When less was more? On the history of designing a better world

Jason Hickel’s acclaimed book dedicated to the sources of and proposed solutions to the climate and environmental crisis, which has recently been translated into Polish, bears the telling title: Less is More: How Degrowth Will Save the World. The author uses a phrase often associated with the history of modernist architecture as a motto for a post-growth transformation that for him means “(…) a planned downscaling of energy and resource used to bring the economy back into balance with the living world in a safe, just and equitable way.”  ^1  1   J. Hickel, Mniej znaczy lepiej. O tym, jak odejście od wzrostu gospodarczego ocali świat, transl. J. P. Listwan, Wydawnictwo Karakter, Kraków 2021 (ebook); [J. Hickel, Less is More: How Degrowth Will Save the World, William Heinemann, London 2020, https://dl1.cuni.cz/pluginfile.php/1179270/mod_resource/content/1/Jason%20Hickel%20-%20Less%20is%20More.pdf, accessed: 8 May 2022].  ↩︎ “Postgrowth” – he continues – “begins as a process of taking less. But in the end, it opens up whole vistas of possibility. It moves us from scarcity to abundance, from extraction to regeneration, from dominion to reciprocity, and from loneliness and separation to connection with a world that’s fizzing with life.”  ^2  2   Ibid.  ↩︎

Showing the directions of change, Hickel proposes an array of strategies sourced from the field of economics (e.g. the decommodification of goods and services, a reduction of working hours, debt cancellation, a move away from a debt-based monetary system), including the models of production and sale. He also points to planned obsolescence and the advertising market as phenomena that deepen our entanglement in this wasteful and harmful system. Although these areas are only signalled, it is clear that the way in which we design, produce and use objects and spaces has to undergo a thorough transformation, as should our entire economic system. This encourages us to investigate past practices of urban planning and design that were also guided by the “less is more” principle, in order to verify whether they could inspire us to reduce the contemporary anthropogenic pressure on the natural environment, while at the same time ensuring that people have decent conditions in which to lead a good and satisfactory life.

The term “less is more” is said to have been popularised by the icon of modernist architecture – Mies van der Rohe. Even a superficial glimpse at his oeuvre reveals the inconsistencies and ambivalences inscribed in this postulate. Let us take a look at one of his projects – Villa Tugendhat, erected for a wealthy industrialist family in Brno between 1929 and 1930. Tourists are now booking tours around its interiors months in advance and are especially interested in seeing it during the last sessions of the day, in the hope of experiencing the sunset flickering on the famous “onyx wall”, highlighting the reddish veins in the stone – an unforgettable aesthetic experience. Mies’s considered selection of materials used throughout the building structure and interiors is legendary. The ones applied in Villa Tugendhat aptly illustrate the paradox inscribed in modernist architecture: the aragonite used to create the “onyx wall” comes from the Atlas Mountains, and the white travertine was imported from Italy. Exotic hardwoods: ebony, palisander and zebrano used for doors, wardrobes and wall panelling came to the Moravian capital from South-East Asia.

This way of achieving an elegant, minimalist effect was far from sustainable, which refers not only to the distance taken by the materials to be imported, but also to the way they were sourced. Such materials were often imported from colonised regions via trade companies that ruthlessly exploited the local resources and labour. On another note, the architectural form, dubiously proposing vast glass-paned surfaces in the seasonally changing Central European climate, required a clever heating system. The solutions introduced by Mies are awe-inspiring: the villa has a unique heating and cooling system based on the air circulating inside. However, our enthusiasm for technological innovations implemented in the building can be diminished by the fact that this entire sophisticated machinery was designed to provide thermal comfort for just one family. Visiting Villa Tugendhat, it is hard not to discern the irony of the “less is more” motto; in its most spectacular iterations, modernist architecture has achieved its elegant, minimalist effect only at the cost of excessive and hardly justifiable use of materials, energy, and labour.

