What are the synergies and tensions between Degrowth and people’s movements? This article has aimed to answer these questions, at least partly. To do so, it started by outlining degrowth and its core ideas, critiques, and program. Moreover, Where it is positioned in relation to other movements and as well as its strategies of choice. Also, What the role of class is and who its political subjects are. Lastly, with whom and where Degrowth resonates. Or put differently, whether degrowth is only relevant in the Global North or possesses relevance beyond geographical boundaries.
There exist strong synergies between Degrowth and many people’s movements. The critique of the negative impacts of growth-based development and the need to rethink societal relations have proven fertile ground for engaging with frameworks developed in the Global South such as Buen Vivir, Sumak Kawsay, Radical Ecological Democracy, and Post-Extractivism.75
If viewed from a ‘social movement ecology’ perspective,the strengths and weaknesses of the different movements as well as their strategies and tactics for change are centered and new methods for collaboration are privileged. To reach back to Nancy Fraser, this occurs against the background of a ‘happy coincidence’. Namely, the opposition to Capitalism as the driver of the ecological as well as socio-economic crises.76 Beyond the lowest common denominator, there is room for each framework to complement one another based on overall shared principles and values. This might be even more important considering the recent exponential uptake of degrowth and its talking points across a broad range of actors and mediums.
At the same time, there remain areas of contention with parts of Degrowth. Among these, the question of who stands at the front of a Degrowth transformation and what role class plays for mobilisation looms especially large.
To understand the implications of this for Degrowth and the potential for further alliance-formation, it is first best to take a step back and center one of the key characteristics of Degrowth: its plurality.
Degrowth understands itself as a ‘movement of movements’. But plurality can have unwanted effects. It can hide differences and power imbalances within the movement. Furthermore, it has strategic implications leading to what some have called ‘strategic indeterminance’.77
Where does Degrowth go from here? Two general trends have been outlined: broad inclusivity and connecting to bottom-up struggles and projects. Another way of looking at this is through Erik Olin Wright’s categorization of societal transformation into ‘interstitial’, ‘symbiotic’, and ‘ruptural’ politics.78 ‘Ruptural’ politics, those seeking direct confrontation and change through the breaking of institutions are rare among degrowthers. More prominently, some such as Jason Hickel and Giorgios Kallis trend towards symbiotic politics that builds on broad appeal and policy-orientation. Transformation is approached from within the system through the democratic empowerment of the many. The emphasis lies on connections with frameworks such as the ‘Green New Deal’ that have broad-based appeal.79 More reflective of the second trend are those engaging in interstitial politics that seek to build direct alternatives in ‘the niches, spaces, and margins of capitalist society’ where power is less absolute.80
The question is less whether degrowth can accommodate one or the other. Rather, how does it straddle the divide between the two? This shines a light on an on-going dilemma that most political ideas and movements are faced with. How ‘mainstream’ do we go? How far do we accommodate? What is the purpose, overall? And what are the implications of trending either way?
What might such a broad-based approach hide? As the aforementioned ‘enabling approach’ by Scoones and colleagues suggests, politics is characterised by fundamental uncertainty. Transformation, as critical political economy has shown us, generally occurs in uneven ways. If, as Harold Lasswell famously argued, politics is about ‘who gets what, when, how’, then a strategy of active inclusion of those directly experiencing the violence and impacts of the current system, as well as potential future impacts of a transition is consequential.
Mobilising along class-lines and engaging in a politics that is premised on explicit representation is one way of answering what above has been called ‘the thorny distributive questions’. It is one strategy on how to engage with the contingencies of social processes. Beyond representation, there is a need for degrowth to more strongly connect to people’s movements by taking up a stronger oppositional stance and engaging more deeply with their strategies and tactics.
Seeing fossil capitalism and current socio-economic modes of being from the eyes of movements and struggles on the ground makes it direct. It reminds us that climate justice and calls to ‘leave it in the ground’ are not just directed at 2050 or a future beyond growth. They are calls of resistance to methods and actions that perpetrate violence in the here and now. They are acts of self-defence that occur in the present.
The connection to movements provides also fertile learning ground. A significant part of degrowthers are following an interstitial approach. Ideas and movements are budding in the cracks of the current system and mobilizing in parallel but also in opposition to it. These long-standing struggles may provide inspiration for the important question facing these Degrowth initiatives: how to connect the different initiatives? How can they be fortified and radicalized? In what ways can they be the arbiters of broader changes and what needs to be considered to enable a socio-ecologically just process? On this, degrowthers can learn from people’s movements and their rich history of opposition and building of alternatives.