by Chris Marsh
Ever since hearing about permaculture
25 years ago I’ve wondered how it was going to take off in a big
way and save the world. It turns out that the answer lies in
permaculture ethics: ‘care of the earth’, ‘care of people’
and ‘setting limits to population and consumption’ (or ‘fair
shares’) (Mollison 1-9). Effectively, permaculture is the opposite
to conventional economics, because we have ethics, they have
‘externalities’.
Externalities
Professors of Economics, Jean Drèze
and Amartya Sen, mention ‘externalities’ as the term economists
use for effects like pollution, overuse of resources and failure to
meet social needs, with the word indicating that market decisions
tend not to take these effects into account unless forced to by law
and public opinion (82, 92). Democratic governments, elected by the
public, make laws and enforce regulations, but public opinion is
fickle and can be manipulated, and governments tend to bow to
economic interests rather than public ones. Economic growth can raise
household incomes and help remove poverty, but Drèze and Sen point
out that India, ‘the world’s largest democracy’, fails to
deliver on what we would call earth care and people care, because the
benefits of growth are not spread fairly (248). Interestingly, the
word ‘externalities’ does not appear in the index of Ha-Joon
Chang’s useful little book, Economics: The User’s Guide.
The effects are mentioned, in a chapter entitled ‘Running Out of
the Planet?: Taking Environmental Sustainability Seriously’, but
the author makes a case for more economic growth being the answer,
especially for developing countries (268-73). What becomes apparent
is that economic growth can benefit or harm people and planet –
because ‘externalities’ don’t really count – so we are faced
with chronic uncertainty. However, another book on economics,
Wolfgang Streek’s Buying Time: The Delayed Crisis of Democratic
Capitalism, suggests that an end to uncertainty is fast
approaching.
The End of Democratic Capitalism
For decades there’s been talk of
globalisation bringing about the ‘End of the Nation’, the subject
of a major article a few months ago in New Scientist. Recent
studies by economists and political scientists show how ideologues of
the neoliberal capitalist system advocate the rolling back of the
state, and that state bureaucracies are weakening and national
governments are losing power.
In Buying Time, Streek examines the crisis history of late capitalism since the 1970s and concludes that ‘democracy [has split] from capitalism through the splitting of the economy from democracy’ (5). What has happened is that governments have switched constituencies, away from voters towards creditors: ‘from tax state to debt state’ as Streek puts it (72-5). We can no longer rely on ‘law and public opinion’ to impose ethical standards on the economy. Streek sets out a political consequence of the long financial and fiscal crisis as the emergence of the authoritarian ‘consolidation state’ in Europe (97). Streek’s suggestion for ‘buying time’ is that national governments should withdraw from the European Monetary Union in order to be able to boost their economies by devaluing their currencies; an interesting scenario, given Greece has recently elected a leftist anti-austerity party into government, who are at present insisting they want to keep the euro.
These changes have effects locally, nationally and globally. At the start of their term of office, the leaders of the UK Coalition government presented a vision of ‘The Big Society’ and a ‘Localism agenda’, presented as ‘the key to economic, social and political success in the future’. Hidden in the rhetoric are the key phrases ‘small government’, ‘a shrinking of the state’ and ‘an ethic of volunteerism’ (www.localism-agenda.com/background ). Responsibilities are devolved (giving local decision makers what Isaiah Berlin termed ‘negative freedom’), but with ‘austerity’ and cuts funding does not follow. This means that local people are faced with an enormous challenge: finding solutions to a whole raft of problems born out of the national and global economic crisis.
In Buying Time, Streek examines the crisis history of late capitalism since the 1970s and concludes that ‘democracy [has split] from capitalism through the splitting of the economy from democracy’ (5). What has happened is that governments have switched constituencies, away from voters towards creditors: ‘from tax state to debt state’ as Streek puts it (72-5). We can no longer rely on ‘law and public opinion’ to impose ethical standards on the economy. Streek sets out a political consequence of the long financial and fiscal crisis as the emergence of the authoritarian ‘consolidation state’ in Europe (97). Streek’s suggestion for ‘buying time’ is that national governments should withdraw from the European Monetary Union in order to be able to boost their economies by devaluing their currencies; an interesting scenario, given Greece has recently elected a leftist anti-austerity party into government, who are at present insisting they want to keep the euro.
