Los Indignados

A guest post from Marta Suárez in Madrid:

Madrid, May 15th, 2011. After a big demonstration for a real democracy, Madrid main square, Puerta del Sol, is occupied by a group of young people. The Police try to move them away but, instead of that, more and more joined them and camped there. For some weeks, the square is full of tents, posters and people, assemblies are celebrated at every time. No one is unmoved; Sol never was so crowded… the 15-M Movement has been born.

The 15-M Movement is the resurgence of people’s anger, facing the government and the markets which control it, but I do not want to write an extensive text about what is the Movement, how it works and what it does mean, since I am sure a lot has already been written about. I only want to tell my personal experience as a person who has been involved mostly since the movement started and is still part of it or, as many people know us, as an “indignada”.

Sol was only the beginning. About two weeks later, the movement was decentralized, and assemblies in most of the districts and towns of Madrid were announced. I remember the first assembly in my neighbourhood as one of the most exciting days in my life. About 500 people (or more) were gathered together in front of the District Council, something that I could have never imagined, since my neighbourhood is a well-off area in comparison with the numerous working-class areas which exist in Madrid. Many people spoke, giving their opinion about very different issues and suggesting what we should do. But we had (and still have) a long way to go and the first step was to organize ourselves so, the following week, at the second assembly, we create four working groups (social, environment, politics and economics). These groups would be the space to work on the proposals which would be explained at the assembly to reach a consensus on it.

I got involved in the environmental working group and, thus far, we have organized two conferences -one about Degrowth last November and, more recently, one about Agroecology, which included talks, film screenings and workshops. We have been working on setting up a time bank, which will probably start to operate on the following months, and have promoted the establishing of a new consumers group: a group of consumers who organize themselves to acquire organic and local food, when it is possible, directly from the farmers in the neighbourhood.

Personally, the 15-M Movement has been the opportunity to know what was happening in my neighbourhood, to meet my neighbours and to get involved in the place I live. Thanks to it, I have known projects which had begun before the movement started but which totally fit the same principles, like the communal urban allotment which was set up two years ago by the neighbourhood association.

It has been said that the movement is dead, that it hasn't achieved its objectives, that if it doesn't engage to the majority of the population it makes no sense... It is true that we are not the 500 hundred people who went to the first assembly, that our aims are so big and our influence on the government so small that it is very difficult to achieve what we want, that there are people who do not agree with us. But there still are many people working for a better future and many small projects - bank times, new consumers groups, urban allotments, work cooperatives, eco-villages, a newspaper, barter markets - have set up for the last ten months trying to build a new society, a new economic system and a new way to relating to other people and the environment. In short, trying to build solutions that the government are not capable to build.
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Needing to Know What we Need

Green economists view markets as inherently social institutions, governed by rules which are subject to democratic decision-making. While this runs counter to prevailing economic orthodoxy – with its emphasis on ‘free’ markets – it is actually exemplified by legislation to protect consumers, such as environmental health legislation and building regulations, and more recently by increasing control over the activities of business in relation to climate change. Rather than proposing the replacement of the market system with a planning-based allocation system, how far can we develop the potential for democratic processes to adjust the incentives governing the market in a more environmentally benign direction?

A market economy is designed to meet needs so that resources are efficiently used and utility is maximised, but how do we know what we need? In a world where some societies suffer from consumption-related ‘status anxiety’ while in others people die from starvation it is difficult to find empirical justification for the theoretical position that markets ensure allocative efficiency. The environmental crisis adds an extra dimension to this question: as a closed system the earth has finite resources and a limited capacity to absorb the waste products of industrial society.

From the perspective of Green Economics, a human community that acknowledged ecological limits would also ensure that citizens managed the supply of products and services according to human needs. This is not the approach taken by Western societies, where consumption decisions are determined by ability to pay and individual choice. How might a green economy organise the allocation of resources for and the production of goods and services? Might there be a way of devising a scale of needs which was supported by some degree of social consensus?

In the middle of last year I was sent a research proposal to explore these questions. The idea (which came from Gareth Watkins of Ethical Propaganda) was to assess individual and societal need in relation to products and services that could be bought in the market. Gareth and I are hoping to work together to take some of this forward, his focus being especially the development of a 'scale of needs', scoring products and services to produce the scale, while mine is more related to socially determined economic planning.

The research plan, as we developed it, involved the establishment of a number of ‘citizens’ juries’ that would resolve the question of how needs might be defined at a societal level by comparing, within a limited energy framework, the priority they would accord to, say, a fertility treatment programme or a new computer game. The ultimate aim of the research would be to develop policies to resolve the conflicts between individual and societal needs in order to create incentives to bring them into closer alignment.

There has been a disturbing tenor of debate amongst those most concerned to curb consumption in the face of its ineluctable growth and our apparent inability to reduce CO2 emissions in spite of the clear evidence of accelerating climate change. Commentators suggest that it would all be so much easier to solve if we weren’t troubled by the problem of living in a democracy. How much easier to be China and have access to real political power.

The pitfalls of central planning of an economy, where one bicycle factory predicts and then satisfies the demand of a vast nation, was made plain by the poor-quality goods produced in inadequate quantities by the economies of what was once Comecon. But the Western ‘free’ market generates as many problems as it solves. Basic needs remain unmet while a whole range of pointless and unsatisfying consumer goods generate the CO2 emissions that are destroying our climate, while also squandering the earth’s resources.

A system of citizens’ juries, a technique in the style of participatory economic planning, would require people to rise above the selfish individualism that a market system encourages. Instead, they are expected to adopt something more like the ‘original position’ proposed by John Rawls in his A Theory of Justice. As a society we would decide how we spent our limited energy budget. Once the juries had established the hierarchy of needs the taxation system could be adjusted to encourage appropriate consumption.

At present the debate about sustainability economics is dominated by research into the failure of economic growth to lead to higher levels of human well-being, and the suggestion that we might be able to achieve greater levels of human flourishing with lower levels of energy and materials input and pollution outputs. Recognising the environmental limit of economic activity means growth cannot be employed as the means of raising the living standards of the poorest, and thus forces questions of allocation to the centre of political decision-making; sustainability and equality are hence inextricably related. However, so far there have been no attempts to categorise and measure different types of consumption and their social usefulness. The proposed research will help ensure that decisions about how limited energy and resources are shared are truly participatory, and truly democratic.
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