Manifeste pour une Dotation Inconditionnelle d'Autonomie

Reporterre is an independent French online daily dealing with environmental issues. They organised a very successful discussion in Paris in October « Environment in the heart of a reconstruction of politics« . A Degrowth Project collective participated in this event based on the ideas suggested in the following text:

Headed Straight For The Cliff? There Is  Another Way!
By Vincent Liegey, Friday, September 26th, 2014, on Reporterre.

If we step back and consider the crazy world we live in, it isn’t long before we lose hope… Yet society is full of energy and inventiveness, opening our eyes to new possibilities. Concrete alternatives are being brought to the table every day and they will help build a society whose horizons do not end with profit and competition. Let us stick together, looking forward to the future!

It is hard to feel hopeful in light of environmental indicators (the planet’s resources are being used up more quickly each year, fossil fuels and metals are being depleted, according to the most recent report of the IPCC); rising inequality (1% of the population owns 50% of the wealth, returns on capital are rising, debt and austerity measures are a sham); the fact that the economy is the new religion; and the increasingly absurd litany proclaiming that sacrosanct economic growth is the only possible solution (from French President Hollande to Prime Minister Valls, and including that huckster, former President Sarkozy)…
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Published in Les Z’indigné(e)s n° 16, June 2014.
The idea of “Protectionism” recurs often when we are trying to imagine solutions to face up to the horrors of Liberalism. Our friends from the Left often prone it and, even though we might share their approach, it is not without any reservations. As Growth Objectors, we remain prudent, not only with regard to their diagnosis and proposals, but also with the term itself for many reasons.

Protectionism reflects a society of fear… we must free ourselves from this domination by the oligarchs and the Far Rights:
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For over a year, « A Degrowth Project » has been invited to participate to Institute of Desirable Futures’s Lab Session. Lab Sessions provide “a two-way journey into the complexity during which some 20 participants from diverse horizons explore the limits of our reality to better overcome them”. The Lab Session provide a prospective experience in deciphering the present using contemporary world cartographies and experimentations, testimonies and know-hows, weak signals and questions.

Here is the summary of our last session with Sophie Dumaret, a resident journalist at Lab#4:
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How to escape from the “steel cage” of capitalism?

By Yves-Marie Abraham
Published in Les cahiers de lecture de l’Action nationale, Volume VIII, numéro 3, été 2014, p. 25.

The project of a “sustainable Degrowth” entered the public debate over ten years ago. Rather, ideas formulated during the 1960s-70s that had been eclipsed by the conservative and ideological revolution that is sustainable development, re-appeared under a new form. Here is a summary of the main ideas: the economic growth argued for by our “representatives” as being a prerequisite to solve our problems is in fact the cause of our problems. This endless race for the production of goods, measured by the GDP, is destructive, unjust and alienating. Not only this infinite growth is impossible in a finite world, it is also not desirable if we want to respect of equality and freedom meant to be our values. At the collective level, we must break away from the dogma of Growth and commit ourselves to build post-growth societies.
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