Marx's Commons Offer a Path Beyond Capitalism

I read Slow Down: The Degrowth Manifesto quite a while ago, the book that was both a bestseller and the thing that suddenly thrust Mr. Saito into the public eye, and I’m putting together a summary now, belatedly (it’s a bit long, so I’m splitting it into two parts). This is meant strictly as a memo, not as an attempt to argue any particular point. Still, a lot of it was genuinely useful. Anyone with even a little interest should read the original directly. I’d be glad if this summary helps with that.

Personally, I find the author’s “analysis of the current situation” excellent and full of useful reference points, but his “countermeasures” and “vision” sections strike me as weak by comparison.

Slow Down: The Degrowth Manifesto

【The idea of the commons】

Things that should be managed without being put on the market or given a price. Communism is the idea of returning things that ought to be common property, but were absorbed into capitalism, back to community management—the commons.

【Citizen-ization】

Take electricity, for example. Secure abundant electricity through methods that don’t involve scarcity, such as renewable energy, then let citizens run and distribute it. Citizens also decide how work is organized.

【Communal wealth】

Not an infinitely gushing abundance, but a lasting, temporally rich one.

【The Germanic Mark community】

Land was held in common, and its use was strictly regulated. Rather than depleting the soil’s fertility, this actually raised it over the long term. Selling land outside the community was unthinkable, and selling the harvest outside the community was also rare (local production for local consumption). Land allocation was decided by lottery. Capitalist agriculture, by contrast, repeatedly exploits the soil’s fertility. Something exploitative and wasteful cannot be called rational.

【Georg Ludwig von Maurer】

He studied the Mark community. Fraas also references it. The Mark community was a circular society that did not grow. Even when it could have produced more, it deliberately chose not to. This prevented the uneven distribution of wealth from generating power, and kept relationships of domination and subordination from arising. Afterward, the loss of common ownership of land accelerated capitalism. In 16th-18th century England, the enclosure of land stripped many farmers of their land, and a portion of capital came to monopolize it. The dispossessed flowed into the cities and became wage laborers, but their income was low; they worked themselves to death to support their families, and even so could only afford poor food. Yet as the system of earning money through labor spread, capitalism grew stronger through their sacrifice. Land in Manhattan is held mostly by big capital for speculative purposes, and ordinary citizens can no longer live there. This is artificial scarcity, typical of what capitalism creates. Is this really becoming richer?

【Detroit】

Wasteland created by capitalism. Now organic farming is starting up, taking advantage of the land prices that have fallen.

【The realm of necessity and the realm of freedom】

The realm of freedom is a state with nothing forced upon you. The realm of necessity is the minimum that must be done. It’s a matter of balance between the two. Marx thought that the realm of freedom blossoms on top of the realm of necessity. Freedom does not mean limitless material desire. Leaving huge amounts of food uneaten at an all-you-can-eat buffet, replacing your wardrobe every season, chasing brand-name goods for no reason—these are all “bad freedom.” During the COVID pandemic, humanity ran a rehearsal of the question “lives or the economy?” The same question is bound to be posed again, this time centered on climate change. Even though SARS and MERS had already occurred, research institutions withdrew from research into things like antibiotics, because it doesn’t pay. ED drugs pay better. Capitalism will not make the right call on this scale. LOHAS ended up just a fad. It became clear that changing anything through consumer awareness alone is impossible.

【Karl Polanyi’s “fictitious commodities”】

“Labor, land, and money”—Polanyi argued that if these three are completely commodified, inequality accelerates. None of the three can be said to be completely commodified today (there are still parts where the state intervenes and manages), but it’s fair to say a considerable portion has been commodified.

Consider, for example, abolishing marketing, advertising, and packaging. Also ending round-the-clock, no-holidays operation. Just this alone would free enormous numbers of people from toil. In a world where productive capacity has risen this much, why must we still work to excess? Automation didn’t shorten working hours—it only produced anxiety about unemployment. When production is democratically managed through social ownership, decision-making naturally slows down, and the economy decelerates. This idea exists in Marx’s thought, but the Soviet Union did not accept it, and learned the hard way through its own failure. Banning platform monopolies likewise slows the pace of innovation.

【Bullshit jobs】

Marketing, advertising, consulting, finance, insurance, and the like—jobs that many people think “wouldn’t be missed if they disappeared,” yet the people doing them are highly paid. In 2019, a nursery school in Setagaya went bankrupt, and it was decided that it would run autonomously with no manager in place. It ran with no problems whatsoever, proving that the manager and the hired head of the nursery had been doing bullshit jobs.

【Regulation】

Amsterdam, Paris: regulating the number of days Airbnb can operate

Grenoble: regulating school lunches so global corporations cannot get in

Barcelona: Fearless Cities A critique of the urban space that capital created. Abolishing short-haul flights, capping speed in the city center at 30 km/h. A manifesto devised by citizens themselves. Barcelona failed to recover after the Lehman Shock. Overtourism drove an increase in short-term rentals, which pushed up rents, while global corporations profited and the local area stayed poor—a textbook contradiction. Out of the citizens’ movement that began in 2011, a political party was born, which eventually took control of city government.

【Fighting global corporations through horizontal solidarity】

The Global South is, if anything, ahead here. Mexico: the Zapatista movement. La Vía Campesina, a farmers’ collective with 200 million participants. It began as opposition to the global free economy.

【The Yellow Vests movement】

They pressured Macron into holding a Grand National Debate. But even after receiving 15,000 proposals, Macron was criticized again for dragging his feet, and this led to the creation of the Citizens’ Convention for Climate. Members chosen by lottery put forward 150 concrete policy proposals, including a proposed constitutional amendment.

【Workers are eco-friendly】

It’s more eco-friendly for workers to work than to mechanize and burn fossil fuels. If that means production falls, then we should simply stop doing work with low use-value and focus effort on producing what’s actually needed.

【Abolish the division of labor】

To make labor attractive, so that labor itself becomes a primary purpose, the uniform division of labor should be abolished. This requires continuous vocational training. Worker cooperatives already include this kind of function.

Capitalism cannot be fought without changing the nature of labor. But things like tax policy and large-scale climate strategy are beyond what an individual can handle. At the same time, top-down political leadership alone cannot fight climate change either. Changing the nature of production sites from the ground up is what ordinary people can actually do.

【Care work】

Care work has high use-value and is difficult to replace with robots or AI. Recipients of such services don’t want speed or efficiency, either. This is exactly the kind of work that should be valued. Yet in reality it’s a hotbed of “exploitation through a sense of purpose.”

【Pillars of degrowth communism】

• Shift to a use-value economy
• Shortening working hours
• Abolishing the uniform division of labor
• Democratizing the production process
• Valuing essential work Rather than growing GDP, the goal is to track whether what’s needed is being produced in the amount needed.

【South Africa’s food sovereignty movement】

NGO-led, but a mechanism by which citizens each form their own cooperatives. Even though South Africa is a food-exporting country, 26% of it is said to suffer from hunger. People teach each other methods that don’t rely on genetically modified crops or chemical fertilizers.

【Harvard historical research】

When 3.5% of those affected rise up through nonviolent means, the era changes. Capitalism is essentially a fight of 1% against 99%, so by rights it should never be able to win.

【Piketty】

Piketty, who had once proposed taming capitalism, leaned toward participatory socialism in his 2019 book. Still, Piketty, who originally pushed for things like progressive taxation, hasn’t abandoned that stance. If the state grows too strong, citizen self-governance becomes impossible.

Originally published in Japanese at https://clazytech.com/2022/08/1272/. Translated with LLM assistance and reviewed before publication.