{"id":6368,"date":"2022-11-02T04:06:19","date_gmt":"2022-11-02T08:06:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.law.columbia.edu\/utopia1313\/?p=6368"},"modified":"2022-11-10T04:51:43","modified_gmt":"2022-11-10T09:51:43","slug":"bernard-e-harcourt-introduction-to-utopia-4-13-on-degrowth","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.law.columbia.edu\/utopia1313\/bernard-e-harcourt-introduction-to-utopia-4-13-on-degrowth\/","title":{"rendered":"Bernard E. Harcourt | Introduction to Utopia 4\/13 on Degrowth"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Bernard E. Harcourt<\/h2>\n
\n

His utopia is that of a new civilization that masters the time of life and of labor. […] Based on a critique of contemporary work, which is constantly being reduced or degraded into precarious, intermittent and part-time jobs, the steps of this utopia can be summarized in a few words: to restrict as much as possible the time spent on producing what is necessary in today’s complex and hypertechnological production and to share it out among everyone; this will allow everyone to free up time for work for oneself, for socially useful activities, and also for autonomous individual or collective activities\u2014facilitated by the digital circulation of knowledge\u2014that are blossoming because they are not constrained; and finally, to put an end to the vital dependence on work by a redistribution of wealth that would be the granting of a guaranteed, sufficient and unconditional income, so that we are no longer forced to work to have an income, but to have an income to work without constraint.<\/p>\n

\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0\u2014 On Andr\u00e9 Gorz, by Willy Gianinazzi, in Andr\u00e9 Gorz, Le fil rouge de l\u2019\u00e9cologie <\/em>(Paris\u00a0: \u00c9ditions EHESS, 2015)<\/p>\n

\n<\/blockquote>\n

I was reintroduced to Andr\u00e9 Gorz by my brilliant impassioned student at the \u00c9cole des hautes \u00e9tudes en sciences sociales<\/em> in Paris, T\u00e9l\u00e9maque Masson-R\u00e9cipon<\/a>, who was writing his masters thesis under my supervision on the theory and praxis of universal basic income (\u201cUBI\u201d). T\u00e9l\u00e9maque is both a scholar and an activist-organizer, having militated for UBI for years now and organized doggedly in several countries to promote UBI. We had gotten together to discuss the structure of his draft and his progress writing.<\/p>\n

T\u00e9l\u00e9maque and I were sitting at a sticky table in a corner of this gritty, cavernous bar, Le Piano Vache<\/em>, down the winding rue Laplace, a stonesthrow from the Panth\u00e9on. The beer on tap was cheap, the music too loud, and a stream of people were passing through to a jazz area in the back getting set up. As our conversation unfolded, T\u00e9l\u00e9maque pulled out of his backpack a stack of books he had bought for me\u2014books I had to read. There were the Andr\u00e9 Gorz interviews called The Red Thread of Ecology<\/em>, and another book co-edited<\/a> by Clara Ruault\u2014who joins us at Utopia 4\/13\u2014which consisted of an edited volume of a critical dialogue between Gorz and Herbert Marcuse. He pulled out the Cahiers du Quatri\u00e8me Ordre. L\u2019Ordre sacr\u00e9 des infortun\u00e9s<\/em><\/a>, a fascinating tract published in 1789 by Louis-Pierre Dufourny de Villiers, which I immediately read when I left the bar. It was the manifesto for the \u201cfourth\u201d class of society\u2014recall that there were supposed to be only three orders in the \u201ctiers \u00e9tat\u201d structure of the French monarchy, but this fourth, invented one, was for the poor and destitute. And another book by Bruno Tardieu, Quand un people parle. ADT Quart Monde. Un Combat radical contre la mis\u00e8re<\/a> <\/em>(Paris: La D\u00e9couverte, 2015) on the social movement, born in 1957 in a camp for homeless people in the Parisian banlieu<\/em>, the ADT Quart Monde.<\/p>\n