These contradictions can be discerned not only in the work of individual architects, but also in the entire milieu of architects and designers orbiting around the CIAM and the Bauhaus, apparently representing a reformatory stance. Despite their progressive and emancipatory premises, the modernist architects were said to be reinforcing the capitalist model rather than challenging it. This opinion was articulated not only by later critics, but also by contemporary, more radical peers. To stumble upon some critical voices, we would not even have to leave Brno. At the same time as Mies was carrying out his project, integrated gently into the slope descending towards the Lužánky Park, another Moravian architect, designer and graphic artist, the avant-gardist Zdenek Rossman, bitterly observed:

“Taking into account the success of contemporary architecture, it is shocking to acknowledge that, in parallel to the number of fashionable villas and palaces, the number of homeless people living in our cities rises with each day, too.”  ^3  3   Z. Rossmann, 10 let tzv. s. moderní české architektury, „Stavitel XI”, 1930, p. 2-5, [cited in:] K. Spechtenhauser, Sociologický funkcionalismus. K sociologickému fragmentu bydlení Jiřího Krohy, [in:] Jiří Kroha v promĕnach umĕní 20. století, Muzeum Mĕsta Brna, Brno 2007, p. 232 [the translations from Czech are by the Author].  ↩︎ 

Does that mean that architects and designers were, without exception, entangled in the capitalist production system and that the only way to overcome these contradictions was to abandon one’s practice and focus on a theoretical and academic career, as many radical Czechoslovak creators did in the interwar period? Furthermore – and more importantly for us – hasn’t the latter focused more on social issues, without paying enough attention to our pressure on the natural environment?

When we look carefully at the whole spectrum of modern architecture and design, we will find movements and individuals who – even if not explicitly – followed the “less is more” principle in a way that seems very close to the spirit of Hickel’s book and his idea of degrowth. Throughout their practice, their attempts to reform the social, economic and political life were inextricably bound to their concern about the state of the natural environment and a reflection on how it is affected by human activity. In this paper, we will focus on examples from Czechoslovakia, knowing that they were part of wider tendencies that had much older traditions.

In 1946, Karel Honzík, an avant-garde architect and co-creator of the social security office in Prague, known as one of the most important examples of functionalist architecture in Czechoslovakia, issued his book Necessismus. Myšlenka rozumné spotřeby (Necessism. An Idea of Sensible Consumption). The publication served as a kind of a manifesto for a movement that was created by a small group of architects and philosophers convinced about the need for a radical change in current lifestyle, a rationalisation of production and a decrease in consumption. According to one of the initiators, the goal was to “take good care of everything that is necessary and get rid of everything that is redundant and thus detrimental.”   ^4  4   L. Žák, Obytná krajina, Svoboda, Praha 1947, p. 25.  ↩︎ 

 The most important books of this rather ephemeral movement include Obytná krajina (The Inhabited Landscape, 1946) by the architect Ladislav Žák – one of the precursors of landscape architecture; Racionalizace spotřeby. Základní problémy projektování. (The Rationalisation of Consumption. The Rudimental Problems of Design, 1946) by Bohuslav Brouk – philosopher and psychoanalyst; and Tvorba životního slohu (Creating a Lifestyle, 1946) by Honzík.  ^5  5   I have dealt with the Necessist movement, and the work of Ladislav Žák in particular, in the degrowth context in: “«Pozbawiony przepychu obywatelski dobrobyt przyszłości». Socjalistyczni prekursorzy postwzrostu”, Czas Kultury 2020, no. 3. On the Necessist movement, see: D. Dvořáková, Necessismus. Myšlenka racionalizace spotřeby, [in:] ​​Bydlet spolu. Kolektivní domy v českých zemích a Evropě ve 20. století, ed. H. Guzik, Arbor Vitae, Praha 2017; H. Guzik, Čtyři cesty ke koldomu: Kolektivní bydlení – utopie české architektury 1900-1989, Zlatý řez, Praha 2014.  ↩︎

