THE SECOND CONVIVIALIST MANIFESTO: Towards a Post-Neoliberal World

In the rich, developed countries, young people have begun to join forces to demand that their governments and transnational corporations finally engage seriously in curbing global warming and halting the irreversible degradation of the natural environment. These protesters recognize that their own future is in imminent danger. More and more scientists warn us that we have at best a few years to reverse these ominous trends. Decidedly, brave words and virtuous proclamations never followed by action no longer suffice, and further delay has become unbearable.

In some Asian and Arab world countries, youth are rebelling against tyrants and dictatorships. Current examples include the Sudan, Algeria, and Hong Kong, although the progressives have so far been unable to prevent new dictators from replacing the old ones.

Elsewhere, in the poorest countries where endless mayhem and implacable, unwinnable civil wars often coincide, young people feel they have no solution and no hope but to migrate.

These three geographically defined groups of young people live separated and know little about each other, but their hopes and their struggles are inseparable. They will either win or lose together.

In 1971 John Lennon wrote “Imagine,” which over the years has become one of the most popular songs in the world. Today, people pay as much attention to the optimistic words as to the beautiful melody. “Imagine all the people, living life in peace . . . no need for greed or hunger . . . the brotherhood of man. Imagine all the people sharing all the world.” Now, fifty years later, it is more urgent than ever not only to imagine and dream of a peaceful world but to help make it happen as quickly as possible. Even mere imagining seems harder now, but we must try.

What might such a world look like? Surely not a paradise, a utopian land of plenty, but a truly humane world, and such a world is possible. It would be one where, as US president Franklin Roosevelt said in 1941, freedom of speech, freedom of religion, freedom from want, and freedom from fear would prevail. In the wake of Roosevelt’s “Four Freedoms” speech, the Philadelphia Convention was organized three years later to set the general objectives of the International Labour Organisation (ILO) and the prelude to the Universal Declaration of the Rights of Man. These were agreed and declared on May 10, 1944. Article 2 of the Philadelphia Convention states: “All human beings, regardless of race, creed or sex, have the right to pursue their material progress and spiritual development in freedom and dignity, in economic security and with equal opportunities.”

Although now genderless, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights no longer seems to inspire younger generations. If they have heard of it at all, they understandably consider it hollow rhetoric constantly refuted by real-world facts. Our effort here is to salvage its true meaning and bring it up to date for our present circumstances. Is imagination really so degraded that we cannot conceive of a world in which power would not be seized by psychopaths, aided by criminal networks, and abetted by the army and the police? A world where once conquered, power would not be maintained by more or less visible control over the media, arbitrary arrests, corruption of the judiciary, torture, and murder?

It should not be impossible to imagine a world where some poverty would undoubtedly still exist but no one would be totally destitute because a fair social network system would allow everyone to live decently from their own work. In such a world, extreme wealth that feeds fantasies of alternative humanity, even a kind of superhumanity for the few, would not be tolerated any more than would poverty. In such a world, one can imagine that whereas people would have different ideas, ideologies, and beliefs and argue among themselves about what makes life meaningful, they wouldn’t massacre each other or wage civil and religious wars or commit violent acts for the sake of naked power and control. Is it now somehow forbidden to imagine a world where natural resources and the natural environment would no longer be systematically sacrificed and plundered for the benefit of large or small private and public corporations; a world where humanity could effectively curb global warming and halt, even reverse, the multiple instances of today’s accelerating ecological degradation?

Surely these desires, these ideals, are virtually universal and self-evident, based as they are on the most elementary common sense; the most widespread wishes of humanity; expressing what the vast majority would say they want. And yet even their partial, much less total, realization seems entirely out of reach, almost inconceivable. Why is this so? Is this the destiny from which humanity cannot escape?

Let us indulge briefly in looking at the world in retrospect. During the three decades following the Second World War, the principles set out in the Philadelphia Convention and then in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights did not sound like empty words. Everyone, even in nondemocratic countries, took—and had to take—them seriously. These principles were the cornerstones officially guiding public policy, and they inspired concrete results. Western democracies were obliged to seek out policies that would prevent them from relapsing into the totalitarian horrors of Nazism and fascism that had triggered the Second World War and claimed tens of millions of victims. These policies also withstood the seduction of communism, another variant of the totalitarianism that dominated Russia, Eastern Europe, and China and was quickly spreading to many countries of the so-called “Third World.” Even the communist countries felt obliged to pay lip service to the concepts of human rights while avoiding implementing them.

In 1989, with the fall of the Berlin Wall and the subsequent collapse of communism in Russia and Eastern Europe, capitalism no longer had an obvious and tangible enemy. Capitalism seemed to be the twin sibling of democracy—a capitalism that, at the time, was essentially industrial based on labour. Perhaps blinded (for many reasons), until the beginning of the twenty-first century, political scientists and philosophers would focus on what appeared to them to be the reality of “democratic transitions.” The dominant discourse, albeit with varying degrees of conviction, maintained that the remaining dictatorships would collapse fairly quickly and that all the countries of the world would adopt the institutional formula that had worked so well for the West: a mixture of parliamentary democracy, free markets, and the welfare state.

With the demise of its previous enemies, democracies and their capitalist economies believed they needed to be less on guard and could conveniently afford to take human rights and democratic principles more leisurely. Capitalism turned from industrial to strongly rentier and speculative, and in its most debilitating form, into techno and surveillance capitalism. Its profits derive less from tangible production and instead from speculative finance and nontransparent trade in personal data. On the one hand, the new capitalist redistribution of wealth is increasingly unfair and unjust, diminishing prosperity to the extent that the poor get poorer and the middle classes (in rich countries, not yet in the newly emerging economies) have been rapidly contracting. On the other hand, it has been operating ruthlessly, generating a literally senseless enrichment of the richest. No one can ignore the fact that some forty ultrarich individuals possess as much as the poorest half of humanity, which consists of nearly four billion people. Forty people are as important as four billion! But because such figures overwhelm the human scale, they defy understanding and cause despondency and passivity so that no one knows, even attempts to imagine, what to do to change course.

As liberal and pluralist democracy with its spirit of human rights is losing ground, it is the so-called illiberal or peoples’ democracies, effectively dictatorships—the “democratures”—that are flourishing everywhere. In its impulsive reaction to the fall of communism, the rich West had taken its self-chosen role to bring peace and prosperity to the world too lightly. It has, however, caused a storm. Being unable or unwilling to keep its promise to the world, it is now vigorously confronted (significantly more than during the bipolar era) by the resentment that has been breeding since its past colonial, imperial, and neo-imperial domination. The Islamic radicalism of al-Qaida or ISIS represents only the most visible face and most terrifying expression of this hatred.

What went wrong? What explains the betrayal of the expectations raised at the end of the Second World War? There are many complex and intertwined causes, but one looms far above all else: the subordination of the entire planet and all spheres of human existence to the demands of a rentier and speculative capitalism. This capitalism produces wealth for the very few while diverting wealth away from the many. The triumph of this new type of capitalism, not least its global attraction and adoption, has many causes. Again, one stands out from among the others—hardly seen and poorly understood—and yet is essential: the power of ideas. When supported by concrete means, ideas can succeed in capturing the imagination of a large number of people, gain their support, and subsequently become controlling. To be sure, this is the raison d’être of this Second Convivialist Manifesto: to oppose and supplant neoliberal ideology, which has paved the way for this new type of capitalism, a capitalism in its pure state, free of all and any moral or political constraints.²

All isms are subject to multiple discussions and possible definitions. True of capitalism (or anti-capitalism), it is just as true of neoliberalism (in its different variations). Current neoliberalism is sufficiently characterized by the combination of the following six proposals or axioms:

• There is no such thing as society, as Margaret Thatcher said, no cultures or collective bodies. There are only individual men and women.

• Greed is good; the thirst for profit is a good thing. Greed is a value.

• The richer the rich get, the better it will be for all because everyone will benefit in the process thanks to the trickle-down effect.

• Free and undistorted competition in unfettered markets( including the financial markets) is taken as the only desirable mode of coordinating human activities for the greater good of all.

• There is no limit. Always, the more the better

• There is no alternative, as again Margaret Thatcher used to say.

The many who would doubt the power of ideas and values, and the force with which they affect our behaviour, should be reminded that none of these six proposals was held to be true, or fair, between 1944 and the 1970s–1980s. Again, a brief retrospective is warranted. In economics, the dominant doctrine, inspired in particular by John Maynard Keynes, assigned the State and its redistributive functions a major role. To put an end to Keynesianism, and the generally social-democratic policies it inspired, in 1947 some thirty opponents—including Friedrich von Hayek, Karl Popper, Milton Friedman, and many other well-known names—gathered in Switzerland and created what would become the Société du Mont Pèlerin (Mont Pelerin Society). Very soon, supported by large companies and rich foundations, the Société du Mont Pèlerin, which is still very active today, would gradually undermine the Keynesian consensus and impose a new vision of the world and humanity, a new way of understanding human affairs. It is this alternative mode of reasoning, this new version of understanding of how the world operates, that has come to exert, on a global scale, what the philosopher Antonio Gramsci called hegemony, control over ideas and minds. It is now clear that this hegemony must be invalidated most urgently. This can be achieved only by challenging its thrust. It demands explaining the foundations of a new type of reasoning, fitting for our time and our condition. However, it cannot be a return to Keynesianism or to the isms of the past.

Though young people in rich countries are becoming increasingly aware of climate change and environmental degradation, they still have difficulty understanding that their fate is linked to that of young people elsewhere who seek to free themselves from dictatorships or are forced to emigrate. Green parties have attracted the attention of an increasing audience in the West, but their concern for the environment has not yet congealed into a political philosophy, nor does it provide a blueprint for an enforceable policy that may forcefully challenge neoliberalism. In order to be able to effectively respond to the severe and irreversible harm that the global domination of rentier and speculative capitalism has already inflicted, and will continue to inflict, on humanity, we absolutely need to offer an alternative political philosophy to neoliberalism. We are responsible to not limit our philosophy to mere denunciation of the fallacy of the six central propositions of neoliberals; we must concretely outline another possible world, more humane, viable, with which the vast majority can identify by sharing the concern to save what can and must still be saved from our environment in a way that ensures Roosevelt’s “Four Freedoms.” To achieve this, we need to defeat the feeling of powerlessness and build an inspiring mutual trust between individuals, groups, and their governments.

As a first step, this Second Manifesto of Convivialism will outline the contours of the other possible world that it offers, a post-neoliberal world. Subtitled Declaration of Interdependence, the Convivialist Manifesto was first published in 2013.³ It submitted—as a starting point for a new ideational hegemony—that what is manifestly most needed is an explicit and demonstrably shared consensus on central values or principles underlying a new convivialist political philosophy (largo sensu). Today, the thousands or tens of thousands of associations and networks, and the hundreds of millions of people throughout the world who seek to cast off the grip of neoliberal capitalism, lack the “ideational glue” that would lift them out of a state of self-perceived impotence and revitalize a common spirit of agency against the odds of neo-liberalism and its core rentier and speculative, and techno and surveillance capitalisms. The first Convivialist Manifesto demonstrated that such an agreement on certain central principles outlining a post-neoliberal political philosophy is not only desirable but indeed possible. It was the product of sixty-four distinguished critical intellectuals,⁴ hailing from all the streams of the Left, who drafted and published it and who won the endorsement of intellectuals and others from the “centre” and the Right.

Why a Second Manifesto of Convivialism? Firstly, the FirstConvivialist Manifesto was not international enough even though it has been supported by intellectuals and activists in many countries. It has been translated into about ten languages and is the subject of discussion books in German, Brazilian Portuguese, Spanish, Italian, and Japanese. Nevertheless, convivialism only makes sense if it is accessible and reaches out to people in all countries so that they are also able to identify with its premises. It thus became necessary to considerably broaden the circle of authors and sources of inspiration. Second, while the First Convivialist Manifesto pointed at paths to be taken on many critical points, the text remained a little too vague, theoretically, on some issues, and insufficiently concrete on others. This Second Convivialist Manifesto builds on the essence and structure of the first but clarifies fuzzy points and enriches its propositions considerably thanks to exchanges conducted over the past six years between the original authors and intellectuals and community activists from many countries sympathetic to convivialism. Faced with accelerating and unsettling climate change and the increasing erosion of humanist ideals and democratic principles, there is an urgent need to agree, on a global scale, on the values essential to the material and moral survival of humanity. And adhering to these agreed values depends on finding a global consensus on the paths to ensure the progress of the world civilizations and the art of living. All with a convivial disposition.

One last word. Both first and second Convivialist Manifestos are the outcome of a collective discussion led primarily by intellectuals, specifically, intellectuals and academics, many of them also activists concerned about the common good and engaged in multiple collective actions. What they all share is their passion for reading and writing, of which they have done plenty. Why do we emphasise this? Because intellectuals and academics have very often gotten bad press, especially and increasingly nowadays. At times, their reputation suffered for good reasons—for losing themselves in sterile speculation, oblivious to the concrete, or for snobbish elitism. This certainly is not the case of those who are gathered in the writing of these manifestos. They don’t think they’re smarter than anyone else (nor less, either). Simply by profession, they have memory and are therefore well placed to sound the alarm when necessary, and to imagine a future that is not too likely to fall back into the ruts of the past. Also, they are used to writing and working on ideas, those ideas that play such a decisive role in history when and if the greatest number of people grab them.

Let us add that, because they are all actively linked to citizens’ and civic movements, to the many initiatives that invent alternatives that bring meaning and well-being on a daily basis, they are not satisfied with the ritual denunciations of markets or capitalism that lead to nothing—however well-founded they may be—as long as they do not tell us what other type of society we can reasonably hope to build. What other type of society we must therefore start building as soon as possible.

Because—let us repeat this—nothing is more urgent than developing an alternative thought, a Weltanschauung, a worldview that offers a compelling alternative to that which neoliberalism has been able to impose on the entire planet. It is indeed a political philosophy (in the broad sense of the term) that is needed, and it cannot mean simply reverting to socialism, communism, anarchism, or classical liberalism. We must therefore sketch out a transformative step forward in the field of ideas. This step cannot consist of simply adding up analyses of this or that philosopher, economist, or sociologist, however accurate and persuasive they may be. To offer an overriding alternative to neoliberalism, any analysis must also be captivating, widely believed, and shared, if possible, on a global scale. This is the challenge of this Second Manifesto of Convivialism: to be and be seen as the outcome of a collective intellectual work, which has brought together intellectuals, activists, writers, and artists of international renown. In this collective endeavor, none has sought to emphasise their own ground and insist on their own minuscule difference (so typical of the intellectual field). On the contrary, all have agreed to prioritise those ideas that they share. Without overstretching the point, we could say that this Second Manifesto of Convivialism is the manifesto of an “International in formation.” An inclusive International determined to expand and open to all.

Because this is what this Second Convivialist Manifesto aims to achieve: to state as clearly as possible commonsensical and fair ideas, which, from one end of the ideological spectrum to the other, can mobilize world public opinion and effect radical change in the condition of humanity and the world.

It is up to our readers to take these ideas and make them their own if, as we hope, they speak to them.⁵

How strange and disconcerting our situation is! Never have we had so many reasons to believe in Progress, but never has humanity had so many good reasons to fear disasters that could jeopardize its very survival. We no longer know to what extent we can believe in the promises of the present, given the huge threats in front of us.

Various important social or environmental advances have been made in recent decades, and there is nothing a priori to prevent them from continuing and increasing in the decades to come.

• Since 1990, according to the UN, extreme poverty has fallen by more than two-thirds, and more than a billion people have emerged from it. The new objective set by the UN is the eradication of global poverty by 2030.

