Not only the what, but also the how
In my latest article, 'Beyond Growth', It argued that we live trapped in the capital-life conflict: a structural tension that transforms the economy into a machine of perpetual extraction while eroding the material and social foundations that sustain existence. This is the daily reality of an accelerated, precarious, and ecologically overwhelmed world, in which emergencies become chronic and politics often manages the symptoms while protecting the causes.
This reflection was fueled by the debates at the Beyond Growth Social Forum, a space where social movements, trade unions, and academia converged on a key idea: degrowth—or post-growth—is not a slogan, but a practice of economic and cultural reorganization aimed at guaranteeing dignified lives within the biophysical limits of our territories. We spoke of broad alliances, of sovereignties to be reclaimed, and of narratives to be contested. Above all, we spoke of conflict and real alternatives.
It was within this same framework that our participation last Friday in the Social Economy Forum of Camp de Tarragona, the FESCT, organized by CoopCamp, took place. This forum aims to ground these ideas in the social and solidarity economy. While the Forum focused on global frameworks and civilizational horizons, the FESCT provided concrete solutions and tools to the key question: how do we organize life when we stop prioritizing economic growth?? When does the sustainability of life become the political horizon of social transformation, transcending the imposed order and shifting its focus from the reproduction of capital? Cooperatives, community networks, ethical finance, critical culture, and democratic forms of production are not marginal elements; they are the material infrastructures of another possible and desirable model, and of another possible and desirable economy that we want to reclaim. It is from this framework—that of transformative economies—that the social economy is not just another niche within capitalism, but rather a fissure, a fracture, an (other) possibility: it democratizes and questions ownership, roots activity in the territory, prioritizes use over profit, and recognizes that sustaining relationships is the true center of any economic system worthy of the name, in a necessary reappropriation and reinterpretation. This is the exact opposite of productivism, which turns everything living into a commodity.
During the FESCT event, we also delved into the fabulatory -Laboratories for (co)fabulation-: collective spaces for imagining habitable futures and training the political imagination. In times of collapse and normalized dystopias, imagining is not escapism: it is contesting the narrative of realism. Now, more than ever, we must break free from the mental framework of inevitability and construct languages, scenes, and practices that make a post-capitalist, feminist, anti-racist, and ecologically viable society conceivable—and desirable. This cultural and narrative dimension is inseparable from material transformation. Without new imaginaries, courageous policies seem impossible. Without concrete practices, imaginaries dissolve into rhetoric. That is why spaces like FESCT and the fabulation workshops resonate so well with what we advocated at the Forum: we must articulate thought, action, and community; we must weave together economy, culture, and democracy.
This is what we also try to do in our context, by debating the fabrications surrounding the study's proposal. Impacts on the work of ecosocial transformation in the Balearic IslandsWith this study, we aim to translate the degrowth framework into tangible proposals for the ecosocial transformation of the Balearic economy. Faced with the prevailing narrative that equates progress with tourism monoculture, we propose diversifying the production model, reducing dependencies, strengthening sectors that sustain life, and rethinking work beyond wages: redistributing time, recognizing care work, strengthening social bonds, and democratizing economic planning. It's not just about what we will live on, but how we will live.
This is what we were also able to discuss this week at the 4th Meeting of the CCOO Territorial Economic and Social Councils, a conference to which we were invited to speak about this proposal for ecosocial transformation. The proposal takes climate change as the starting point for the new realities we will have to face, realities in which we need a strong alliance between environmental proposals and the world of work and trade unionism, extending beyond wage labor. The ecosocial transition will only be viable if it is just, and it will only be just if it puts the world of work at its center and recognizes that the dimension of social justice is at the heart of any transformative alternative that allows us to redirect the economies of our territories.
It is not an easy path. It involves conflict, sacrifices, and open confrontation with the established powers. It also involves confronting the limitations of our own mental frameworks, which we must dare to break and transcend. And this is what we do in these spaces for dialogue and collective thought: dare to transcend the centrality of growth, to stop asking ourselves how to grow and start asking ourselves how to live—and live better—with dignity, justice, and boundaries.