T\u00e9l\u00e9maque was going through each one of the books, opening them to the right pages, telling me how and why I had to read each one. In an impassioned soliloquy that I could hardly cut off, T\u00e9l\u00e9maque made me know these books were of the greatest importance to my own work, not just to his. I knew they had to be. T\u00e9l\u00e9maque was working as a night watchman on the midnight shift at a small hotel in the Marais to cover his rent, and he\u2019d brought these books for me to take. I realized how privileged I was to receive them. You only get brilliant and motivated students like that rarely. I had to read every book he gave me with care.<\/p>\n

That was March 15, 2022. I began reading, in some cases rereading, and a few days later, I had to jump on the bullet train to Frankfurt to host the public seminar Revolution 13\/13 on Hans-J\u00fcrgen Krahl<\/a> with my friend Martin Saar at the Institute for Social Research, the old haunt of Horkheimer, Adorno, and the Frankfurt School.<\/p>\n

Less than eight months later, here we are back in Paris. T\u00e9l\u00e9maque was right. We must read and discuss these powerful writings on degrowth\u2014its history, its theory, its practice.<\/p>\n

Andr\u00e9 Gorz first used the term \u201cd\u00e9croissance\u201d (degrowth) in 1972 as a hypothesis in an international conference he had organized in Paris, and it sowed an idea. It was picked up in 2004 (not long before Gorz\u2019s death in 2007) by the main movement of anti-advertising and anti-consumerism campaigners in France, as a \u201cpunch word\u201d (un mot coup-de-poing<\/em>) title for their activist newspaper. From there it quickly became a polarizing slogan and the name of a large and diverse movement, many of whose members recognize Gorz as an intellectual forebearer. One point of agreement within the movement is denouncing the fetishization of GDP growth by the vast majority of governments and economists, be they neoclassical or socialist, because it does not constitute a valid measure of welfare and often occludes detrimental costs to society.<\/p>\n

A number of political philosophers and heterodox economists developed theories and strategies of degrowth, or \u201canti-growth,\u201d or \u201csteady-state economics,\u201d putting forth concepts such as that of prosperity without growth, \u201csobri\u00e9t\u00e9 heureuse<\/em>\u201d (blissfull sobriety) or Buen Vivir<\/em>. These include economists following in the footsteps of Schumpeter\u2019s prot\u00e9g\u00e9 Nicholas Georgescu-Roegen in the United States, as well as thinkers like Baptiste Mylondo and Serge Latouche in France, Giorgios Kallis in Greece, or Christian Kerschner in Austria. In a recent manifesto titled Degrowth<\/em><\/a>, Kallis explains that it is possible to vastly shrink consumption and resource depletion on Earth without having to sacrifice well-being: \u201cIt is possible to have meaningful employment and secure well-being with much less through-put and output than is found in wealthy countries today,\u201d Kallis writes.<\/p>\n

The degrowth movement emphasizes the need for radical redistribution of resources and a shift in values. The problems they identify include both the excessive use of resources and their unjust distribution. Some of the strategies range from UBI to forms of cooperative work and living, to ZADs and squats, and other forms of political disobedience.<\/p>\n

These theories and practices of degrowth constitute\u2014as the epigraph above suggests\u2014an utopic ideal and, in some cases, concrete utopias.<\/p>\n

