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Scientific paper

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Degrowth Conference Budapest, 2016 - Non-Monetary Degrowth is Strategically Significant

Author:
Anitra Nelson

Entry type:
Scientific paper

Year of publication:
2016

Publishers:
Budapest Conference 2016

Language:
English

External content:
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Presentation by Anitra Nelson

Even for many radical adherents of degrowth, money is a common-sense — not simply capitalist — tool, so alternative currencies and banks abound. This paper argues against this common-sense logic, as follows. The most direct and efficient form of degrowth requires as-local-as-is-feasible production focusing on people’s basic needs, implying that future distribution is decided simultaneously with collectively agreeing on productive goals and ways of achieving them. Say, each person contributes a number of hours to collective production as a community obligation and, in return, has their basic needs met. Decision-making focuses on bio-physical, environmental and social measures and values; complex bio-physical and social efficiency is paramount in limiting throughput in production and associated exchanges. As a result, money has no place in degrowth, where grassroots political decision-making replaces production for trade and market exchanges. Similarly, so-called ‘alternative’ currencies that serve functions of legal tender or the ‘universal equivalent’ on which capitalism depends, are redundant. In non-monetary degrowth, reward for work is the security of having life-long basic needs met with continuous input in making decisions on both local production and the terms of exchange (compacts) with as-local-as-feasible neighbour-producers. There is personal, but no private, property: the entire Earth is commons with clear, efficient and universal principles and terms for commoning. Such a vision suggests that advancing specifically non-monetary degrowth — consciously breaking with monetary production and exchange — is of crucial strategic significance.

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