Thinking about permaculture… and politics…
Prospect and fate: permaculture under different political systems
…permaculture contains elements of more than one political system and mashes them together in a context set by the permaculture design system’s ethics, principles and characteristics.
IN WRITING this story it soon became clear that fitting permaculture into an existing political system would be difficult. Why? Because permaculture contains elements of more than one political system and mashes them together in a context set by the permaculture design system’s ethics, principles and characteristics.
I should point out that this happens unintentionally. It comes from the zeitgeist—the spirit of the times—examples being the ideological split over responses to the Covid pandemic and the infusion of neoliberal ideas into permaculture thinking during the 1990s. Neoliberalism was the orthodoxy of the day and its influence was imbibed from the cultural ambience and its prominence in the media by some, while other permaculture people took a more-leftist attitude in criticising neoliberalism. The same goes for the overlap of permaculture ideas with those coming from the Australian Greens. They found acceptance within permaculture because in some instances they already existed within permaculture thinking.
If anything is useable as a criterion for aligning permaculture with a particular political philosophy it is whether a political system enables permaculture’s three ethics of care of people and planet and the distribution of excess resources according to need to be implemented. That’s one criterion. A looser criterion is how well the political theory or system aligns with the common characteristics we find in permaculture. These are variable and implied, seldom articulated within the permaculture movement. We can partially summarise them as:
- individual liberty within a context of community and social wellbeing (which suggests limits for the common good)
- small-scale development (although large projects have a place)
- focus on the long-term
- local control over local resources
- local/regional governance
- environmental and social wellbeing
- local economies
- cooperation rather than competition.
We can see how these characteristics already preclude some political systems. If we disregard how some systems have evolved and are applied today we can see that permaculture is potentially, theoretically, that is, more at home in social democratic and left-leaning political systems such as democratic socialist or anarchist systems, although we see from evidence around the world that permaculture can also exist within some right-leaning social democratic systems. It can also exist in authoritarian systems—to a limited and farming/gardening-focused extent, anyway—as we see in China which is alternatively regarded as either an authoritarian communist or an authoritarian capitalist state.
Complicating permaculture’s potential within particular socio-political systems is how those systems are applied in different ways in different places, such as socially and economically liberal capitalism/authoritarian capitalism, democratic socialism/authoritarian socialism and the libertarian trend of some forms of anarchism that prioritise individual freedom above social wellbeing.
Authoritarian systems might tolerate some elements of permaculture practice, such as organic food production, but not others such as permaculture’s preference for social equity regardless of ethnicity and wealth (a function of permaculture’s second and third ethics of peoplecare and distribution of surplus), decentralised decision making and localism in governance and economy. This hobbles permaculture being applied to its fullest extent in authoritarian states and compromises it by watering it down to only a few tolerated practices.
Bill’s politics
If you’ve disguised your revolution as gardening too well, for too long, you may in fact just be gardening.
Bill Mollison, whose scientific field work and extensive knowledge of natural systems and in the years leading up to the publication of Permaculture One in 1978, explained how he came to his own political position in his acceptance speech on receiving the Right Livelihood Award in 1981. Bill said he developed his own politics as something different to that offered through political parties and the electoral systems of representative democracy:
“I withdrew from society about 1970 because I had been long in opposition to the systems that I saw were killing us. I decided it was no good persisting with opposition that got you nowhere. I thought for two years. I wanted to return to society but I wanted to come back only with something very positive. I did not want to oppose anything again and waste my time.
“Somewhere someone had given me Mao‑Tse‑Tung’s little red book. I didn’t understand it very well, in fact it was very difficult for me to read. But, at one point when he was talking about an attack on the city of Tai Ching, his advice to his army was ‘Don’t attack Tai Ching: it’s too heavily defended. Go around it and Tai Ching will fall.’
“So I’ve been going around the things that I think are killing us.”
Bill’s notion of “going around” is similar to Edward de Bono’s ‘water logic’. de Bono likened water logic to the way water in a stream flows around a big boulder, bypassing it and slowly eroding it away rather than confronting it with brute force when it might prove immovable.
A criticism of going around rather than confronting something is that going around an obstacle leaves it intact. It might eventually be worn down or pass into irrelavance, however until it does either of those things it can do a lot of damage. If it is powerful enough it can block those side passages which those those going round it make use of.
If ever there was a political and communitarian call to implement permaculture then it is this made by Bill when he positioned permaculture as a subtly oppositional practice based on principles of self-organisation and self-help.
“The tragic reality is that very few sustainable systems are designed or applied by those who hold power, and the reason for this is obvious and simple: to let people arrange their own food, energy and shelter is to lose economic and political control over them. We should cease to look to power structures, hierarchical systems, or governments to help us, and devise ways to help ourselves.
“I teach self-reliance, the world’s most subversive practice. I teach people how to grow their own food, which is shockingly subversive. So, yes, it’s seditious. But it’s peaceful sedition.”
Bill’s notion that growing your own food is “shockingly subversive” is not accepted by all in permaculture or in the broader sustainability movement. It might go some way to subverting the food industry supply chain by promoting a limited self-reliance in providing a life necessity, however it shows no sign of being a threat to the food industry. If anything, growing your own food is a reform of the food supply chain rather than subversion or revolution.
US permaculture blogger, Rafter Sass Ferguson, put it this way: “If you’ve disguised your revolution as gardening too well, for too long, you may in fact just be gardening.”
Whatever subversion of the dominant food supply chain there might be in the self-provisioning of part of our food supply, it is contingent on people having land, a home and the financial resources and time to grow their own food. Those are in short supply.
