There is a myth that lay at the root of the social imaginary in the last century and
which even today constitutes the background common to modern political ideologies,
whether on the Left or on the Right: it is the myth of growth. This belief, to which the
idea of unlimited growth is linked, has brought with it the requirement to maximise
production, comsumption and profit, leading us to today’s religion of the global market.
This system of thought is based on, and at the same time reproduces, an image of
the human being as a “homo economicus”: a subject without ties, a rational, utlitarian
individualist, orientated towards maximising his own interests and increasing his own
wealth as a monetary, generic, universal power; he is a subject who finds himself by
chance immersed in an environment seen as the “outside world” to exploit and bend to
his own ends, in a ceaseless growth of his own power to have things and other living
creatrures at his disposal.

It is the vision of the world which, while being fundamentally wrong, produces
concrete effects on individuals’ behaviour, having disastrous consequences on ecological,
social and political equilibria. We recognise that the choice of western societies to aim
solely at economic accumulation, at the growth of productivity and consumption, has
produced in the “West” greater material wealth throughout an entire historical period.
The unilateral aspect of this approach has led to loosening social ties and the threat of
the collapse of ecosystems. Furthermore, the cost of these economic goals has been paid
not only by the working classes and subjects not considered to be productive, but also,
and above all, by the countries and peoples in the other parts of the world, forced to
adapt themselves and modify their own social and productive systems according to our
economic and political demands.

At the same time, the growth in income has been made possible by an inconsiderate
exploitation of ecological systems. Scientific proof (the drastic climate change, peak oil
prices, the loss of biodiversity), which can no longer be ignored, demonstrates that the
biosphere is already unable to sustain today’s model of development.
The negative effects can also be felt on the social level, not only in the emergence of
new poverty and increasing economic inequality, but also in the increase in malaise,
working and existential precariousness, forms of depression, in a general lack of hope for
the future that can even become violent and self-destructive. From this point of view, we
must learn how to interpret the uneasiness, anxiety and unhappiness pervading our
society in greater depth. This model of development, based on growth, has produced in
recent decades an increase in working hours, precariousness and stress and, at the same
time, has gradually eroded and eliminated our free time, the time for our relationships,
the time for ourselves and for the things we care most about.

On a political level, the accumulation of financial wealth, the control of which is
increasingly in the hands of a small minority, produces a formidable concentration of
power, thereby actually depriving democracy of any true significance. The consumption
of global resources clearly means increasing local conflicts and wars to gain control over
these resources and, thus, a loss of the room for true democracy in the world.
However, the most perverse effect of this system is its capacity to create a form of
adaptation to the disease. Pollution, climate changes, the increase in the number of those
excluded, while making them the guilty party, and wars over resources are becoming a
familiar scene to which we passively gradually become accustomed, without modifying
the way in which we behave and the basic organisation of our society. In other words,
growth produces dependence.

In any case, this brief period of wealth and the creation of well-being is drawing to a
close in the very “developed” world itself. From the mid 1970s, the growth of the Gross
Domestic Product (GDP) has not only decreased in the advanced countries but it is above
all not accompanied by any increase in individual well-being. To continue today to cherish
the adoration of the GDP means refusing to open one’s eyes to the absurdity of an idea
of wealth that does not take into account the ecological and social costs of development.
Faced with the perception of the social and ecological limitations, of the degradation
caused by the commercialisation of life and of the growing international conflict over
natural resources, we believe that it is necessary to question the founding myth of our
society, that is to say growth, if we want to seek truly alternative paths. If we have
fought poverty with all our might for decades, today we finally realise that we have to
question our wealth and model of well-being. We thus rediscover an ancient theme,
which is also totally contemporary, the theme of limitations, or more precisely that of
“moderation”.

We are not ideologically opposed to all forms of growth. In order to move towards a
future sustainable society some products and behaviours will have to be reduced or
eliminated, while others will have to be encouraged and developed. What we declare we
are opposed to is rather the assumption of growth as the basic principle of the
orientation of our imaginary. We feel that the quality of life, on a finite planet, cannot
continue to be based on a generalised quantative growth but must be measured against
the capacity to re-define technologies, institutions and labour qualitatively.
Generally speaking, the obsession with production must be tempered with the
awareness of the needs of reproduction, regeneration, care for people, relationships,
contexts and the environment.