These changes have effects locally, nationally and globally. At the start of their term of office, the leaders of the UK Coalition government presented a vision of ‘The Big Society’ and a ‘Localism agenda’, presented as ‘the key to economic, social and political success in the future’. Hidden in the rhetoric are the key phrases ‘small government’, ‘a shrinking of the state’ and ‘an ethic of volunteerism’ (www.localism-agenda.com/background ). Responsibilities are devolved (giving local decision makers what Isaiah Berlin termed ‘negative freedom’), but with ‘austerity’ and cuts funding does not follow. This means that local people are faced with an enormous challenge: finding solutions to a whole raft of problems born out of the national and global economic crisis.
Alternative Economics
There are a few enlightened economists
with constructive solutions to the long crisis. In his books
Capitalism Hits the Fan, and Democracy at Work: A Cure for
Capitalism (also his 2011 lecture: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jsbfOxUx8ZA), Richard Wolff sets out his answer to the extreme and deepening
inequalities of global capitalism as ‘Workers Self-Directed
Enterprises’ or producer co-ops. A weakness of Wolff’s proposal
is that it seems to depend on obtaining Federal funding from
taxation.
In their scholarly study A Post-Capitalist Politics, J.K. Gibson-Graham recommend ‘place-based activism’ (5) and they set out the principles of ‘intentional community economies’ with a number of real examples (165-96). The vision of ‘post-capitalism’ echoes the authors’ earlier feminist critique of the ‘End of Capitalism’. It is strong on vision and imagination, but with a practical orientation and an emphasis on diversity. (Sadly one of the authors died in 2010.)
Lester Brown, President of the Earth Policy Institute, in his World on the Edge: How to Prevent Environmental and Economic Collapse, sets out an alternative ‘Plan B’, an ‘economy for the twenty-first century’ (99-180), and in his final chapter says that such a plan is ‘our only hope’ (183). He urges readers to get informed, become politically active and get together to put pressure on their political representatives. So, like Wolff, Brown relies on a ‘democratic revolution’. Interestingly, Brown describes one form of popular response which does not require political action at national or international levels, the ‘Local Food Movement’ (175-8).
Although he is not a trained economist, I will include Rob Hopkins and the Transition Movement under the heading ‘alternative economics’, because Hopkins also has a Plan B, aimed at addressing austerity by encouraging local entrepreneurship. All these alternatives depend on local involvement, understanding and good will, acting as the equivalent of the ‘law and public opinion’ which Drèze and Sen mention as the guardians of ‘externalities’.
In their scholarly study A Post-Capitalist Politics, J.K. Gibson-Graham recommend ‘place-based activism’ (5) and they set out the principles of ‘intentional community economies’ with a number of real examples (165-96). The vision of ‘post-capitalism’ echoes the authors’ earlier feminist critique of the ‘End of Capitalism’. It is strong on vision and imagination, but with a practical orientation and an emphasis on diversity. (Sadly one of the authors died in 2010.)
Lester Brown, President of the Earth Policy Institute, in his World on the Edge: How to Prevent Environmental and Economic Collapse, sets out an alternative ‘Plan B’, an ‘economy for the twenty-first century’ (99-180), and in his final chapter says that such a plan is ‘our only hope’ (183). He urges readers to get informed, become politically active and get together to put pressure on their political representatives. So, like Wolff, Brown relies on a ‘democratic revolution’. Interestingly, Brown describes one form of popular response which does not require political action at national or international levels, the ‘Local Food Movement’ (175-8).
Although he is not a trained economist, I will include Rob Hopkins and the Transition Movement under the heading ‘alternative economics’, because Hopkins also has a Plan B, aimed at addressing austerity by encouraging local entrepreneurship. All these alternatives depend on local involvement, understanding and good will, acting as the equivalent of the ‘law and public opinion’ which Drèze and Sen mention as the guardians of ‘externalities’.