The popular interpretation of permaculture as a gardening system for DIY food production received a solid rebuke from Bill Mollison:
I’ve realised… being a good gardener can be like being an ostrich with your head in the sand. You will inevitably die in your own good garden if you don’t pull your head out and see what is happening in the real world.
Therefore, for us to continue to live on the earth, stop for a while from just being gardeners and look at what is happening and try and stop it.
…Interview with Bill Mollison, Permaculture magazine, 1983.
Origin: a product of social democracy
Permaculture is the product of the socially liberal social democratic system of Australia of the 1970s. The decade was one of economic and social change. The economy started to computerise and technology became more of a presence in society and was seen in a positive light. This was the time when the Whitlam Labor government made tertiary education free, enabling many who would never have had a university education to obtain one. It was the right thing at the right time in that it provided skilled people for an economy in the process of adopting new technologies and enabled social mobility into the middle class.
The spirit of the times was formed by a mashup of technological, social and political currents flowing through society. A great many young people were participants in the ‘alternative’ culture or ‘counterculture’, a broad social movement critical of contemporary society and consumer culture that sought lifestyles inclusive of environmental and social wellbeing. Researcher Peter Cock, author of Alternative Australia — communities for the future (1979, Peter Cock; Quartet Books, Melbourne. ISBN 0 908128 09 6), an analysis of Australia’s alternative subculture, estimated a rough total participation of around 50,000. The movement was influenced by the radicalisation of the Vietnam War years and by the New Left (which gave the anti-war-in-Vietnam movement its political voice and in Australia incorporated political tendencies ranging from the Australian Labor Party agenda to socialist groups) and the hippie culture that came out of the late 1960s.
In those years there was a pervasive notion of scientific and social progress, an inheritance of the optimistic preceding years. Counterculture people had a mixed attitude to this, some eschewed modernism in preference for rural lifeways that sought inspiration in the past, while others looked for ways to humanise social institutions like science and adopted a modified notion of progress.
It is questionable whether permaculture could have evolved in any political system other than social democracy. In theory, it could have emerged from a liberal socialist polity but not from the authoritarian communism of the Soviet Union or its Eastern European bloc or China. Freedom of enquiry, association and speech, and access to diverse sources of information were requirements for permaculture to emerge and evolve. When permaculture grew out of the social and intellectual ferment that was the 1970s in Australia, it required not only the personal freedoms of movement, expression and enquiry of Western democracies but the freedom to criticise without fear. It also required freedom of the press to publish its ideas. In other words it required an open society.
At the time when Permaculture One was published, Bill Mollison was a lecturer at the University of Tasmania. He had earlier been a researcher for the CSIRO (Australia’s national scientific research agency) and Tasmania’s Inland Fisheries Commission. Bill also researched and published a genealogy of Tasmanian Aborigines. This experience fed into the emerging concept of permaculture. To articulate the concept as it developed, Bill required the traditional academic freedom to publish and discuss what were unorthodox ideas and, in the case of the genealogy, findings that contradicted the government.
Permaculture has long had an antagonistic relationship with politics. Bill Mollison was especially critical of politics and David Holmgren has maintained this stance* (Bill and David formulated permaculture at the end of the 1970s). The design system’s only foray into politics came over 20 years ago when Bill proposed setting up the Permaculture Peoples’ Party (manifesto). A few practitioners acted on his proposal and started the work of establishing the party, however it came to nothing and has largely faded from permaculture’s collective memory. Critics at the time said it would diffuse the vote for the Australian Greens, the party most aligned with permaculture ideas that had in-effect already occupied the permaculture political niche.
Permaculture has traditionally distanced itself from party politics. The proposal to form a political party came across as ironic. I don’t know where the quote from Bill Mollison first appeared, but the move to start a political party seemed something of a contradiction to his earlier attitude to politics:
“ …permaculture is anti-political. There is no room for politicians or administrators or priests. And there are no laws either. The only ethics we obey are: care of the earth, care of people, and reinvestment in those ends.”
Had the party moved to policy creation, considerable overlap with the Greens would have been likely. This is because although permaculture is politically revolutionary in intent, although not through violent revolution, it is politically reformist in action. It seeks change through a substantial restructuring via reform. Bill Mollison once described permaculture as a revolution disguised as gardening.
Permaculture’s prospects in a chaotic world
The world is presently moving towards multipolarity via a number of events and trends:
- following the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, the breakup of the Eastern Bloc and the ending of global dominance by the US and the Soviet Union during the Cold War
- the rise of authoritarian states such as Russia, China, Iran and North Korea and their alliance as a de facto power bloc
- global political polarisation as North Korea and China supports and arms Russia in its war in Ukraine (at the time of writing there are reports of North Korean military personnel in Russian-occupied Ukraine) and the military and economic support of Ukraine by European, US and other states including some in Eastern and Western Europe previously subject to Russian occupation during the Cold War; Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has forced Scandanavian nations, Finland and Sweden, to join the NATO military alliance on realising that neutrality offers no protection against invasion
- the emergence of illiberal electoral democracies such as Hungary
- the decline of economic globalisation, the model favoured by the neoliberalism of the 1980s-1990s
- the establishment of the BRICS economic bloc
- the impact and social divisions resulting from social and political conflict within Western nations; the role of Russian and Chinese grey zone and disinformation tactics in support of this; and Russian interference in elections and politics in Western nations.