To speak of degrowth, Serge Latouche says, is like throwing down the gauntlet, or
daring a provocation. On the one hand, it is an iconoclastic act and, on the other, a new
way of recounting our being here and now in this world. We want to try to question the
divinity we have worshipped and also the symbolic maps and frameworks within which
we have been moving for centuries and which we have become accustomed to confusing
with reality. One might wonder whether it is possible to question our imaginary, if it is
realistic to think of setting up a society that is not modelled on growth as an aim unto
itself. We maintain that recognising our ecological and social interdependence, our
human fragility, is the only true realism, the only way to avoid leading a process of
pathological adaptation to its inevitable conclusion, which by consuming the ecological
basis on which we have developed, will lead us to disaster.

We are not against technology, but in favour of another sober, lasting, sustainable
and convivial type of technology. The ability to reconsider today our technological
systems will perhaps permit us to moderate the risk of an obligated degrowth, one that is
authoritatively imposed tomorrow. We must show that we are capable of doubting our
basic values and accepting the risk of imagining an after-development, a society of
degrowth.

Being realistic today does not mean adapting to a system that is destroying itself but
being willing to make far-sighted decisions, taking as a reference a vaster temporal and
political perspective than we are used to. To do so it is necessary to reconstruct a
relationship and agreement among generations: we must learn to think in the perpective
of several generations and not just of our own. This furthermore calls for the need to
create new national and international institutions and/or the radical reform of the existing
ones.

It is not a matter of teaching an ideal way of behaving, or even of finding fault with
individual acts of consumerism. The most important challenge is to be found rather in the
ability to bring into play the different social, relational, symbolic and evocative practices
that are humanely and socially richer and, in the end, more desirable.
At the same time we have to face a series of subtle changes in our way of thinking
and being. It is not a matter of proposing abstract utopias or technocratic planning: in a
complex world we cannot know what will happen, or when, but we can undoubtedly begin
to make a move, starting from ourselves, from where we are, from our relationships,
from our territory, from the places we inhabit, setting virtuous processes in motion. In
this sense we propose to reinvent another idea of beauty that will let us see our cities,
territory, countryside and human communities in a different manner.

We want to rediscover the sense of common wealth, relational wealth, experimenting
new forms of sharing and practising a social consumption, a deeper sharing. We believe
in the possibility of setting up a society where people and their relationships, not goods
and economic exchanges, are the focal point, a society which considers immaterial goods
to be more important than material ones, which values antiutilitarian, not instrumental,
ways of relating to one another, which is open to solidarity and common wealth rather
than private interest, which values the natural environment and other forms of life for
their beauty and dignity, and not just in terms of how they can be exploited.

This also means reconstructing forms of ties with territories, appraising resources and
local goods, networks of social and solidarity economics, satisfying first and foremost the
needs of the local community and the environment, not those of the market. The local
territory is for us the appropriate size from which to start to create greater participation
and a true decentralisation: in other words, to favour autonomy, that is to say the
chance for everyone to participate in the definition of the norms and rules of the
economic and social government of the communities.
Our research is not yet over, and it places us profoundly and radically in a dangerous
situation. We are also aware that we are “sick healers”. In a market society orientated
towards growth, there is no human being who is able to observe the culture of goods
from the outside, however ascetically he may behave. Even if we deprive ourselves of
every possession, we still culturally remain the products of this society: it is only by
recognising that we are impregnated with this culture that we can take the first step and
finally begin to be “sick hearlers”, capable of taking care of our own fragility and of a
planet that, along with the other creatures, we wish to continue to inhabit.

Is this, then, a utopia? Perhaps it is a utopia but a very concrete one. Two scenes
seem to appear on the horizon: that of a real, necessary, suffered degrowth, consisting
in rationing imposed on the poor and foreboding foreseeable authoritarian involutions, as
was the case in the 1920s and 1930s as a result of the failure of nineteenth-century
liberalism, and that, on the other hand, of a shared, sustainable, responsible degrowth,
which, on the contrary, may offer great opportunities for democracy and the selfgovernment
of societies. We ask you to join us in order to help us ensure that it is the
latter, not the former, alternative that the course of history in the twenty-first century
will follow.