• Nearly two billion people have been freed from hunger or probable undernourishment over the past twenty-five years (at the cost, it is true, of massive pesticide use).

• In twenty years, the number of children out of school has fallen by half.

• In twenty-five years, both maternal mortality and infant mortality have been halved (between 1990 and 2015).

• Globally, average life expectancy has risen in just over a century from thirty years to seventy-one years.

• Since 1945 the rate of violent deaths (either due to war or crime) has declined sharply, in the world in general and in Europe in particular.

• Production of ozone-depleting substances has been almost entirely discontinued. It is assessed to return to its acceptable global level before 2050. Nearly twenty-five million cases of cancer would thus be prevented.

• The Rhine and the Seine, two of the most polluted rivers in the world some thirty years ago, are now in a good position, which shows that there is no fatality and not always irreversibility in ecological terms.

More generally, and to look resolutely to the future, there are many promises of individual and collective fulfilment in our world!

• The global extension of the democratic principle will be infinitely longer and more complex than some may have thought after the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, due to its misuse by a rentier and speculative capitalism that largely emptied it of its content and seduction. But it is always in the name of democracy that everywhere in the world people rise up, as shown, for example, by the Arab revolutions, however unfulfilled and ambiguous they may be. Smothered until now, they will rise again from their ashes.

• It is therefore conceivable to put an end to all dictatorial or corrupt powers, particularly thanks to the multiplication of basic democratic experiences and the increased circulation of information. Even if for the moment we are witnessing a revival of dictatorships, this makes it all the more urgent to increase the power of convivialism.

• The end of the colonial era and the decline of Eurocentrism pave the way for a genuine dialogue of civilizations, which, in turn, makes possible the advent of a new universalism. A universalism with many voices, a pluriversalism.

• This plural universalism rests on the recognition of equal rights, gender equality of men and women. The recognition of this parity has made tremendous progress in recent years, even in countries of Islamic tradition that may have, initially, seemed most reluctant.

• The new global consciousness that is emerging is both the expression and the result of new forms of participation and citizen expertise informed by a now global ecological consciousness, which has become particularly sensitive in younger generations. They introduce into the public debate the very question of “good living” (buen vivir), asking what can be expected from “development” or “growth” and their limits.

• Information and communication technologies, when not used for manipulation and control purposes, increase the possibilities for creation and personal fulfilment, whether in the field of art or knowledge, education, health, participation in community affairs, sport, or human relations throughout the world.

• The example of Wikipedia or Linux and peer-to-peer relationships shows the extent of what can be achieved in terms of inventing and sharing practices and knowledge.

• The standardization of decentralized and autonomous modes of production and exchange makes possible an “ecological transition,” particularly in the context of the social and solidarity economy, where women’s involvement plays a decisive role.

• The definitive eradication of hunger and poverty is now an achievable objective, provided that existing material resources are more fairly distributed and new alliances are formed between actors in the North and the South.

• More and more formerly fatal diseases are now being treated (AIDS, with tritherapies, some cancers), although care must be taken with the sharply decreasing effectiveness of antibiotics.

Still, all these opportunities can become a reality only if humanity succeeds in coping with the terrible threats facing it.

Humanity lives beyond its means. In 2019, according to World Watch Institute, we have already consumed our annual credit for natural resources from July 29 (from May 10 in Europe, in 2019). The list of major ecological threats is well known:

• Global warming, disasters of all kinds, and the huge migrations global warming will cause.

• Biodiversity decline (one million animal or plant species are threatened with extinction, according to a recent UN report).

• The sometimes irreversible weakening of natural ecosystems, the rapid artificialisation of the soil, the long-term erosion of cultivable soils.

• Deforestation, and in particular that of the Amazon, which is one of the major sources of oxygen for the planet.

• Air pollution that makes the air in many large cities, such as Beijing, New Delhi, or Mexico City, increasingly unbreathable.

• The reduction of fish resources.

• Nonpoint pollution of the oceans and inland waters.

• The accumulation of waste in the environment, starting with plastic waste, which constitutes a “sixth continent” in the oceans.

• The persistent risk of a nuclear disaster, either in the form of industrial accidents as in Fukushima, or in the form of a nuclear war triggered by uncontrollable algorithms or some crazy dictator.

• The scarcity of the energy (oil, gas), mineral (rare earths, in particular), and agricultural resources that had enabled growth; also, wars for access to these resources.

Each of these problems poses a threat to the survival of humanity in the medium- to long-term. Given their close intertwining, it is reasonable to consider them as representing a unique and systemic threat—one originating from the impact of human activity on our ecological niche.

Climate change alone encapsulates the ecological challenge as it potentially carries extremely severe social and humanitarian consequences manifest in short order. The consequences of global warming, currently in the order of 1°C compared to the average temperature of past centuries, is already visible. However, without boosting the objectives of the Paris Agreement (2015), and unless the agreed measures are implemented, global warming is expected to rise by at least 3°C by 2100. Given the current inaction of governments, this alarming figure is already considered too optimistic by climate scientists.⁶

The physical effects of global warming include sea-level rise, natural disasters, loss of agricultural productivity, health problems, etc. The social effects have already been manifest and are expected to accrue as climate-related migration increases. The World Bank forecasts, which are optimistic compared with other research, expect the number of climate refugees to reach 143 million by 2050.⁷ According to other studies, by the end of the twenty-first century, territories currently home to several billion people will become uninhabitable. It is no exaggeration to say that by the end of this century, climate change will have likely imperilled the survival of civilization (if not humanity).

Decoupling GDP growth from the consumption of nonrenewable resources will not suffice to resolve these problems for it would be far too slow to save us from major disruptions. Relying on technological innovation to decouple economic growth from greenhouse gas emissions is illusory. As demonstrated by the past three decades, efforts to “decarbonize” growth have had, and can have, only limited effectiveness.

The social sustainability of the current development model offers no better assurances than its ecological sustainability counterpart. It is hardly necessary to recall the long list of problems that have become worse and have already produced a general decline—not only in practices but also in democratic ideals—on a global scale:

• The enduring, emergence, furthering, or return of unemployment and work precariousness, exclusion, or misery, all over the world.

• This unemployment will become all the more significant as exponential advances in artificial intelligence and robotics risk replacing a large part of human work, and not only in the simplest and most repetitive tasks. It risks making a significant part of humanity economically redundant. Such a situation is historically unprecedented and represents a formidable challenge.

• A “great divide” between humans “augmented” by the mastery and use of artificial intelligence and those who can not and will not follow will find themselves “diminished” as a result.

• Wealth gaps between the poorest and the wealthiest have become disproportionate everywhere. They are set to fuel a struggle of all against all, and driven by generalized greed, have already contributed to the formation of oligarchies that effectively, albeit not rhetorically yet, have ridden themselves of adherence to democratic norms.

• The existence of dozens of transnational companies richer and more powerful than very many states, which have been thriving outside all democratic regulation.

• The control of data concerning huge sections of the world’s population by a small number of giant companies such as Facebook and Google or by authoritarian regimes (think of the systematic rating of citizens by Chinese authorities).

• The breakup of traditional political blocs and alliances, and the inability to form new ones, has encouraged the multiplication of civil, tribal, or interethnic wars, coupled with religious wars.

• The prospect of the return of the inter-state world wars is probable, and should these materialize, they are likely to be more lethal than previous ones.

• The global increase in indiscriminate terrorism.

• The growing social, ecological, and civic insecurity generating an excess in populist policies and propaganda.

• The proliferation of criminal networks and increasingly violent mafias and cybercriminality.

• The varying and worrying networks using tax havens and high finance, both rentier and speculative.

• The increasing burden exerted by these activities and speculative finance on all political and economic decisions.

• Abuse of bodies and minds subject to a permanent acceleration standard.

• The risk of bursting the bubbles that feed dominant capitalism and enrich the richest, harbouring a significantly more severe economic crisis than that of 2008. The remedies for the latter—money issuance, quantitative easing—will be useless since it is these remedies that, by multiplying claims detached from the real economy, are set to cause even worse financial crises than the last one. The next financial crisis threatens to quickly turn into a social, political, and moral crisis without precedent since the 1930s, when fascist regimes emerged.

These two types of threats—ecological, on the one hand, and economic, social, political, and moral, on the other—are closely intertwined and mutually reinforcing. All of them, in one way or another, are linked to the global explosion of inequalities. Let us remember: forty people possess as much wealth as four billion people. In other words, one person would be worth as much as one hundred million others. Gradually, economic inequalities equivalent to those that prevailed in the early 1900s, but at an infinitely higher absolute level, can be found just about everywhere. In the United States, for example, in the 1920s, the richest 1 percent owned 40 percent of the national wealth. This figure fell to 20 percent in the 1970s and has now risen to 40 percent. And the one out of one hundred alone own 20 percent.⁸ The value of the first four hundred fortunes amounted to nearly $3 trillion in September 2019, after having multiplied by 2.3 in ten years.⁹ In France, according to the economic magazine Challenge,¹⁰ the cumulative value of the five hundred largest French fortunes tripled from 2008 to 2018. Estimated at €650 billion in 2018, it amounted to 30 percent of France’s GDP (against 10 percent in 2009 and 6.4 percent in 1996).

This explosion of inequalities, which undermines at its roots the belief in democracy and trust in institutions, is also, for various reasons, the primary factor in ecological and climate change . . . if only because the richest are the biggest polluters. It would take five planets to generalize the way of life and consumption of the United States, nearly three for the Europeans, and more than two for the Chinese (and nearly nine for the Qataris).

Faced with all these perils, the “ecological transition” or “green growth” may well not be up to the challenges, let alone if no country really starts them. For the first time in its history, humanity is discovering itself objectively and radically unified by deadly, interdependent dangers that can only be confronted on a global scale. This implies an equally global awareness and a reversal of all the values that are dominant today. We must now find and share another way of defining what it means to be fully human and worthy of humanity.

Convivialism is the name given to everything that in doctrines and wisdom, existing or past, secular or religious, contributes to the search for principles that allow human beings to compete without massacring each other in order to cooperate better: to advance us as human beings in full awareness of the finiteness of natural resources and in a shared concern for the care of the world. A philosophy of the art of living together, it is not a new doctrine that would replace others by claiming to cancel them or radically overcome them. It is the movement of their mutual questioning based on a sense of extreme urgency in the face of multiple threats to the future of humanity. It intends to retain the most precious principles enshrined in the doctrines and wisdom that were handed down to us.

What is the most precious thing? And how can it be defined and understood? To these questions there is not and cannot—and must not—exist a single, unequivocal answer. It is up to each of us to find their particular answer. There is, however, a definitive criterion instructing us as to what we can retain from each doctrine in a perspective of universalization (or pluriversalization), taking into account both the threat of possible disaster and the hope for a better future. It is to be retained for sure from each doctrine: what makes it possible to understand how to control excess and conflict so that they do not turn violent; what encourages cooperation; and what opens the way to dialogue and the confrontation of ideas within the framework of an ethics of discussion.

These considerations are sufficient to draw the general outlines of a universalizable doctrine, one that can adequately wrestle with the emergencies of the day, even though its concrete application will necessarily be local and cyclical. Even if it is obvious that there will be as many different, possibly conflicting variants of convivialism as there are of Buddhism, Islam, Christianity, Judaism, liberalism, socialism, communism, etc. (and, conversely, Buddhist, Islamic, liberal, socialist variants of convivialism, etc.); if only because convivialism in no way claims to cancel these religions or doctrines, at best, it can help to “transcend” them (aufheben)—in other words, to consider them in a synthetic perspective, by highlighting their points of convergence to better imagine a humanly sustainable future.

The only legitimate policies, but also the only acceptable ethics, are those based on the following five principles: common naturality, common humanity, common sociality, legitimate individuation, creative opposition. These five principles are subordinate to the absolute imperative of hubris control.

Principle of common naturality: Humans do not live outside a nature, of which they should become “masters and possessors.” Like all living beings, they are part of it and are interdependent with it. They have a responsibility to take care of it. If they do not respect it, it is their ethical and physical survival that is at risk.

Principle of common humanity: Beyond differences of skin, nationality, language, culture, religion, or wealth, sex, or gender, there exists only one humanity, which must be respected in the person of each of its members.

Principle of common sociality: Human beings are social beings for whom the greatest wealth is the richness of the concrete relationships they maintain among themselves within associations, societies, or communities of varying size and nature.

Principle of legitimate individuation: In accordance with these first three principles, legitimate is the policy that allows each individual to develop their individuality to the fullest by developing his or her capacities, power to be and act, without harming that of others, with a view toward equal freedom. Unlike individualism, where the individual cares only for oneself, thus leading to the struggle of all against all, the principle of legitimate individuation recognizes only the value of individuals who affirm their singularity in respect for their interdependence with others and with nature.

Principle of creative opposition: Because everyone is called upon to express their singular individuality, it is normal for humans to be in opposition with each other. But it is only legitimate for them to do so as long as this does not endanger the framework of common humanity, common sociality, and common naturality that makes rivalry fertile and not destructive. Politics inspired by convivialism is therefore politics that allows human beings to differentiate themselves by engaging in peaceful and deliberative rivalry for the common good. The same is true of ethics.

In addition to these five principles, there is an imperative that cuts across all of them:

Imperative of hubris control: The first condition for rivalry to serve the common good is that it be devoid of desire for omnipotence, excess, hubris (and a fortiori pleonexia, the desire to possess ever more). On this condition, it becomes rivalry to cooperate better. This principle of hubris control is in fact a metaprinciple, the principle of principles. It permeates all the others and is intended to serve as a regulator and safeguard for them. For each principle, pushed to its extreme and not tempered by others, risks being reversed into its opposite: the love of nature or that of abstract humanity in hatred of concrete men; the common sociality in corporatism, clientelism, nationalism, or racism; individuation in individualism indifferent to others; the creative opposition in the struggle of egos, in the narcissism of the small difference, in destructive conflicts.

The First Convivialist Manifesto (2013) articulated only four principles: the principles of common humanity, common sociality, legitimate individuation, and control of the opposition. After its drafting, it gradually became clear that, in fact, each of these principles succinctly states the central value of each of the four major political ideologies of modernity, each of which, in turn, represents one of the four components of the democratic ideal: The affirmation of a common humanity is at the heart of communism. Socialism is inspired by the principle of common sociality, anarchism by that of legitimate individuation. Or, in principle, communism favours fraternity, socialism equality, and anarchism freedom.

Liberalism is more difficult to locate. Very generally, and in its earliest gist, liberalism enunciates the principle of creative opposition. It thus makes pluralism possible, and not only in one sense, but in two. Above all, it accepts, and even values, the plurality of opinions, mores, and beliefs. But it also advocates keeping the different logics of social action as separate spheres that should not be confused and contracted. Importantly, the legislative, the executive, and the judiciary must not be merged and confounded; the economic, political, and ideological realms as well as knowledge, power, and possession must be kept distinct and apart.

This principle is at the root of the modern democratic ideal. As such, it is therefore a condition for the possibility of the other three modern political ideologies. To be sure, liberalism identified with the refusal to accept divine law, the rule of kings and the powerful or the authority of sacred books, without questioning; it was essential for the realm of the social to be open to political inventiveness. Original liberalism is therefore the modern political ideology par excellence. But liberalism, when differently understood, is also an ideology among others, of the same rank as others, reducing legitimate opposition to mere economic competition that values only individualism to the detriment of common humanity and common sociality. When thus conceptualized, it becomes liberism or neoliberalism; a neoliberalism that is perhaps the worst enemy of the original—political—liberalism.

