Bottom-Up-ers vs.Top-Down-ers: Who is right about abolishing capitalism?
Let us begin with a powerful graph and call it the Big Picture:
This is the 2025 national ecological footprint and biocapacity accounts for all countries on Earth. In order to stop global warming, humanity must degrow its ecological footprint very fast, by 2-3% per year, until it falls under the biocapacity of the planet to regenerate itself. As a consequence, this means that capitalism must be abolished and replaced with a different economic system.
There is a passionate ongoing debate in the Prospects for Degrowth series about how capitalism can be abolished, which basically has two different approaches: a bottom-up and a top-down.
The bottom-up approach advocates for the evolution of thinking and behaviours at a personal level towards a voluntary rejection of capitalism, and the adoption of a simple anti-consumerist lifestyle. Some of the bottom-up-ers are: the adopters of voluntary simplicity, those living in ecovillages, those living off the grid, the minimalists, the Amish, the self-conscious urbanites, communitarians aware of ecology, the financially independent sustainability class, or the family of Captain Fantastic living in the forest and being self-taught in Chomsky, Marx, but not degrowth.
The top-down approach advocates for massive reforms at the level of the state, that would in turn transform society towards post-capitalism. The top-down approach hopes that with the right kind of laws and regulations, lifestyles and culture would also change. Some of the top-down-ers are: environmental activist organizations, unions, political activists, policy wonks both academic and non-academic.
Bottom-up-ers tend to say that it is futile to convince the government to adopt degrowth because governments are captured by the flaws of electoral democracy, they must operate under popular mandates, they are lobbied by special interest groups, they defend the capitalist status quo.
Top-down-ers tend to say that it is futile to convince people to adopt simplicity, because people never actually change unless they are pressured by some external force, via laws and regulations, social stigma, war, pandemics etc. Some even go as far as to propose climate Leninism, a top-down aggressive strategy that wants to solve the climate crisis fast considering that we are running out of our carbon budget.
Many humans may not be aware that these dilemmas even exist! Most of my family and the people I know do not think in these terms. We are faced by some hard questions for both bottom-up-ers and top-down-ers, which may or may not represent people I know in my life:
1. I hate capitalism. I can barely make rent and I live paycheque to paycheque. But I still want to fight. What do I do?
2. I hate capitalism. I make okay money. I have some savings. I own my home. I have some free time and I want to fight. I live in a big city. I cannot leave it because all my family is here. What do I do?
3. I am agnostic about capitalism, but I do think the system is fundamentally broken. I think oligarchs have too much power. We need a completely new economic system, but I do not want to lose any of hard-earned prosperity. I don’t have time for activism but once in a while I donate some money to some cause. Am I doing okay?
What is capitalism, actually?
This brings us back to the Big Picture. Capitalism is the single cause for the environmental breakdown, for the fact that humanity operates beyond the capacity of the planet to provide for our huge demand of resources.
Avoiding the Big Elephant in the room which is capitalism, does not advance the conversation. We must say it like it is, even if it sounds jarring to many ears. Capitalism is the problem! We must also clarify what we mean by capitalism.
I proposed a focus on 3 doctrines of capitalism: proportionality, dispossession, and hierarchies. Proportionality is about one share = one vote in corporations instead of one human = one vote, dispossession is about the appropriation of property with or without consent in order to transform it into profit-making capital, and hierarchies are about the unelected managers and executives in corporations and elsewhere in status quo organizations. Abolish these 3 doctrines and you abolish capitalism. Forget about free markets and the private ownership of the means of production. It’s the doctrines that define capitalism.
Circles of thinking
When we think about the bottom-up versus top-down dilemma we tend to move through several levels of thinking which we may summarize with three overlapping circles.
The “aha” moment is when each person makes the shift in their mind from me thinking to us thinking. From a small circle to a larger circle. The larger the circle the bigger the “aha” moment. Bottom-up-ers tend to think change must start in the red circle and push outward. Top-down-ers tend to think change must start in blue circle and push inward.
