In addition to criticising and resisting the predatory onslaught of today’s capitalism, the left has the task of developing new proposals and visions, challenging the thinking that still longs to join a life of boundless consumerism, and breaking its hegemony. The task is to initiate new debates about what concepts as vital as happiness or quality of life might mean from another perspective, and to transform another world into something imaginable.

It was with the purpose of contributing to this task that the Permanent Working Group on Alternatives to Development was set up in the Andean region at the start of 2010. The working group is coordinated from the Rosa Luxemburg Foundation’s regional office in Quito, and brings together women and men from eight countries in Latin America and Europe, although its analyses focus on Ecuador, Bolivia and Venezuela. It seeks to link intellectual production from various academic disciplines and schools of thought − ecology, feminism, anti-capitalist economics, socialism, indigenous and subaltern western thinking – which question the very concept of development and seek to build alternatives to the current hegemonic development model.

This book is a first result of the group’s work. Its debates build on a basic agreement: that the range of the changes and political strategies we need surpasses the limits of alternatives proposed within the hegemonic concept of development. In this sense, the group’s name, “alternatives to development,” indicates a political position with regard to this concept which, historically, has usually been perceived in Latin American countries as something positive. The members of the working group, however, believe that development inevitably ties us to a certain way of thinking – one that is western, capitalist and colonial.

The Rosa-Luxemburg Stiftung Hanoi Office and our partners have translated this book into Burmese, Khmer and Vietnamese to strengthen the dialogue on alternatives to development between Latin America and the Mekong region.