From Fearless Vegan:
In its most basic form, sustenance Economics is the ecology of how humans make a living. It is the economics of how we meet our basic needs in order to survive, reproduce and hopefully thrive. Sustenance economics are an essentially social activity. It is meeting our basic needs through co-operation and sharing – not just with other humans but with the web-of-life. Sustenance economics are the most fundamental kind of direct action, characterized by interpersonal interactions on the family, local, and community levels. It is the way me meet our basic needs for food, water, shelter, right livelihood, community and peace. As Vandana Shiva describes it: “The sustenance economy includes all spheres in which humans produce in balance with nature and reproduce society through partnerships, mutuality, and reciprocity.”
One can think of the web-of-life on planet Earth as a pyramid. The base of the pyramid is the natural economy. It is the essential foundation for all life and for all human economies and society. Directly above the natural economy is the sustenance economy. For tens of thousands of years, the human sustenance economy has lived in a symbiotic and sustainable relationship with the natural economy. The sustenance economic understands that it is fundamentally dependent on the natural economy and grows organically out of it.
Relatively recently, the capitalist market economy has asserted itself into the pyramid on top of the other two economies. The primary characteristic of the capitalist economy has been the predation, domination and destruction of the other two economies. It is the ecology of parasitism. Today on Earth, we have reached the final phase, where corporate-capitalist parasitism is on the verge of destroying the host. The natural economy, once thought to be imperishable, is now on the verge of a catastrophic decline in its ability to support “higher” life.
In most of the world, the capitalist economic system has already destroyed an independent sustenance economy, reducing it to a state of abject, oppressed, neocolonial dependence. Most of those sustenance economies that remain exist on a bare survival level and are under tremendous threat from the greed economy. Although the market economy cannot exist without the sustenance economy, it cannot as Dr. Shiva says, “fully internalize the sustenance economy because externalizing the social burden is the very basis of profits and capital accumulation.” As the capitalist economic system falters, like a cancer it devours the other levels of the pyramid. Governments begin to slash even modest spending on the sustenance economy in favor of increased spending on war, “homeland security,” and corporate subsidies.
Above the three economies on the pyramid, are the various structures and institutions of human society. Human social organization – what we might call culture – is built on, and is fundamentally dependent on, the three economies. The apex of the pyramid is politics, the way humans govern themselves. For at least the last 5,000 years, the top levels of the pyramid-of-life have been structured hierarchically with men on top of every level and sub-level – what is called patriarchy.
People are increasingly aware of three great crises – ecological, social, and political – facing the pyramid-of-life. They are also beginning to realize that the crises are fundamentally rooted in the hierarchical structure of the top levels. Under this hierarchy, society and economics are structured so that change flows primarily from the top down. For the last 5,000 years, the political domination of the 1% at the top of the pyramid has determined the changes that take place at the lower levels. The nearly complete merger of corporations and the state at the pyramid’s political apex has resulted in unprecedented concentration of power in the hands of the 1%. With their control of science and technology the patriarchy has been able to completely dominate all levels of the pyramid. Its taking power has become so great that it is now making irreversible destructive changes to the very foundation of all planetary life – the natural economy.
Because humans are so socialized into this hierarchic structure, it is understandable that many people would believe change begins at the top with political action. Unfortunately, efforts to change the hierarchical structure of society and the economy from the top (through politics) have come to naught. What we call revolutionary change has largely been the replacement of one hierarchy with another. The appearance changes but the hierarchical structure remains in place. Part of our inability to affect transformational structural change has been because the hierarchy concentrates power at the top. But it is also because the nature of the hierarchal structure determines that change happens in one direction. Change can only come from the top down in a hierarchically structured society. The institutions (including shamocracy) and the taking power they wield insure that while the names and faces may change the hierarchical structure itself remains intact.
Replacing the hierarchical structure of society thus requires two things. First is altering the direction that change takes place. Second is altering the kind of power that is used to make change. Altering the direction that change takes place, i.e. from the bottom up, necessitates a complete restructuring of society from hierarchical (vertical) to horizontal (egalitarian). Change from the bottom up requires that we begin with the natural and sustenance economies, not at the top, through political action. What is left of the sustenance economy is already largely horizontally structured, so what must be done involves strengthening the sustenance economy while defending the natural economy. This is what Gandhi meant when he said that a constructive program is necessary for effective political action. Gandhi’s constructive program is just another way of looking at Shiva’s sustenance economy.
Replacing the hierarchical structure of society also requires an essentially different kind of power. Instead of the hierarchical “taking” power, transformational change requires “do together” power. Or as John Holloway phrases it, “change the world without taking power.” Holloway’s double entendre brilliantly summarizes the nature of transformational change. It is about using the social power of doing – providing for our needs – together, rather than the revolutionary taking the 1%’s parasitic “taking” power.
Change from the bottom up thus begins with the pyramid’s bottom two economies, the natural and human sustenance. That is why, defending the natural economy has to be the first priority for making transformational change. In a healthy human society, the sustenance economy is intimately and sustainably linked to the natural economy. The health of one is inseparable from the other. The most effective way to defend the natural economy is to rebuild a sustainable sustenance economy and reduce dependence on the parasitic capitalist market economy. That is why the food movement has such an important, perhaps the key place in rebuilding the sustenance economy.
Effectively defending the natural economy requires a sustainable and vibrant human sustenance economy. As long as people are dependent on the capitalist greed economy for their basic needs, their ability to change that system is severely limited. Likewise without a truly sustainable relationship to the natural economy, the human sustenance economy is unable to foster transformational change. Once local communities are able to establish a strong and independent sustenance economy, it becomes possible to make transformational change flow upward, to society and culture and eventually to the top political level – the last to change.
Another essential characteristic of the upward flow of change, is that it creates and builds the new and does not tear down or reform the old hierarchical social structure. Once a viable sustenance economy is in place, it becomes possible to build the necessary new social, cultural and political relationships to replace the old. It is the egg shell theory of revolutionary change. As the embryo of the new society grows into a self-reliant economy and society, the corrupt greed economy and parasite society decays and withers away. Until it becomes just a hollow shell, that eventually breaks and disappears.