The great universal religions, of course, have also dealt with these four principles, each in their own way. By calling, for example, for love and fraternity, they honour the principle of common humanity. By promoting solidarity and sharing, they respect the principle of common sociality. By showing the ways of salvation, they allow a certain individuation. But because they subordinate these values to the recognition of a spiritual reality transcending human subjectivity, they often find it difficult to think of creative opposition, the fertility of controlled opposition. It is on this point that democratic modernity has broken with them, by insisting on the principle of legitimate individuation.

We can see now that the discourses of democratic modernity pose two sets of problems, still unresolved, which explain today’s global troubling disillusionment with the democratic ideal. On the one hand, as each of these discourses is solely concerned with its own central principle and ignores the importance of the others, it fails to achieve its goal of democratic modernity. For example, left to its own devices, the communist ideal of fraternity tends to degenerate into totalitarianism. Left to its own devices, the socialist ideal of solidarity and equality tends to turn into statism; the anarchist ideal into nihilism; and the liberal ideal into economism and plutocracy. Simply aggregated, these different disfigurements of primary values can breed dictatorships, overblown bureaucracies, mafia-like clientelisms, chaos, civil wars, etc. On the other hand, and in contrast, convivialism emphasizes the need to recognize the interdependence of the four principles, positing that they must be tempered and mutually balanced. It is only by combining and articulating them with the principle of common naturality that we can achieve an initial overcoming of inherited ideologies.

As it turned out, the statement of these four principles proved insufficient to fully convey the importance of convivialism. If it now seems necessary to add the principle of common naturality and the metaprinciple of hubris control, it is because these highlight the above-mentioned blind spots of modern democratic ideologies. All these ideologies, to varying degrees, share the same limitation: because they assume that humans are first and foremost (if not exclusively) needy beings, they deduce that the cause of the conflict between them is material scarcity. And there is, of course, some truth in that. But this need is inseparable from the desire for recognition. While all the material needs of infants deprived of their mothers can be met, if they do not also receive love, if they are not recognized in their uniqueness, they will die or fail to develop.

Hoping to satisfy all needs is a recipe for disappointment simply because a need is always recharged and sharpened by desire. If this desire is not both satisfied (by affection, respect, or esteem) and limited by prohibitions that prevent it from degenerating into hubris, then needs become insatiable, whatever the level of wealth reached.

By reducing the political problem to the satisfaction of needs, and in particular material needs, the classical discourses of democratic modernity are proving to be constitutively incapable of addressing the crucial problem of humanity. A problem that is both psychological and political, individual and collective. At the collective level, these classical discourses are lost because they are unable to answer the question of how to limit the aspiration to the omnipotence of the “Great Ones,” “who wish to command and oppress” (to paraphrase Machiavelli); how to control the hubris inherent in human desire when nothing channels it. The hubris of the Greats can trigger by mimicry and envy that of the “Little Ones,” or their resentment.

It can now be said with certainty that to satisfy needs made insatiable by unlimited desire, it has been necessary to form a “master and possessor” relationship with nature, and abandon the former relationship of gift/counter-gift with it, a reciprocal relationship in which one cannot take without giving back, even if only symbolically. But nature has its limits, and these have clearly been reached by now. Nature has already given (or, rather, let be taken) a good part of what can be given without return. And without receiving the attention she deserves, Gaia takes revenge. Hence, as political ecology has long made clear, we need to affirm through the principle of common naturality that our fate is linked to nature’s destiny, that we are interdependent, and that by exhausting nature, it is our very survival that we are gravely endangering. To be sure, political ecology has become the fifth and most recent discourse of modernity. Whilst the most precious, perhaps, it nevertheless still lacks the ability to specify its relationship to our inherited ideologies.

The metaprinciple of hubris control, so well highlighted by the ancient Greeks, formulates the central problem that humanity must now tackle resolutely. Unless humanity agrees on a virtue for which it is worthwhile to restrain the potential limitlessness of desire, and concur on how to run it out of steam, humanity will perish. Indeed, the primary social and political role of religions has been precisely that: to curb the desire of omnipotence, of the “Great” and the “Little,” by trying to subject everyone to a transcendental law, to heteronomy, by allowing hopes of reward—for those who could resist insatiable desire—or threatening those who would yield to it with afterlife punishment.

The problem with the discourses of modern democracy is that they are unable to block limitless desire. Their greatness resided in the promise of emancipation—in other words, in the affirmation that individuation, subjectification, becoming a subject are possibilities offered to all. Yes, they say, it is possible, necessary, desirable to “get out of the state of minority,” out of heteronomy, and to free oneself from the domination of the Great Ones. Yet most often, in the final analysis, these discourses hardly manage to conceptualise emancipation as different from surrender to an attitude resembling the hubris of the Great, each reproducing it in their own creed, in a way that everyone ceases to be servant and all become masters. This does not solve the hubris problem at all. Neither collectively nor individually.

How, then, to convince nonbelievers, miscreants, “modern” people—especially when they no longer believe in “secular religions,” like communism, the republic, socialism, progress, and so on—to renounce the hubris, the infantile desire for omnipotence, if they no longer expect any reward or fear any punishment in the afterlife? Why, in the name of what, should they give up their desire to dominate those they have the power to dominate? The answer is that by violating the principles of common humanity, common sociality, common naturality, legitimate individuation for all, and creative opposition, they endanger the very survival of humanity and expose themselves to legitimate anger and contempt and stigma from all. This just anger must not be transformed into hatred and resentment, lest a toxic hubris be overtaken by an even more devastating one.

Under the reign of neoliberalism and rentier and speculative capitalism, the only outlasting value has been market wealth. In the dominant thought, only those who gain access to the power of money are considered worthy of recognition. This has replaced mutual trust with mutual distrust. On the contrary, in a convivial society, the actions that will be valued first and foremost are those that ensure respect for the principle of common humanity, contribute to more harmonious social relations, preserve the natural environment, and are deployed in art, science, technology, sport, democratic inventiveness, convivial attitudes, etc. Convivialism is above all a movement to invalidate that dominant value that prevails today.

Perhaps the central paradox of our time is that our era can be seen both as one in which the democratic principle is beginning to triumph fully and as one of its possible self-destruction.

Modern democracy is based on the premise that we all enjoy the same status, a common humanity. This equality and this common humanity are asserted and claimed today with a strength never heard before and almost unimaginable only a short time ago. The preeminence of Western thought and the type of universalism it formulated is being challenged in the name of equality between cultures and, more concretely, between former colonized and former colonizers, or between “races.” Equally, or even more powerfully, there is an irresistible groundswell of support for equality not only between men and women but also between sexual orientations or between genders. And this demand for equality now extends to the animal world in the name of anti-speciesism and common naturalness.

But, on the other hand, never since their invention one or two centuries ago have political regimes claiming to be modern, representative democracy been so discredited, as if, for lack of keeping or being able to keep their promise of general emancipation, they were doomed to give way to authoritarian regimes that very quickly flout the demands for democracy that brought them to power. As a result, the more people claim to be democratic, the further away democracy seems to be moving.

Deeply troubling these days is the question of whether it is worthwhile to engage in social and political struggles that strive to come as close as possible to the state of an ideal of democracy. Does a convivialist society necessarily have to be a democratic society? While still obvious in 2013, when the First Convivialist Manifesto was first published, today the democratic model of government is in deep crisis everywhere. Not only is democracy in constant decline around the world, increasingly giving way to dictatorial regimes, and at best (or perhaps, worst) having become a moniker for what are, in fact, illiberal democracies or a form of “democratures”; but even more alarmingly, it is appealing less and less to young people in Western countries. For them, from now on, the word sounds hollow, it no longer radiates a sense of hope; it is no longer “believed” in.

Remarkably, however, as can be seen, all revolts and popular uprisings are carried out in the name of democratic values. Always, everywhere, it is against the monopolization of power by a caste or a family; against corruption, insolent fortunes, and blatant inequalities; against arbitrary arrests, police violence, and torture that we rise up in protest. To be sure, it is for freedom of opinion, freedom of the press, party pluralism, and truly free and transparent elections that we are calling. Democracy thus appears to be the only guarantor of a common humanity and a common sociality, the only means that accepts the legitimate individuation of all within a framework of controlled oppositions. In short, paradoxically, it is exactly where democracy does not exist that people are so desperate for it, and where it appears to be established, where elections are not rigged, where there is genuine party and press pluralism, democracy is increasingly losing support. As it happens, there are many reasons for this disaffection with democracy.

• At the international level, it is obviously suspicious that the same democratic values held by the prosperous Western countries as they colonized or dominated the entire world have remained and are still the core values of their societies. Thus, they appear to be associated with a drive for hegemony, their virtuous proclamations suspected for concealing selfish interests. The quest to impose democracy through armed intervention has contributed significantly to its discredit.

• Even within Western countries, the subordination of the democratic contest to neoliberal logic—that of rentier and speculative capitalism—has been hollowing its rules of their meaning. What is the point of voting if there is no alternative? If the increasing professionalization of politicians increasingly estranges them from voters? And where the functioning of democracy clearly benefits only the richest 10 percent and promotes the dizzying enrichment of the 1 percent, 0.1 percent, or, even more, the 0.001 percent, wherein then lies its virtue?

• Neoliberal globalization has been mauling democracy and along the way shattering societies and political communities. Certainly, it has run afoul the best-known definition of democracy, characterized by Abraham Lincoln as “the government of the people, by the people, for the people.” But who are considered to be the people? All those who share the same origin? The same language? The same tradition? The same religion? Those who belong to the same political community? Those below as opposed to those above? Evidently, almost everywhere today, societies and political communities, even the oldest ones, are plagued by ruptures, splitting into largely four types of groupings that are increasingly ignoring each other: the globalized, those who benefit from globalization in one way or another (national or foreign); the included, those whose situation and income are more or less guaranteed; the precarious, those whose situation and income are uncertain; and the excluded, those (often relatively recent immigrants or from minority groups and by the majority disparaged cultures or religions) who not only encounter difficulties in finding jobs but are also victims of specific stigmatization.

• The growing gap between these four population groups is explained by the dynamics of the global market, which radically distorts the Western liberal signposts inherited until the 1970s. To be able to sustain one’s status by preserving one’s social situation and income, everything must now be done faster. In order not to be in retreat, one must accelerate. By the same token, depending on the availability of modes of transportation and the extent of internet permeation, the farthest away may effectively be the closest, so that the very sense of being at home or in private amongst ourselves loses its firmness bit by bit, day by day.

• This fracturing of the social space, combined with the neoliberal laws of the market, the acceleration of the rhythm in all aspects of life, and de-anchoring resulting from deterritorialization, ruins the sense of social community. When, in addition, religious or cultural antagonisms overlap, the situation becomes explosive. To all these worrying factors must be added democracy’s fragile constitution, its relative indeterminacy, and the current trend towards what might be called “democratic hubris.”

• Democracy is a fragile regime, as difficult to establish as it is easy to lose. The many examples of insurrections or revolts that lead to even more brutal military governments or dictatorships than their predecessors that have been overthrown attest to the predicament facing those in pursuit of democracy. This illustrates the steep hurdles democracy must overcome to self-regenerate. Numerous are the examples of elections that have “democratically” promoted dictators whose sole goal was to end democracy. The most famous case remains Hitler’s rise to power. The very holding of elections, even if they are initially free, does not guarantee the strength and sustainability of democracy when the dominant values in a society, at a given time, are not themselves democratic.

• Today’s democratic regimes are based on two principles yet to be definitively joined. The first is the liberal principle in the broadest and original sense of the term, founded on pluralism and free debate. It assumes that the losers acknowledge their defeat in exchange for the winners’ accepting that their power can be challenged. Moreover, and more fundamentally, this principle recognizes that no one is absolutely certain that they are right, so everything is open to debate. The second principle stipulates that power resides only with the people. But “the people” is largely an elusive entity. It exists only when it is represented, a condition in which its “representatives” are granted full latitude to substitute for the people.

• Finally, in the current democratic dynamics, unless tempered by a concern for the common good, the general aspiration for equal conditions is conducive to the risk of hubris. For fear of being dominated, everyone seeks to assert their own superiority. Each group, even each person, advances specific claims in the name of democracy and attempts to secure new rights for themselves oblivious to the duty to defend democracy. The part, or even a fragment, is considered as being the whole. Indeed, democracy has been transforming into democracy without democrats. This is all the more so as each single group, locked in its own sphere of interests and demands, refuses to hear anything any longer beyond information or ideas that support its position. Strictly speaking, public opinion and space are of a bygone era, replaced by a myriad of distinct public spaces that no longer communicate. At best, they ignore each other.

Obviously, there are many reasons as to why people no longer believe in democracy. Perhaps another word should be found to name the possible future political regime envisaged by convivialists. But since, so far, none has emerged, one has to continue and agree with Churchill that democracy, even today, is the worst form of government except all those other forms that have been tried from time to time. Indeed, the challenge of convivialism is that only a convivialist democracy can be fully democratic. In this democracy, the principle of legitimate individuation offers everyone the possibility of being recognized in their singularity as long as they play the game of controlled opposition; and by outlawing both poverty and extreme wealth, the principles of common humanity and common sociality prevent oligarchic and plutocratic abuses.

The proper functioning of a convivialist democracy presupposes at least adherence to the following five points:

• Effective implementation of the principle of subsidiarity: only that which cannot be done at the lowest and most local level should be done at higher levels.

• A systematic articulation between representative democracy, participatory and direct democracy, and democracy of opinion (or deliberative). Participatory democracy (consulting citizens on important decisions) can be effective only if it is as direct as possible—in other words, if it is largely based on drawing lots. But the opinion of the citizens drawn by lot only makes sense if, following the model of consensus conferences, it listens to experts with varied or opposing opinions (if their opinions are indeed taken into account at all). It is therefore necessary, if the elected executive bodies do not retain the opinion formulated by the bodies drawn by lot, that they have the power to submit their proposal to the vote of the citizens concerned.

• Ascertaining of facts. In spite of the necessary and abundant philosophical debates on the notions of truth, reality, or objectivity, none of them suggests that anyone would have the right to say that it is dark when it is daylight, or to hold and make pass for true only that which is in their immediate interest. The fragmentation of societies into population groupings that (when they do not hate each other) ignore each other is reinforced by the multiplication of (often manipulated) information channels; this, in turn, leads to the multiplication of false news encumbering on the democratic debate, rendering it increasingly problematic. While the same facts may attract many interpretations, they must, at a minimum, be ascertained in the most objective way possible, devoid of any partisan spirit. It is therefore critical to ensure a multitude of public expert institutes composed of unbiased researchers dedicated to establishing the requisite factual data (for instance, regarding the effectiveness of medicines, the harm caused by certain products, inequalities, the state of the soil or rivers, the climate, etc.). In addition, a public media dedicated to the dissemination of this data must be available even if, unlike the most “liked” media, it may not be the most entertaining (although, why not?) and the most consulted; its existence is essential.

• In theory, in a democracy, the basis of power is considered immanent, based on a trusted social contract, even if, in some countries, this contract is made “before God” (in Canada, for example). Regardless of the legal status of the relationship between religion and the State, the State is independent of religious authorities and norms. Citizenship is independent of religion, and all citizens are formally equal regardless of their religion and belief. Finally, the State guarantees freedom of belief and the free exercise of religions.

