Hi Jurriaan,
The problem is that you identify the environmental cause with the
bourgeois
environmentalists and with those pursuing a wrong policy. The result is that
you appear to curse the idea of environmentalism, rather than bourgeois
policy.
Yes, it infuriating that the worst polluters today speak in the name of
environmentalism, from the repeated ads of the oil companies, to the
politicians promoting nuclear power and fracking and other environmental
disasters. Moreover, it is a tragedy that various Green Parties follow
bourgeois policy.
But all this simply shows that the class struggle exists on the
environmental front, as on other issues. It shows that the working-class
needs its own distinct policy concerning the environment. This policy cannot
be writing off the environmental issue as a bourgeois fraud and becoming
allergic to anything "green". And it cannot be a more subtle writing off of
the environmental issue by reducing the issue simply to saying that there has
to be a new system. There will never be a revolution unless a movement of
class struggle on the major issues, including the environmental issue.
The article you gave a reference to, "Green capitalism: the god that
failed", flayed the supposed market solutions, and showed that they have been
a failure. Moreover, it recognized that the carbon tax, and not just cap and
trade, is a futile market solution. This is quite important with respect to
dealing with the Green Parties and a major section of the establishment
environmental movement.
But what was the alternative? Your fulminations about how "In the
Green
Dictatorship, the jetsetting, SUV-driving & Designer kitchen Green knowledge-
bureaucrats regulate everything" and that Green regulation means having "a
group of people actively placing limits on what other people may do" sounds
just like how conservatives flay any alternative to the market. Indeed, it
sounds like neo-liberal cursing against any regulation that restricts what
business wants to do, and like far-right cursing of unions, socialism, and so
forth. For them, it's all really a plot of the bankers and of the rich and of
the communists, all together eating cheese fondue at the expense of the hard-
working capitalist and the respectable citizen.
Environmental protection requires regulation and planning. That's a
fact. It
will require that after a revolution. And any serious steps before the
revolution will also require this.
But regulation and planning under capitalism aren't socialist in and of
themselves, or even necessarily good. The capitalists can and do use this to
fight their rivals and suppress the working class. So the working masses
have to fight over what type of regulation and planning is put in place; what
it calls for; what it forbids; how it's enforced; whether it includes
planning for the mass livelihood; and so forth. To recoil from this fight on
the environmental front simply because it's hard, and to simply whine about
all the different obstacles, is as worthless as giving up the fight for wages
and benefits, for health care, for political rights, against wars, etc. It
means avoiding the fight against the capitalists, not radicalizing it.
The article you gve a reference to criticized the market methods and
looked
to a new society, but could do little besides curse "consumerism" and
"growth". It said nothing little about what should be fought for now, or even
about how the issue would be dealt with under socialism. Its mantra was the
denunciation of "consumerism" and "growth". That was its weak point, because
behind this mantra, it evaded the question of what would replace market
methods. If market methods not only are insufficient, but actually are making
things worse in many ways, then what shold be done?
Well, you curse the Greens. But actually, one of the reasons the Greens
stay
with market measures is precisely this sort of horror at regulation and
planning that was expressed in your outburst. Take for example the Australian
naturalist Timothy Flannery. He wrote, several years back, the book "The
Weather Makers: How Man is Changing the Climate and What It Means for Life on
Earth". It provided useful material for showing the threat facing us. But
what should be done about it? He also recoiled against a "carbon
dictatorship". He pointed out that, if the measures he preferred failed, this
would lead to the need for planning and regulation concerning harmful
emissions. He pointed to the interconnections between different parts of the
economy, and that this planning would in fact inevitably be rather
comprehensive. And he feared that. It seems to me that your fulminations
against "Green bureaurats" are -- in essence -- just his fear of the "carbon
dictatorship".
Guess what. He had become a Green, and his fear of the "carbon
dictatorship"
was the expression of his bourgeois environmentalism. As I waswriting this
note, I made a quick check to see what's become of him since I commented on
his book in 2007, and I discover that he is about to head an Australian
government-appointed commission to build support for setting a carbon price.
His prominence among bourgeois environmentalism in Australia and his support
for such market measures as the carbon price is in line with his denunciation
of "carbon dictatorship". Or to put it another way, your fulminations against
Green bureaucracy isn't so radical after all.
In my comments on the article on "Green capitalism", I faced the issue
of regulation and planning directly. I pointed out that there will be a major
struggle over this regulation and planning, and gave some features of what
will be fought over, thus bringing out the class issues involved. The article
avoided that, and avoided class issues, by talking of "consumerism" and
posing as radical by denouncing "growth", and you avoided it by cursing the
current bureaucracy for its Green phrases.
-- Joseph
> As regards myself, my first bout of political activism was to campaign for a
> nuclear-free New Zealand in 1976-77. In 1978, I joined the first Green party
> in the world, the New Zealand Values Party, officially founded in 1972.
> Since that time, I've had the opportunity to watch the evolution and growth
> of the Green movement worldwide, and the social differentiation within that
> movement.
>
> At various times in my life, I have also worked for the Greens (e.g.
> Resource Management, Greenpeace, Green Party) and I could observe their
> process personally. And, in Holland where I live now, there are per capita
> more supporters of environmental causes than anywhere else in the world (and
> consequently, proportionally more Green officials than anywhere else).
>
> I agree, there would be many Greens who would not consider other Greens
> "Green". But that is just to say that nowadays almost every man and his dog
> has an "environmentalist policy" and that the Green agenda has been absorbed
> into all kinds of different political agenda's. A "green and clean" image is
> good for the political profile, but in reality the despoilation of the
> physical environment and the destruction of ecosystems has accelerated.
>
> Per capita, rich people who make the most "noise" about pollution, are
> actually themselves responsible for the most pollution. Of course, with
> their money they can travel to, or buy unspoilt pieces of nature. Poor
> people simply lack the wherewithal and money to cause that much pollution,
> other than if they have to work under the authority of a rich polluter. Nor
> can they avoid the effects of pollutants so easily.
>
> As a sociological generalisation, what is called the "New Left" became part
> of the renewal of the elite, giving rise to new classes of bureaucrats
> funded by taxes, profits and philantrophy. I have been able to observe that
> process myself while working for local, provincial and central government
> across 20 years. Poor and oppressed people, or evidence of environmental
> problems, are primarily a tool for these knowledge bureaucrats to get
> funding and good jobs, and enrich themselves through career activity which
> they find personally satisfying. Naturally, there are also those who resist
> the co-optation process, but typically their job opportunities are limited
> for that very reason.
>
> J.
>
>
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-----------------------------------
Joseph Green
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