The alternative is Counter-Hegemony – only through advancing nowtopian alternatives to the genocidal capitalist paradigm can new worlds be constructed

Andrea Vetter, Matthias Schmelzer, Aaron Vansintjan, “The Future Is Degrowth”, Verso Books, Pages 216-219, 2022,

Interstitial strategies that test alternatives in civil society ‘from below’, and the non-reformist reforms that shift the transformation of central contours of the social system ‘from above’, seem to be, at first sight, contradictory, or perhaps unconnected, strategies. They can be related in two ways. On one hand, the wider adoption of nowtopias presupposes changes in society as a whole, and vice versa, as argued above. On the other hand, however, the implementation of radical reforms depends on the establishment of a counter-hegemony in order to enforce ruptures in certain areas of society and around key conflicts – and this counter-hegemony needs nowtopias to grow and gain strength.

What is counter-hegemony? Let us briefly revisit the concept of hegemony. As we argued in the second chapter, following Antonio Gramsci, capitalist growth societies not only stabilize themselves through the power of the state and the economic elites. They are also stabilized by the consent and consensus of the governed and subalterns, a consensus which is primarily established in civil society and the media. Thus, hegemony is the system of power and domination that prevails, not just through governments or the market but also through civil society, our way of life, and the ideas that we live by. Particularly central to this is the hegemony of the growth paradigm – the idea that growth is desirable, necessary, and essentially infinite. Any dominant ideology, including the growth paradigm at the core of capitalist ideology, depends on legitimacy and approval.36 This is the hegemonic system we aim to dismantle.

But the everyday mind is not uniform, and the promises and visions of a hegemonic imagination always point beyond it. According to Ernst Bloch, they contain a ‘utopian surplus’ – a common sense that a different world is possible – that can be taken up and strengthened.37 Counter-hegemony is the flip side of hegemony. Building up a counter-hegemony that can undo the growth paradigm, re-orient our economy towards well-being, and scale down social metabolism in the interim would, conversely, also reshape our daily lives, our imaginaries, and the way we conduct politics and manage the economy. These counter-hegemonic imaginaries and movements can be strengthened in diverse ways: in nowtopias; in the development of a cooperative and solidarity economy; in what Ernst Bloch calls ‘militant optimism’; in popular education; through engagement with mainstream media; by running radical candidates supported by social movements to push the debate to the left; through aspirational policies that change people’s living conditions; and through a militant ‘dual power’ grounded in, for example, social movements, unions, strike actions, and people’s assemblies – a strategy that we discuss further below.

Crucially, counter-hegemonic common sense is embedded in people’s everyday experience and is therefore closely related to the mobilization of social movements and the spread of nowtopias. For one, counter-hegemonic values can be cultivated when people face the cumulative effects of a growth economy, such as cyclical crises, the brutality of elites in defending the status quo, and the destruction of nature. But this is only possible when these experiences of injustice are politicized through organized social movements, contestation, and public debate. Social movements are particularly important because they position themselves against a hegemonic consensus and can be important catalysts for making counterhegemonic positions part of a future consensus, and they help to politicize people who may have been less active in the past. Shifts in everyday understanding also take place in the manifold commons, nowtopias, projects of the solidarity economy, and social and ecological struggles – once again, especially when these are politically linked and understood as answers to the worsening crises of growth.38 As Barbara Muraca argues, concrete utopias and interstitial spaces are central to fostering a counterhegemonic environment, serving as ‘workshops of liberation’. In the words of Giorgos Kallis, alternative economic spaces are not simply localized initiatives, but ‘incubators’ for counter-hegemony:

They are incubators, where people perform every day the alternative world they would like to construct, its logic rendered common sense. Alternative commons are new civil society institutions that nurture new common senses. As they expand, they undo the common senses of growth and make ideas that are compatible with degrowth hegemonic, creating the conditions for a social and political force to change political institutions in the same direction.39

Thus, counter-hegemonic ideas, desires, and demands can be strengthened if more and more people interact with and benefit from the solidarity and cooperative economy, if these freedoms are politicized and social movements are formed around them. A ‘militant optimism’ (as Ernst Bloch calls it) drives these strategies forward, makes them visible, and reinforces them.40

In this sense, advancing visionary policies and experimenting with local alternatives form two sides of the same coin – which ought to be brought together discursively in the degrowth framework. This counter-hegemonic narrative can be made visible through interventions in the social sphere – including through developing new media, conferences and seminars, running radically progressive electoral campaigns (even if they do not win), but also including practices in public space such as adbusting (see section 3.2). The formation of think tanks, strategic engagement with mainstream media and pop culture, developing memes, infiltrating the arts, and engaging actively in the ‘war of ideas’ (per Gramsci) through opinion pieces can all create an environment where degrowth ideas advance in the popular consciousness.

Another way to encourage the formation of a counter-hegemonic imaginary is through popular education, engaging people in pedagogical experiences that allow them to readjust mental infrastructures, develop an understanding of being part of society and nature, and become politicized. This can be done through workshops, getting involved in nowtopias, organizing with their colleagues or neighbours, or engaging in political action such as Ende Gelände or a strike at their workplace. Each of these experiences may encourage feelings of enjoyment, empowerment, selfacceptance, mindfulness, solidarity, and finding meaning with others – thus fostering immaterial sources of satisfaction that are central to creating a new common sense around the degrowth imaginary.