Abstract: The ecological and social crises, standing at the origins of the political engagement for degrowth, are not the outcome of execrable “values” but mainly of the “horizontal” form adopted by growth regime. Horizontalism is founded on a clear separation between “functions” and “values”: the social pattern is not aimed to the implementation of specific values or ideas of justice. The regime is uninterested in any value and it only assures that each singularity (the citizen and its networks) could freely play its game on the basis of its own values. This indifference is the basic reason of ecological, social and economic deregulation. The paradox of degrowth is that, on the one hand, it evokes the necessity of a return to “vertical” regulation (i.e. collective sovereignty), on the other, it is deeply subaltern to the paradigm of horizontalism (the same that frames the growth regime).
Narrative step: facing the current crisis.
Keywords: horizontalism, verticalism, values vs. form, Europe, Mediterranean