Subsistence Perspective
As mentioned earlier, the new vision of a non-exploitative, non-colonial, non-patriarchal society which respects, not destroys nature, did not emanate from research institutes, UN-organizations or governments, but from grassroots movements, in both the South and the North, who fought and fight for survival. And in these movements it is women who more than men understand that a subsistence perspective is the only guarantee of the survival of all, even of the poorest, and not integration into and continuation of the industrial growth system. Many recent studies on the impact of ecological deterioration on women, particularly the poorest women in the South, have highlighted not only the fact that women and children are the main victims of this war against nature but also that women are the most active, most creative, and most concerned and committed in movements for conservation and protection of nature and for healing the damage done to her. While women’s role as ‘saviours of the environment’ may be welcomed by many, including those who want to combine sustainability of eco-systems with permanent economic growth, few voices emphasize that these grassroots women’s movements also implicitly and explicitly criticize the prevailing capitalist, profit and growth-oriented, patriarchal development paradigm and that they advocate a new alternative; a subsistence alternative.
This perspective was most clearly spelt out by the women of the Chipko Movement, who in Vandana Shiva’s interview with some of its leaders in Garwhal (chapter 16) clearly said that they expect nothing from ‘development’ or from the money economy. They want only to preserve their autonomous control over their subsistence base, their common property resources: the land, water, forests, hills. From history and their own experience they know that their survival (their bread) as well as their freedom and dignity — all essentials for survival — can be maintained only as long as they have control over these resources. They do not need the money offered by the government or the industrialists to survive. Their concept of freedom and the good life differs from that offered by the global supermarket of the capitalist patriarchal industrial system. Remarkably, even their sons are not fascinated by this supermarket model unlike many young men in the South who are the first to be lured by the promises of the market and money economy. Few men today are ready to say: my mother’s dignity cannot be bought with money.
While the male leaders and speakers seemed to expect South Africa’s economic and ecological problems to be solved through full integration into the growth-oriented world economy, the women, who had so far borne the burden of modernization and development, were much more sceptical. One 60-year-old woman said that, ‘The (government’s) betterment scheme has been the best strategy to push us into the depth of poverty.
We have already mentioned the Seikatsu Club in Japan, started by housewives after the Minamata disaster. There are many such producer-consumer cooperatives in the North, started or led by women. Several feminist groups have gone to the countryside and sought to build up a self-sufficient subsistence base as gardeners, sheep farmers, or handicraft workers. A group of unemployed women in Cologne initiated a scheme to exchange things with each other rather than to buy new ones.
For example, the efforts of Hazel Henderson to establish an alternative economy, Marilyn Waring’s14 critique of the concept of work, prevalent in capitalist industrial society, or Margrit Kennedy’s15 proposal, following Gsell, to strip money of its ‘productive’ capacity to produce ever more money, namely through interest. To subsume all these practical and theoretical efforts to find an alternative to the existing destructive system under the rubic ‘subsistence perspective’ would be incorrect; many differences exist, in detail and perhaps also in perspective. But there is a commonality in these initiatives: the need for a qualitative, not simply a quantitative change in what we are accustomed to call the economy.
One, in the South, is the case of a people’s movement towards water preservation and subsistence in India. The other is an account of a commune in Germany which tries to solve the ecological problem of waste disposal within the framework of a subsistence perspective. These are particular cases, but they encapsulate the main elements of a society which is no longer based on industrialism and generalized commodity production for profit, permanent growth and consumerism.
Thus, the people not only wanted to regain control over their own resources and restore the ecological balance in their area, they also began to change the unequal social relationships between the classes and genders. For the first time women received a share in a resource which actually belongs to everyone and to nature.
A new cropping system—and an alternative agriculture: The Mukti Sangarsh Movement also wanted to change the socially and ecologically disastrous capitalist farming system. A new cropping system was proposed in which the various resources — land, water, different species — should be used to facilitate an ecologically, socially and economically sustainable system.
The Baliraja Dam in Khanapur is evidence of the fruitfulness of such a subsistence-oriented, integrated, synergic approach in which the key elements are:
social organization of the people;
recovery of their subsistence knowledge and skills;
active participation in the development process;
a serious attempt to change structures of social inequality and exploitation, including sexual inequality and exploitation;
a critique of mainstream science and technology and the development of locally based, ecologically sustainable alternatives;
an effort to end further privatization of the commons, and instead,
a move to recreate community control over common resources like water, sand, and so on.
Phase 1: From students’ movement to squatter movement: The Sozialistische Selbsthilfe Köln (SSK) is one of the oldest self-help initiatives in Cologne (Germany); its beginning dates back to the Students Movement in the early 1970s. Inspired by Herbert Marcuse’s argument that the ‘revolution’, the alternative to capitalist, industrial society, could no longer be expected from the working class in industrialized, affluent societies, but rather from drop-outs, marginalized groups and the colonized in the Third World, a group of students in Cologne initiated a scheme whose objective was to give shelter to youngsters who had run away from authoritarian homes, remand homes or even prisons. They claimed that they could offer a better education and better prospects for life to these young people than could the establishment institutions.