The writings by the Necessists are an inspiring and moving read for anyone interested in the idea of degrowth. The far-sightedness with which they described the threats to the natural environment caused by overconsumption, overproduction and the waste of energy and natural resources is stunning – especially when we consider the times when these texts were created. After all, the critique of unrestrained economic growth (which Žák dubbed “economic maximalism”) and of the fetishisation of progress and its detrimental effects on the natural environment, was already being expressed by them at the beginning of an era that celebrated a cult of economic productivity measured by an increase in GDP, the ideology of developmentalism, and – above all – an acceleration of the climate crisis.

Moreover, the creators of Necessism had a premonition that the end of World War Two and the beginning of the new epoch marked the very last moment to introduce the necessary changes:

“Instead of quietly complaining, we need to cry desperately and act, in a state of utmost necessity, for the change to finally come so that the activists from all options come to their senses and start to think and start the great repair. Time will tell that it wasn’t about the fancy of a handful of exalted lunatics but a true perspicacity. Every new day brings new damage that someday will have to be fixed at a great cost and with much effort – if it would be possible at all. To many readers, the hazard of a wrong development that we are describing here would probably seem trivial in the face of contemporary events. However, we should have already thought about it during the war – that when peace is reinstated, a time will come for a new life, new development, and new construction. We should have taken the recent, fairly stable time to prepare our spirits diligently and to make sure that the growth and building that will come about will be better than what we had known so far.”  ^6  6   L. Žák, Obytná krajina, op. cit., p. 188.  ↩︎

The end of World War Two seemed like an apt moment to start such reforms. Society still remembered the consequences of the crisis and the increasing social inequalities of the interwar period. During the Nazi occupation, on the other hand, self-sufficiency and austerity became common practices of social life – though forced by circumstances. The Necessists believed that the new political and economic system would create conditions in which these “forced virtues”, as Žák put it, would become voluntary and valued by the society as markers of modern life. Leftist artists, faced with numerous obstacles in interwar Czechoslovakia in the context of implementing progressive social reforms, believed that the socialist regime would provide a favourable framework for them. The central planning system was hoped to safeguard the needs of the citizens efficiently while sensibly utilising the resources, energy and production capacities of the nationalised economy.

The proposed alternative was based on the idea of a modest and economic life in which people would nurture their skills and cultivate their artistic creativity, physical activity and contact with nature, rather than consuming material goods. All this was to be possible thanks to the use of new technologies and a consequent reduction in the work time, thereby freeing citizens from the burden of labour. The Necessist movement was characterised by many of the values and strategies present in contemporary ideas of degrowth. It was to be based on the optimalisation of planning and production processes. Instead of supporting the capitalist market, with its mass production and artificially created needs, the development of technology was to help optimise production processes and create solutions for products, infrastructure or architecture that would then provide people with comfortable living conditions while also economising on materials, energy and time.

A key role in this project was to be played by architects, urban planners and designers. Their task was to create, of course, sensible town planning, creating infrastructure and designing everyday objects. It is easy to discern the technocratic aspect of this project, which could contrast with the ideas of democratising social life. Starting from its name (which, according to an anecdote, was created by Karel Honzík celebrating his passion for academic terminology), the movement was to rely on scientific research and a planned economy managed by experts. Elevating architects, urban planners and designers to a privileged position, the Necessists also appealed to fellow creatives to be humbler. Rather than through extravagant buildings, architecture was to express itself through gestures of abstinence, withdrawal, non-building and the protection of nature. As Žák wrote:

“Possessed with an inexplicable desire to build, our experts are often unable to understand that our existential environment constitutes not only apartments, houses and cities, but also forests, waters and other parts of landscape and that contemporary and future architecture can, and must (…) encompass the preservation and creation of the natural environment.”  ^7  7   Ibid., p. 180.  ↩︎

