Nous sommes Parti·e·s Pour La Décroissance

A short history

The PPLD (Party Pour La Décroissance – Degrowth Party) was created in 2006 following the Degrowth AGM. Without expanding on the context and the debates triggered by its creation, let’ s mention Serge Latouche’ s harsh critics: “a lack of political maturity”, “ Exactly what was needed to discredit Degrowth and break the movement immediately after its birth: the launch of a ridiculous Degrowth Party”. Soon after the party falls apart…

In January 2008, by coincidence or naivety, a few of us join it. We embark on a reflexion on the ways to spread Degrowth in a manner respective of its principles and on the reasons of this failure as well. Both questions are linked. We met with activists from the Degrowth movement and start developing a political strategy that can be viewed on the Platform of Convergence of AdOC a new political movement we created in 2009 with our friends of the MOC (Movement of Growth Objectors).

Following a crisis of growth, AdOC, as an entity with a visible political profile, fails. Thus, we withdraw into our shells, by default, into a party:  the PPLD.

A political party? “But it is hierarchical, partisan, a war machine with a political purpose, in search of power for power sake, etc.”

The fact that we are members of a political party is by chance rather than deliberate. It is even more surprising since we clearly question our societal model’s institutions, which tend to have us believe that politics is limited to a representative democracy and its party system, and the relations of power. And, moreover we participate in the elections… in a non-electioneering manner.
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In 1989, Michael Moore presented Roger and Me, one of his first documentaries. The director, disgusted by the suppression of 30 0000 jobs in his native town Flint, embarks on the search for the culprit: the managing director of General Motors, Roger Smith… Throughout the entire movie, we see the downfall of a city slowly sinking into misery, despair, evictions, to suicides, and we witness the destruction of the social and familial fabric.

The city attempts all possible and imaginable stimulus plans….but it keeps on sinking !

Now, after twenty years of misery, exclusion, and violence … the harsh consequences of this ongoing recession, a successful recovery has not occurred. But over the last few years, the world center of the car industry: the region from Flint to Detroit, has been enjoying an unexpected revival, a transition towards post-industrial, as shown, among others, in the web-documentary by two French journalists: “The culprits are many but the productivist  20^th century, born and dead in Detroit, gives a partial response to this downfall.” The citizens of Detroit were the first casualties of this delusional exponential growth: today they are drawing their lessons: there are building tomorrow’s society from the rubbles of the preceding one. It is not an incident- or pain-free process, it starts slowly but we must talk about it now!”

Endured recession or Degrowth by choice? Continuer la lecture →

Rebeka Szabó, an MP of the Hungarian green party (« Politics can be different« ) spoke about Degrowth, Serge Latouche, the non-sense of Growth for Growth, Tim Jackson and his book « Prosperity without Growth » in the Hungarian Parliament on the 30th of May.

To follow her: http://www.facebook.com/szaborebekalmp

More about Degrowth: http://www.partipourladecroissance.net/?cat=44

And also: Degrowth is coming to Hungary

Nemnövekedés website: http://lmv.hu/nemnovekedes

One year ago, we launched the appeal for Degrowth 2012: Our Candidate is Degrowth. More than 1000 of us signed the petition. Without any illusion, we wanted to plant some seeds for thought and debate to criticise the worst of the personalised political spectacle. What we have just witnessed over the last few weeks vindicates us on two fronts: firstly, this campaign leaves only a minimal space for the small candidates and/or critics of the system, and secondly, the debate has been missing over the recent weeks!

At a time when our Western civilisation is confronted with a convergence of crises, each as devastating as the others, we are witnessing a great political circus, where the “first lady’s twit”, cock fights here and there and the small formulas, so dear to the journos within the Parisian microcosm, are rehashed throughout the medias. This is enacted, in a one of, very strong abstention, which does not bother the winners of this travesty of democracy.