The Problem is the Solution
Anyone concerned about the state of the
world today can probably nominate the worst effects or threats in
their estimation. Many will say the Climate Crisis, others the major
Species Extinction event which is underway. I would nominate land
degradation: soil erosion, salinisation, devastated forests,
spreading deserts. I have thought that Bill Mollison, co-founder of
the Permaculture Movement, would also put the land first, given that
the first permaculture ethical principle is ‘earth care’.
If everyone were gainfully employed in the neoliberal economy with its laissez-faire market democracy – which disregards ‘externalities’ – there would be no hope for climate, species or land. But there’s also a social crisis which could be an opportunity to address the others. Streek writes about ‘an abandoned underclass’, and ‘diffuse expectations of socia1 justice still present in sections of the population’ which may ‘provide an impetus for anarchistic protest movements’. He refers chillingly to methods developed in the US to manage this underclass which Europe could adopt. Observing this situation with permaculture in mind, we would see those people as a potential resource, available to take part in building ‘intentional community economies’, to use Gibson-Graham’s phrase, so that ‘the problem is the solution’. Looked at globally or nationally, this would appear to be an enormous challenge, but taken one town or village or city neighbourhood at a time, it is not impossible. The question now is whether permaculture is ready to take it on.
If everyone were gainfully employed in the neoliberal economy with its laissez-faire market democracy – which disregards ‘externalities’ – there would be no hope for climate, species or land. But there’s also a social crisis which could be an opportunity to address the others. Streek writes about ‘an abandoned underclass’, and ‘diffuse expectations of socia1 justice still present in sections of the population’ which may ‘provide an impetus for anarchistic protest movements’. He refers chillingly to methods developed in the US to manage this underclass which Europe could adopt. Observing this situation with permaculture in mind, we would see those people as a potential resource, available to take part in building ‘intentional community economies’, to use Gibson-Graham’s phrase, so that ‘the problem is the solution’. Looked at globally or nationally, this would appear to be an enormous challenge, but taken one town or village or city neighbourhood at a time, it is not impossible. The question now is whether permaculture is ready to take it on.
 |
| Three of the texts referenced in this blog |
The Trojan Horse
Rob Hopkins has said in an interview
that Transition was ‘designed as a Trojan horse’ to smuggle in
Permaculture, as a way of scaling up ‘a bottom-up, grassroots and
solution-led approach’ which has tended to be ‘niche and fringe’
(Gordon-Farleigh, www.stirtoaction.com/interview-rob-hopkins/)
The ‘niche and fringe’ tendency has always bothered me, because I
came to permaculture after spending several years researching and
teaching on land degradation worldwide, and the concept of ‘permanent
agriculture’, already thought out and put into practice by the
founders, promised to be the solution.
When I got involved in permaculture in Britain I found that most of the early adopters had little or no access to land. They were generally not home owners with gardens. A few had tiny smallholdings in the Celtic fringes. My hopes were dashed of bringing permaculture onto the gardens of England – a potential plot of about a million acres. ‘Permaculture’s not just gardening!’ was the mantra, and people were applying the design approach to anything and everything. I’m afraid I was disappointed and critical of all that – but I was wrong. Permaculture has to prove itself, by taking two directions. Of course it has to show that the design approach gets results when applied to agriculture, because food is the No. 1 human need. But it is also necessary to prove that, given any package of needs and wants, permaculture design can be employed to find out how best to achieve it, using the available resources of time, skills and interests, whether or not land or food is involved. My judgement is that this has been done. Permaculture has proved itself on both counts. There have been 25 years (or more) of the ‘niche and fringe’ and ‘not just gardening’ applications, people discovering the brilliance and joy of permaculture, where a bunch of friends in a particular place get together and decide how to live their lives. They think about what they’ve got between them: some skills and favourite things to do, access to a bit of land, clear ideas about what cannot be done without, and so on. Then they draw up a design and a plan for how to achieve all their needs and desires, using, as far as possible, only their local resources.
