February is becoming the month of anti-capitalist solutions to the financial crisis. In an earlier post I outlined a plan for a Blackspot Debt Collection Agency that would buy, then forgive, debt. Now others are calling for a Debtors Union and some activists associated with Enric Duran are organizing a Bank Strike. Here is a quick summary of these two big ideas.

A Debtor Union has been proposed by Keith at the Pirate Caucus. Keith writes that "A debtors union is open to all who are indebted—credit cards, car loans, mortgages, student loans, medical bills etc. and once we organize ourselves we can refuse to pay and organize a mass default and force the debt to be written off, or we could decide to renegotiate the debt at a steep discount maybe twenty cents on the dollar. That will be for the union members to decide for themselves. In any event, we can take our destiny into our hands --Let’s 'bailout' ourselves, lets 'recapitalize' ourselves, lets get out of debt!" (full post)

The daring anti-bank Spanish activist Enric Duran who reached international fame by borrowing and then refusing to pay half a million Euro is promoting the idea of a Bank Strike. His organization, Crisis, has already spawned a North American Bank Strike Chapter. Here is how they explain their plan for a Bank Strike:

"We must withdrawal our support for the financial system. Everyday it exploits our debts, our savings, and our paychecks—to fund speculation, predatory lending, environmental destruction, and corporate expansion. This will be an indefinite strike which will not end until people’s debt is cancelled just as Wall Street has been bailed out. It won’t finish until the current international financial system is abolished and alternatives are created that cover people’s needs and not those of speculators."

"If hundreds of thousands of people around the arranged to stop paying their debts—and if they supported one other—they could not be stopped. If there are a many more participating in this call by withdrawing the money from the banks, this system that enslaves us would be stopped."

"What meaning would a delinquencies list have if everybody was registered in it? What strength will the seizure of foreclosed property represent if they its affects millions of people? What will they speculate with if we take all of our money out of the banks? Let’s begin this indefinite strike! Let’s withdrawal our money from the banks and put it in alternatives that don’t speculate with our paychecks! We won’t pay our mortgages and we will stay in our homes; we will not pay personal debt. Let this crisis be paid for by the richest!" (more information)

Micah M. White is a Contributing Editor at Adbusters Magazine and an independent activist. www.micahmwhite.com

Can the world function without over-consumption? That is the question that one of our readers asked after we posted a call to join the ongoing General Consumption Strike. This deceptively simple question leads us directly to the heart of the global problem: we feel on the one hand troubled with endless consumption but on the other hand we are afraid that without consumption there will be only suffering. This is the consumer paradox. But identifying it, does not mean we have found our way out of it. So instead of trying to provide glib answers to what is in reality a difficult question, I will instead provide a few pointers in the hopes that other readers will speak up and share their knowledge.

First, here is the thoughtful comment from Disengage that I think is worth taking very seriously:

People are over-consuming. But this is not a black and white situation. I guess black is over-consumption and white is under-consumption. Neither is going to work in the economical system we have today. We have to stay in the grey zone, find a balance between black and white. Over-consuming made the system fail because people were loaning money they didn't have and didn't have the ability to pay back. Under-consuming will also have a negative effect because then no money will be moved around and people will stop making money and lose jobs.

It seems to me that the proper place to begin is on a definition of what over-consumption and under-consumption would be. One compelling definition of over-consumption comes from Global Footprint Network. Their goal is "a world where all people have the opportunity to live satisfying lives within the means of Earth's ecological capacity. We are dedicated to advancing the scientific rigor and practical application of the Ecological Footprint, a tool that quantifies human demand on nature, and nature's capacity to meet these demands." They believe that the Ecological Footprint should be a metric as important as the Gross Domestic Product (GDP).

I decided to test my own ecological footprint, using the excellent Footprint Calculator they have developed. I was surprised to discover that according to their website I was over-consuming by 3 times! If everyone lived like I do, I learned, it would take 3.6 planets to sustain us. The primary source of my over-consumption is that the majority of my food comes from hundreds of miles away. Even though I eat a primarily vegan diet, I am still depending on trucks, fuel, highways, etc to deliver my "healthy choices".

So, if we accept the moral principle derived from Kant's Categorical Imperative -- act in the way you would want everyone else to act -- then proper levels of consumption would mean a lifestyle that everyone can enjoy and which the planet can handle. This, however, seems to be the very problem with consumer society: there is not enough world for everyone to be as wasteful as the average North American.