Meanwhile, poverty; the result of desperate austerity measures aimed at saving our dying economic model and therefore the oligarchy it feeds, affects an ever greater number of people, with its collaterals (suicide, depression, isolationism and the rise of the Far Right, etc.). Furthermore, the religion of growth is dished out at every sauce, mainly a green sauce, in order to better avoid any substantive discussion on this productivist system, which brings us ever faster into the wall.

Elections, con games? No, we must still mention, that these elections, away from the TV studios, allow us to engage into debates, to bring people together as we have seen in the 40 electroal districts where Growth objectors were candidates. Similarly, through our relationships with the Left Front (Front de Gauche), some embryos of debate and hope appear. We also had discussions and fructuous partnerships with our friends from the NPA (Nouveau parti anti-capitaliste – New Anticapitalist Party) and the Alternatifs. Finally, we wish all the best to the EELV (Europe Ecologie Les Verts – Europe Ecology-the Greens), blinded by the illusion that being in power is only what is required to change the society embarked on a rather sordid adventure!

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“We cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them.” Albert Einstein

Even the mainstream media no longer expect anything from this kind of summit as we can see from the press headlines and particularly those in Le Monde, dated 20 June 2012. The derailment of the green economy at Rio + 20, the article begins with: “Will the United Nations conference on sustainable development, to be held from Wednesday 20 June to Friday 22 in Rio de Janeiro, be over before it starts?”

And it goes on: “The crisis (economic and financial) weighs heavily on the negociations”.

“The round of negotiations, started in January, has suffered from the financial crisis and the inability of the industrialised countries to commit to clear financial goals as requested by the South.”

It concludes: “Compared with the sense of urgency spread by many experts attending the conference, who, almost unanimously, are worried about the threats to humanity if it fails to adapt its production and consumption modes to the resources scarcity, combined with population growth; the concrete decisions might appear quite subdued”.

40 years after the Stockholm Summit, and also 40 years after the publication of the Meadows report, the work of Nicholas Georgescu-Roegen, 25 years after the release of the Bruntland Report, which led to the creation of this oxymoron: “sustainable development”, 20 years after Rio, “We use the same parameters and we start again”!

“If you have a hammer in your brain, you tend to see every problem as a nail.”
Albert Einstein, cited by Serge Latouche.

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“The problem is not the number of people but the number of motorists”

Too often, the growth objectors sweep aside the demography debate with this kind of joke. Are there too many of us on earth? Do we support world population growth? If so, how and to what extend? If we do not consider these questions as primordial, they are asked too often. A simple joke is not sufficient and it proves that these questions must be debated.

1) Degrowth is a new multidimensional and radical political project, that is what constitutes its coherence:

Degrowth is built on two approaches:

–          The physical limits of growth with the need to build a transition. Reflections on the demographics question form just a part of this approach.

–          The cultural limits of growth and the desirability of new societal projects. That is “buen vivir”. (living well).

We are faced with converging crises. Therefore, finding solutions to this anthropological crisis does not mean that treating the symptoms the dead-end growth society brings us closer to (including the population explosion) is sufficient, but, on the contrary, we must try to understand the essence of this process in order to address it at the roots level. That is why we think we must establish a democratic and peaceful transition towards new sustainable and desirable societal projects. We must start from our given society: the way it is psychologically, culturally, socially but also institutionally, politically, economically and demographically. This transition can only be democratic and serene only if we can find political, economic, and social policy levers that trigger involvement and participation.

To limit the debate to demographic decline, or even to decrease the ecological footprint of the richest people, is counter-productive and risky: Continuer la lecture →

Fourty years after the publication of the famous report Limit to Growth (Halte à la croissance)[1] presented at the Club of Rome, Dennis Meadows – co-author of the report – was visiting Paris at the end of May. And he confirmed and said: “World growth is about to stop” in Le Monde[2] or “We haven’t put an end to world growth, nature will take care of it”, in Terra Eco.[3]

As Growth objectors, we can only agree with Meadows’ diagnosis, which confirms the first report’s perspectives [4], this type of discourse bears the blames we direct to the radical “greenies” since it stops at being a catastrophist lament.
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