• Finally, a democracy can be alive and productive only between those in whom the desire to be there and together prevails over the desire to be elsewhere and with others. It can be vibrant only where people wish to contribute and give themselves to others and are open to receive from others. This caring reciprocity is at the heart of the principle of common sociality. The confines of this state of togetherness are largely dictated by history, by an agreed common past that is accepted as a foundation for building a common future. Captured in the term nation, it is an imaginary framework in which modern democracies have developed. While still compelling, obviously, its original constitutive fiction is outdated—namely, the idea that the members of the nation all share or should be sharing, in actuality or symbolically, the same ethnic origin (the natio), the same language, the same religion, or, failing that, at least the same values and beliefs. Indeed, the problem all countries are facing today is how to preserve yesterday’s aspiration for solidarity within the framework of the nation imagined as multiethnic and multicultural. It raises the question of the degree of compatibility between ultimate values and different beliefs (or absence of beliefs). This is the question of pluriversalism.

Convivialism stands no chance of helping to avert the disasters that threaten all the peoples of the earth unless it makes sense to all of them—indeed, has a universal scope. Should convivialism then be seen as universalism? Such a take might be dangerous precisely because it had been in the name of supposedly universal values, of universalism and science and reason, that the West has colonized or fortified its domination over the entire planet. To claim universalism therefore means to run the risk of being immediately associated with one form or another of imperialism. However, by the same token, to affirm the irreducible singularity of cultures, their uniqueness, does actually contribute immeasurably to the failure of any common ethical and political project (largo sensu) on a global scale. And that is absolutely what we need.

• It is therefore crucial to avoid falling into the trap of the false alternative that posits universalism as the opposite of communitarianism. All universalism is wrong because, by definition, it ignores singularities and particularities and thus crushes them. Likewise, particularist communitarianism masks the very source of thought common to all humanity, by reference to which, and indispensably, their particularity makes sense.

• To affirm the incommensurability of cultures or religions—which are often their matrices—is to fail to see that, far from having a single and fixed identity once and for all, to be homogeneous throughout as if they were substances, they are actually intrinsically plural. Each culture and each religion carries many possibilities. Today’s pertinent challenge is to know which out of these possibilities each culture and religion must update to fit our times and prioritize to contribute to the moral and physical survival of humanity.

• Many values common to all cultures would become obvious had cultures and religions only chosen to reason from the vantage point of humanity in general, or at least, from the angle of the broadest possible humanity, rather than from the most particular viewpoint of humanity. To be sure, while common values are articulated by every culture in its own language, the convivialist approach elicits the ethical and political (largo sensu) universals they conceal, enunciating them in the most general (and therefore shareable) terms possible, ending up expressing them in both particular and plural forms. Thus, universalism is not universalism as we know it but pluriversalism.

• Moreover, the fact that these common values can never be expressed in one single language, in the terms of one single culture only, reflect their richness. Each culture reveals to the others see what they don’t see, or what they misinterpret.

• Each culture, in its own way, when it has chosen to reason from the point of view of the broadest humanity, has already set out the principles of convivialism, even if it is often in a partially truncated way. All of them, to varying degrees, accept the principle of common humanity (although not always without reservation); all value the common sociality (although they often also value hierarchies). Each one gives a certain place to individuation, and all strive to control oppositions even if they often have difficulty recognizing their potential fertility.

Put differently, religious and cultural traditions are often closely intertwined. The role of religions is by nature ambivalent. It is both to provide an identity for collectives and to contain violence, in both senses of the word “contain.” Religions set limits to violence between humans and even aim in principle to eradicate it, but this violence is also within them. When religions privilege their identity function and when a religion is confronted with the identity function of another religion, they liberate the violence they contain and amplify it, sometimes to the point of paroxysm.

• But the highest religious authorities of today, Christian, Islamic, Buddhist, etc., agree that:

The same authorities specify that “religions must never incite war, hateful attitudes, hostility and extremism, nor must they incite violence or the shedding of blood.”¹² It is hard to find a stronger affirmation of the common humanity.

Increasingly, the problem today is not so much the coexistence between religions or cultures in different spaces as between those living together in the same space. This is obviously possible only if religions or cultures that are called upon to coexist, recognizing their own incompleteness, agree to allow individuals the freedom to choose their beliefs. It is this freedom that the same religious authorities proclaim: “Freedom is a right of every person: everyone enjoys freedom of belief, thought, expression and action. Pluralism and diversity of religion, colour, sex, race and language are a wise divine will, by which God (or Allah . . . ) created human beings. [ . . . ] That is why it is reprehensible to force people to adhere to a certain religion or culture, as well as to impose a style of civilization that others do not accept.”¹³ Good acceptance of democratic principles!

But it would be illusory to believe that, within a given political community, holding a certain vision of the future but also a certain bond with its past, all religious or cultural traditions could enjoy exactly the same status. Within each political community, those older, more established traditions, which are more closely linked to the identity of that particular community, are placed to some extent in the role of the welcoming host, the younger ones in that of the welcomed newcomer. The duty of the welcoming culture is to be humble as much as possible and not take advantage of its role while that of the welcomed cultures is to never forget this welcome.

• A convivialist political community is one that is open to the maximum cultural diversity compatible with maintaining its unity, a unity that allows the maximum cultural diversity.

Each culture defines who should give what to whom, receive what from whom, in what way, on what occasions, etc. The primary system of gifts, the one that governs the relationship to life and death, is the one that stipulates what men owe to women, and vice versa. Traditionally, most often, women gave (and gave themselves to) life, men to death. Almost universally, men have exercised social and political domination over women, more or less compensated for by women’s domination of the domestic household, births and deaths (sometimes quite clearly, often very little). More often than not, women’s gifts on these occasions were not recognized as gifts but were seen as mere facts of nature or as the result of obligations. In any case, this patriarchal system has become increasingly unbearable to women (and many men) in the most prosperous democratic countries, where it no longer has any economic necessity or significance. The ideal of equal rights between men and women in all areas is now a matter of course.

• Because the question of what both sexes owe each other is at the heart of cultural diversity, this ideal of strict equality will not be imposed everywhere easily and at the same pace. In many countries or cultural traditions, women themselves choose and will choose to preserve part of their traditional role in supporting the struggle against Western imperialism when it is deployed under the guise of human rights . . . and women’s rights.

• Only a democracy that has become convivialist and therefore pluralistic, nonimperialist, can overcome this tension.

• But the general meaning of evolution is not mysterious. The religious authorities already mentioned state as follows:

“It is an essential requirement to recognize the right of women to education and employment, and to recognize their freedom to exercise their own political rights. Moreover, efforts must be made to free women from historical and social conditioning that runs contrary to the principles of their faith and dignity. [ . . . ] Accordingly, an end must be brought to all those inhuman and vulgar practices that denigrate the dignity of women. Efforts must be made to modify those laws that prevent women from fully enjoying their rights.”¹⁴

• Once this equality of rights (and the means to exercise them) has been fully achieved, it is up to each and every one of us to decide freely what for us is sex or gender, nature or culture, and what is due to the other sex or gender.

Yet another anthropological revolution is currently underway, which is likely to have considerable consequences. Increasingly more women and men, sensitive to the common naturality, object to the suffering inflicted on animals and denounce both their breeding and slaughter conditions, which are indeed unbearable. Should we aim to universalize vegetarianism or veganism, even make them mandatory? Obviously, on the one hand, this objective is difficult to achieve in the short to medium term simply because eating meat has always been associated with the human condition. Also, it is uncertain whether it is desirable since many animals would simply not see the light of day if they were not intended for breeding. On the other hand, from a convivialist perspective, it would be essential to attempt to consume only animals raised in the context of traditional breeding. This tradition is rooted in a relationship of gift/counter-gift with breeders (some giving their lives, others giving their care and often their affection), the animals having enjoyed the freedom of an outdoor life and dignified sanitary and slaughtering conditions. We must, therefore, make it a priority to eliminate the gigantic industrial farms that treat animals as if they were just nonliving matter and that, on that commercial level, have become sources of enormous pollution. Also, we must ensure the traceability of the food we eat.

Yet an overall reduction of meat consumption is absolutely necessary with regard to the supply of food for a still growing world population, with regard to methane emissions, water consumption, destruction of ecosystems, and using land for feedstuff and pasture.

Indeed, the stakes are high. Building a worldwide pluriversalizable inclusive convivialist society that ensures adequate prosperity and well-being for all, decisively rejects the unattainable and dangerous dream of strong perpetual market growth, and effectively counters limitlessness and disproportion is an uphill battle. The task is difficult and dangerous. We don’t deny the fact that on the road to success, we will be facing, and will have to surmount, formidable powers—financial, material, technical, scientific, and intellectual, as well as military and criminal.

Against these colossal and often invisible or elusive powers, our two main weapons are:

• Indignation. Outrage at the disproportionality of power and wealth distribution and corruption will evoke such deep and inescapable shame to unbearably weigh on all those who, directly or indirectly, actively or passively, violate the principles of common naturality, common humanity, and common sociality. Provided they are well coordinated and conducted, and serve a coherent and trusted ideology, "name and shame" practices and boycott calls can be very effective.

• The feeling of belonging to a global human community. A sense of solidarity will be shared among millions, tens and hundreds of millions, even billions of people, from all countries, all languages, all cultures and religions, all social conditions, driving them to participate in the same struggle for a fully humanized world. This will require them to be able to identify with a common symbol that associates them with fighting corruption and limitlessness. For now, the word “convivialism” is that symbol until such time that a more evocative and intuitive symbol is found.

• On this basis, it will be possible for those who recognize themselves in the principles of convivialism to radically influence the instituted political games and to deploy all their creativity to invent other ways of living, producing, playing, loving, thinking, and teaching. They are doing so in a convivial manner, through nonviolent actions, by competing without hate and without causing mutual destruction, and by rebuilding the trust for a just future in those who have long lost it. In a perspective of both reterritorialization and relocation, and openness to associationist global civil society. This action has already been underway in many forms, evident in particular in the many facets of the social and solidarity economy, the experiences of participatory democracy, the experience of the World Social Fora, etc.

• The internet, new technologies, and science will serve to build this civil society both locally and globally. Deeply rooted and open to otherness at the same time. Thus a new progressivism is emerging, free of all economism and scientism, and of mechanical identification of the more or the new with the better.

Yet, obviously, a convivialist society will not be built as a stand-alone homogenous humanity, as a simple function of goodwill, or as a result of a miracle finally transforming all human beings into one society basking in better feelings and devoid of multiple disagreements and arguments. To be sure, the temptation of hubris is not the prerogative of the richest and most powerful only; it is present in all humans, actively or potentially. Consequently, in a convivialist society, it will not be possible to say that it is “forbidden to forbid.” In order to enable everyone to exercise their desire to be recognized by virtue of their participation in socially beneficial activities and their concern for the common good, a whole new set of norms must be built. These include, first and foremost, the norm of prohibiting extreme wealth that accumulates in denial of the principles of common naturality, common humanity, and common sociality.

• At present, the dominant social norm is—contrary to the convivialist norms—grounded in greed, self-adulation, and indifference to the fate of others. To be sure, the introduction of new convivialist norms will be unable to avoid the generation—as a by-product—of many currently unforeseeable new forms of delinquency. It is therefore too early to meaningfully address the questions of deterrence and civil and criminal control and management. As a general rule of thumb, restorative justice (i.e., an orderly, face-to-face meeting between offenders and their victims) and imprisonment or punishment aimed not at destroying subjectivity, as is the case in most existing prison systems, but at allowing, on the contrary, genuine individuation work, will be the convivialist choice.

• More generally, a convivialist society will be a reflective and educational one. It cannot emerge and last if it does not empower individuals and groups, on the one hand, to better understand what motivates them and, on the other hand, to know how to control the oppositions that result from the quest for recognition that drives them all.

• A convivialist society provides the caring environment in which self-confidence and emotional security are restored to all those whose lives have been detrimentally affected by the economic crises, the isolation and loneliness induced by the neoliberal way of life, the massacres that led to migration, etc.

There will also be a huge pool of potential jobs in the care tasks that are unlikely to be dethroned by artificial intelligence.

But, even before any educational process, conviviality bets on the mobilization of emotions and passions. Nothing can be done without them. The worst as well as the best. The worst is the call to murder, which feeds totalitarian, sectarian, and fundamentalist passions. The best is the desire to build effectively democratic, civilized, and friendly societies on both a global and a local scale. The aspiration to realize all the promises of the present that must be made palpable and felt by all.

It might be worth considering foundation of a global representative body to “tangibly” embody and symbolize the unity of convivialism, and to pronounce with sufficient authority and media coverage on the many urgent questions to be decided. As a first step, we might consider drafting a sketch of a World Assembly of the Common Humanity built with representatives from world civil societies, philosophy, human and social sciences, and the various ethical, spiritual, and religious streams that see themselves reflected in the principles of convivialism.

In the short term, convivialism must resolve two main difficulties, both of which are linked to the fact that it may seem to emanate from more or less abstract considerations, with no direct bearing on the immediate economic needs of each individual as well as on political realities.

On the first point, convivialism apparently runs up against the same problem as all the parties that claim to be ecologically minded (they are more and more numerous, at least in words) but do not really commit themselves to the necessary changes. For how can we really defend the planet and save the environment without destroying some jobs (those of polluting or deleterious economic activities we want to stop)? How can we reconcile fear of the end of the world with concern for the end of the month? In order to convince, it will not be enough to talk to the most educated social strata or their children, who are already aware of the need to fight against global warming. It is necessary to address everyone: protestors of all kinds, unionized workers, unemployed city dwellers in poor areas . . .

A part of the convivialist goal is to draw the contours of a viable society even without GDP growth—i.e., even if GDP and monetary purchasing power were to stagnate, either for ecological or economic reasons (the “secular stagnation” diagnosed by some economists), or following a major financial crisis. We have shown that this is possible as long as a significant part of needs is satisfied in a nonprofit way, through direct relations between producers and consumers: through demerchandising, deglobalization, and relocation.

However, we must not deprive ourselves of the financial resources that are currently underutilised. We have seen that the cumulative proposals of the Democratic candidates for the US presidential nomination, affecting only very high incomes, assets, or estates, would bring in around $400 billion per year. This is the case in many other countries. In France, for example, similar measures—combined with a more effective fight against tax havens and decent taxation of multinationals (especially GAFAMs) on the turnover of each country—would bring in some €50 billion per year, all other things being equal. Enough to finance a truly universal income, which would allow, for example, farmers or shopkeepers who love their profession but are constantly on the verge of bankruptcy (and suicide) to flourish without limiting such socially productive activities to their monetary, profitable part. Enough also to start the necessary ecological transition by doing away with the thermal sieves while also remedying the great misery in hospitals or prisons, etc.

These figures give an idea of the leeway we would have for social change if the richest were no longer able to evade the duty of solidarity implied by the three principles of common naturalness, common humanity, and common sociality. But two points need to be made immediately. On the one hand, it is clear that conviviality will not take shape in a country isolated from the rest of the world. If the wealth taxed here can immediately find refuge elsewhere, it will be difficult to move forward. That is why it is vital that the principles of convivialism—under this name or any other, it does not matter—should be able to trigger a tidal wave of world public opinion. On the other hand, we should certainly not believe, or let people believe, because we would regain some financial latitude, that everything could start again as before, without changing our lifestyles. In a word, we must reason in a completely different spirit than that of state Keynesianism (which believes that everything can be solved by boosting GDP growth through public spending) and abandon the illusion of “green growth” (which would only be a new modality in the eternal race for wealth, the ecological issue being in fact only a pretext).

