Roles of utopian thought in a degrowth transformation

Abstract

It is easier to imagine the end of the world than the end of capitalism is the favourite slogan of capitalist realists (Fisher 2009), and it offers us no solace in times when six out of nine planetary boundaries are crossed (Richardson et al. 2023), and inequality rises at incredible rates (Hickel 2018). It suggests to us that ‘there is no alternative’ and only those playing well the current rules of the game are fit enough to survive. Degrowth comes up against this highly cynical, utilitarian but currently dominant logic. No wonder, ‘decolonise the imaginary’, the slogan attributed to Serge Latouche (2009, Chapter 24, this volume) has become the motto of degrowth. Any degrowth scholar or activist must be painfully familiar with the feeling when the whole concept of degrowth – with all the degrowth practice, literature, research and social innovation of the last decades – is dismissed with one word, ‘utopia’. As if it was a mere intellectual amusement to think of ways to rid our societies from its massive addiction to growth in order to put a stop to ecological degradation and, incidentally, to save ourselves as well as other species from extinction. To many, the dystopian thoughts of the apocalyptic Mad Max worlds where humans turn against each other after social and ecological collapse seems more credible than any quest to imagine a world where people live convivially and in solidarity with each other and other non-human beings. In this chapter, I do not just dismiss the notion that being utopian would be a futile exercise but argue that utopian thought can be the very foundation of our collective understanding and action in a world often described as complex and ambiguous. Thomas More ([1516] 2012) toyed with the Greek words ‘outopia’ and ‘eutopia’ when describing the society of his own imaginary as Utopia. While the first one refers to no-place, the second refers to a good-place (Vieira 2010; Fernando et al. 2018). This ambiguity still impacts the way people dismiss or embrace utopian concepts such as degrowth. Whether in our everyday speech we believe utopia is ‘an impractical scheme for social development’ (Merriam-Webster undated) or ‘a perfect society in which people work well with each other and are happy’ or in British Cambridge Dictionary (undated), in this chapter we move beyond the conundrum surrounding the definition of utopia (Vieira 2010) and work with the understanding that utopia is a normative vision of society: not what we think the world could be but what we imagine it should be in an ideal scenario. Utopias can serve three distinct functions: first, they can motivate people to engage in activities that drive societies closer to what they deem ideal; second, they serve as a benchmark for the ideal and enable people to assess current realities accordingly, giving them a critical stance towards existing structures; and, third, they can provide a safe mental space to retreat to from reality and compensate for the bleak social reality people face, leading to some forms of escapism (Levitas 1990). Or they might just simply build up our social realities. Before we have a look at that last possibility, let us discuss the role of utopias on the individual level.