To explore these ideas and praxes, I am delighted to welcome to Utopia 4\/13, at the Librairie Utopia<\/a> in the fifth arrondissement of Paris a brilliant panel of thinkers and actors: Fran\u00e7oise Gollain<\/a>, the foremost expert scholar of Andr\u00e9 Gorz\u2019s intellectual writings, author of his reference intellectual biography Andr\u00e9 Gorz, une philosophie de l\u2019\u00e9mancipation <\/em>(L\u2019Harmattan, 2018), as well as of an excellent short general introduction to his theories Andr\u00e9 Gorz pour une pens\u00e9e de l\u2019\u00e9cosocialisme<\/em> (Le Passager Clandestin, 2014); Clara Ruault<\/a>, another brilliant scholar of Gorz\u2019s thought, who edited the volume on Gorz-Marcuse and joins us from Columbia University; Frederic Bosquet<\/a>, one of the main instigators and cooperators of the TERA eco-village project<\/a>, with a long career in Social and Solidarity Economy, managing cooperatives and participating in different ways to transition our societies to more sustainable and just ways of functioning;\u00a0Alex Robin, a member of the Longo Ma\u00ef<\/a> cooperatives since 1974 and the founder of Radio Zinzine<\/a>, a non-commercial, self governed, anarchist radio station in France; and T\u00e9l\u00e9maque Masson-R\u00e9cipon<\/a>, a doctoral student at the EHESS and militant-organizer around UBI.<\/p>\n

With Fredric and Alex as our guides, we will be focusing a spotlight on the Longo Ma\u00ef<\/a> and TERA<\/a> eco-cooperatives to explore with them their concrete utopias.<\/p>\n

The Librairie Utopia<\/a> on the Left Bank in Paris was created by the Utopia movement<\/a>, which is a popular education movement. The library is a \u201clibrairie associative,\u201d that is mainly volunteer run and staffed, and the Utopia movement organizes a yearly gathering that they call the \u201cUtopia summer university\u201d over the course of 2 or 3 days (the term \u201cuniversity\u201d here is meant to mean something very different than a conventional university, more like the gatherings that French political parties have at the end of summer).<\/p>\n

Welcome to Utopia 4\/13!<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\n

Son utopie est celle d\u2019une nouvelle civilisation ma\u00eetrisant le temps de vie et le travail. [\u2026] Reposant sur une critique du travail contemporain, qui ne cesse de se r\u00e9duire ou de se d\u00e9grader en emplois pr\u00e9caires, intermittents et \u00e0 temps partiel, les \u00e9tapes de cette utopie peuvent se r\u00e9sumer en quelques mots\u00a0: restreindre le plus possible le temps pass\u00e9 \u00e0 produire le n\u00e9cessaire dans le cadre de la production complexe et hypertechnologis\u00e9e d\u2019aujourd\u2019hui et le r\u00e9partir entre tous\u00a0; ce qui va permettre de d\u00e9gager pour tous du temps pour le travail pour soi, pour les activit\u00e9s socialement utiles, et aussi pour des activit\u00e9s autonomes individuelles ou collectives\u2014facilit\u00e9es par la circulation num\u00e9rique du savoir\u2014qui \u00e9panouissent parce que non contraintes\u00a0; et enfin mettre fin \u00e0 la d\u00e9pendance vitale vis-\u00e0-vis du travail par une redistribution des richesses que serait l\u2019octroi d\u2019un revenu garanti, suffisant et inconditionnel, afin de ne plus \u00eatre contraint de travailler pour avoir un revenu, mais d\u2019avoir un revenu pour \u0153uvrer sans contrainte.<\/p>\n

\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u2014 Sur Andr\u00e9 Gorz, par Willy Gianinazzi, dans Andr\u00e9 Gorz, Le fil rouge de l\u2019\u00e9cologie <\/em>(Paris\u00a0: \u00c9ditions EHESS, 2015)<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Bernard E. Harcourt His utopia is that of a new civilization that masters the time of life and of labor. […] Based on a critique of contemporary work, which is constantly being reduced or degraded into precarious, intermittent and… Continue Reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2332,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[52291],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6368","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-posts-4-13"],"post_mailing_queue_ids":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.law.columbia.edu\/utopia1313\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6368","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.law.columbia.edu\/utopia1313\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.law.columbia.edu\/utopia1313\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.law.columbia.edu\/utopia1313\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2332"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.law.columbia.edu\/utopia1313\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6368"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.law.columbia.edu\/utopia1313\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6368\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.law.columbia.edu\/utopia1313\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6368"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.law.columbia.edu\/utopia1313\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6368"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.law.columbia.edu\/utopia1313\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6368"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}