This raises the question of the political positioning of convivialism. It is clear that convivialism will not be able to impose itself without entering at some point, in one way or another, into the field of the instituted political game. And this is another contradiction that must be resolved. Convivialism relies first and foremost on the power of civil society, or, to put it better, of civic society—in other words, on the mobilization of all those who care about the common good. But these people, very generally, distrust politics and politicians (who moreover most often ignore them except at election time). They do not necessarily refuse to do politics; rather, they participate on the condition that they do it “differently,” without professional politicians. But this refusal is precisely what condemns them to a dispersal of their forces, to great invisibility, and ultimately to a great powerlessness in the face of the market or the State.

What to do? In the immediate future, and particularly during election campaigns, let us suggest that professional or paraprofessional politicians who feel in agreement with this Second Manifesto of Convivialism should claim it as their own. Convivialism, after all, belongs to no one, and its strength comes precisely from the fact that it brings together people from very diverse political and ideological backgrounds. For the time being, therefore, we can only hope that our ideas will be “hijacked.” If some of them were to do so abusively, it would be quite easy to denounce them.

But convivialism can make a real entry into politics only if the values it embodies and the solutions it proposes are widely shared. How can we ensure that they are shared, and how can we know and make it known? Many people who are already convinced by convivialism wonder how they could contribute to it. Precisely because convivialism is not an organisation, let alone a party, they cannot be offered membership.

The first way to contribute (in English-speaking countries as well as in France and Germany, for the moment) is to discuss this Second Convivialist Manifesto and to enrich it by making known new experiences or analyses. The sites http://convivialism.org/ and www.convivialisme.org are made for this purpose. The second, if you adhere to the analyses developed in this manifesto, if you share the values that animate it, is to make it known by becoming its propagandists. This Second Convivialist Manifesto, for reasons that are quite simple to understand, can hardly rely a priori on the currently dominant media. It can therefore be disseminated only by word of mouth, or even by being offered to potential supporters. It’s up to you! Just say and make it known that you consider yourself a convivialist.

Convivialism is not a dogma but a path. And a hope, in a world that lacks so much of it. Our hope is that if people identifying with convivialism become more and more numerous, then they will be able to recognize each other and enter into discussion where they live or work, in hospitals, in colleges, in prisons, in high schools, in agriculture, in companies, in mutual insurance companies, in trade unions, etc. By discussing in this way, they can begin to draw the outlines of more convivial workplaces or living spaces, where people live better, more harmoniously, even if money is lacking. It is indeed a post-neoliberal society that will take shape in this way.

Then, perhaps, we will have to start thinking about the creation of an organization or even a convivialist political organization. In the form of an archipelago? Perhaps. Indeed, who does not see that the existing political parties are proving increasingly incapable of providing credible hopes to the majority of citizens? Only those who give voice to distress, hatred, and resentment by mobilising them against scapegoats now prosper. They all suggest that if only growth would return (and they present themselves as the most likely contributors) and scapegoats would be removed, then all problems would be solved. It might be agreed that there is nothing exhilarating about this. It is not surprising in these circumstances that more and more voters are abstaining and that more and more people, especially young people, no longer believe in democracy and institutions. It is that they simply no longer believe in the future.

So, yes, some form of convivialist party giving hope by showing what new kind of society could actually be built would be more than welcome. But it is not up to intellectuals like those who contributed to the drafting of this manifesto to embark on this indispensable political undertaking. That is not their task. It is up to others, especially the younger ones, to take up the baton now. Let us all discuss this together. It is their future that they have to build, and no one else will do it for them.

Warning: Why these signatories and no others? Why not the thousands or tens of thousands of other personalities who could have been or would be equally likely and potentially willing to join the list? And why, moreover, limit ourselves to well-known figures?

The answer to this second question is simple: we fervently hope that millions or tens of millions of people will be able to recognize themselves widely in convivialism and contribute to it, but we have to start somewhere. In order for the movement to have a chance to snowball, it is important that the first signatories are sufficiently known and respected. But we cannot stop there. We therefore invite all those who wish to do so to show their support for convivialism on the website http://convivialisme.org as was already the case for the First Convivialist Manifesto. This will at the very least enable information to be circulated on possible future initiatives.

And (first question) why these signatories and not others? Again, for convenience. Because it was impossible to move forward other than by contacting those with whom the signatories of the First Manifesto were already in contact in France and around the world. By starting with other people, other networks would have been formed, no doubt, even if they would most likely have partly overlapped with the one that appears here. In any case, the list of signatories of this Second Manifesto has a real consistency. They come from thirty-one different countries, which allows us to speak of a Convivialist International, even if it has no organisational or institutional reality and therefore remains totally informal.

How did this Second Manifesto come about? A first version, based on elements of the First Manifesto, was written by Alain Caillé. A first translation into English was soon made, which helped fuel a real international discussion. Dozens of contributions or proposals, additions, subtractions, or modifications were integrated. Some were two or three words, or a few lines; others were entire paragraphs. Many of the signatories merely indicated their agreement, but in the end, it is truly a plural and international text.

The reader will find below the names of the signatories and a brief presentation of who they are and what they do. Many have written many, many books. In order not to lengthen this presentation excessively, only one is mentioned.

Tetsuo Abo († Japan), honorary professor of the Institute of Social Science, University of Tokyo, director of the Management Research Group JMNESG. The Hybrid Factory: The Japanese Production System in the United States, Oxford University Press,1994.

Daron Acemoglu (Turkey, USA), economist, professor of Economics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, holder of the “Charles P. Kindleberger Chair”, John-Bates-Clark Medal in 2005. Why Nations Fail (with J. A. Robinson), Crown Publishers, 2012.

Jean-Philippe Acensi (France), delegate general of the Agency for Education through Sport (APELS), president of the civic movement Bleu, Blanc, Zèbre.

Alberto Acosta (Ecuador), Ecuadorian economist and activist, former president of the Constituent Assembly of Ecuador. Le Buen Vivir, Una vía para el desarrollo, Ed. Univ. Bolivariana, Santiago, 2009.

Michel Adam (France), engineer and sociologist, community activist, president of the Jean Monnet European Study Center in Cognac, L’Association, image de la société, L’Harmattan, 2008.

Frank Adloff (Germany), professor of sociology, Hamburg University, Gifts of Cooperation, Mauss and Pragmatism, Routledge 2016.

Thais Aguiar (Brazil), professor of Political Science at the Institute of Philosophy and Social Sciences (IFCS) of the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro. Demofobia e demofilia: Dilemas da democratização, Azougue editorial, Rio de Janeiro, 2015.

Christophe Aguiton (France), associate professor in sociology of the web at the University Paris-Est Marne-la-Vallée, founder of Acting together against unemployment! and cofounder of ATTAC. La gauche du 21ème siècle, enquête sur une refondation, La Découverte, 2017.

Shoki Ail Said (Ethiopia), president of the association France-Ethiopie Corne de l’Afrique, co-president of the association Dialogues en humanité.

Cengiz Aktar (Turkey), economist, political scientist, and journalist, professor emeritus at the Faculty of Economic and Administrative Sciences of Bahçeşehir (Istanbul), initiator of the Turkish request for forgiveness to the Armenians. L’Appel au Pardon, des Turcs s’adressent aux Arméniens, CNRS Éditions, 2010.

Claude Alphandéry (France), resistant, honorary president of the lab of Social and Solidarity Economy and of France Active. Honorary president of the National Council for Integration through Economic Activity and of the Higher Council for the Social and Solidarity Economy. Une famille engagée: Secrets et transmission, Odile Jacob, 2015.

Hiroko Amemiya (Japan-France), anthropologist, honorary lecturer in Japanese language and civilization, University of Rennes 2, specialising in the power of social transformation by short food circuits between peasants and consumers. Du Teikei aux Amap, Presses universitaires de Rennes, 2012.

Geneviève Ancel (France), co-founder and coordinator of the global network Dialogues in Humanity, territorial administrator at Lyon Metropole.

Catherine André (France), journalist, co-founder and editor-in-chief of the multilingual website VoxEurop and deputy editor-in-chief of Alternatives Economiques.

Kathya Araujo (Peru), sociologist and psychoanalyst, professor at the Instituto de Estudios Avanzados (IDEA) of the Universidad de Santiago de Chile. El miedo a los subordinados: Una teoría de la autoridad, Santiago, Lom, 2016.

Margaret Archer (United Kingdom), professor emeritus of sociology at the University of Warwick (UK), social theorist, and critical realist, first female president (1960) of the International Sociological Association, founding member of the Pontifical Academy of Social Sciences. Morphogenesis and Human Flourishing (ed.), Springer, 2017.

Marcos Arruda (Brazil), economist and educator, director of Politicas alternativas para o Cone Sul (Rio de Janeiro), Partner Institute of the Initiative for Another World network. A formação de ser humano integral. Homo evolutivo, praxis e economia solidaria, PACS/Editoria Vozes, 2003.

Rigas Arvanitis (Greece-France), sociologist, director of the Centre Population et Développement (Ceped, IRD), works on the constitution of scientific communities in southern countries and research and innovation policies. Knowledge Production in the Arab World: The Impossible Promise (with Sari Hanafi), Routledge, 2015.

Amin Ash (United Kingdom), holder of the 1931 Chair of the Department of Geography, University of Cambridge. Seeing Like a City (with N. Thrift), Polity Press, 2016.

Geneviève Azam (France), economist, essayist, member of the Attac Scientific Council and of the Editorial Board of the Revue des livres, des idées et des écologies, Les Terrestres (terrestres.org). Lettre à la Terre. Et la Terre répond, Seuil, 2019.

Laurence Baranski (France), lecturer, University of Paris 2 Panthéon-Assas, coach, consultant specialising in individual and collective change processes, involved in citizen dynamics. Le coming out spirituel, Exergue, 2017.

Marc de Basquiat (France), engineer and economist, founder of StepLine, president of the AIRE Association pour l’instauration d’un revenu d’existence (subsistence income).

Philippe Batifoulier (France), professor of economics at the University of Paris 13, director of the Centre d’Economie de Paris Nord (CEPN, UMR CNRS 7234). Capital santé, quand le patient devient client, La Découverte, 2014.

Jean Baubérot (France), honorary professor at the Ecole Pratique des Hautes Etudes (“History and Sociology of Secularism”). La loi de 1905 n’aura pas lieu, éditions de la MSH, 2019.

Michael Bauwens (Belgium, Thailand), integral philosopher, commons theorist, founder of the P2P (Peer-to-Peer) Foundation. Peer to Peer: The Commons Manifesto, University of Westminster Press, 2019.

Marcel Bénabou (France), historian and writer. Definitive provisional secretary and then provisional definitive secretary of the Ouvroir de littérature potentielle (or OuLiPo). Le Voyage d’hiver et ses suites, Seuil, 2014.

Raymond Benhaïm (Algeria), economist, consultant, and activist in several national and international civil society organizations; president of Racines, the Association for Cultural Development in Morocco and Africa.

Dorothée Benoît-Browaeys (France), science journalist, director of TEK4life, co-founder of the VivAgora association. L’urgence du vivant vers une nouvelle économie, Editions François Bourin, 2018.

Augustin Berque (France), geographer and orientalist, director of studies at the EHESS, member of the European Academy, Cosmos International 2018 Prize. Poétique de la Terre. Histoire naturelle et histoire humaine, essai de mésologie, Belin, 2014.

Yves Berthelot (France), economist, former United Nations official, president of the French Committee for International Solidarity (CFSI) and of the Centre International Développement et Civilisations - Lebret-Irfed. Chemins d’économie humaine (with Lourthusamy Arokiasamy, Andrés Lalanne, and Lily Razafimbelo), Le Cerf, 2016.

Romain Bertrand (France), research director at the Centre de recherches internationales (CERI, Sciences Po-CNRS), specialising in the history of European colonisation in Asia. Le Détail du monde. L’art perdu de la description de la nature, Seuil, 2019.

Jean-Michel Besnier (France), professor of philosophy emeritus at the Sorbonne-University. L’Homme simplifié. Le syndrome de la touche étoile, Fayard, 2012.

Leonardo Boff (Brazil), one of the leaders of liberation theology in the 1970s and 1980s, recipient of the Alternative Nobel Prize in 2001. The Tao of Liberation: Exploring the Ecology of Transformation (with Mark Hataway), Orbis Books, 2009.

Susanne Bosch (Germany), freelance artist and researcher. Art in Context. Learning from the Field. Conversations with and between Art and Cultural Practitioners (with Herman Bashiron Mendolicchio), Goethe Institut, 2017.

Daniel Bougnoux (France), philosopher, professor emeritus at the University of the Alps of Grenoble. La Crise de la représentation, La Découverte-poche, 2019.

Malek A. Boukerchi (Algeria), ultramarathon runner, founder of ARSYNOE, social writer and poet, lecturer philo-storyteller at I.R.I.S., “Guetteur-Tisseur de rêves.” Il était une fois en Antarctique, du rêve au dépassement de soi, First éditions, 2015.

Dominique Bourg (France), philosopher, honorary professor at the University of Lausanne, former president of the Scientific Council of the Fondation Nicolas Hulot. Le marché contre l'humanité, PUF, 2019.

Pascal Branchu (France), social worker and activist on issues of urban agriculture and the protection of large alignment trees, especially in dense urban areas.

Geneviève Brisac (France), writer, member of the NGO Libraries Without Borders. Week-end de chasse à la mère, éditions de l’Olivier, Prix Femina 1996.

Axelle Brodiez-Bollino (France), contemporary historian at the CNRS, specialising in poverty-precariousness and humanitarian issues. La protection sociale en Europe au XX siècle (with Bruno Dumons), Presses universitaires de Rennes, 2014.

Wendy Brown (USA) professor of political science at the University of California, Berkeley. In the Ruins of Neoliberalism: The Rise of Antidemocratic Politics in the West, Columbia University Press, 2019.

Fabienne Brugère (France), professor of philosophy of modern and contemporary arts at Paris VIII University. On ne naît pas femme, on le devient, Stock, 2019.

Luigino Bruni (Italy), economist and philosopher, professor at the University of Milan-Bicocca, theorist of the civil economy and the economy of communion. Economia civile e sviluppo sostenibile (with L. Berchetti and E. Zamagni), Roma, Ecra, 2019.

Jaime Rios Burga (Peru), professor of sociology and political science at the University of Lima, “Colonialidad y descolonialidad como imaginarios en el sistema mundo moderno/colonial,” in América Latina en Debate Sociedad, conocimiento e intelectualidad, ed. Julio Navarette, URP, Lima, 2011.

Valérie Cabanes (France), lawyer in international law, specialising in human rights and humanitarian law, ecologist, and essayist, who co-launched the citizen movement End Ecocide on Earth, which defends the project to have ecocide recognized in international law as a crime against peace and future generations. At the origin of the online petition The Case of the Century. Homo natura: En harmonie avec le vivant, Buchet-Chastel, 2017.

Alain Caillé (France), professor of sociology emeritus at the University of Paris-Ouest-Nanterre, founder of the Anti-Utilitarian Movement in the Social Sciences (MAUSS), director of La Revue du MAUSS, one of the leaders of the convivialist movement. Extensions du domaine du don. Demander–donner–recevoir–rendre, Actes Sud, 2019.

Matthieu Calame (France-Switzerland), agricultural engineer, director of the Leopold Meyer Foundation for the Progress of Humankind. La France contre l’Europe. Histoire d’un malentendu, Les Petits Matins, 2019.

Craig Calhoun (United States), American sociologist, former director of the London School of Economics and Political Science (2012–16), then first president of the Berggruen Institute. Does Capitalism Have a Future? (with Immanuel Wallerstein, Randall Collins, Michael Mann, and Georgi Derluguian), Oxford University Press, 2013.