At the same time, nations struggle with the onset of the climate crisis. Severe weather events, flooding, bushfire, drought, crop failure, warming oceans and more promise a prolonged period of disruption and adaptation that, observers say, will bring food shortages and pressure on borders as people are displaced. Border crossings by climate refugees, who would be classed as illegal immigrants, are likely to trigger anti-immigration political movements. They are already doing so in Europe where large numbers of illegals are frequently described as ‘invaders’ who do not share the values of the countries they move to and are seen as culturally incompatible.
This geopolitical realignment raises the question as to how it potentially affects the practice and future of the permaculture design system. That might not be a direct political influence, however it is difficult for any social movement to avoid incidental influence, for the simple reason that its participants are affected and may reflect that influence in their actions and organisations.
In thinking through this we should recognise that different polities (the political makeup and governance of a nation) may permit the existence of communities of practice around permaculture to the extent that they remain below the threshold of criticising government or the socioeconomic or religious system, after which they may be viewed as dissident groups and overt or covert action taken against them.
What, then would be the prospects for permaculture under different political systems? Let’s go ahead and speculate.
Starting conditions: capitalist social democracy
Capitalism is the system from which permaculture emerged, however it was not the neoliberal capitalism that came later. The design system’s early adopters were influenced by the critiques of capitalism and consumerism of the left-leaning subculture of the years that preceded its appearance in the pages of Bill Mollison’s and David Holmgren’s Permaculture One in 1978, and by books critical of the economic system such as Limits To Growth. Not all who were attracted to the early permaculture were necessarily influenced by those politics, however anecdotal evidence suggests that the critical discourse around capitalism, consumerism and materialism informed many of permaculture’s early adopters*.
Permaculture was positioned in the public marketplace for ideas as a more constructive way to channel the dissatisfaction and critique of contemporary society than that offered by protest alone, and to build the sort of society its participants wanted.
The economically and socially liberal capitalist society of the times of permaculture’s birth afforded the freedoms that new ideas, like permaculture, needed to emerge and develop within. These were taken for granted at the time, however it became apparent that aspects of contemporary capitalism presented challenges to permaculture. Capitalism’s focus on individual ownership and market forces, the pursuit of profit and economic growth and their prominence over social and environmental wellbeing, and the exploitation and degradation of natural resources were the opposite of what permaculture wanted.
Neoliberal ideas enjoyed a limited currency among some in permaculture in the eighties and nineties. Notions like user-pays gained currency despite the reality that users can only pay if they have the funds to participate in a user-pays economy. Many did not — pensioners, the unemployed or disabled and others on a limited income. The current cost-of-living crisis in Australia has rendered more people unable to effectively participate in a user-pays economy, including middle class people who face housing affordability and other stress. It was not a good move for some in permaculture to adopt the user-pays principle as it ignored permaculture’s ethic of peoplecare.
Neoliberal notions like the economic trickle-down effect had some currency as well. An organic food advocate told me how he thought it justified to promote organic food to affluent people because its availability would trickle-down to the less-financially-well-off. Those people are still waiting.
Those things remain as contradictions to implementing and furthering permaculture in today’s capitalist societies. In adapting, permaculture practitioners had no choice other than adopting capitalist forms in the form of small businesses and attempting to operate in socially and environmentally beneficial ways. At the same time, permaculture activists promote and educate about alternatives to move us out of the contemporary capitalism mainstream, such as co-operatives and social enterprise rather than for-profit business, and producing and selling products that comply with sustainability criteria in resource use and waste.
The Australian Greens-an uneasy relationship
Stemming from the critique of capitalism and the consumer culture of the late-1960s, and emerging as a political force in Australia from the late-1970s to its peak of political influence in the 1990s, the Green Left remains an influence on thinking and political action in its electoral and direct action varieties. After the Tasmanian Greens (which grew out of the United Tasmania Group, the world’s first green electoral party) morphed into the national Australian Greens, environmental politics became a theme in federal and state politics. It remains so today.
Anecdotal evidence suggests that although permaculture espouses no collective party-political alignment, it would be with the Green Left that it finds the most affinity. Social media comments made around elections suggest an ideological alignment with the Green Left (a collective, essentially reformist political manifestation, not an organisation or a political party), mainly the Australian Greens despite criticism of the party in permaculture commentary, and to a lesser extent with the Australian Labor Party. There is virtually no preference for the conservatives other than a few permaculturists associated with ‘freedom movement’ ideas who have promoted far-right politicians known for their conspiracy theory-based politics. This came to prominence when permaculture co-originator, David Holmgren, marched in a freedom movement demonstration against government Covid mandates in Melbourne, allegedly organised by the far-right.
Points of alignment between green politics and permaculture would include:
- the rapid transition to renewable energy and decarbonisation of the economy to tackle the climate crisis
- the continuity of public services like universal healthcare and education funded through progressive taxation
- improvement to workers’ rights and social welfare
- progressive taxation policies that include fair corporate and wealth taxation
- the inclusion of environmental considerations in political decision making.
Reading through comments on permaculture Facebook groups it becomes clear that the great majority of commenters favour Australia’s Greens party as their political choice. At the same time reservations about The Greens are evident. An example is a political commentator who on social media described The Greens as “economic rationalists on bicycles”. A commment on a Facebook page stated “The Greens are abandoning their policies left, right & centre to go after more mainstream voters.”.
Facebook posts and comments do not constitute a proper survey but it is all we have to go on in the absence of any sort of statistically valid data.
The Australian Labor Party (ALP) has received some support but only a small fraction of the number of favourable comments and reposts supporting The Greens. Many hold the ALP in the same contempt they hold the Liberal Party.
