Regression to the norm: How to manage accommodation in system change efforts
In his 1970 treatise on confrontation within organizations and movements, American economist Albert O. Hirschman laid out the three forms of response individuals can employ in the face of a resented power structure. Loyalty is when individuals consign themselves to the whims of the social order, voice is when they confront the social order directly, and exit is when they pull out in search of a more favorable option or build an alternative of their own. Many of us romanticize exiting, dreaming to build systems of living that are free from the demands the social order. The problem is that exit strategies do not occur in a vacuum, and are subject to continual negotiation with the systems they challenge.
Building alternative systems outside of the social order is an important method of change adopted by a range of social and political movements. The United Farm Workers union in California, for example, propelled itself to success by building social services for workers, including a burial fund and by making notaries, translators, and form fillers available to immigrant farmworkers. By offering social services outside of the existing system, they better met the needs of their members while cultivating a sense of mutual solidarity. Such strategies form the bedrock of many mutual aid projects; an ethos of “We’ll just do it ourselves.”
Unfortunately, simply ‘exiting’ the social order is often not an option. Movements attempting to build parallel alternatives may find themselves entangled in the logic of dominant systems, subject to the whims of incumbents and the constraints they force upon us. The forces of conformity, efficiency, and competition all too often denude movements for change of their more radical goals.
Worker cooperatives are a common victim of this ‘regression to the norm’ phenomenon. Attempts to establish novel economic models are often quashed by the homogenizing effect of the market, which compels cooperatives to nullify some of their more radical precepts in order to survive. The famous Mondragón cooperative federation in Spain’s Basque Country initially had a rule that the highest paid employee would make no more than three times the lowest paid employee. This strategy was in keeping with cooperative principles of worker solidarity and to prevent an internal class system from arising.
Unfortunately, the firm eventually found that this policy, along with limits on hiring contractors, stymied their ability to attract and retain talented engineers and leaders who would often leave to pursue higher paid opportunities in the private sector, harming their ability to build a true alternative in the face of brain drain. In response, they changed the pay ratio to 4.5:1 and later to 6:1 to stay competitive. While still far more egalitarian than private companies, this forced betrayal of cooperative values represents an unsavory compromise the Basque cooperative movement has had to make with the forces of capital.
The Californian organic movement is another prime example of accommodation to incumbent systems. Up until the 1990s, organic agriculture in the state was quite radical and incredibly marginal, with organic foods being grown by tiny farms and sold in obscure, locally owned or cooperative grocery stores. These farms adopted truly transformative production methods, integrating crops and livestock to ensure the circulation of nutrients and controlling pests with biological instead of chemical means. The individuals involved in the organic movement were highly values-driven, willing to take a cut in profits to deliver ecologically sound food to their equally principled consumers.
With time, however, the broader market recognized an opportunity for greater profit within this niche. Chain grocers wanted a cut of this higher-margin market, and more conventional farmers began producing organically. Lacking the doctrinal dedication to the philosophy of organic farming, these new farmers adopted an “input substitution” model where, instead of truly transforming the way they farmed, they found nominally organic inputs like Chilean nitrate that allowed them to farm in modes similar to how they farmed before. The rejuvenation of the land and water sought by the organic movement never followed, even as more farmers adopted the label. This denuding of organic farming, brought on by market forces, was further entrenched by the high cost of land in California, which saddled farmers with debt and forced even the ideologically-motivated to cut corners to stay in business. In attempting to build an alternative, organic agriculture was plainly unable to escape the demands for efficiency and maximized production wrought by market forces. The once-revolutionary organic movement was reduced to following the template laid out by conventional agriculture.
In cultivating new economies of sufficiency and wellbeing on the margins of the social order, the process of regression is an essential strategic consideration. No matter how distant a project is from the purview of rationalizing markets, some level of coercion, using financial, legal, and infrastructural mechanisms, will compel those building new institutions and lifestyles to compromise in some way with the demands of the system.
Compromise, however, need not pollute our attempts to transform the world. A strategic understanding of how these forces work and where it is possible to fight against them can ensure continuity between vision and result. When planning a project, understanding how one relies on the system and planning around those issues can help to preserve the project’s mission.
A collective farm, for example, could construct dual supply chains where inputs are created on-farm and purchased through existing supply chains, balancing the need for productivity while maintaining alternative forms of fuel and fertilizer should those supply chains fail. Activist groups, similarly, can build out communications networks through dominant tech platforms to maintain relations with the public and their wider communities while constructing autonomous infrastructures, such as mesh-nets, to ensure secure conversations can still occur and create an off-ramp should censorship intensify.
Pragmatic exit strategies will simultaneously operate within and against the dominant system. The regression phenomena will always be present; studying and planning around it is crucial for forging thriving futures.
Nolan Monaghan is a graduate of the University of Missouri Center for Agroforestry, where he studied the agronomy of perennial polycultures. He writes about agroecology, circular sustainability, and human cooperation on his blog, Headwaters.