Phase 2: From Chernobyl to the ecology question and the discovery of subsistence: About 1986, after the meltdown at Chernobyl, the SSK-commune became aware of the ecology problem. They began to question their model of socialism and asked themselves what was its use in an environment poisoned and polluted by radioactivity and other toxic wastes of industrial society. They held many discussions on how to change the SSK in order to contribute to a more ecologically sound society.
Phase 3: From garbage to compost: The Subsistence Conference at Bad Boll not only meant the discovery of a new guiding concept but also the beginning of a new process in which their old utopia could be re-created within a new ecological framework. Through a friend present at this conference, the three SSK activists came into contact with a biologist, Peter van Dohlen who had developed a method to make compost out of organic kitchen waste in closed containers. He had tried in vain to persuade the Green Party of Cologne to propagate this compost-technology, which was particularly appropriate for cities. When the three activists met Peter it was a meeting of people who, left to themselves, had begun to despair and saw no way out of their crisis. But by coming together and exchanging ideas a new and creative process started which is still on-going. To make a long story short: the technology developed by Peter provided the SSK with a new type of meaningful, self-sustaining ecological work, while for him, here at last were people who grasped the significance of his compost-making technology and, as a collective, were ready to work to make it function. Having adapted an old oil container for compost-making, the SSK people collected kitchen garbage from their neighbourhood in Gummersbach and experimented with it. The result was excellent: within three weeks kitchen garbage could be transformed.
Phase 4: From compost to subsistence agriculture: From the beginning the SSK had stressed the interconnections between the various problems with which they dealt: joblessness; the ecology problem; the inanity of most work; a sense of futility; loneliness; health problems; lack of dignity and recognition; overconsumption and addictions, and so on. Therefore also in their practical, political work similar also synergetic solutions should be sought.
Guided by the subsistence perspective and the need to get enough hay for the animals, the next step was to buy an old farmhouse and repair the old equipment for subsistence production. At the same time the group secured a contract for composting the kitchen garbage for a series of villages. This compost is used as fertilizer in the new fields and gardens where experimental organic farming is carried out to produce vegetables for the SSK workers on the farm. Chickens, pigs, ducks, goats, sheep and a horse which pulls a cart to collect garbage, are kept on the farm. At present about six to eight people can live by this subsistence work.
In summarizing the main features of the subsistence perspective which has informed and inspired the initiatives described above, as well as many ecological and feminist grassroots movements referred to in this book, we can see that these struggles for survival are a practical critique not only of an aggressive, exploitative, ecologically destructive technology, but of commodity-producing, growth-oriented capitalist, or socialist industrial systems. Although none of these movements, initiatives, communities have spelt out a full-fledged explicit new utopia for an ecologically sound, feminist, non-colonial, non-exploitative society there is enough evidence in their practice and theory to show that their concept of a ‘good society’ differs from the classical Marxian utopia. While Marx and his followers saw capitalism as the ‘midwife’ of the ‘material base’ upon which a socialist society could be built, these movements and initiatives demonstrate their rejection of the universal supermarket as a model of a better society, even if it was equally accessible to all. Neither do they accept Engel’s statement that what is good for the ruling class should be good for everybody. These women’s and men’s concept of what constitutes a ‘good life’, of ‘freedom’ is different, as is their concept of economics, politics and culture. Their utopia may not yet be spelt out explicitly, but its components are already being tested in everyday practice, it is a potentially concrete utopia. What are the main characteristics of this subsistence perspective? The aim of economic activity is not to produce an ever-growing mountain of commodities and money (wages or profit) for an anonymous market but the creation and re-creation of life, that means, the satisfaction of fundamental human needs mainly by the production of use-values not by the purchase of commodities. Self-provisioning, self-sufficiency, particularly in food and other basic needs; regionality; and decentralization from a state bureaucracy are the main economic principles. The local and regional resources are used but not exploited; the market plays a subordinate role. These economic activities are based on new relationships: a) to nature: nature is respected in her richness and diversity, both for her own sake and as a precondition for the survival of all creatures on this planet. Hence, nature is not exploited for the sake of profit, instead, wherever possible, the damage done to nature by capitalism is being healed. Human interaction with nature is based on respect, co-operation and reciprocity. Man’s domination over nature — the principle that has guided Northern society since the Renaissance — is replaced by the recognition that humans are part of nature, that nature has her own subjectivity. b) Among people. As man’s domination over nature is related to man’s domination over women and other human beings a different, non-exploitative relationship to nature cannot be established without a change in human relationships, particularly between women and men. This means not only a change in the various divisions of labour (sexual division; manual/mental and urban/rural labour, and so on) but mainly the substitution of money or commodity relationships by such principles as reciprocity, mutuality, solidarity, reliability, sharing and caring, respect for the individual and responsibility for the ‘whole’. The need for subsistence security is satisfied not by trust in one’s bank account or a social welfare state, but by trust in the reliability of one’s community A subsistence perspective can be realized only within such a network of reliable, stable human relations, it cannot be based on the atomized, self-centred individuality of the market economy.