A different social democracy
Kim Stanley Robinson is an American speculative fiction writer who writes well of permaculture who explores political systems, climate change and related topics in his books. He writes that the Nordic countries’ social safety nets, strong labour unions, high levels of wealth equality and emphasis on work-life balance are a model for a social democratic approach that ensures a decent living standard for all citizens while preserving democratic freedoms. This would surely be a type of society in which permaculture could evolve as an open system of community initiative.
Robinson sees the Swiss system of direct democracy, with its referendums and devolution of power to the local level as a model for how a multilingual society can function cohesively through civic participation, an alternative to the winner-take-all dynamics of majoritarian democracy.
His proposal of using evidence-based rational decision making and applying scientific knowledge to address societal challenges would well-suit permaculture’s pragmatic approach.
Authoritarian capitalism
Authoritarian capitalism is a social economy in which a capitalist market economy exists alongside an authoritarian government. Market forces coexist with limits on or repression of dissent and freedom of speech, immigration restrictions or an electoral system dominated by a single political party. Corruption and cronyism are common. Hungary under Viktor Orbán and Turkey under Recep Tayyip Erdoğan are often cited as examples. Orbán boasted of how he had made Hungary an ‘illiberal democracy’.
Russia can be seen as an authoritarian capitalist state, an oligarchy and kleptocracy (and here), with strong economic and social direction from government, economic dominance by oligarchs, corruption, limits of democratic freedom, control of the media, limited access to foreign media and limits on foreign civil society organisations and their banning. State capitalism in the form of government businesses and industries coexist with private corporations in a war-based economy.
Market conditions may be deregulated to some extent under authoritarian capitalism, however the development of economies towards the free market model has to contend with the retention of a strong central government and its legislative control of the economy and society, as well as by the public mood stemming from the weakening of environmental safeguards and restrictions on democratic freedoms.
Permaculture can operate in authoritarian capitalism so long as it takes a form that does not threaten the state or the oligarchs. A case would be organic and regenerative farming that has been adopted in permaculture and which would be tolerated and even encouraged, especially if they grew to become export industries. Evidence for this comes from China where, writing in an article entitled Why China is emerging as a leader in sustainable and organic agriculture in The Conversation, academics Steffanie Scott and Zhenzhong Si write that: “The total area of certified organic agriculture cultivation increased more than five-fold between 2005 and 2018, to 3.1 million hectares, according to a 2019 government report. China ranked third in the certified organic area in 2017, after Australia and Argentina.”
Organic agriculture is not permaculture although like home food gardening it is an element within it, however they are often conflated. Some in permaculture are critical of large-scale industrial organic agriculture, favouring smaller-scale farming systems.
Some forms of self-help community initiatives might also be tolerated. The limit would come where initiatives were seen to threaten the government in some way. That questions whether permaculture’s tradition of questioning government and industry in the West would land it in trouble. Would what we see be a dumbed-down version of permaculture stripped of its social critique content?
Socialism
The origin of socialism can be traced to the Age of Enlightenment as well as to notions of liberty and social equality coming from the French Revolution whose ideals are fundamental principles of liberal democracy. The Age of Enlightenment was a European intellectual movement of the 17th and 18th centuries that valued the gaining of knowledge through rational thought and which featured political ideas such as progress, fraternity and constitutional government. It overlapped the Scientific Revolution.
‘Socialism’ is a term ascribed to a range of political and economic systems including social democracy, anarchism, utopianism and Soviet and Eastern European communism of the Cold War period, making it important to define what we are talking about in using the term.
While capitalism has a limited range of forms, socialism has many.
- parliamentary socialism is a polity we find in Western democratic societies; socialist ministers of government might introduce environmental and social welfare legislation and economic reform that limits particular capitalist practices while not interfering in the overall operation of markets other than for some forms of market regulation and workplace and product safety
- a reformist mixed economy model in which a strong central government enacts a socialist agenda to reform and control markets and take an influential role in the national economy; this form of socialism establishes government industries and institutions while retaining democratic practices; it introduces economic reform and limits or prevents the economic dominance of large corporations
- authoritarian socialism, such as in Cuba, in which a strong central government institutes reforms and limits or prevents the economic dominance of large corporations while permitting small-scale capitalism; there is usually some degree of control over media, dissent, social liberties and social organisation.
Socialism originated in the West and takes forms that are either compatible or incompatible with conventional Western values. ‘Western values’ and ‘socialism’ are terms with diverse meanings. Parliamentary socialism does not seek the overthrow of the state, focusing more on the reform of the economy to emphasise social values. We get a hint of it in some Western European countries such as Sweden and Norway where social democracy is integrated into political and economic systems. Here, market economies incorporate strong social welfare and public services, the return on high taxation coming through the provision of services available to all, demonstrating that democratic socialism can coexist with electoral democracy and individual freedoms. Universal healthcare, public education and labour protections reflect socialist values and are part of the social contract in these societies.
- democratic socialism aligns with Western values around individual freedom and rights, equality before the law, reducing wealth disparities and access to basic needs like healthcare, education, housing and equal opportunity
- democratic socialism does not prevent the pursuit of self-interest through free markets although critics argue that socialism might restrict personal freedom by curbing property rights, overregulating markets or imposing high taxes to redistribute wealth; they say that socialism could stifle innovation and limit entrepreneurship, however socialists argue that without some degree of wealth redistribution, inequality is likely to undermine Western democratic values and social cohesion.