To argue that the average North American, myself included, needs to drastically reduce their consumption is not to say that they should crawl into a ditch and starve. As I mentioned above, the primary reason why my lifestyle is unsustainable is because my food is not produced locally. It is too much of a resource drain on the world for food to be transported long distances. This is why some people are now proposing the idea of "relocalizing". According to the Relocalization Network,

Relocalization is a strategy to build societies based on the local production of food, energy and goods, and the local development of currency, governance and culture. The main goals of Relocalization are to increase community energy security, to strengthen local economies, and to dramatically improve environmental conditions and social equity.

For obvious reasons, the movement to relocalize is built at the local level by community groups across the world: "Local Post Carbon Groups work, within their communities and in cooperation with local government and other community-based organizations, to put the concept of Relocalization into practice. The Groups work on projects such as cooperative transport and food networks, local renewable energy production, community assessment inventories and municipal action plans."

Relocalizing is part of the wider agenda of Economic Degrowth. Anti-bank activist Enric Duran does a great job explaining degrowth:

Degrowth doesn’t need to be a negative idea: just as when a river bursts its banks and we all want it to diminish and for the waters to return to their course, the same thing occurs with the unsustainability of the current situation. Degrowth isn’t something negative, but rather something necessary.

Degrowth attacks the myth of growth. It proposes abandoning the parameters of productivism and consumerism, and ultimately leaving the capitalist system. In order to do this, it proposes re-localising our ways of life. Degrowth consists in abandoning the process of economic globalisation and re-localising the economy —production and consumption — thus reducing transport. In order to do that we must re-localise politics, thus putting it back under the control of people.

Re-localising politics means, for example, that the levels of sovereignty go from the bottom upwards. Everything that can be decided at the municipal level should not be decided at higher levels; only things that affect the whole country should be decided at that level. Living in that way would allow us to liberate ourselves from the power of the transnational companies and global economic forces.

This transition to the local ambit should be put in practice together with a radical reduction in consumption, which could in turn lead to a reduction in production and transport. Things which are considered necessary should be produced according to increasingly ecological principles and completing the cycles of the materials used.

According to the participants of the Economic De-Growth For Ecological Sustainability And Social Equity Conference degrowth is characterized by:

• an emphasis on quality of life rather than quantity of consumption;
• the fulfilment of basic human needs for all;
• substantially reduced dependence on economic activity, and an increase in free time,
• unremunerated activity, conviviality, sense of community, and individual and collective health;
• encouragement of self-reflection, balance, creativity, flexibility, diversity, good citizenship, generosity, and non-materialism;

Returning to the question of whether the world can function without over-consumption, I believe the answer is yes. Of course, it will require some substantial changes to the way our world is organized, it would involve a fundamental "relocalization" of our food, energy, goods, currency, governance and culture. But I find this prospect exciting because it feels like real change is at our fingertips.

What do you think? Here are some of the ideas that other readers have brought up so far. If you have any specific knowledge about these alternatives, please share.

• Counter-economics
• micro-credit
• workers' self-management
• labour credit vouchers
• self-sufficient intentional communities
• collectives
• Participatory Economics
• Eco-economics
• Proudhonian Mutualism
• no-interest banking
• financial co-operatives
• Autonomism
• economic secessionism (along bioregional lines?)
• Josiah Warren
• Benjamin Tucker
• "How To Be Free" by Tom Hodgkinson

A headline on today's MarketWatch.com says it all: "Shoppers on strike in September". In an earlier blog post, I suggested that the decrease in consumer spending may seem like uncoordinated fear but is actually partly the result of an organized campaign by fed-up consumers who are using a General Consumption Strike as a tool to change the world. Now is the time to join this growing movement to consume less and live more.

The mass media is understandably alarmed by the sharp declines in consumer spending that have happened in the last three months: as everyone knows, our economies are based on unhealthy, unsustainable consumption. The more we destroy the earth by turning our natural resources into disposable garbage the "healthier" our economies are, or so we are told. But it is becoming obvious to most people that, as the revolutionary leader in Ursula K. Le Guin's classic The Dispossessed taught, excess is excrement and the only way to restore health to our social body is to decrease the unnecessary excesses of our society and to lower our consumption of the earth. In other words, live simply so that others may simply live.

The New York Times summarizes the gains of our General Consumption strike thus:

Retail sales fell sharply in September as consumers shunned department stores, auto showrooms and shopping malls, ratcheting back spending for a third consecutive month.

Last month’s 1.2 percent decline in retail sales was the sharpest drop in years, and it came in the heart of the back-to-school shopping season, traditionally the busiest time of the year for retailers outside of the December holidays.

 

The scent of capitalism's decline is in the air, people are now looking for alternatives. Some are turning to Marx -- the Guardian reports sales of Marx's books are up 300% in Germany -- and others are looking to local currencies and alternative economies. Our time is approaching, let us be prepared.