More recently, the question of how permaculture ecological design can successfully feed people in the UK has been answered. Andy Goldring, Permaculture Association CEO, addressed the 2015 Oxford Real Farming Conference on ‘Initiating Permaculture & Integrating Research’ and ‘addressing the data gap’: amassing the evidence from permaculture plots and LAND centres. It has been known for some time that permaculture works to feed people and rebuild communities in deprived areas and on marginal land. Recently there has been a call for funding for the republication of a Tropical Permaculture Guidebook, providing ‘knowledge, techniques and skills that will reduce the severity of global climate change and provide adaptation and resilience knowledge and skills to those impacted the most by climate change and who are the least able to afford expensive solutions’.
When I got involved in permaculture in Britain I found that most of the early adopters had little or no access to land. They were generally not home owners with gardens. A few had tiny smallholdings in the Celtic fringes. My hopes were dashed of bringing permaculture onto the gardens of England – a potential plot of about a million acres. ‘Permaculture’s not just gardening!’ was the mantra, and people were applying the design approach to anything and everything. I’m afraid I was disappointed and critical of all that – but I was wrong. Permaculture has to prove itself, by taking two directions. Of course it has to show that the design approach gets results when applied to agriculture, because food is the No. 1 human need. But it is also necessary to prove that, given any package of needs and wants, permaculture design can be employed to find out how best to achieve it, using the available resources of time, skills and interests, whether or not land or food is involved. My judgement is that this has been done. Permaculture has proved itself on both counts. There have been 25 years (or more) of the ‘niche and fringe’ and ‘not just gardening’ applications, people discovering the brilliance and joy of permaculture, where a bunch of friends in a particular place get together and decide how to live their lives. They think about what they’ve got between them: some skills and favourite things to do, access to a bit of land, clear ideas about what cannot be done without, and so on. Then they draw up a design and a plan for how to achieve all their needs and desires, using, as far as possible, only their local resources.
More recently, the question of how permaculture ecological design can successfully feed people in the UK has been answered. Andy Goldring, Permaculture Association CEO, addressed the 2015 Oxford Real Farming Conference on ‘Initiating Permaculture & Integrating Research’ and ‘addressing the data gap’: amassing the evidence from permaculture plots and LAND centres. It has been known for some time that permaculture works to feed people and rebuild communities in deprived areas and on marginal land. Recently there has been a call for funding for the republication of a Tropical Permaculture Guidebook, providing ‘knowledge, techniques and skills that will reduce the severity of global climate change and provide adaptation and resilience knowledge and skills to those impacted the most by climate change and who are the least able to afford expensive solutions’.
Life in its Completeness
I have mentioned
my disappointment 25 years ago at permaculture being ‘not just
gardening’. I stayed in touch, but I also turned aside to find out
about the rural reconstruction work carried out by Rabindranath
Tagore from the 1890s to 1930s. I heard about Tagore at the same time
as I first heard of permaculture, and I saw parallels between them.
Tagore believed that people should be given the freedom to work
cooperatively towards self-reliance at the local community level. His
focus was on rebuilding village society in India, disrupted by
British rule, with the aim of bringing what he called ‘life in its
completeness’. Tagore regarded the ‘modern age’ as a phase
during which humanity took a wrong turning, led by the West, but
dragging Asia after it. In his last public address ‘Crisis in
Civilization’, Tagore indicated that he foresaw a ‘new chapter in
history after the cataclysm is over’, the ‘cataclysm’ being the
system we live under, which puts profit before planet and people.
In his essay ‘City and Village’, Tagore’s aims appear very modest. He explained that rather than think of the whole country, it is best to start in a small way: ‘If we could free even one village from the shackles of helplessness and ignorance, an ideal for the whole of India would be established’. Historian Uma Das Gupta has described Tagore as ‘exhausted and weak’ and clearly in despair in the 1930s, because those working for him had reorganized the project ‘as a business’, with profit-making dairy units and cottage industries, to the detriment of Tagore’s aim of building village self-reliance (376).