Hernando Calla (Bolivia), activist in a human rights organization (APDHLP) and writer/translator of a dozen books, including La verdadera riqueza de las naciones. Creando una economía del cuidado (Riane Eisler), Fundaçión Solon/Trenzando Ilusiones, 2014.

Belinda Canonne (France), novelist, essayist, and lecturer in comparative literature at the University of Caen-Normandy. La Forme du monde, Arthaud, 2019.

Roberto Luis Cardoso de Oliveira (Brazil), professor of anthropology at the University of Brasilia, former president of the Brazilian Association of Anthropology (2006–8). Direito Legal e Insulto Moral: Dilemas da cidadania no Brasil, Quebec e EUA, Rio de Janeiro, Garamond, 2011.

Jorge Carrillo (Mexico), a researcher at Colegio de la Frontera Norte (Colef), is working on innovation and technological learning in Mexico. Made in México. Desafìos para la ciencia y la innovación en la frontera norte, Comecso, 2016.

Genauto Carvalho de Franca Filha (Brazil), professor at the Federal University of Bahia, Ação publica e economia solidaria. Uma perspectiva internacional, UFRGS, 2006.

Barbara Cassin (France), philosopher and philologist, director of research at the CNRS, member of the French Academy. Under her direction, Dictionary of Untranslatables: A Philosophical Lexicon, Princeton University Press, 2014.

José Cassiolato (Brazil), professor emeritus of the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro, former secretary of state in the Ministry of Science and Technology, former director of GLOBELICS (Global Research Network on the Economics of Learning, Innovation and Competence Building Systems).

Silvia Cataldi (Italy), researcher in sociology at the Sapienza, University of Rome, leader of the group Social One. Culture of Peace: The Social Dimension of Love (ed., with Vera Araujo and Gennario Iorio), L’Harmattan Italia, 2016.

Philippe Chanial (France), professor of sociology at the University of Caen, editor-in-chief of La Revue du MAUSS. La société vue du don. Manuel de sociologie anti-utilitariste appliquée (with Norbert Alter, Sylvie Malsan, and Jacques T. Godbout, La Découverte, 2008.

Francis Chateauraynaud (France), director of Studies at EHESS, director of the Group of Pragmatic and Reflective Sociology. Introduced the concept of whistle-blower (1996). Aux bords de l'irréversible. Sociologie pragmatique des transformations (with Josquin Debaz), éditions Pétra, 2017.

Hervé Chayneaud-Dupuy (France), facilitator of the Citizenship Workshops. Citoyen pour quoi faire? vers une démocratie sociétale, Chronique sociale, 2016.

Eve Chiapello (France), director of studies at the Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales (Paris), where she holds a chair of sociology of the transformations of capitalism. Management Tools: A Social Sciences Perspective (with Patrick Gilbert), Cambridge University Press, 2019.

Noam Chomsky (USA), professor emeritus of linguistics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), founder of generative linguistics, and committed intellectual. Optimism over Despair: On Capitalism, Empire, and Social Change, Penguin, 2017.

Philippe Cibois (France), professor emeritus of sociology at the University of Versailles-St-Quentin en Yvelines. La Source, école de la confiance (with Jeanne Houlon), éditions Fabert, 2007.

Sébastien Claeys (France), philosopher, mediator at the Espace éthique Île-de-France and columnist for the magazine Socialter. De disruption à prosommateur: 40 mots-clés pour le monde de demain, Le Pommier, 2018.

Denis Clerc (France), economist, founder of Alternatives économiques, which he directed for twenty years. Déchiffrer l'économie, 19th ed., La Découverte, 2019.

Gabriel Cohn (Brazil), sociologist, professor emeritus of sociology at the University of São Paulo. Weber, Frankfurt: Teoria e pensamento social, Azougue, 2017.

Gabriel Colletis (France), professor of economics at the University of Toulouse 1-Capitole, researcher at the Laboratoire d’Étude et de Recherche sur l’Économie, les Politiques et les Systèmes sociaux (Lereps), created and chairs the Association of the “Manifesto for Industry” (manifestepourlindustrie.org).

Catherine Colliot-Thélène (France), political philosopher, professor at the University of Rennes, member of the Institut universitaire de France. La démocratie sans Demos, Presses universitaires de France, 2011.

Josette Combes (France), sociolinguist, honorary lecturer (University of Toulouse). Member of numerous national and European networks for social and solidarity economy (SSE), president of the movement for solidarity-based economy (MES), and Delegate to the intercontinental RIPESS.

Christian Coméliau (France), honorary professor at the Graduate Institute of Development Studies, University of Geneva. La Croissance ou le progrès? Croissance, décroissance, développement durable, Seuil, 2006.

Eugenia Correa (Mexico), professor of economics at the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, member of the Mexican Academy of Sciences, received the National University Award in 2006. Crisis y Desregulación Financiera, Editorial Siglo XXI.

Sérgio Costa (Brazil, Germany), professor of sociology, Free University of Berlin. A Port in Global Capitalism: Unveiling Entangled Accumulation in Rio de Janeiro (with Leite Gonçalves Guilherme), Routledge, 2019.

Thomas Coutrot (France), statistician and economist, expert on the link between work, health, and democracy, co-chair of ATTAC-France (2009–16). Libérer le travail, Seuil, 2018.

Florian Couveinhes-Matsumoto (France), lecturer in public law at the University of Applied Sciences (Ulm). Specialises in international law and legal philosophy, works on a “convivialist” conception of law. Les Etats face aux juridictions internationales. Une analyse des politiques étatiques relatives aux juges internationaux (with Raphaëlle Nollez-Goldbach), éditions Pedone, 2019.

Daniel Cueff (France), mayor of Langouet, a commune involved in social ecology since 1999. Regionalist ecologist, with no affiliation with any political party.

Eric Dacheux (France), professor in information and communication sciences, Clermont Auvergne University. Member of the Inter-University Network of Researchers in the Social and Solidarity Economy. Principes d’économie solidaire (with D. Goujon), Ellipses, 2017.

Jean-Yves Dagnet (France), video writer-director and lecturer on agricultural and rural development issues.

Francis Danvers (France), professor emeritus in educational psychology at the University of Lille, vice-president of the People’s University of Lille. S’orienter dans la vie: Une valeur suprême?, Presses universitaires du Septentrion, 2020.

Mireille Delmas-Marty (France), jurist, honorary professor at the Collège de France, member of the Academy of Moral and Political Sciences, president of the Pharos Observatory of Pluralism of Cultures and Religions. Aux quatre vents du monde. Petit guide de navigation sur l’océan de la mondialisation, Le Seuil, 2016.

Federico Demaria (Spain), researcher at the Autonomous University of Barcelona. Pluriverse. A Post-Development Dictionary (co-ed.), Tulika Books, 2019.

Philippe Descola (France), anthropologist, professor emeritus at the Collège de France, gold medal of the CNRS. Beyond Nature and Culture, University of Chicago Press, 2013.

Erica Deuber Ziegler (Switzerland), art historian and politician, Swiss honorary professor of universities. Culture et cultures, les chantiers de l’ethno (with Réda Benkirane), éditions Infolio, 2007.

Jean-Claude Devèze (France), agronomist, member of the Civic Pact and of Democracy & Spirituality. Vers une civilisation-monde alliant culture, spiritualité et politique, Chronique sociale, 2020.

François Doligez (France), agro-economist IRAM, teacher-researcher associated with UMR8586 Prodig, “Diversité et potentialités de l’ESS au Maghreb dans un contexte de transition,” Revue Internationale de l’économie sociale, no. 4, 2019.

Jean-Philippe Domecq (France), novelist and essayist. La monnaie du temps et autres textes politiques, Agora Pocket, 2018.

Pierpaolo Donati (Italy), sociologist, Alma Mater professor at the University of Bologna, former president of the Italian Sociological Association. Relational Sociology: A New Paradigm for the Social Sciences, Routledge, 2011.

Michael Dreiling, (USA), political and environmental sociologist, director of the Department of Sociology at the University of Oregon. Agents of Neoliberal Globalization, Cambridge University Press, 2020.

François Dubet (France), sociologist, former director of studies at the EHESS and professor at the University of Bordeaux. Le Temps des passions tristes: Inégalités et populisme, Seuil, 2019.

Stéphane Dufoix (France), professor of sociology at the University of Paris Nanterre and member of the Sophiapol laboratory (SOciology, PHIlosophy, and Anthropology POLitics). Senior member of the French University Institute, he also teaches at Sciences Po Paris. La Dispersion. Une histoire des usages du mot « diaspora », Editions Amsterdam, 2012.

Dany-Robert Dufour (France), philosopher, university professor. Baise ton prochain. Une histoire souterraine du capitalisme, Actes Sud, 2019.

Jean-Pierre Dupuy (France), professor at Stanford University. La guerre qui ne peut pas avoir lieu, Desclée de Brouwer, 2019.

Timothée Duverger (France), associate lecturer at Sciences Po Bordeaux and the Centre Emile Durkheim, specialising in the social and solidarity economy, degrowth, and basic income. L’invention du revenu de base. La fabrique d’une utopie démocratique, Le Bord de l’Eau, 2018.

Shirin Ebadi (Iran), judge, Nobel Peace Prize laureate 2003.

Adalbert Evers (Germany), professor emeritus, Centre for Social Investment (CSI), University of Heidelberg. Social Policy and Citizenship–The Changing Landscape (with Anne-Marie Guillemard), Oxford University Press, 2013.

Emmanuel Faber (France), chairman and CEO of Danone.

Olivier Favereau (France), emeritus professor of economics at the University of Paris-Ouest-Nanterre-La Défense, leader of the Ecole des Conventions. Entreprises: La grande déformation, Parole et silence, 2014.

Andrew Feenberg (USA), philosopher of technology, former student of Herbert Marcuse, now Canadian Research Chair in Philosophy of Technology at Simon Fraser University in Vancouver. Questioning Technology, Routledge, 1999.

Christian Felber (Austria), facilitator-founder of the network Economy for the common good. Change Everything: Creating an Economy for the Common Good, ZED Books, 2015.

Franceso Fistetti (Italy), professor of contemporary philosophy at the University of Bari, director of the online review Post filosofie. Il filosofo e il tiranno. Viaggio nel cuore di tenebra del XX secolo, Morlacchi, 2018.

Anne-Marie Fixot (France), university professor, geographer, researcher in human and social sciences, facilitator of the education and popular discussion group Démosthène (Caen).

David Flacher (France), teaches economics at the Université de Technologie de Compiègne, spokesman for the Utopia Movement and vice-president of the Organisation for Universal Citizenship. Réguler le secteur des Télécommunications? Enjeux et perspectives (with Hugues Jennequin), Economica, 2007.

François Flahault (France), philosopher, emeritus research director at the CNRS. Où est passé le bien commun?, Mille et une nuits, 2011.

Fabrice Flipo (France), philosopher, teacher at ITM-BS, researcher at the Laboratory of Social and Political Change at the University of Paris VII. Nature et politique: Contribution à une anthropologie de la modernité et de la globalisation, éditions Amsterdam, 2014.

Jean-Baptiste de Foucauld (France), former commissaire au Plan, initiator of Solidarités nouvelles contre le chômage, Démocratie et spiritualité, Pacte civique, president of the Friends of Pontigny-Cerisy. L’abondance frugale, pour une nouvelle solidarité, Odile Jacob, 2010.

Christophe Fourel (France), economist, president of the Association of Readers of Economic Alternatives, and head of the Terra Nova Solidarity Pole. Specialist in the philosophy of André Gorz. D’autres monnaies pour une nouvelle prospérité (ed.), Le Bord de l’eau, 2015.

Paulo Fracalanza (Brazil), director of the Institute of Economics of the State University of Campinas (UNICAMP) São Paulo.

Stéphane de Freitas (France), director (“Speak Out Loud. The Power of the Word”) and social entrepreneur. He is the designer of the Eloquentia speaking programs and the Indigo social support network.

Philippe Frémeaux (France), editorialist at the magazine Alternatives Economiques and president of the Veblen Institute. Après Macron, Les Petits Matins, 2018.

Emmanuel Gabellieri (France), aggregate and philosopher, vice-rector of research at the Catholic University of Lyon. Le phénomène et l'entre-deux. Essai pour une metaxologie, Hermann, 2019.

Jean Gadrey (France), honorary professor of economics at the University of Lille. Adieu à la croissance, bien vivre dans un monde solidaire, Les petits matins, 2010.

Noémi Gal-Or (Canada), professor emeritus of politics and international law at Kwantlen Polytechnic University in Canada and lawyer. International Cooperation to Suppress Terrorism, Routledge, 2015.

Vincent de Gaulejac (France), university professor, president of the International Network of Clinical Sociology. Le capitalisme paradoxant, Points-Seuil, 2018.

François Gauthier (Canada, Switzerland), professor of sociology of religions at the Department of Social Sciences of the University of Fribourg, Switzerland. Religion, Modernity, Globalisation. Nation-State to Market, Routledge, 2020.

Susan George (USA, France), Franco-American political scientist, honorary president of ATTAC (Association for the Taxation of Financial Transactions and Aid to Citizens) and president of the Supervisory Board of the Transnational Institute. Les Usurpateurs, Seuil, 2014.

François Gèze (France), chairman and CEO of Éditions La Découverte (Paris) from 1982 to 2014, member of Cedetim and the Algeria-Watch association.

Chiara Giaccardi (Italy), professor of sociology at the Catholic University of Milan, director of the magazine Communicazioni sociali. Social Generativity: A Relational Paradigm for Social Change (with Mauro Magatti), Routledge, 2018.

Katerine Gibson (Australia), geographer economist, professor at Western Sidney University. Take Back the Economy: An Ethical Guide for Transforming Our Communities (with Jenny Cameron and Stephen Healy), University of Minnesota Press, 2013.

Gaël Giraud (France), economist, member of the Society of Jesus, former director of the French Development Agency. Illusion financière, L’Atelier, 2013.

Pascal Glémain (France), manager, economist, and local developer (Univ-Rennes 2, LiRIS), specialist in social and solidarity economy, mainly of associations and cooperatives. L’économie sociale et solidaire, de ses fondements à son "à venir," Apogée, 2019.

Vincent Glenn (France), filmmaker, director. Latest film “Enfin des bonnes nouvelles”; author of On marche sur la dette (with Christophe Alévêque), Points, 2016. Mediapart blogger.

Maja Göpel (Germany), professor of political economy at Leuphana University in Lüneburg, secretary general of the German Advisory Council on Global Change (WBGU). The Great Mindshift: How a New Economic Paradigm and Sustainability Transformations Go Hand in Hand, Springer, 2016.

Roland Gori (France), honorary professor of clinical psychopathology at Aix Marseille University and president of Appel des appels. La nudité du pouvoir, LLL, 2001.

Phil Gorski (United States), professor of sociology at Yale University, sociology of religions and historical sociology. Founder of the Critical Realism Network. American Covenant: A History of Civil Religion from the Puritans to the Present, Princeton University Press, 2017.

Daniel Goujon (France), lecturer in economics at the university Jean Monnet of Saint-Etienne. Défaire le capitalisme, refaire la démocratie. Les enjeux du délibéralisme (with Eric Dacheux), Erès, 2020.

Jean-Marie Gourvil (Canada, France), former director of studies at the IRTS of Normandy and consultant in local social development. Se former au développement social local (with Michel Kaiser), Dunod, 2013.

David Graeber (United States), professor at the London School of Economics, anthropologist and anarchist activist. Bullshit Jobs: A Theory, Simon & Schuster, 2018.