When it comes to aesthetics, the Necessists did not propose any revolutionary changes. The vernacular forms and building materials that were implied by the need to economise on materials and energy on the one hand, and to diminish class differences and social stratification on the other, were not an example of a desire to create a rustic Arcadia but remained in line with the spirit of functionalism. The design of a “working-class dwelling”, as created by Žák still during the interwar period, was inspired by the interiors of affordable Bed & Breakfasts and was furnished using natural, locally sourced materials: pine and ashwood, linen, etc.   ^8  8   See: D. Dvořáková, Nábytkový soubr Lidový byt I a II, [in:] Bydlet spolu.…, op. cit.  ↩︎.

 His artistic explorations were close to the aesthetics of the Czechoslovak cooperative known as Krasná jizba, which the architect collaborated with. To our Polish readers, this can be reminiscent of the designs by the “Ład” Artistic Cooperative, which was also guided by similar ideals – a democratisation of well-designed, aesthetically pleasing furniture and everyday objects. With their respect for vernacular architecture, the Necessists did not announce a return to a rural idyll, nor praise craft over mass production. They did, in fact, appreciate some aspects of technological and industrial development, thanks to which well-designed and comfortable objects of everyday use could be accessible to a wider public.

Reconstructing some earlier experiences of the creators of Necessism, we can recognise the importance of the topic of housing in the shaping of their worldview. The housing crisis that spread in the interwar period posed a vital challenge for many avant-garde architects and created a drive to search for such housing forms that would propose spatial efficiency and provide decent living conditions for tenants. Devising the parameters for an Existenzminimum and experimenting with collective forms of dwelling became a common denominator for many European, progressive architects, designers, and city planners.

Both Žák and Honzík were active participants in these surveys and designed numerous – though unrealised – designs of collective houses and furniture prototypes for their interiors. Already in the 1930s, Žák noticed the deep social stratification, where the poorest masses dwelled in makeshift barracks or in old, cramped tenement houses without any amenities such as sewage, ventilation, or heating, whereas the richest few took advantage of exclusive equipment – electric washing machines, ovens, and dryers in their private villas. Žák criticised not only these glaring inequalities but also the irrational character of the amenities, which were used sporadically in private households and which symbolised general wastefulness in his opinion. According to his vision, these appliances should be accessible to wide social groups, and not privately owned – it should be something that would be accessible to the tenants of the entire building or a community estate   ^9  9   L. Žák, Utopie bytové kultury?, “Světozor”, no. 9/1934, n.p.  ↩︎. This rationalising imperative was later to become evident in the Necessist project, and its goal was to create a model based on “private sufficiency, public luxury”, to use the phrase coined years later by the supporters of degrowth   ^10  10   See: G. Monbiot, Public luxury for all or private luxury for some: this is the choice we face, “The Guardian”, 31 May 2017, ​​https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/may/31/private-wealth-labour-common-space, accessed: 25 June 2022.  ↩︎.

Nature played an important role in the search for housing solutions. We can see that, for example, in the postulates of the Athens Charter. Modern architects underlined nature’s contribution to the well-being of individuals and strived to provide the widest possible audience with access to green areas – for the sake of their psychological and physical health. Their attitude towards nature, however, tended to be rather superficial – its function was basically to serve the needs of humans. However, there was no shortage of voices calling for broader housing reform that would also include man’s relationship with nature. One of these voices came from the community that was close with Honzík and Žák. In 1932, an influential avant-garde architect and theoretician, Karel Teige, devoted much attention to the relationship between man and nature in his dissertation titled Minimum dwelling. In line with Marxist tradition, he pointed to the “metabolic rift” related to urbanisation and the birth of capitalism and of processes that led to a breach in the natural cycle of matter and uprooted humans from the network of direct dependencies and cohabitation with other organisms and ecosystems. These, as a result, enabled the exploitation of natural resources, hiding its effects by means of physical or temporal distancing   ^11  11   More about this process and its historical conceptualisations, see: J. B. Foster, B. Clark, R. York, Ecological Rift. Capitalism’s War on the Earth, Monthly Review Press, New York 2011.  ↩︎. At the same time, however, Teige did not reject the technological progress and did not call for a return to the pre-industrial era. Instead, he appealed for modern architecture to become a tool to reinstate the lost harmony between humans and nature:

“Let us integrate our houses with flowers, grass, trees; connect nature with the human-built environment. The house should not be seen as a machine for living, but as a biological instrument that serves people’s bodily and spiritual needs. (…) Modern architecture should enhance and nurture the relationship between life and nature. (…) Our homes will be able to respond to the subtle vibrations and movements of the breathing Earth. (…) Our settlements will not resemble stone deserts but will become places where the rhythm of our lives will draw vital forces from nature, in a new symbiosis between the human, zoological and botanical cycles of life.”  ^12  12   K. Teige, Minimum dwelling, transl.  E. Dluhosch, MIT Press, 2002, p. 315- 316 [original: K. Teige, Nejmenší byt, Praha 1932].  ↩︎

Teige, along with Žák and Honzík, spent the years before the Second World War and the Nazi occupation studying the relationships between man and nature. In the 1930s, the future Necessists voiced their views on nature preservation. Particularly pronounced were the appeals formulated by Žák, who took an active part in the fight for valuable natural areas in and around Prague   ^13  13   See: J. Dostalík, Organická modernita. Ekologicky šetrné tendence v československém urbanismu a územním plánování v letech 1918 až 1968,Masarykova univerzita, Brno 2015.  ↩︎.

 Jan Dostalík writes that Žák made use of the war years to deepen his knowledge of natural science. Similarly, Teige’s views on nature must have evolved along a similar path. It was him who had written the enthusiastic introduction to the Inhabited Landscape, simultaneously expressing his personal, increasingly radical views   ^14  14   See: K. Teige, ​​Předmluva k architektuře a přírodě, [in:] L. Žák, op. cit. About Teige’s stance towards nature, see: E. Dluhosch, Translator’s introduction, [in:] K. Teige, op. cit., p. xxvi-​​xxviii.  ↩︎.

Neither the Necessists nor Teige were the first architects and designers to propose a critique of mankind’s influence on the natural environment from a leftist perspective. Among their predecessors, there was one person who can easily be named as a patron of the socialist ecological philosophy. This was, of course, William Morris – a British designer, graphic artist, and committed socialist, co-founder of the Arts and Crafts movement. During the interwar period, his oeuvre was still considered a reference point not so very distant in time. His News from Nowhere were translated into the Czech language twice: in 1900 and in 1926   ^15  15   The novel was first published as an insert to a Social-Democratic newspaper, Právo lidu, as Zvěsti z nejsoucna, čili, Epocha míru. V několika kapitolách z utopistického románu, and later as Novinky z Utopie, čili, Věk pokoje – published by an important left-wing publishing house, Družstevní práce.  ↩︎. Some of his political pamphlets have been translated as well.

Karel Teige refers directly – although not without criticism – to Morris in his deliberation on the relations between man and nature in Minimum dwelling. He argues that Morris’s utopian projects were entrapped in petit-bourgeois aesthetics and imagery. A closer reading of Morris’s texts, debated by John Bellamy Foster in his in-depth dissertation, Return of Nature. Socialism and Ecology, points to the fact that – regardless of the authors’ aesthetic predilections – the Necessist movement stemmed from similar recognitions to those of Morris’s reformatory proposal   ^16  16   See: J. B. Foster, The Return of Nature: Socialism and Ecology, New York 2020.  ↩︎. Just like Morris, the Necessists held an intuition that capitalism is a “systemic wastefulness”, supported by designers, makers, and consumers alike. According to Morris:

“(…) there is the mass of people employed in making all those articles of folly and luxury, the demand for which is the outcome of the existence of the rich non-producing classes (…). These things, whoever may gainsay me, I will for ever refuse to call wealth: they are not wealth, but waste. Wealth is what Nature gives us and what a reasonable man can make out of the gifts of Nature for his reasonable use.  The sunlight, the fresh air, the unspoiled face of the earth, food, raiment and housing necessary and decent; the storing up of knowledge of all kinds, and the power of disseminating it; means of free communication between man and man; works of art (…) – all things which serve the pleasure of people, free, manly and uncorrupted.  This is wealth.  (…) [W]ill you not be bewildered, as I am, at the thought of the mass of things which no sane man could desire, but which our useless toil makes—and sells?”  ^17  17   W. Morris, Signs of change, Reeves and Turner, London 1888, pp.148-149, [cited in]: J. B. Foster, Return of nature…, op. cit., p. 104. [see also: J. B. Glasier, William Morris and the Early Days of the Socialist Movement, Longmans, Green and Co., London, New York, Bombay, Calcutta, Madras, 1921, p. 81–82, http://ia802606.us.archive.org/18/items/williammorrisand00glasuoft/williammorrisand00glasuoft.pdf, accessed: 10 May 2022].  ↩︎

Decades later, similar tones would resound in the book by Ladislav Žák:

“We extract coal and produce electricity so that, alongside the important and necessary things, countless unnecessary items can be made and transported. Beautiful lands are torn apart to source limestone and bricks; the riverbanks and riverbeds are destroyed to extract sand. Building materials are obtained so that the building industry could flourish – ever larger and just as bad. Nature is being destroyed by brickworks, excavation pits, and the work of diggers, only to destroy it even further with the construction of new, ever more awful buildings. The beauty of nature is often irrevocably destroyed with the sight of industrial plants endlessly producing an ever-increasing number of products, among which we will find a ton of useless stuff, (…) burdening the so-called consumer who, in reality, does not need these wares at all. They bother him, burden him with unnecessary expenses and complications.”  ^18  18  L. Žák, op. cit., p. 143.  ↩︎

The question of energy use, indispensable to sustain this vicious circle of wastefulness, was an integral part of the critique of capitalist economy. Morris is said to have claimed:

“For myself, I should be glad if we could do without coal, and indeed without burrowing like worms and moles in the earth altogether (…) We could do with less than half of what we use now, if we lived properly and produced only really useful, good, and beautiful things. We could get plenty of timber for our domestic fires if we cultivated and cared for our forests as we might do; and with the water and wind power we now allow to go to waste (…) we could perhaps obtain the bulk of the motive power which might be required for the essential mechanical industries.”  ^19  19   These words were written down by John Bruce Glasier, see: J. B. Glasier, op. cit.; J. B. Foster, op. cit., p. 137, 560.  ↩︎

Stuart Chase, an American economist and socialist, was yet another author who uttered a critique of the ways we obtain and use energy, and whom we know to have inspired the Necessists. In his book, Men and Machines, translated into the Czech language in 1931, he observed:

“[The machine] has used up more oil in the last ten years than all the oil consumed since the beds were laid down, some millions of years ago. It has used up more minerals since 1900 than in all previous history. (…) A good half of the volume is wasted in exploitation, another large fraction falls by the wayside in fabrication, leaving a net product for final consumption, of which a high percentage, as we have seen in earlier chapters, is worthless junk. In other words, an equal standard of living could probably be derived by prudent and thrifty exploitation of not more than one quarter of the present tonnage shovelled and pumped from the crust of the earth. To the time of Watt, mankind lived primarily on the interest derived from its store of natural resources. Increasingly since 1800, and for the past generation with blind fury, it has been tearing into its capital – on a scale that precludes replacement.”  ^20  20   S. Chase, Člověk a stroj. transl. V. Rocháček, Jan Laichter, Praha 1931, p. 365–366 [English version: S. Chase, Men and Machines, The Macmillan Company, New York, 1937, p. 301, https://archive.org/details/menmachines00chas/page/n9/mode/2up, accessed: 10 May 2022].  ↩︎