Tagore, of course, knew nothing of climate change and peak oil, the drivers of the Transition movement. He might have felt uneasy about Hopkins’ Plan B, with its emphasis on local entrepreneurialism. I wonder about Hopkins’ notion of ‘scaling up’ permaculture from being ‘niche and fringe’, which might result in spreading the ideas and practices too thin. Tagore’s vision was to bring ‘life in its completeness’ in one locality at a time. It is no longer acceptable to ignore ‘externalities’ such as land degradation, pollution and waste, species extinctions and social deprivation. Taking responsibility locally is the only way to ensure ‘ethics’ come first. The shrinking debt state divorced from democracy, official approval of a Localism agenda, and permaculture design having proved its efficacy, means that it is time for permaculture to take off in a big way and save the world.
In his essay ‘City and Village’, Tagore’s aims appear very modest. He explained that rather than think of the whole country, it is best to start in a small way: ‘If we could free even one village from the shackles of helplessness and ignorance, an ideal for the whole of India would be established’. Historian Uma Das Gupta has described Tagore as ‘exhausted and weak’ and clearly in despair in the 1930s, because those working for him had reorganized the project ‘as a business’, with profit-making dairy units and cottage industries, to the detriment of Tagore’s aim of building village self-reliance (376).
Tagore, of course, knew nothing of climate change and peak oil, the drivers of the Transition movement. He might have felt uneasy about Hopkins’ Plan B, with its emphasis on local entrepreneurialism. I wonder about Hopkins’ notion of ‘scaling up’ permaculture from being ‘niche and fringe’, which might result in spreading the ideas and practices too thin. Tagore’s vision was to bring ‘life in its completeness’ in one locality at a time. It is no longer acceptable to ignore ‘externalities’ such as land degradation, pollution and waste, species extinctions and social deprivation. Taking responsibility locally is the only way to ensure ‘ethics’ come first. The shrinking debt state divorced from democracy, official approval of a Localism agenda, and permaculture design having proved its efficacy, means that it is time for permaculture to take off in a big way and save the world.
Bibliography
Berlin, Isaiah, Four Essays on Liberty (London: Oxford
University Press, 1969)
Brown, Lester, World on the Edge: How to Prevent Environmental and
Economic Collapse (London: Earthscan, 2011)
Chang, Ha-Joon, Economics: The User’s Guide (London:
Pelican, 2014)
Das Gupta, Uma, ‘Rabindranath Tagore on Rural Reconstruction: The
Sriniketan Programme, 1921-41’, Indian Historical Review, 4
(1978), 354-78.
Drèze, Jean and Amartya Sen, An Uncertain Glory: India and its
Contradictions (London: Penguin, 2014)
Gibson-Graham, J.K., A Post-Capitalist Politics (Minneapolis:
University of Minnesota, 2006)
Gordon-Farleigh, www.stirtoaction.com/interview-rob-hopkins/
Hopkins, Rob, The Power of Just Doing Stuff: How local action can
change the world (Cambridge: Green, 2013)
Localism Agenda, www.localism-agenda.com/background
MacKenzie, Debora, ‘End of the Nation’, New Scientist, 6
September 2014, pp. 30-7.
Mollison, Bill, Introduction to Permaculture (Tyalgum, NSW:
Tagari, 1991)
Permaculture Ambassadors Blog, ‘Oxford Real Farming Conference on
“Initiating Permaculture & Integrating Research”’,
http://permacultureambassadors.blogspot.co.uk/2015/01/2015-oxford-real-farming-orfc-conference.html;
https://www.permaculture.org.uk/our-work/land-project
Permaculture Guidebook,
https://www.chuffed.org/project/permacultureguidebook
Streek, Wolfgang Buying Time: The Delayed Crisis of Democratic
Capitalism (London: Verso, 2014)
Tagore, Rabindranath, ‘City and Village’, in Towards Universal
Man (London: Asia Publishing House, 1961), pp. 302-22.
—‘Crisis in Civilization’, in Towards Universal Man
(London: Asia Publishing House, 1961), pp. 353-9.
Wolff, Richard, Capitalism Hits The Fan: The Global
Economic Meltdown and What to Do About It (Northampton, MA, 2013)
— Democracy at Work: A Cure for Capitalism (Chicago:
Haymarket, 2012)
— 2014 lecture: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jsbfOxUx8ZA)
