T HE POTENTIAL OF DE - GROWTH AS A COUNTER - HEGEMONIC MOVEMENT

As discussed in Chapter 2, de-growth can be first and foremost understood as a critique of the mainstream growth imperative and the sphere under which alternative ideas may mobilize (Latouche, 2009). As such, it is a movement towards a societal and systemic change. According to scholars, the main challenge for de-growth movement is its continuous “marginalization within political mainstream and wider public debates” (Büchs & Koch, 2019, p. 156). From here, with the spread of voluntary simplicity as the alternative common sense through eco-communities and organic intellectuals within them, it may be argued that de-growth as a counter-hegemonic movement is strengthened. This is so, as with the increase in masses that exhibit emancipation from the mainstream common sense, de-growth movement may grow to where it would no longer be marginalized, but embraced, due to the increased prescription to the alternative common sense – the culture of voluntary simplicity. From here, as the main obstacle shows the potential to be overcome, de-growth as a counter-hegemonic movement arguably carries the potential to grow and facilitate a broader transition respectively.

However, going back to theoretical considerations, there is one remaining challenge in the de-growth movement – the risk of passive revolution. Passive revolution in Gramscian thought refers to an unsuccessful or incomplete counter-hegemonic transition, one that did not result in the establishment of a new historic bloc (Gramsci, 1999). Passive revolution may manifest in transformism – the mainstream cooption of the alternative common sense, thus ensuring the persistence of the hegemonic front and the existing historic bloc (Gramsci, 1999).

De-growth, currently, can be argued to resemble the peak of environmentalism in 1970s, which, as discussed in Chapter 2, was coopted by the mainstream creating the green growth imperative to ensure the continuation of the profit driven system. This was possible at the time because only war of movement strategy was applied. While the de-growth movement can be argued to be a combination of a reactionist and revolutionary strategies, as it exhibits both escapist and transition traits, it may still be vulnerable to passive revolution. This is so, as arguably an incomplete transition from a war of movement to a war of position is visible in the de-growth movement, as it builds upon the ideas of the ‘back to the landers’ and now operates to sustain and spread the alternative common sense, but continues retaining reactionist escapist strategies to do so. As such, it continues to be vulnerable to external shocks.

Further, the current climate change crisis and the societal awareness of it, as well as constant political and academic debates about addressing the climate issues, and the growing environmental movements in a form of protests and demonstrations in the West, suggests a level of ‘organic crisis’ – a condition when the hegemonic ideas, or the mainstream common sense, is under societal questioning, creating space for new ideas to be brought in (Gramsci, 1999). Here, the hegemonic ideological domination becomes no longer sufficient, thereby leading to the need for coercion to control the society at large. As, according to Gramsci (1999), coercion alone is not a sufficient long-term strategy, an establishment of a new historic bloc is needed. Organic crisis is thus the stage where “the old is dying and the new cannot be born”

(Gramsci, 1999, p. 276). Counter-hegemonic, or resistance strategies are hence implemented during this stage, which then results in either a new, counter-hegemonic ideology-led historic bloc, or the appropriation of the counter-ideology into the ‘old’ hegemonic historic bloc, i.e.

transformism (Gramsci, 1999). Currently, the needed level of organic crisis is not yet present for either tranformism or the formation of counter-hegemonic historic bloc to occur. This is so, as the counter-hegemonic movement is still in the process of spreading the alternative common sense, thus not yet at the stage where a transition could be practically carried out. However, if and when the paradigm shift was to reach the society at large, the mainstream may act to defend

its hegemony. If this were to happen, the de-growth movement may be unable to finish the transition and thus undergo a passive revolution.

Moreover, as discussed in Chapter 3, passive revolution may also manifest in utopianism – a divorce from ideological and material capabilities where the alternative ideas cannot be carried out due to the limited or non-existent material and practical grounds (Cox, 1999). As this study has argued, de-growth movement can be understood to be grounded, at least partly, in eco-communities, thus having the needed material foundation for its practical realization. However, most eco-communities, including Suderbyn Ecovillage, while having matching values with the de-growth ideology, in reality do not meet complete autonomy and self-sufficiency required to make them sites of de-growth fully. While eco-communities avoid escapism by remaining dependable on the outside, the lack of complete withdrawal may be argued to make the de-growth movement at large utopian. This is so, as even in an eco-community setting that already exhibits the strive for change, the core objectives of the de-growth movement are not being realized in practice, making it that much more difficult of an objective to be implemented in the mainstream society. From here, whether de-growth movement led by eco-communities would be able to avoid passive revolution remains unclear.