Nous sommes Parti·e·s Pour La Décroissance

Degrowth is not only the aim of this project but its path and its method.

An authoritarian Degrowth would not be a genuine Degrowth as we conceive it. More than a simple warning against the « forever more » paradigm, first and for all, Degrowth ought to allow us the re-appropriation of our lifestyle choices. Therefore Degrowth can be arrived at through the principles of individual choices, collective decision-making and participative democracy.
An objective look at the facts with regard to the issues of energy leads to a very pessimistic vision of the future, almost catastrophic. This is why we cannot exclude either an authoritarian recession, or the emergence of a “green dictatorship” that would rely on coercion, or on dogmatic control of civil society. An historical perspective shows that crises often lead to losses of identity, scapegoating, military endeavours and an erosion of democracy.
In that sense, we may think that Serge Latouche with his « pedagogy of disasters » and the peak oil theorists and their catastrophism, are right.
However, for those who can’t wait to build and enjoy a sustainable and pleasurable society, Degrowth must be built on democratic principles.
Even if resources were unlimited, the present mode of consumption would result in an endless succession of crises: social, economic, cultural, and political. Thus, Degrowth is not a goal in and by itself, but rather a pathway towards a new social paradigm.
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Confronted with a multidimensional crisis, we propose a radical, coherent and conscientious proposition: an Objection to Growth.

After the first political campaign Europe-Decroissance (Europe Degrowth) which advocated Degrowth (1), do we have the audacity to extend this adventure and to create a political movement, the objectives of which are individual and collective emancipation, well-being and fulfillment achieved through voluntary simplicity?
We consequently do not hesitate to present the outlines of our approach in this endeavor. We invite all like-minded people to join us in developing it collaboratively in order to create a society which is ecologically and socially responsible, humanistic, and democratic.

The ‘Growth society’ (i.e. business-as-usual paradigm) dramatically creates a combined crisis: an energy crisis, an environmental crisis, a social crisis, an economic crisis, a cultural crisis and a political crisis. Fundamentally, it is the expression of one and the same madness: a world that has become inhuman, as if the belief in « always more » was enough to give it meaning.

In view of the monumentality of these crises, we offer a new paradigm: an immediate exit from capitalism and productivism through all the practical alternative ways of living life which either exist or are still to be created. These two imperatives constitute our radical approach. We do not want any other form of development, any other type of growth, any other way of consuming or any more productivism. We want to leave behind the religion of Growth which has increased inequality, exhausted resources, wiped out biodiversity and denied human dignity.
Even if infinite growth in a finite world were possible, consumption and productivism would still be absurd.

So how can we create new pathways into different worlds?
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