ABSTRACT

The last chapter focuses on how the fight for a degrowth society could be rooted in the current social processes, gaining hegemony. The favorite strategy of degrowthers coincides with the so-called voluntary simplicity, that frames the horizontalist logic (the same as the origins of the growth regime). The chapter contends that this strategy is ineffective. It ends with the implementation of a parallel world that never meets the real world. Any political strategy that aims at a radical change has to deal with this social reality. The fight for degrowth must be rooted in the current crisis of neoliberalism: the “thirty inglorious years” that followed the end of the social-democratic century have been characterized by stressing growth. Now this strategy shows multiple leaks. The chapter posits how to restore a vertical–democratic regime (as opposed to a horizontal–anomic growth one) aimed at the implementation of the social production of the “self-consciousness” (conscience de soi, as Bataille named the recomposition of the relation between humankind and nature). This strategy also requires an anthropological inspiration based on a “de-thinking” actor, as defined by Carmelo Bene, who refuses market anomic competition and calls for the restoration of communitarian ties. Starting from this anthropological layer, it is possible to draw the profile of a degrowth society.