For a democratic transition towards sustainable societies based on Degrowth.
Growth society accumulates the whole spectrum of crises: economic, environmental, social, cultural, and political. There is no need to demonstrate this absurdity in view of the growing full-in-your-face inequalities, the increasing unease, the daily social and/or natural industrial disasters. Today we need to build a transition towards sustainable and desirable societies based on Degrowth.
It is about sharing the cake more equitably, to limit its size, but to improve its taste as well!
That’s why we, the Degrowth Collective 2012, intend to take part in the presidential elections: the most important political event of our sick democracy, in order to:
- Open up the debate about degrowth and propose some pathways and reflections on how to achieve a transition out of a growth society into a Degrowth society that we must build together.
- To criticize showbiz politics intrinsic to the presidential institution, which has become a caricature of a regal oligarchy serving the rich and which does not impress anymore.
- To facilitate local meetings for all growth objectors so that we can reclaim our life choices.
We intend to take part into the debates through a multi-voice collective.
Our candidate is the Degrowth project.
During this campaign we will develop our main themes:
- For a democratic transition towards sustainable societies based on Degrowth. The first item must be the reduction of inequalities. This is why we propose a redistribution of resources through the creation of the Unconditional Autonomy Allowance (UAA) necessarily coupled with a fixed maximum income. The allowance is designed to re-localise the economy whilst preserving national and international solidarities, to gain emancipation from the central value of “work” associated with capitalism, in order to achieve self-management, food and energy self-sufficiencies by getting out of the dependence onto non-renewable resources, mainly oil, and to re-engage citizens’ participation in politics. This allowance would apply from birth to death unconditionally, it covers free use of a certain level of energy, water and food, free access (food, education, health, transport) and the creation of local non speculative currencies.
- For a decolonisation of our imagination, towards a society of well-being: it is time to get out of our toxic dependence on consumption and chose the qualitative over the quantitative. Work less to produce less but better, to consume less but, above all, to have a better quality of life: by privileging culture, conviviality, sharing and solidarity rather than economic competition and the “always more”. To gain emancipation from wars triggered by economistic logic, and identity withdrawals, or even from frustrations created by the advertising industry.
- To set up a constitutional assembly for a true democracy. It is time to dismantle the Institutions of the Fifth Republic (for France) in order to reengage citizens into politics through local decision-making entities and to increase participation across genders. The transformation is not a top-down process but a bottom up one. It is up to us to create it.
An unlimited growth in a world with limited resources is an absurdity.
The campaign revolves around the 4 political levels of Degrowth:
- The project level: for a transition and a reflection on the nature and shape of societies of degrowth
- The collective level: setting up alternative scenarios/experiments.
- The exposure level: organise debates-forums, demonstrations, media appearances and participate in elections without pursuing a purely electoralistic agenda.
- The individual level: adopting voluntary simplicity and the decolonization of the imagination.
Therefore, we invite everyone who shares these ideas to take a sidewalk with us so that we can build together a serene, sustainable, and convivial Degrowth.
- Sign the call: www.Decroissance2012.fr
- See also the vidéos of the campaign.