Permaculture and socialism share common goals of reducing social inequalities and promoting communal wellbeing, characteristics necessary in any society that would be sustainable over the long term. In a theoretical socialist society where permaculture was not hobbled by legislation or unofficial restrictions, limitations would be placed upon economic control and political influence by large corporations while smaller-scale businesses would continue and strong workers’ rights legislated. Some forms of socialism emphasise state ownership of critical industries and in other forms emphasise collective ownership, as in cooperatives. Along with forms of democratic decision-making both could create the political conditions for the implementation of permaculture principles.
Social media posts suggests that there are some who see affinity between socialism and permaculture. An indication of permaculture’s relationship with socialism comes from a Facebook page post:
“While there does tend to be a strong ‘socialist’ side to Permaculture in Australia, this is not so for the whole world. Many survivalists are into Permaculture and tend to be a bit more right wing. Proper Permacultural policy though, should try to avoid such labels and should also try to avoid the related oppositional dichotomies.”
Despite any socialist leanings, there is a pervasive view that socialism is the flip side of capitalism, the same thing in a different form in that both are about big economic systems, big organisations and hierarchical control structures. Socialism may still dig up valuable ecosystems for the minerals beneath. Presumably, socialism would still have left us with global warming. I admit that these conjectures might be challenged by socialists.
Karl Marx might have said “from each according to his ability, to each according to his need”, but societies like the Soviet Union and China that professed a socialist structure proved to be anything but what Marx said. Rather than the dissolving away of the state, they became powerful authoritarian states monitoring their citizens in detail and projecting economic and political power and influence worldwide. China became a paranoid kleptocracy that fueled much of its rapid economic rise and hi-tech industry by stealing technologies and intellectual property from Western corporations. Following the collapse of the Soviet Union, Russia evolved into an oligarchic kleptocracy.
While some permaculture practitioners might agree with the humanitarian motivations of socialism in ensuring social wellbeing, there seems to be a generalised suspicion of socialism as just another big system with big system problems. However, by prioritising social and environmental needs over profit-driven motives, and allowing a degree of decentralisation of governance and economic activity within the context of a unified national economy and polity, democratic socialist systems could provide the necessary support for sustainable practices and community cooperation, especially were they to retain traditional Western values around civil liberties and to at least partially decouple from the economic growth model.
Communism
Like capitalism, any discussion of communism raises the need to differentiate its theoretical model and its real-world implementations. Both Adam Smith’s writings on capitalism and Karl Marx’s on communism differ from what we see in the real-world implementations of the systems they proposed.
Marx’s statement, “From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs”, suggests compliance with permaculture’s second and third ethics of ‘care of people’ and ‘fair share’ or ‘distribution of surplus’. Theoretically, it suggests a favourable environment for permaculture. In practice, the historical implementations of communism have centralised political power and suppressed individual initiative, which would hinder the decentralised decision-making and self-reliance encouraged by permaculture. Communist parties in power have proven as authoritarian and suppressive of civil liberties, access to information and freedom of association as have fascist parties. Like fascism, what we see is a clique of authoritarians dressed up as a communist party gaining control of nation states.
If implemented with a focus on local autonomy, participatory decision-making and ecological stewardship, some new iteration of communism which preserves the civil liberties and democratic values of Western civilisation could potentially align with permaculture principles. We have to admit to the unlikelihood of this eventuating.
Authoritarian communism
Authoritarian communism, such as we see in contemporary China (the Chinese government and the Chinese Communist Party are synonymous because the Party is the only one permitted, and it forms the government) might allow some permaculture practices to exist, such as organic farming and gardening (there are some permaculture projects like this in China), but would be wary of permaculture allusions to decentralised economic models and governance, as they could be seen to threaten the centralised state and the role of the party. Although communist in name, the economy of China strongly suggests it should be regarded as an authoritarian capitalist state masquerading as communist.
Cuba provides an example of an authoritarian communist government permitting the inclusion of ideas shared with permaculture, especially to address the food crisis of its ‘Special Period’ following the collapse of Soviet support immediately after the Soviet Union imploded. The Soviets supported Cuba economically with favoured prices for its farm crops. That economic arrangement crashed with the Soviet Union, a food crises ensued and in response, the Cuban government introduced policies to address food shortages and promote sustainable agriculture. A team organised by the Permaculture Global Assistance Network in Australia gained federal funding through AusAID, the Department of Foreign Affairs overseas development assistance arm, to teach urban food production in Havana using low-external input organic techniques. It was a limited introduction of permaculture that assisted Cubans and did not threaten the state. The focus of the Cuban government initiative was on building food security through urban agriculture, organic farming and local food production, initiatives that contributed to public nutritional health and Cuba’s food sovereignty — the control over its food supply.
Anarchism
Like socialism, anarchism comes in many flavours and shares principles with permaculture such as decentralisation, community cooperation and voluntary participation.
The term ‘anarchism’ is bandied about among permaculture people without much thought as to its meaning. The suggestion seems to be that permaculture is ‘anarchistic’ in the sense that it contains many different opinions and practices. That is not anarchy. That is diversity.
Others use the term to describe how gaining agreement in often difficult in permaculture. This gets to what permaculture co-originator, David Holmgren, told his audience at Australasian Permaculture Convergence 14 in Canberra in April 2018. He said permaculture is made up of “cantankerous individuals”. True enough, but that is not anarchism. That is an absence of effective facilitation in decision making.
