A few weeks ago we published an article titled Transition is underway: « More and more people are realising the physical and anthropological limits of our growth society. More and more people feel uncomfortable with consumerism, even more with the demeaning of work, the devastating consequences of austerity plans, what we called the religion of the economy ».

Over the last three months since the release of our book, A Degrowth Project: Manifesto for an Unconditional Autonomy Allowance, our experience reinforces it. For sure, the desire for a robust debate, new ideas and alternative solutions is very strong!

So, we are pleasantly surprised by the positive response from the medias: Le Monde, Libération, France Culture, France 5, Rue89, BastaMag etc. Furthermore, people share these articles around and they triggermany great commentaries and discussions. Despite the media crisis, some journalist are still resisting.

Public meetings we are taking part in are very well attended (Paris, Budapest, Metz, Vesoul, Le Havre, Clermont Ferrand, with Switzerland and Lyon to come, etc.). And debates reveal this strong desire for answers and readily implementable solutions…

Lastly, our publisher has surprised us by announcing that A Degrowth Project has sold out in bookshops in less than three months… so an urgent re-print is in the making.

The success our Degrowth Project  is enjoying demonstrates the relevance of the ideas underpinning Degrowth. The political and structural impasse exacerbates ill-feelings and leads people to question and realise the limits of this system also. Meanwhile some solutions are taking shape, new ideas are emerging. These are in total rupturewith the dominant thinking.

So we keep on talking, debating, opening new paths, and meeting as well, questioning ourselves and experimenting. No doubt, transition is underway!

Vincent Liegey, Stéphane Madelaine, Christophe Ondet, Anne-Isabelle Veillot.

Co-authors of A Degrowth Project, Manifesto for an Unconditional Autonomy Allowance, Éditions Utopia, 2013.

http://www.projet-decroissance.net/

Libération – Economy – April 21, 2013, 19:06

INTERVIEW – The spokesperson for the supporters of degrowth, this engineer campaigns to give society an ecological and humane meaning.

By Coralie Schaub

Whilst France is desperately seeking a pathway to growth, Vincent Liegey, co-author of the book: A Degrowth Project (Un Projet de décroissance – Utopia 2013) proposes alternative pathways to get out of the crisis.

To advocate for degrowth whilst unemployment is exploding, isn’t it indecent?

Growth does not guarantee full employment, it’s a myth: for the last forty years, the GDP has increased but so has unemployment. Imposing austerity plans with damaging human consequences and hoping for a return to growth oblivious of the ecological collapse is rather irresponsible. We cannot grow infinitely in a finite world.

The word Degrowth is scary….

It is a provocative word to trigger an in-depth debate. What are we producing? How? Why? Growth forces us to produce more useless things by depleting resources. How can we get out of it by inventing a society valuing humane relationships, a different relation to tools, production, and nature? What is happening in Latin America around “buen vivir” (Well-Living) interests us. It is certainly not a return to candlelight. The first of all degrowths must be degrowth in inequalities.

In reality, how can we do it?
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March 11, 2013, by Hervé Kempf, in Le Monde.

Degrowth, instructions manual

An equal income on the one hand and a maximum income on the other: this is the economic vision offered by Degrowth supporters in this book which is intended on shaking society. It is unlikely that it will succeed in the near future, but the vision is so radically opposed to the dominant dogmas that it becomes rather interesting.

Written by diverse “growth objectors”, the book begins by reminding us of the basic tenets of the Degrowth theory. With a touch of irony, the authors that the very term “Degrowth”, despite its imperfections, ”does not lend itself, unlike sustainable development, to be appropriated by growth society”.
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By AgnèsRousseaux from BastaMag (March, 23^rd 2013)

“We have successfully created misery and ill-being in our opulent materialistic societies”, declares Vincent Liegey. The engineer and spokesperson for the Degrowth party (PPLD: Parti Pour La Décroissance) does not stop at slaying the myth of the never-ending growth. Together with the co-authors of the book A Degrowth Project, he proposes to give each citizen an Unconditional Autonomy Allowance (Dotation Inconditionnelled’autonomie): a living income with the potential to open many horizons, as well as an invitation to question the meaning of our society.

Basta!: Implementing a basic income, also called living income or universal allocation, is an emerging claim. You are offering a new proposition towards it.  In what way is your project original?

Vincent Liegey:  The basic income consists in giving each citizen an income, unconditionally, from birth to death. It is a very old idea that we have contributed to exhume, but we take a critical view of it: this type of income could be inscribed in our actual economic system, without toppling or questioning it.

Even Milton Friedman, one of neoliberalism’ s fathers, supported a basic income – by supressing social minimums and unions, and by letting the market’s “invisible hand” be in charge! We have developed a proposition, the Unconditional Autonomy Allowance (UAA), based upon past reflexions, but which is outside the commercial system. In short, some kind of “demonetised” basic income.
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The co-authors of A Degrowth Project, Manifesto for an Unconditional Autonomy Allowance give their enthusiastic and vigilant support to the European citizens’ initiative for an Unconditional Basic Income validated by the European Commission.

Within a context of economic absurdities and the absence of a democratic debate at the European level, this initiative opens the discussion about another Europe outside the Troika, which, as demonstrated by the Cyprus issue, brings on the Europeans peoples ever closer from the abyss. It is time to leave the religion of the economics behind, which through its blind support for the oligarchy, can only conceive society through its sacrosanct strong currency, the respect of public deficits and austerity plans; thus triggering devastating human consequences.

The citizens’ initiative aims at: “Asking the Commission, to encourage cooperation between the Member States aiming to explore the Unconditional Basic Income (UBI) as a tool to improve their respective social security systems.
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