Revolutions are contextual. They are vectors with several axes: location, culture, the material throughput of the economy, each axis having its unique tipping points. North American and most European culture are heavily anchored in the red circle of thinking, so the strategy there would have to target each level with different narratives. For the red circle it would be about dismantling some virtues to expose them vices, such as unsustainable lifestyles. For the green circle it would be about creating groups of trust for a common purpose, such as tenant unions, or cooperatives. For the blue circle it would mean counter-attacking capitalists on their turf by boycotting speeches, civil disobedience, pressuring politicians.
Shifting culture is possible. From slavery to smoking, humans have changed their thinking and their behaviours, often within a decade. The polycrisis of today, from climate breakdown to colonialism and inequality, puts degrowth front and centre. Degrowth is about a material self-limitation, but the prize to win is freedom and security.
We must stop lying to ourselves with sustainability lifestyles
There is a hard limit to adopting voluntary simplicity. A rural lifestyle is not necessary the most sustainable if one still has to make trips by personal [electric] car to hospitals, clinics, theatres, opera, museum, libraries, cinemas, sports arenas, farmers markets, community centres, carnivals, parades, concerts. We cannot and should not abolish all these. They are common goods. They are culture.
Meanwhile, if you are in the top 1% globally you are doing okay for sure. If you are in the top 10% locally you are also doing okay, probably. There is no excuse to want to accumulate wealth more than $5 million dollars (earned from wages, inheritance, or capitalist appropriation), or to seek income 5 times more than your local minimum, as Thomas Piketty suggested. In Canada that would translate into a maximum gross income of $184.600 per year. It should be a matter of social stigma to seek more than that in a year! We are riding a historical wave of opportunity to convert virtues into vices and expose them for what they really are: chokepoints on life.
A lifestyle that is compatible with the degrowth transition required by the Big Picture combines both bottom-up self-limitations and also top-down limitations. Bottom-up limitation is not about buying a new green apartment or buying an electric car to signal virtue. It is about our entire ecological footprint from what we eat, where we live, how we move, what we buy. Top-down limitation is about the just rationing of production and consumption: from carbon rationing to rationing everything that contributes to the ecological footprint, to ensure fair distribution for all humans.
Individuals stuck in the red circle of thinking, to no fault of their own, can self-adjust their lifestyles wherever they are, to the best of their abilities. They don’t have to sell their apartment and move into an ecovillage. Those with a high footprint would have to sell their big mansions, but guess what, someone else has to buy it! What then? Do we abandon millions of buildings?
This is where top-down policies help such as: ration the per capita use of electricity, water, fossil fuels; use consumption-based carbon credits distributed equally to all citizens; convert mega mansions into multi-unit buildings or repurpose them for community use; electrify everything; insulate everything etc.
The Economy for Life
There is no single recipe to fight capitalism. Bottom-up is okay. Top-down is okay. However, there cannot be one single approach because the Big Picture implies many intersectional challenges. Some are hyper local, such as the quality of drinking water. Some are intercontinental, such as the present day colonialism. All approaches are needed. The Simpler Way works for some of us. Getting involved with unions works for others. Same with political activism.
As long as the attack names capitalism directly, as long as it attacks its three core doctrines, all fights are legitimate and desirable. We cannot remain stuck in the red circle of thinking, and we cannot remain stuck in the blue circle either. The flow of thinking should move from me to us, and from us to me, constantly.
I introduced the Economy for Life framing as an umbrella term. It is an alternative to capitalism with words untainted by controversy. The political program of the Economy for Life is degrowth ecosocialism, obviously. Tough to swallow? Tough to break mainstream neoliberal red-scare propaganda? We must be as noisy as we can get to break through, but not compromise on language. Degrowth may be a tough word to sell, but only until people actually read its definition and come to understand it.
In conclusion, both bottom-up-ers and top-down-ers want the same thing: the end of capitalism. We all want an economy for life, and not for profit. All life: human and non-human. The clock is ticking. Who is awake?