Liberation
Liberation is at the heart of degrowth, in the sense that everyone has the right to live a safe and dignified life free from oppression. We believe that degrowth should be an inclusive and diverse movement that opposes and actively seeks to dismantle discrimination and systems of oppression wherever they occur, such as racism and patriarchy. We stand in solidarity with movements in London and internationally that are anti-racist and anti-fascist, and that support the rights of migrants, the LGBTQIA+ community, women and people with disabilities, among other marginalised groups. We will always work to make our spaces, meetings and events accessible to all, and to actively cultivate a culture of care.
Anti-capitalism
Capitalism is a political-economic system that is destructive for both people and planet. Politicians - perhaps most famously including Margaret Thatcher - have continuously tried to convince us that ‘there is no alternative’ to capitalism. In reality, there are infinite alternative ways we could choose to organise our society, and we must divert to a new economic system in order to secure a safe and thriving future for all people on this planet. We are part of a huge section of the global population calling for a move beyond capitalism, to a way of organising society and the economy that prioritises human wellbeing and planetary sustainability over economic growth and corporate greed.
Participatory decision-making
We are deeply critical of hierarchies, and we believe that - in society and in our collective - power should not be concentrated with a few, but shared and decentralised. We therefore govern ourselves according to a framework known as ‘sociocracy’, which means major decisions must receive the consent of all members of the collective, and any resistance must be worked through using dialogue. Sociocracy empowers decentralised working groups with the autonomy to make decisions about the areas that they are responsible for.
Anti-imperialism
While our work is grounded in London, we are guided by principles of global justice and anti-imperialism, which are central to degrowth transformations. We always stand in solidarity with those around the world fighting against imperial and colonial aggression, of which the British state has been a major historical perpetrator. We recognise that white supremacy and settler colonialism remain as powerful forces of oppression in the world today, and that we can only secure a just future for all people by defeating these forces once and for all. We see degrowth not as a universal blueprint for all places, but as part of a ‘pluriverse’ of alternative worlds that will need to be born in order to achieve globally just and sustainable futures, which will take a different form in every place.
Community power
As the kinds of social and ecological transformation needed are different in each place, we believe that grounded action in local communities is essential - though not sufficient - for bringing about a degrowth transformation at the global scale. Community scale action is vital in order to build public support for a degrowth-aligned vision, and to strengthen networks of grassroots action for social and environmental justice. We therefore organise with a grassroots or ‘bottom-up’ approach, aiming to build community power for transformational change.
In addition to our own principles and values, we also endorse those of the International Degrowth Network, of which we are a member.