In some instances, anarchism becomes blended with libertarian market capitalism where freedom to trade blends into libertarianism’s ideology of personal freedom. This libertarian anarchism differs from the anarchist model of personal freedom in a context of community rather than individual wellbeing.
Anarchist systems promote self-governance and reject hierarchies. This could create an environment conducive to implementing permaculture ethics and design principles. By emphasising local autonomy, self-sufficiency and local initiative, anarchism could support the development of small scale regenerative systems that comply with permaculture ethics, principles and practices. Initiatives in permaculture and other fields would rely on the motivation of local people and organisations.
Fascism
Fascism is the least likely environment within which permaculture could be fully implemented. Like authoritarian communism, fascism enforces social and economic control, the prominent role of business corporations in social direction, the role of oligarchs and conformity to an ideology, religion or ethnic construct. The prioritisation of centralised state interests places it at odds with permaculture principles and ethics.
A centralised power structure focused on a single political party and suppression of dissents blocks the diversity of ideas and knowledge, resilience and decentralised decision-making that permaculture promotes. Fascist ideologies often prioritise short-term gains, environmental destruction and the interests of a ruling elite over long-term sustainability and community wellbeing, making them incompatible with permaculture’s goals. Ethno-fascism, which requires the demonisation and suppression of particular ethnic groups such as immigrants and the deflection of blame for social ills onto them, fails the ‘care of people’ ethic of permaculture.
Interestingly, a US permaculturist has reinterpreted permaculture to fit into fascism’s Nazi form by limiting the design system’s ethic of ‘care of people’ to care of only white people, and by promoting Nazism by referencing it during the Germany of the 1930s and 1940s.
Ethno-nationalist and theocratic regimes
Permaculture’s fate under an ethno-nationalist or ethno-religious theocratic regime would probably be similar to its fate in other types of regimes in which civil liberties are suppressed and a particular demographic group gains political control. There would be potential for elements of permaculture to be accepted so long as permaculture people stay out of politics and do not challenge political or economic interests. There is also potential for permaculture to be marginalised and directly or indirectly suppressed if it is seen as a threat to those who wield power.
Regimes like Iran’s Islamic polity might come to mind, or Afghanistan’s, both of which are run by a male religious clique. This type of regime is not restricted to Islam. We see manifestations of it in the USA where it takes the form labelled ‘Christo-fascism’. There, it has influence but not overall political and cultural power. Margaret Atwood’s 1985 novel, The Handmaidens Tale, describes a patriarchal, totalitarian theocratic state known as the Republic of Gilead that is popularly taken as a model of a Christofascist society in the USA. The novel explores the fate of women, including their loss of reproductive rights and civil liberties and how some resist.
Ethno-religious/nationalist regimes have the potential to take the form of authoritarian capitalism. Permaculture’s position in such a society would depend on how permaculture as practiced there aligns with the values of the regime. Would it reflect the values of the dominant political power? An ethno-theocratic or ethno-nationalist society — they are potentially the same thing — is necessarily a two-level society. Those not of the dominant socio-cultural demographic may form an underclass that is discriminated against politically, socially and economically. Were permaculture to focus on its betterment it may be marginalised and treated with official suspicion and seen as subversive. Community organisation and community permaculture associations may be tolerated if they do not threaten the dominant ideology.
Just as in other types of authoritarian regimes, traditional conservative social values practiced in permaculture like home gardening and homesteading might be accepted. Less likely is permaculture’s peoplecare ethic, as ethno-theocratic , ethno-nationalist regimes would favour people of the dominant ethnic or religious culture.
Theocratic states or those based on the dominance of ethnicities offer only a severely limited opportunity for permaculture to realise its potential as a design system that encompasses the sustainable production of everyday needs, opportunity and social participation by all, and effective resource and environmental management.
Libertarianism
Libertarianism emphasises individual liberty, limited government intervention and free markets. Libertarians oppose policy, legislation and regulations that restrict individuals’ freedom despite the social, economic or environmental consequences. In theory, libertarians advocate a radical social liberty in the form of freedom of association and of cultural and religious expression.
Like socialism and anarchism, libertarianism comes in multiple flavours that can be broadly classified as ‘right-libertarianism’ (sometimes called ‘market anarchism’) and left-libertarianism.
Right-libertarianism or free-market libertarianism is based on an absence of government regulation of economic activity. Private property and private resource ownership are core elements. Commonly known as ‘laissez-faire’ (meaning to let people do what they want to do), the model opposes interference in commerce beyond the minimum necessary for a free enterprise system to operate according to its economic laws.
At one extreme is the US flavour that favours individual freedoms but a much reduced role for government and government regulation, and freer reign for corporations. This is more tuned to Ayn Rand-type thinking and is known as ‘Right Libertarianism’.
It is the type of libertarianism that Joel Salatin, the innovative American farmer popular in Australian regenerative agriculture circles seems to align with. I recall Salatin telling the public meeting at the Sydney’s Teachers Federation auditorium that he was a “Christian libertarian”. I wondered what that meant at the time and found out later when, during his 2016 visit, an Australian food sovereignty advocate asked Salatin about his attitude to the advertising of tobacco and other harmful products. According to the advocate Salatin said he didn’t favour any restrictions at all.
A woman attending the same event asked him about health policy and Salatin was again reported not to be in favour of universal schemes. The woman informed him that here in Australia we actually like our universal scheme. This was all reported on Facebook with the message from the food sovereignty advocate that those interested in sustainability should be careful in choosing their heroes.
I mention this not to discredit Joel Salatin’s significant contribution to regenerative agriculture but to show that permaculture practitioners can overlook some aspects of those it turns into champions who might be a poor fit with its ethics.