Jean-Edouard Grésy (France), legal anthropologist; co-founded the firm AlterNego, which specialises in inclusive management and social dialogue. La révolution du don. Le management repensé à la lumière de l’anthropologie (with A. Caillé), Seuil, 2014.

André Grimaldi (France), diabetologist, head of department at Pitié-Salpêtrière Hospital. L’hôpital malade de la rentabilité, Fayard, 2009.

Jean-Claude Guillebaud (France), writer, essayist, and journalist, winner of the Albert-London prize. Le Tourment de la guerre, pourquoi tant de violence, Éditions L’iconoclaste, 2016. Grand prix de la Société des Gens de Lettres.

Patrice Guillotreau (France), professor of economics at the University of Nantes, specialising in the economics of the sea. Co-editor of Global Change in Marine Systems, Routledge, 2018.

Roberte Hamayon (France), anthropologist, honorary director of studies at the Ecole Pratique des Hautes Etudes, silver medal from the CNRS (French National Center for Scientific Research). Why We Play, Hau, 2016.

Sari Hanafi (Palestine), professor of sociology at the American University of Beirut, editor-in-chief of Idafat: The Arab Journal of Sociology (Arabic), current president of the International Sociological Association (ISA), and former vice-president of the Arab Sociological Association. Palestinian Refugees: Identity, Space and Place in the Levant (with Are Knudsen, eds.), Routledge, 2010.

Keith Hart (United Kingdom), economic anthropology, international director of the Human Economy Programme at the University of Pretoria in South Africa. Money in a Human Economy, Berghahn, 2017.

Armand Hatchuel (France), professor of management sciences at the Ecole des Mines de Paris. Design Theory (with Pascal Le Masson and Benoit Weil), Springer, 2017.

Eiji Hattori (Japan), professor, adviser to the president of the Japan Society for Global System and Ethics. Letters from the Silk Roads: Thinking at the Crossroads of Civilization (with Wallace Gray), University Press of America, 2000.

Benoît Heilbrunn (France), philosopher and professor at ESCP (Ecole Supérieure de Commerce de Paris). Specialist in material culture and market mediations (consumption, brand, design, luxury). L’obsession du bien-être, Robert Laffont, 2019.

Wolfgang Hofkirchner (Austria), retired professor of technology assessment at the TU Wien, director of the Institute for a Global Sustainable Information Society (GSIS), Vienna. The Future Information Society: Social and Technological Problems (co-ed. with Mark Burgin), World Scientific, 2017.

Axel Honneth (Germany), philosopher and sociologist, director of the Institute for Social Research in Frankfurt (Germany) and professor at Columbia University. The Struggle for Recognition: The Moral Grammar of Social Conflicts, Polity Press, 1995.

Dick Howard (USA), philosopher, distinguished professor, Stony Brook University. The Marxian Legacy, Palgrave, 2019.

Marc Humbert (France), professor emeritus of political economy (Université-Rennes 1), is developing an ethical and political (PEKEA), anti-utilitarian (MAUSS) approach in socioeconomic activities. Vers une civilisation de convivialité, Goater, 2014.

Eva Illouz (Israel, France), sociologist, director of studies at EHESS, Paris. Unloving: A Sociology of Negative Relations. Oxford University Press, 2018.

Daniel Innerarity (Spain), professor of philosophy at the University of Zaragoza, writer, and translator. La Société invisible, Presses de l’Université de Laval, 2013.

Ahmet Insel (Turkey), economist and journalist, professor emeritus of Galatasaray University (Istanbul, Turkey). La nouvelle Turquie d’Erdogan, La Découverte, 2017.

Florence Jany-Catrice (France), economist, university professor. Faut-il attendre la croissance? (with D. Méda), La documentation française, 2016.

Isabelle Jarry (France), novelist, essayist. Vingt-trois lettres d'Amérique, Fayard, 1995, prix Amerigo-Vespucci.

Béatrice and Jean-Paul Jaud (France), documentary filmmakers and activists. Nos enfants nous accuseront (2007), Tous Cobayes (2011), Libres (2015), Grande Synthe (2018).

Bob Jessop (United Kingdom), professor emeritus of sociology, University of Lancaster. Numerous books on the theory of the state and political economy. The State: Past, Present, Future, Polity Press, 2016.

Zhe Ji (China, France), professor of sociology at the Institut national des langues et civilisations orientales (INALCO) and director of the Centre for Interdisciplinary Studies on Buddhism (China, France) (CEIB). Religion, modernité et temporalité: Une sociologie du bouddhisme chan contemporain, CNRS Editions, 2016.

Hans Joas (Germany), professor of sociology at Humboldt University Berlin and the University of Chicago. The Sacredness of the Person: A New Genealogy of Human Rights, Georgetown University Press, 2012.

Stephen Kalberg (United States), professor of sociology at Boston University, specialising in Max Weber. Searching the Spirit of American Democracy: Max Weber on a Unique Political Culture, Routledge, 2013.

Giorgio Kallis (Spain), professeur d´économie écologique, à l’université autonome de Barcelone. Limits: Why Malthus Was Wrong and Why Environmentalists Should Care, Stanford University Press, 2019.

Makoto Katsumata (Japan), economist, professor emeritus of Meiji Gakuin University (Tokyo); he was for many years president of the Tokyo Centre for International Peace Studies (PRIME). Conviviality but Not Growth (in Japanese; ed. with Marc Humbert), Commons, 2011.

Harry Kunneman (Netherlands), philosopher and sociologist, professor emeritus of practical philosophy at University of Humanist Studies in Utrecht, diretor of Waardenwerk (Work on Values). Amor complexitatis, Humanistics University Press, 2017.

Hervé Kempf (France), French journalist and writer. A former journalist with Courrier international, La Recherche, and Monde, he is currently chief editor of Reporterre. Tout est prêt pour que tout empire. 12 leçons pour éviter la catastrophe, Seuil, 2017.

Farhad Khosrokhavar (Iran, France), sociologist and philosopher, director of studies at EHESS. Le Nouveau Jihad en Occident, Robert Laffont, 2018.

Joseph Ki (India), professor, director of the Gulati Institute of Finance and Taxation (GIFT), Thiruvananthapuram, Kerala.

Seiichi Kondo (Japan), diplomat, has occupied various positions including former deputy secretary-general, Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), and director of Kondo Institute for Culture & Diplomacy.

Ashish Kothari (India), environmental activist, founder-member of the NGO Kalpavriksh. Alternative Futures: India Unshackled (with KJ Joy), Authors UpFront, 2017; Pluriverse (with Ariel Salleh, Arturo Escobar, Federico Demaria, Alberto Acosta), Tulika/Authors Upfront, 2019.

Irène Koukoui (Benin), coordinator of the Women Leaders Network in Benin, organizer of the Dialogues in Humanity in Benin and the Pan-African Dialogues, deputy director of the office of the Minister of Education in Benin.

Jacinto Lageira (France), professor in philosophy of art and aesthetics at the University of Paris Panthéon-Sorbonne. L’Art comme Histoire. Un entrelacement de poétiques, éd. Mimésis, 2016.

Kamal Lahbib (Morocco), activist and linchpin of Maghreb civil society, creator and/or animator of multiple NGOs, organizer of the Maghreb Social Forum 2005, president of the Forum des Alternatives du Maroc.

Karim Lahidji (Iran), jurist and lawyer, president of the International Federation for Human Rights (2013–16).

Elena Lassida (France), sociologist, professor at the Institut Catholique de Paris. Le goût de l’autre, Albin Michel, 2011.

Helena Lastres (Brazil), associate researcher at the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro, former assessor to the president of the National Bank for Economic and Social Development of Brazil (2007–16), co-coordinator of Redesist, the Latin American Research Network on Local Arrangements for Production and Innovation.

Bruno Latour (France), sociologist, anthropologist, and philosopher of science, professor at the IEP. Down to Earth: Politics in the New Climatic Regime, Polity Press, 2018.

Camille Laurens (France), writer, novelist, teacher at the IEP, columnist at Le Monde.Dans ces bras-là, P.O.L, 2000. Prix Femina.

Marc Lautier (France), professor of economics at the University of Rennes 2, specialising in the link between economic development strategies and globalization, especially in Asia. Economie de l’Asie du Sud Est (with J-R. Chaponniere), Bréal, 2019.

Christian Laval (France), professor of sociology emeritus at the University of Paris-Ouest-Nanterre, specialising in the history of utilitarianism and liberalism, member of the Research Institute of the Fédération syndicale unitaire (FSU). Common: On Revolution in the 21st Century, Bloomsbury Publishing, 2019.

Jean-Louis Laville (France), sociologist, professor, holder of the CNAM Chair in Solidarity Economy, responsible for the research initiative Démocratie et économie plurielles au Collège d'études mondiales (Fondation Maison des Sciences de l’Homme). L'économie sociale et solidaire: Pratiques, théories, débats, Seuil, 2016.

William Lazonick (USA), professor emeritus of economics, University of Massachusetts, president of the Academic-Industry Research Network.

Christian Lazzeri (France), professor of contemporary philosophy at the University of Paris-Ouest-Nanterre. Histoire raisonnée de la philosophie morale et politique (with A. Caillé and M. Senellart, eds.), La Découverte, 2001.

Frédéric Lebaron (France), professor of sociology at the Ecole Normale Supérieure Paris-Saclay, specialising in economic sociology and political sociology. Empirical Investigation of the Social Space (with others), Springer, 2019.

Erwan Lecoeur (France), sociologist and consultant in political communication (Pacte, social sciences laboratory, CNRS). Face au FN (with Enzo Poultreniez), Le Passager clandestin, 2013.

Jacques Lecomte (France), doctor of psychology, honorary president of the French Association of positive psychology. La bonté humaine, Odile Jacob, 2014.

Claus Leggewie (Germany), professor of political science, University of Giessen. Europa zuerst! Eine Unabhängigkeitserklärung, Ullstein, 2017.

Jacques Le Goff (France), emeritus professor of public law (University of Brest) and former labour inspector, chairs the Association Amis d’Emmanuel Mounier. Du silence à la parole, PURennes, 2019.

Martin Legros (France), philosopher and journalist, editor-in-chief of Philosophie magazine.

Stephan Lessenich (Germany), professor of sociology at the Ludwig Maximilian University in Munich, president of the German Sociological Association (DGS). Neben uns die Sintflut. Die Externalisierungsgesellschaft und ihr Preis, Hanser Verlag, 2016.

Didier Livio (France), founder of the Synergence company, director of Deloitte. Réconcilier l’entreprise et la société. L’entreprise a-telle une vocation politique?, Eyrolles, 2002.

Agnès Lontrade (France), lecturer at the École des Arts de la Sorbonne. Co-director of Les valeurs esthétiques du don (afterword by A. Caillé), éditions Mimésis, 2019.

Helena Lopes (Portugal), professor of economics at the ISCTE-University Institute of Lisbon, Penser le travail pour penser l’entreprise, Presses des mines, 2016.

Eric Lybeck (United Kingdom), Presidential Academic Fellow at the Manchester Institute of Education, University of Manchester, editor of the journal Civic Sociology (University of California Press). Norbert Elias and the Sociology of Education, Bloomsbury Academic, 2019.

Mauro Magatti (Italy), professor at the Catholic University of Milan, director of the Centre for the Anthropology of Religion and Cultural Change (ARC). Social Generativity: A Relational Paradigm for Social Change (with Chiara Giaccardi), Routledge, 2017.

André Ricardo do Passo Magnelli (Brazil), sociologist, associate professor at the University of São Bento do Rio de Janeiro (FSB-RJ). Director of Ateliê de Humanidades. Durkheim, apesar do século: Novas interpretações entre filosofia e sociología, Ateliê de Humanidades, 2019.

Rasigan Mahrajah (South Africa), chief director of the Institute for Economic Research on Innovation, Tshwane University of Technology, South Africa.

Gilles Maréchal (France), co-founder within Elan Créateur, Terralim consultant on local food systems, associate researcher at the UMR ESO-Espaces et Sociétés of the CNRS.

Francisca Marquez (Chile), professor at the Alberto Hurtado University (Santiago de Chile), specialising in cultural and urban anthropology. [Relato de una] Ciudad Trizada. Santiago de Chile, Ocho libros, 2017.

Paulo Henrique Martins (Brazil), professor of sociology at the Federal University of Pernambuco, former president of the Latin American Association of Sociology (ALAS). Itinerarios do dom. Teoria e sentimento, Ateliê de humanidades, 2019.

Danilo Martuccelli (Chile, France), former professor of sociology at the University Paris-Descartes, senior member of the Institut Universitaire de France, researcher at the Instituto de Estudios Avanzados (IDEA) of the Universidad de Santiago de Chile. La condition sociale moderne. L´avenir d´une inquiétude, Gallimard, 2017.

Gus Massiah (France), engineer and economist, one of the leaders of the antiglobalization movement, co-creator of CEDETIM and AITEC (International Association of Technicians and Researchers). Une stratégie de l’altermondialisme (with Élise Massiah), La Découverte, 2011.

Dominique Méda (France), professor of sociology, director of the Institute for Interdisciplinary Research in Social Sciences at the University Paris Dauphine. Her fields of research are work, employment, social policies, and wealth indicators. Les nouveaux travailleurs des applis (ed., with Sarah Abdelnour), Presses universitaires de France, 2019.

Marguerite Mendell (Canada), professor in the Department of Public and Community Affairs at Concordia University in Montreal, director of the Karl Polanyi Institute. Reclaiming Democracy. The Social Justice and Political Economy of Gregory Baum and Kari Polanyi Levitt, McGill University Press, 2005.

Maurice Merchier (France), honorary professor of social sciences in preparatory classes. Author of numerous articles, he directs, with Guy Roustang, the Encyclopedia to change direction (ECCAP).

Pascale Mériot (France), lecturer-researcher at the Faculty of Economics in Rennes and researcher at LiRIS. Her main object of research is education; she is also interested in social and solidarity economy (SSE).

Jean-Claude Michéa (France), philosopher and essayist; critic of liberalism and the identification of socialism with the left; theorist, in the wake of George Orwell, of common decency (decency of ordinary people). Le Complexe d’Orphée: la gauche, les gens ordinaires et la religion du progrès, Climats, 2011.

Henry Mintzberg (Canada), writer and educator, is professor of management studies at McGill University in Montreal. Rebalancing Society–Radical Renewal, Beyond Left, Right and Center, 2015.

Pierre-Olivier Monteil (France), philosopher, associate researcher at the Fonds Ricœur, lecturer in ethics at Paris-Dauphine University and ESCP Europe. Ricœur politique, Presses universitaires de Rennes, 2013.

Edgar Morin (France), sociologist, philosopher, and mediologist, emeritus research director at the CNRS. Theorist of complex thought (in the six volumes of The Method). La Voie: Pour l’avenir de l’humanité, Fayard, 2011.

Chantal Mouffe (Belgium, United Kingdom), post-Marxist political philosopher, professor at the University of Westminster (London). For a Left Populism, Verso, 2018.

Fatou Ndoye (Senegal), coordinator of the Dialogues in Humanity in Senegal, coordinator of the SADA cluster (Sustainable Alternative Food Systems/Gender).

Julie Nelson (United States), professor emeritus of economics at the University of Massachusetts, specialising in the relationship between economics and feminism and in social and environmental policies. Economics for Humans, University of Chicago Press, 2006.

Richard Nelson (USA), professor at Columbia University, is one of the leading theorists of evolutionary economics. An Evolutionary Theory of Economic Change, Harvard University Press, 1982.

Pierre Nicolas (France), political philosophy. La Cité de la Parole, Editions l’Œuvrier, 1991. Blog Dépasser les conflits inutiles (https://pierrenicolas.com).

