We come from a growth society, a society swallowed up by a capitalist economy based on unlimited accumulation. However, nowadays, we live in «growth without growth» societies, which is the worst scenario. Consumer society, in fact, is neither sustainable nor desirable anymore. Globalisation, which marks the shift from a world economy with market to economy and society without borders, constitutes the utmost triumph of the religion of growth. This world market society is not sustainable since it overcomes the load capacity of earth and clashes with the finitude of biosphere. Nevertheless, even if it could last indefinitely, this society would not be less unbearable and its transformation would be desirable, for at least three reasons: it engenders increasing inequalities and injustices, it creates a widely illusory wellbeing, it does not generate a lively society for the wealthy either, but an «anti-society» suffering from its own richness. Continuing with the same logic of the growth society, by which I mean the capitalist system, will be possible within the context of the destruction of biosphere only through a new change in the form of an eco-totalitarianism or eco-fascism. However, we have a way out: we could choose between the eco-socialism of «degrowth» —that is, the construction of a society of frugal abundance— and the barbarism of eco-fascism and forced degrowth, leading to the ruin and disappearance of mankind, if we do not change direction radically. Self-limitation is the condition through which we reach prosperity without growth, and thus avoid the ruin of human civilisation. Gambling on degrowth means that, in circumstances favourable to the weakening of the ruling oligarchy, people will prefer the route of ecological democracy than that of collective suicide.