Therefore, it is not surprising that, when it comes to the search for alternative energy sources, Ladislav Žák also remained a pessimist:

“There is nothing left for us to do but wait until the last reserves of these useful but filthy minerals are exhausted – then, under the pressure of necessity, new, clean energy sources will undoubtedly be invented (…) For nature, the consequences of increased energy production are tragic: the devastation of vast areas (…) due to the extraction of coal; we are still a long way from repairing all the damage caused by the century of steam, and we are already destroying more areas with dams and artificial lakes; new damages, no less severe, are already being caused by the century of electricity.”  ^21  21   L. Žák, op. cit., p. 135.  ↩︎

Obviously, the discussions on energy production and consumption then functioned in a different context than they do today, but they are still very relevant: the authors drew particular attention to the wasting of limited resources, the environmental damage caused by the development of mining infrastructure and the pollution of air and water by compounds produced during their combustion. Research into the atmospheric concentration of greenhouse gases released by the burning of fossil fuels, and their potential impact on the planet’s climate, was, at the time, at the stage of pioneering hypotheses, with one of the pioneers of this research, the Swedish scientist Svante Aarhenius, suggested that a slight warming of the earth’s climate could actually be a positive phenomenon   ^22  22   See: J. B. Foster, B. Clark, R. York, op. cit.  ↩︎.

It is plausible that Žák was acquainted with this theory: the popularising book How Worlds Are Made, in which Arrhenius elucidates it for a wide audience, has been translated into many languages, including Czech   ^23  23   See:  S. Arrhenius, Vznikání světů, transl. F. Vítek, Praha 1909.  ↩︎.

 However, given the state of knowledge at the time and the scale of the processes described by Žák (as mentioned above, he was writing at the dawn of an era that was yet to bring their unprecedented escalation and acceleration), his far-sightedness and broad outlook are striking – he pointed to the majority of issues we still face today. In his Residential Landscape, we find critical passages devoted to the unsustainable growth of transportation, the cruelty of industrialised animal breeding, the environmental consequences of large-scale agriculture and the agrarian monoculture, an overload of garbage, the chaotic development of cities, and pressure imposed on the natural environment by a system based on the growth of production and consumption. Perhaps the most progressive, in political terms, was his demand for the emancipation of non-human beings. Read from today’s perspective, the Czech architect appears as a courageous precursor of eco-socialism:

“Yes, animals are the fifth state to gain civic rights. However, it needs to be extended to other states: plants will be the sixth state, and the rest of nature and the world of inanimate matter the seventh state – they should also enjoy full citizenship rights. Exactly so, the principles of consensual and just coexistence, the ideas of socialism must be extended to the whole of the earth’s nature, animate and inanimate, in order to overcome this fatal, unsustainable and disastrous state, rightly described as the imperialism of the human species, once and for all. Natural socialism (…) should oppose human imperialism; the ruthless and unbridled parasitic expansion of human beings who, by thoughtlessly destroying nature, ultimately also ruin the basis of their own existence. The maximalist tendencies in the economy and population are the clearest manifestation of the imperialism of the human species and must be condemned and countered like any other imperialism. Here, too, the ideas of scientific socialism confirm their surprising vitality and truthfulness: pan-naturalist socialism will be a logical consequence and highest stage of the development of human beings and the rest of terrestrial nature.”  ^24  24   L. Žák, op. cit., p. 178.  ↩︎

To conclude, we must ask the question: why should we return to the texts of Ladislav Žák, William Morris, Stuart Chase or other pioneers of eco-socialist thought today? Can they give us anything more than bitter admiration for their foresight and sensitivity to certain phenomena, and a sense of frustration that everything they warned against is coming true before our eyes, but on a scale far greater than they could have predicted in their darkest scenarios, while of the reforms they advocated so little has been achieved?