A subsistence perspective is based on and promotes participatory or grassroots’ democracy — not only in so far as political decisions per se are concerned, but also with regard to all economic, social and technological decisions. Divisions between politics and economics, or public and private spheres are largely abolished. The personal is the political. Not only the parliament but also everyday life and life-style are battlefields of politics. Political responsibility and action is no longer expected solely from elected representatives but assumed by all in a communal and practical way. 4. A subsistence perspective necessarily requires a multidimensional or synergic problem-solving approach. It is based on the recognition that not only the different dominance systems and problems are interconnected, but also that they cannot be solved in isolation or by a mere technological fix. Thus social problems (patriarchal relations, inequality, alienation, poverty) must be solved together with ecological problems. This interconnectedness of all life on earth, of problems and solutions is one of the main insights of ecofeminism.
A subsistence perspective demands a new paradigm of science, technology and knowledge. Instead of the prevailing instrumentalist, reductionist science and technology — based on dualistic dichotomies which have constituted and maintain man’s domination over nature, women and other people — ecologically sound, feminist, subsistence science and technology will be developed in participatory action with the people. Such a grass-roots, women and people-based knowledge and science will lead to a re-evaluation of older survival wisdom and traditions and also utilize modern knowledge in such a way that people maintain control over their technology and survival base. Social relations are not external to technology but rather incorporated in the artefacts as such. Such science and technology will therefore not reinforce unequal social relationships but will be such as to make possible greater social justice. A subsistence perspective leads to a reintegration of culture and work, of work as both burden and pleasure. It does not promise bread without sweat nor imply a life of toil and tears. On the contrary, the main aim is happiness and a fulfilled life. Culture is wider than specialized activity exclusive to a professional elite — it imbues everyday life.
This also necessitates a reintegration of spirit and matter, a rejection of both mechanical materialism and of airy spirituality. This perspective cannot be realized within a dualistic worldview. subsistence perspective resists all efforts to further privatize, and/or commercialize the commons: water, air, waste, soil, resources. Instead it fosters common responsibility for these gifts of nature and demands their preservation and regeneration. Most of the characteristics in the foregoing would also be appropriate to the conception of an ecofeminist society. In particular, the practical and theoretical insistence on the interconnectedness of all life, on a concept of politics that puts everyday practice and experiential ethics, the consistency of means and ends, in the forefront. And yet, the two examples previously documented are not feminist projects in the narrow sense in which this term is often understood, namely, all-women initiatives in which men have no role to play. In fact, the initiators of these projects were men. In the ecofeminist movement there are many examples of women-only projects and initiatives. But the question is: can we conceive of a perspective for a better future society by concentrating only on women, or by building all-women islands within a capitalist-patriarchal ocean? As ecofeminists emphasize overcoming established dualisms and false dichotomies, as they want to put the interdependence of all life at the centre of a new ethic and politics, it would be quite inconsistent to exclude men from this network of responsibility for the creation and continuation of life. Ecofeminism does not mean, as some argue, that women will clean up the ecological mess which capitalist-patriarchal men have caused; women will not eternally be the Trummerfrauen (the women who clear up the ruins after the patriarchal wars).
herefore, a subsistence perspective necessarily means men begin to share, in practice, the responsibility for the creation and preservation of life on this planet. Therefore, men must start a movement to redefine their identity. They must give up their involvement in destructive commodity production for the sake of accumulation and begin to share women’s work for the preservation of life. In practical terms this means they have to share unpaid subsistence work: in the household, with children, with the old and sick, in ecological work to heal the earth, in new forms of subsistence production. In this respect it is essential that the old sexist division of labour criticized by the feminists in the 1970s — that is, men become the theoreticians of the subsistence perspective while women do the practical work — is abolished. This division between mental and manual labour is contrary to the principles of a subsistence perspective. The two examples documented above are significant in this respect, in so far as they demonstrate that men have begun to see the importance of the need to overcome this dichotomy.
Moreover, if the dichotomy between life-producing and preserving and commodity-producing activities is abolished, if men acquire caring and nurturing qualities which have so far been considered women’s domain, and if, in an economy based on self-reliance, mutuality, self-provisioning, not women alone but men too are involved in subsistence production they will have neither time nor the inclination to pursue their destructive war games. A subsistence perspective will be the most significant contribution to the de-militarization of men and society. Only a society based on a subsistence perspective can afford to live in peace with nature, and uphold peace between nations, generations and men and women, because it does not base its concept of a good life on the exploitation and domination of nature and other people.