Rather than the right to appropriate resources for private profit as is the practice in right-libertarianism, left-libertarianism holds that resources should be held collectively and apportioned according to distributive egalitarianism, a form of social ownership seemingly compatible with permaculture’s ethic of fair distribution of resources (the ‘fair share’ ethic). They oppose private ownership of natural resources.
Like right-libertarianism, left-libertarianism supports individual freedom, however it differs in proposing that social equity necessitates agreement or regulation to prevent individuals from infringing on the liberties of others. The philosophy can be described as ‘social-libertarianism’ in that it supports social liberty and the freedom of people to engage in activities that do not harm other people or society. Left-libertarianism utilises social collaboration in the form of mutual assistance and non-hierarchical forms of social organisation. Economically, the formation of worker, consumer and other cooperatives would be favoured as they are ‘owned' by their members and replace the profit motivation with a social motivation that produces goods and services needed by society. The collective wellbeing is regarded as the basis of individual wellbeing.
There is occasional speculation within the permaculture milieu that the prominence of homesteading encourages a right-libertarian attitude. The thinking goes that setting up and managing a homestead encourages a sense of self-sufficiency that prioritises individual initiative and private property, as well as homesteaders being able to do whatever they want on their properties. Those are libertarian values. They were made prominent during the Australian tour of American chicken farmer, Joel Salatin (and here, and a critical review here that says he is “a limited-government zealot (who) addressed the Libertarian National Convention in 2020), whose innovative farming system captured much attention in permaculture and regenerative farming circles when he described himself to his Sydney audience as a ‘Christian libertarian farmer’. To what extent his political and religious beliefs are shared among regenerative agriculture practitioners is unknown.
Seen in a permaculture context, libertarianism accords to common permaculture characteristics such as self-reliance, property rights and voluntary cooperation, however in its unregulated right-libertarianism form it contradicts permaculture’s ethics of earthcare and care of people. Left-libertarianism would offer a better home for permaculture’s ethics, principles and practices.
Municipal libertarianism
Murray Bookchin’s idea of municipal libertarianism shares commonalities with permaculture ethics and principles and holds potential for the application of permaculture.
Bookchin was a social theorist, author and political philosopher who was influenced by Hegel, Karl Marx and Peter Kropotkin, according to Wikipedia. An advocate of social decentralisation along ecological and democratic lines, Bookchin went on to influence social movements including the New Left of the late-1960s, the anti-globalisation movement and the American green movement. He wrote several books including Post-Scarcity Anarchism, The Ecology of Freedom, Urbanization Without Cities and The Next Revolution, his book about municipal libertarianism or communalism.
The overriding problem is to change the structure of society so that people gain power. The best arena to do that is the municipality — the city, town, and village — where we have an opportunity to create a face-to-face democracy… Murray Bookchin.
Murray Bookchin also developed social ecology, a philosophical theory that linked ecological and social issues. In The Next Revolution Bookchin writes that libertarian municipalism “constitutes the politics of social ecology, a revolutionary effort in which freedom is given institutional form in public assemblies that become decision-making bodies.” He went on to write that: “The overriding problem is to change the structure of society so that people gain power. The best arena to do that is the municipality — the city, town, and village — where we have an opportunity to create a face-to-face democracy.”
Gaining political influence for social good via local government has been the goal of individuals standing for council elections. Over the past few years in Australia it has also been a goal of rightwing populist campaigners opposing Covid mandates and particular gender issues, such as the MyPlace organisation that has been linked to conspiracy theories, anti-vaccination, campaigning against the 15-Minute City model of town planning and the sovereign citizen idea. My Place has been accused of disrupting council meetings, the result of which was that, for a time, some council meetings were closed to the public.
Cooperation: Municipal libertarianism requires a sense of community solidarity and cooperation in decision-making, which are points of alignment with the permaculture design system. Solidarity suggests that permaculture’s third ethic of sharing surplus resources has a role in creating a social foundation for implementing permaculture practices.
Social and economic justice: Municipal libertarianism seeks to address social and economic injustices by democratising and decentralising decision-making and promoting economic equity, aligning with permaculture’s third ethic as well as with its ‘care of people’ second ethic. With the gate open to permaculture, in this way municipal libertarianism can enlist permaculture ideas and motivations to address systematic inequity and ensure that resources and benefits are accessible to all members of society.
Decentralisation: Local self-governance and decentralised decision-making mesh with the implied permaculture principles of semi-autonomous decision-making on economic, resource, environmental and social questions.
The potential bug-in-the-ointment of decentralised decision-making takes two forms:
- the first is the pervasiveness of disinformation in society; disinformation is said to be the greatest current threat to democracy
- the second is the presence of ideologically and religiously motivated individuals and community organisations that would corrupt community-based decision-making, as we have seen in recent years in Australia with the ideologically motivated community organisation MyPlace disrupting local government meetings in their lust for power.
Ecological stewardship: Ecological stewardship is common to both municipal libertarianism and permaculture and both would include integrating ecological concerns into decision-making processes. The ecological focus of municipal libertarianism could form a supportive framework for the implementation of permaculture works.
Participatory democracy: Although different from our present electoral democracy in which we elect politicians and outsource decision-making and management of the economy and other social functions to them, municipal libertarianism proposes a more participatory form of democracy with active citizen participation. This is compatible with the participatory approach found among permaculture organisations and projects with community members influencing planning and implementation.