In my view, the awareness of long traditions of socially and ecologically progressive thought will allow us to better anchor the contemporary projects emerging in the circles of eco-socialism, post-growth or green anarchism. This also provides the arguments and proposals necessary to transcend the conflicts arising within leftist movements. Some left-wing circles are distrustful of degrowth projects, seeing calls for restrictions on consumption as a mere whim of the privileged middle class or an attack on the life aspirations of the less affluent social strata. Many people are even inclined to think that concern for the fate of the planet is incompatible with these aspirations. This aporia was already noticed by Ladislav Žák, who wrote:

“Do these people not make a similar mistake today when they cannot imagine a way forward for the social mobility of the popular strata other than towards bourgeoisie, believing that everyone should have his own private villa and a car? […] Is this not a misconception? A primitive idea created on the basis of current conditions, and no less ridiculous?”  ^25  25   Ibid.  ↩︎

However, the awareness that the climate crisis cannot be halted without profound changes in lifestyles, especially among the inhabitants of the countries of the Global North, is slowly (though not without resistance) beginning to penetrate the mainstream of public debate. The work of the Necessists and other precursors of eco-socialism can help transcend the dichotomy of individual and systemic change that blocks contemporary discussion and prevents appropriate political action. When, seventy years ago, Karel Honzík wrote about the “creation of lifestyles”, he had no doubt that lifestyles are not just an emanation of the individualised choices of the privileged classes, but have an economic and political dimension as well. No profound reform of social life is possible without transformations taking place in all aspects of our daily lives: in our values, beliefs, ways of working, spending leisure time, family and social ties, and the way we live and travel. Perhaps in the context of contemporary challenges, the most appropriate theoretical concept is that of an “imperial mode of living” proposed by Ulrich Brand and Markus Wissen. It reveals not only the many dimensions in which the everyday practices of the wealthier social layers of the global north are entangled in a political and economic system that is destructive to the planet, but also how effective the mechanisms are for concealing and externalising their most ecologically and socially destructive consequences   ^26  26   U. Brand, M. Wissen, The Imperial Mode of Living. Everyday Life and the Ecological Crisis of Capitalism, transl. Z. King, Verso, London 2021.  ↩︎.

The need for a transformation whereby all social groups live in dignified conditions, but in a way that does not place an undue burden on the environment, explains the key role that architects, designers and urban planners have to play in this process of change. Their task was to provide infrastructure and objects that would be in line with their values of modesty, frugality and self-sufficiency, but that would also make life full of comfort, satisfaction, and pleasure. Well-designed, environmentally friendly housing, durable, functional, user-friendly equipment for everyday use, well-equipped and inclusive public institutions, and convenient public transport infrastructure are all necessary elements for people to finally have the space they need to develop their skills, fulfil their dreams, and act for the benefit of the whole community.

Let us note, however, that these are not sufficient. Reading the texts of Žák and his predecessors reminds us that designers and architects should also be politically responsible and be aware that their actions serve the broader goal of social revolution. This is why these authors often combined their professional practice with involvement in communist and socialist parties; this is also why they called for, among other things, a reduction in working time, a change in property relations, a fair redistribution of wealth and income, and a democratisation of control over the means of production. Perhaps the most urgent lesson to be learnt from the history of Necessism is precisely to expose the political side of the work of architects and designers, to unmask the illusion of their supposedly “apolitical” position as experts, and to make visible the entanglement of their contemporary professional practice in the hegemonic economic system.Today, as in the interwar period, the work of many of these professions is not only in line with the capitalist system, but also serves to legitimise and perpetuate it. It is vital that the voice of those who, through their work, consciously and deliberately work towards its demolition, is clearly articulated.

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