recognition for effort remains strongly coupled with academic status, seniority or popularity. In a true egalitarian movement, merit and status would have no place[i], and would be recognized for what they really are: delusional creations of society.
Most degrowth literature remains deeply captured by jargon and abstract theoretical pirouettes. Academic jargon remains largely impenetrable for many trade unionists, the working class in general, and specifically many people on the barricades of life in the majority world. Perhaps a PhD theoretical researcher may not understand the work of a master electrician, and perhaps our master electrician may not enjoy the language of the symbiotic strategies of non-reformist reforms. This comparison of professions is not meant to suggest anti-intellectualism, or to elevate one profession over another. This is a call for solidarity and egalitarian recognition of effort.
There has been little progress made towards in person engagement with the working class, outside published theory and lively theoretical debates, after a decade of conferences. While we understand the necessity - and some argue, the inevitability - of degrowth, the public relations work of degrowth remains lacking, in spite of the efforts of many learned scholars and activists.
These realities inspire us to make the following five proposals addressed to all degrowth scholars, activists, and practitioners:
1.Decouple recognition from status and merit. The effort to build the degrowth movement is distributed unequally. It is also constructed on unequal histories. Some were lucky to become well-paid academics, some are toiling on assembly lines, on farms, or in cubicles. We all share equal finitude and equal uniqueness as human beings. Comradery and understanding should be based on egalitarian principles of finitude and uniqueness, and not on status or socio-geographical placement in life.
2.Create a Solidarity Fund. Contribution would be voluntary, but we strongly believe this would be a good way to support the highlighting of more diverse voices within the Degrowth community. Walking the talk has more chance of changing the world, than just talking the talk, or writing the talk. The Solidarity Fund would be managed by people selected by sortition, and rotated frequently. We mean to leave the pool of selection open for further discussion. Several pools could be considered: people who contribute with money, or registered members of the IDN, or anyone who contributes to the Global Policy Cloud with an entry (see link below), including people from the Global South. We lean towards a pool that does include non-contributors. The administrators of the fund would distribute money based on transparent decisions. All self-declared degrowthers could contribute 1% of pretax income up to $50,000 or equivalent, 3% from what exceeds $50,000 up to $100,000, or equivalent, and 100% of all income that exceeds $100 000, or equivalent. This proposal is inspired by the work of trade unions, and should receive significant support within the degrowth movement, since maximum income and maximum wealth are among top degrowth policies.
3.Make proactive efforts to engage with the working class, indigenous peoples, environmental activists, and people of the majority world. Invite participants to degrowth conferences by financing their participation in person, or remotely, through the Solidarity Fund.
4.Promote actively and support collaboration within the movement - such as the work of the International Degrowth Network and all its members - at degrowth events and in degrowth literature, as much as possible. Solidarity is about building bridges, and mutual support. It seems like too often the academic community is not willing to give more space or publicity to activists and working-class people. This needs to change. When you show up for them, they will show up for you, and for us.
5.Create or support boots-on-the-ground missions of paid activists that would engage with the working class, indigenous people, environmental activists, people of the Global South, and local communities. These professional activists will organize teach-learn-listen events with the purpose of building bottom-up frameworks of policy, vision, and strategy that would convince governments to act, the ruling class to back down, and the citizens of the world to rise up. These events may take the form of townhall meetings where speakers get to present issues, then larger discussions may begin where everyone interacts with everyone else to teach-learn-listen from each other. Activists can be the organizers of these events. They would act as a conduit. These will be events of equals. Input from these events can be collected in a policy cloud, documents, recordings, etc., and maintained in the public domain for research, political action, and strategy, for the use of any organization, network, or alliance that works to phase out capitalism.
Colleagues, friends, fellow humans, we are in this struggle together. Let us remember that it is the words of the barricades, of the poor, of the downtrodden that changes the world. The words of the Peoples Agreement of Cochabamba. The words of the Red Deal. We CAN work together. We SHOULD work together as equals. We share one humanity.
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