There may be a role here for peoples’ assemblies. There are various understandings of this model of participatory democracy, however they share participation by all who want to take part and operate through direct democracy.
Distributionism
Both distributionism and permaculture advocate for local economies, self-reliance and the reduction of wealth disparities. By promoting the equitable distribution of resources, distributionism can support the implementation of permaculture ethics and design principles.
Emerging during the late 19th and early 20th centuries from Catholic social teaching principles, distributionism favours small independent craftspeople and producers, economic mechanisms such as cooperatives and member-owned mutual organisations, as well as small to medium enterprises and large-scale competition law reform such as antitrust regulations.*
Feudalism
An old form of polity, feudalism is based upon a hierarchical structure that simplifies societies into a land-owning and politically powerful class and an underclass of tenant serfs. Along with land ownership in the hands of the few as well as hereditary property ownership, the concentration of political, economic and social power with limited social mobility makes feudalism an unlikely candidate to house permaculture initiatives.
While hindering decentralised decision-making, community participation and equitable resource distribution that are core to permaculture, certain aspects of sustainable land stewardship and localised self-sufficiency can be found in historical examples of feudal societies, particularly in the practices of common land management and subsistence agriculture.
Common land management—and ownership—well-fits permaculture’s ethic of fair share. Subsistence agriculture can be seen as doing that too, especially in the form of home and community gardening. However, the notion of permaculture people as a type of neo-peasantry that we occasionally hear, although fortunately not often these days (it was never a popular term), positions people within a hierarchical socio-political structure in which most of its ethics and principles could not be realised.
Fully Automated Luxury Communism
We should be clear that what Aaron Bastani talks about in his book, Fully Automated Luxury Communism, is less to do with the common image of communism and more to do with communalism. His idea is predicated on fully automating as much as possible to produce a post-scarcity economy and prosperity and to liberate peoples’ time and energy.
Bastani’s idea of a society utilising technology to free peoples’ time and create prosperity seems a reinterpretation of Buckminster Fuller’s idea of over half a century ago:
Think of it. We are blessed with technology that would be indescribable to our forefathers. We have the wherewithal, the know-it-all to feed everybody, clothe everybody, and give every human on Earth a chance. We know now what we could never have known before — that we now have the option for all humanity to make it successfully on this planet in this lifetime. Whether it is to be Utopia or Oblivion will be a touch-and-go relay race right up to the final moment.
Capitalism is based on scarcity to maintain the economic value of goods and services for the benefit of a tiny minority, and the necessity of participating in employment to obtain the needs and wants of life. The marketised scarcity economy generates profit for the owners of the means of production. In Bastani’s fully automated model, prosperity would replace scarcity because of the productive capacity of technology and automation. Modern technology is inconsistent with present-day capitalism, he says.
There could be potential for permaculture in Bastani’s system, however permaculture practitioners would need to look at the resource and energy basis of full automation. Questions of ownership, waste, control of the technology and other concerns of the permaculture design system are pertinent in assessing Bastani’s model.
Starting conditions influence development
For anything at all, the starting conditions are important because they set expectations and influence development. Permaculture’s origin in Australian social democracy during the late 1970s and the prevailing social expectations, beliefs and assumptions about the society over that and the following decade formed the political starting conditions of the design system. They continue to exert a strong influence.
Permaculture’s politics are ambiguous but favour individual freedom, a social safety net and environmental and social wellbeing before corporate profits. They favour markets in which small business can flourish. This locates the practice of permaculture more in the liberal democratic tradition than in any other.
The design system’s approach to change has been less through elections and more through following the dictum of Buckminster Fuller:
“You never change things by fighting the existing reality.
“To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete.”
As Eliot Peper wrote in his article in Medium: “We need hackers, makers, artists, and independent thinkers. We need to play smarter and think long-term. We need to call our leaders to action. We need to educate ourselves and build a future in which we can thrive, not fight to survive.”
Those statements sum up permaculture’s approach to politics, and similar sentiments appear in permaculture’s social media. That epitomises something pervasive in permaculture: recognition of the problems and challenges we face and criticism of mainstream politics, but little thinking about how permaculture as a community of practice could address them politically. Perhaps that is because mainstream politics is divisive. When it comes to this, I think many in permaculture would agree with scientist and science fiction author, David Brin:
“It’s time to free ourselves from the old left-right axis of the 19th and 20th centuries.
“Might believers in modernity — whether ‘liberal’ or ‘conservative’ — find ways to break free of the doctrinal rigidity that has been imposed on us by fanatics of both the so-called Left and the so-called Right?”
…Alliance for a Modern World. davidbrin.com
The compatibility of political systems with permaculture depends on how well they align with the ethics and principles of permaculture design and with the common characteristics exhibited by the design system. Ecological sustainability, cooperation instead of competition, equitable resource distribution and democracy in decision-making serve as additional filters in assessing the suitability of various political theories and systems to permaculture.
- This is based on the author’s participation in permaculture from just before the mid-eighties, his living in Hobart at the time when permaculture was first articulated in Permaculture One and, a year later, Permaculture Two, and on conversations with permaculture early adopters.
* The definition is drawn from Wikipedia.
Further reading:
The Politics of Permaculture
2021, Terry Leahy; Pluto Press, London. ISBN 978045342757.
An analysis of permaculture’s politics. Socio-political ideas coming out of permaculture often go unnoticed and are commonly ignored, as are their links with existing political ideologies and systems. With his academic background and as a participant-observer of permaculture, Terry is well-placed to formulate this analysis of the political economy and sociology of the permaculture design system.