Jun Nishikawa († Japan) was a professor at the University of Waseda and a political economist on development and globalization; co-edited the Japanese version commented on by several authors of the First Convivialist Manifesto.

Osamu Nishitani (Japan), philosopher, professor emeritus of the Tokyo University of Foreign Languages, teaching transdisciplinary studies of the changing contemporary world. Risei no Tankyu (In Search of the Lost Reason), Iwanami-shoten, 2010.

Debora Nunes (Brazil), urban planner and architect, co-founder of the Network of Professionals for Social and Solidarity Economy (RED)E of Salvador de Bahia and creator of the School of Integral Sustainability or Integrative Ecology. Coordinator of the Dialogues in Humanity in Brazil.

Ugo Olivieri (Italy), professor of Italian literature at the University Frederick II of Naples. Il fascino dell'obbedienza. Servitù volontaria e società depressa, Mondadori, 2013.

Patrice Parisé (France), honorary general engineer for bridges, water, and forests, former vice-president of the General Council for the Environment and Sustainable Development.

Susan Paulson (United States), professor and director of Latin American Studies at the University of Florida. Masculinities and Femininities in Latin America’s Uneven Development, Routledge, 2015.

Antoine Peillon (France), investigative journalist, Anticor’s Ethical Award for Ces 600 milliards qui manquent à la France. Enquête au cœur de l’évasion fiscale, Le Seuil, 2012.

Corine Pelluchon (France), professor of philosophy at the University of Paris-Est-Marne-la-Vallée, specialising in applied ethics, animal issues (cf. her Animalist Manifesto) and political ecology. Éthique de la considération, Seuil, 2018.

Laura Penacchi (Italy), economist, director of the Lelio Basso Foundation and coordinator of the CGIL National Economy Forum. Filosofia dei beni comuni: Crisi e primato della sfera pubblica, Donzelli, 2012.

Alfredo Pena-Vega (France), sociologist, teacher-researcher at the EHESS and the Edgar Morin Centre, and coordinator of the International Court of Nature. Pour une politique de l'humanité? (with Edgar Morin), Atlantique, 2009.

Bernard Perret (France), socioeconomist and essayist, member of the editorial board of the journal Esprit, former member of the Inspectorate General of the Ministry of Ecology. La démarchandisation, Les Petits matins, 2015.

Jacques Perrin (France), honorary research director of the CNRS in economics. Pourquoi les sciences économiques nous conduisent dans le mur?, L’Harmattan, 2011.

Pascal Petit (France), emeritus CNRS director of research in economics, associated with the Centre d’Economie de Paris Nord and the Maison des Sciences de l’Homme. Croissance et richesse des nations, La Découverte, 2005.

Elimar Pinheiro do Nascimento (Brazil), professor of political and environmental sociology at the University of Brasilia. Trajetória da sustentabilidade: do ambiental ao social, do social ao econômico. Estud. av. [online], 2012.

Ilaria Pirone (France), clinical psychologist, psychoanalyst, teaches educational sciences at the University of Paris VIII.

Geoffrey Pleyers (Belgium), professor at the Catholic University of Louvain, vice-president of the International Sociological Association. Alter-Globalization: Becoming Actors in the Global Age, Polity Press, 2011.

Kari Polany-Levitt (Canada), professor emeritus of economics at McGill University (Montreal). While promoting the thinking of her father, Karl Polanyi, she has continued her research on development. Reclaiming Development: Independent Thought and Caribbean Community, Randle Publishers, 2005.

Serge Proulx (Canada), professor emeritus at UQAM (Montreal), specialising in the analysis of contemporary changes in information and communication devices. La contribution en ligne. Pratiques participatives à l’ère du capitalisme informationnel, Presses de l’université du Québec, 2014.

Elena Pulcini (Italy), professor of social philosophy at the University of Florence, specialising in the theory of passions and feelings in modern times. The Individual without Passions: Modern Individualism and the Loss of the Social Bond, Lanham, 2012.

P. V. Rajagopal (India), Gandhian activist, former president of the Gandhi Peace Foundation, New Delhi, founding member and president of Ekta Parishad, organizer of the 2020 Jai Jagat Campaign, scheduled to arrive in Geneva on September 26, 2020.

Henri Raynal (France), poet, philosopher, and art critic. Cosmophilie, nouvelles locales du tout, éditions Cécile Defaut, 2016.

Michel Renault (France), teacher-researcher, Université-Rennes I, is working on indicators of well-being and sustainable development. Contributor to Le bonheur: Dictionnaire historique et critique, Michèle Gally (dir.), CNRS édition, 2019.

Yves Renoux (France), teacher of sports and physical education (EPS) and trainer at the FSGT (Fédération sportive et gymnique du travail).

Robin Renucci (France), director of the Tréteaux de France, president of the Association of National Dramatic Centres, and president of the Association of International Artistic Encounters.

Myriam Revault d’Allonnes (France), philosopher, theoretician of democracy, professor emeritus at the Ecole pratique des Hautes études. La faiblesse du vrai, Seuil, 2018.

Emmanuel Reynaud (France), sociologist and former senior official of the International Labour Office (ILO), has written and coordinated books on social protection, pensions, gender equality, and the critique of masculinity.

Matthieu Ricard (France), biologist, Tibetan Buddhist monk, photographer, interpreter of the Dalai Lama in French. Founder of the humanitarian association Karuna-Shechen. Plaidoyer pour l'altruisme, Nil, 2013.

Marie-Monique Robin (France), French investigative journalist, filmmaker, and writer, Albert Londres prize. Le Roundup face à ses juges, La Découverte, 2017.

Hartmut Rosa (Germany), professor of sociology, University of Jena, 2019. Resonance: A Sociology of Our Relationship to the World, Polity, 2019.

Guy Roustang (France), former research director at LEST-CNRS. Démocratie: Le risque du marché. Desclée de Brouwer, 2012. Co-manager of the Encyclopedia to change direction (eccap.fr).

Marshall Sahlins (USA), anthropologist, professor emeritus at the University of Chicago. On Kings (with David Graeber), Hau Books, 2017.

Emerson Sales (Brazil), professor of physics and chemistry, Federal University of Bahia, coordinator of the Rede de Tecnologias Limpas, coordinator of the Laboratório de Bioenergia e Catálise (LABEC).

Ariel Salleh (Australia), Australian researcher-activist, professor at the University of Sydney. Ecofeminism as Politics, Zed Books, 1997.

Christian Salmon (France), writer and researcher, former assistant to Milan Kundera, founder in 1993 of the International Writers’ Parliament and the Network of Shelter Cities to welcome writers persecuted in their countries. L’Ère du clash, Fayard, 2019.

Saskia Sassen (Netherlands, United States), economist and sociologist, professor at Columbia University and at the London School of Economics. Expulsions: Brutality and Complexity in the Global Economy, Harvard University Press, 2014.

Olivier de Schutter (Belgium), professor of law at the University of Louvain, member of the United Nations Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights. Reflexive Governance: Redefining the Public Interest in a Pluralistic World, Hat Publishing, 2010.

Blanche Segrestin (France), professor of management at the Ecole des Mines de Paris. Refonder l’entreprise (with Armand Hatchuel), Seuil, 2012.

Jean-Michel Servet (France), economist, honorary professor of development studies at the Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies in Geneva, specialising in solidarity-based practices in economics and finance, and in the history of thinking. L’économie comportementale en question, Charles Leopold Mayer, 2018.

Pablo Servigne (France), agricultural engineer, biologist, ecologist, collapsologist, essayist, and lecturer. Comment tout peut s’effondrer. Petit manuel de collapsologie à l’usage des générations présentes (with Raphaël Stevens), Le Seuil, 2015.

Hugues Sibille (France), president of the laboratory of the Ecole Sociale et Solidaire (ESS) and of the Fondation Crédit Coopératif, former interministerial delegate. La Grande Promesse, édition rue de l’Echiquier, 2016.

Siddharta (India), founder and director of the Fireflies Intercultural Centre (an ashram) in Bangalore and trustee of Pipal Tree, an NGO working for poor Indian farmers and promoting intercultural dialogue, especially with young people from Western countries.

Ilana Silber (Israel), professor of sociology emeritus, Bar-Ilan University. “S. N. Eisenstadt’s Theory of Culture,” European Journal of Social Theory, 2020.

Damir Skenderovic (Switzerland), professor of contemporary history at the University of Fribourg, specialising in the radical right. The Radical Right in Switzerland: Continuity and Change, 1945–2000, Berghahn Books, 2009.

Guillaume du Souich (France), painter, former co-president and spokesperson of the Peace Movement.

Boaventura de Sousa Santos (Portugal), sociologist of law, professor at the Faculty of Economics of the University of Coimbra, where he is director of the Centre for Social Studies. The End of the Cognitive Empire, Duke University Press, 2018.

Frédéric Spinhirny (France), philosopher, DRH of the University Hospital Necker-Enfants Malades, in Paris. Hôpital et modernité, Editions Sens & Tonka, 2018.

Robert Spizzichino (France), urban planning engineer, member of the Development Council of the Greater Paris Metropolis, president of the CARMA Gonesse/Pays de France Association. De la Ville en politique, L’Harmattan, 2011.

Fernando Suárez Müller (Netherlands), philosopher, University for Humanist Studies, Utrecht, and Economy for the Common Good. Idealismus heute: Aktuelle Perspektiven und Neue Impulse (ed., with Vittorio Hösle), WBG, 2015.

Roger Sue (France), sociologist, professor at the University of Paris, Centre d'études et de recherches sur les liens sociaux, administrator of FONDA. La contre-société, LLL, 2017.

Bruno Tardieu (France), permanent volunteer ATD Fourth World. Director of the Joseph Wresinski Memory and Research Centre. Les pauvres sont nos maîtres (with D. Jousset and J. Tonglet), Hermann, 2019.

André Teissier du Cros (France), engineer, economist, and writer. Honorary president of the Bastille Committee. La taxe sur l’actif net ou impôt progressif sur le patrimoine dormant, pourquoi il faut taxer le patrimoine et non plus le revenu (collective book; preface by Corinne Lepage), L’Harmattan, 2016.

Michel Terestchenko (France), philosopher, lecturer at the University of Dijon and at the Institute of Political Studies of Aix-en-Provence. Un si fragile vernis d’humanité. Banalité du mal, banalité du bien, La Découverte, 2007.

Bruno Théret (France), economist, emeritus research director at the CNRS. “Système fiscal de paiement complémentaire: Un dispositif pour renverser l’hégémonie” (with Thomas Coutrot), Revue française de socio-économie, no. 22, 2019.

Jacques Toledano (France), environmental activist, facilitator of the Association des Amis du Monde diplomatique (Grenoble).

Catherine Touvrey (France), mutualist, managing director of Harmonie Mutuelle, Insurance and Financial Protection director of the VYV Group for social, mutual, and solidarity protection.

Serge Tracq (France), teacher of sports and physical education (EPS) trainer at the FSGT (Fédération sportive et gymnique du travail).

Florent Trocquenet-Lopez (France), teacher of literature in preparatory classes, journalist and columnist for the magazine Socialter, novelist. La Nature (with Véronique Anglard), Dunod, 2015.

Patrick Tudoret (France), novelist and essayist. Petit traité de bénévolence, Tallandier, 2019.

Jean-JacquesTyszler (France), doctor of psychiatry and psychoanalysis, medical director of the medical-psychopedagogical centre of the Mutuelle Générale de l’Education Nationale (MGEN) in Paris.

Frédéric Vandenberghe (Belgium), a sociologist based in Brazil after having worked in England and the United States. He is currently professor at the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro. What’s Critical about Critical Realism? Essays in Reconstructive Social Theory, Routledge, 2016.

Jean-François Véran (France, Brazil), anthropologist, professor at the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro, regular contributor to Médecins sans Frontières (Doctors without Borders). Médecins Sans Frontières and Humanitarian Situations: An Anthropological Exploration, Routledge, 2020.

Jean-Luc Veyssy (France), philosopher, manages the Editions Le Bord de l’eau. Femmes en politique dans le monde: Angela, Michelle, Ségolène et les autres . . . (with Bernard Collignon), Le Bord de l’eau, 2007.

Bruno Viard (France), professor emeritus of French literature, University of Provence. Joins literature, anthropology, psychology, politics from Marcel Mauss, Pierre Leroux, Paul Diel. Amour propre. Des choses connues depuis le commencement du monde, Le Bord de l’eau, 2015.

Denis Vicherat (France), director of Editions Utopia (www.editions-utopia.org), an independent publishing house deeply rooted in political ecology and alterglobalism. He is also co-animator of the Utopia Movement and has coordinated the writing of the Utopia Manifesto, 2012.

Patrick Vieu (France), senior civil servant, adviser to the vice-president of the General Council for the Environment and Sustainable Development at the Ministry of Ecological and Solidarity Transition.

Daniel Villavicencio (Mexico), professor of sociology of innovation at the Universidad Autónoma Metropolitana de Mexico. Algunas lecciones del programa de fomento a la innovación en México, Administración Pública y Sociedad, 2017.

Jean-Louis Virat (France), retired chartered accountant, facilitator of the Transition Laboratory, of Ecologie au Quotidien, Libr’acteurs, and various associations for citizenship education and assistance to migrants.

Patrick Viveret (France), philosopher, honorary magistrate at the Cour des Comptes. La Cause humaine. Du bon usage de la fin d’un monde, LLL, 2012.

Nathanaël Wallenhorst (France), lecturer and researcher at the Université catholique de l’Ouest (Angers). L’Anthropocène décodé pour les humains, Le Pommier, 2019.

Juliette Weber (France), researcher at the Public Affairs Observatory of the Macif Group. L’idée même de richesse (with A. Caillé), La Découverte, 2012.

Chico Whitaker (Brazil), architect, activist of the Workers’ Party of Brazil, cofounder of the World Social Forum, former executive secretary of the Justice and Peace Commission in Brazil, received the Right Livelihood Award in 2006. Changer le monde, nouveau monde d’emploi, Editions de l’atelier, 2006.

Hitoshi Yakushiin (Japan), professor of sociology, Tezukayama Gakuin University, Osaka, democracy analyst. Shakai-shugi-no-gokai-o-toku (To solve the misunderstanding of socialism), Kobunsha Shinsho, 2011.

Joëlle Zask (France), political philosopher, University of Provence. Quand la forêt brûle. Penser la nouvelle catastrophe écologique, Premier Parallèle, 2019.

Valérie Zenatti (France), writer, scriptwriter. Dans le faisceau des vivants, l’Olivier, 2019.

Lun Zhang (China-France), sociologist, co-organizer of the Tiananmen Square demonstrations (1989), professor of Chinese civilization at the University of Cergy-Pontoise and at the EHESS on Chinese modernity, transition, and reform in China. La Chine désorientée. Cinq ans d’histoire contemporaine (with P. Merle), Charles Leopold Meyer, 2018.

Jean Ziegler (Switzerland), politician and antiglobalization sociologist, vice-president of the Advisory Committee of the Human Rights Council (UN). Le Capitalisme expliqué à ma petite-fille (en espérant qu’elle en verra la fin), Seuil, 2018.

Luigi Zoja (Italy), psychoanalyst, sociologist, and writer, former president of the Centro Italiano di Psicologia Analitica (1984–93) and the International Association of Analytical Psychology (1998–2001). Paranoïa. La folie qui fait l’histoire, Les Belles Lettres, 2018 (Paranoia, La follia che fa la storia, Bollati Boringhieri, 2011).