Most
approaches to Red and Green (labour and environmentalist) alliances have taken
Marxian perspectives, to the exclusion of anarchism and libertarian socialism.
Recent developments, however, have given voice to a “syndical ecology” or what
some within the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) call “green syndicalism”.
Green syndicalism highlights certain points of similarity between
anarcho-syndicalism (revolutionary unionism) and radical ecology. These
include, but are by no means limited to, decentralisation, regionalism, direct
action, autonomy, pluralism and federation. The article discusses the
theoretical and practical implications of syndicalism made green.
Recently,
interesting convergences of radical union movements with ecology have been
reported in Europe and North America. These developments have given voice to a
radical ‘syndical ecology’, or what some within the Industrial Workers of the
World (IWW) call “green syndicalism” [Kauffman and Ditz,. 1992]. The emergent
greening of syndicalist discourses is perhaps most significant in the
theoretical questions raised regarding anarcho-syndicalism and ecology, indeed
questions about the possibilities for a radical convergence of social
movements.
While most
attempts to form labour and environmentalist alliances have pursued Marxian
approaches, Adkin [1992a: 148] suggests that more compelling solutions might be
expected from anarchists and libertarian socialists. Still others [Pepper,
1993; Heider, 1994; Purchase, 1994: 1997a; Shantz and Adam, 1999] suggest that
greens should pay more attention to anarcho-syndicalist ideas.
In the early
1990s Roussopoulos [1991] noted the emergence of a green syndicalist discourse
in France within the Confédération Nationale du Travail (CNT). Expressions of a
green syndicalism were also observed in Spain [Marshall, 1993]. There the
Confederación General de Trabajadores (CGT) adopted social ecology as part of
its struggle for ‘a future in which neither the person nor the planet is
exploited’ [Marshall, 1993: 468].
Between 31
March and 1 April 2001, the CGT sponsored an international meeting of more than
one dozen syndicalist and libertarian organisations including the CNT and the
Swedish Workers Centralorganization (SAC). Among the various outcomes of the
meeting were the formation of a Libertarian International Solidarity (LIS)
network, commitments of financial and political support to develop a recycling
cooperative and the adoption of a libertarian manifesto, ‘What Type of
Anarchism for the 21st Century’, in which ecology takes a very crucial place
[Hargis, 2001].
Among the
more interesting of recent attempts to articulate solidarity across the ecology
and workers’ movements were those involving Earth First! activist Judi Bari and
her efforts to build alliances with workers in order to save old-growth forest
in Northern California. Bari sought to learn from the organising and practices
of the IWW to see if a radical ecology movement might be built along
anarcho-syndicalist lines. In so doing she tried to bring a radical
working-class perspective to the agitational practices of Earth First! as a way
to overcome the conflicts between environmentalists and timber workers which
kept them from fighting the corporate logging firms which were killing both
forests and jobs.
The
organisation which she helped form, IWW/Earth First Local 1, eventually built a
measure of solidarity between radical environmentalists and loggers which
resulted in the protection of the Headwaters old-growth forest which had been
slated for clearcutting [Shantz, 1999].
In 1991 the
Wobblies (IWW), following a union-wide vote, changed the preamble to the IWW
constitution for the first time since 1908. The preamble now reads as follows:
These seven
words present a significant shift in strategy regarding industrial unionism and
considerations of what is to be meant by work. At the same time, their
embeddedness within the constitution’s original class struggle narrative draws
a mythic connection with the history of the IWW and the practices of
revolutionary syndicalism.
The greening
of the IWW was more explicitly expressed through a statement issued by the
General Assembly at the time of the preamble change. It is worth quoting at
length.
In addition
to the exploitation of labor, industrial society creates wealth by exploiting
the earth and non-human species. Just as the capitalists value the working
class only for their labor, so they value the earth and non-human species only
for their economic usefulness to humans. This has created such an imbalance
that the life support systems of the earth are on the verge of collapse. The
working class bears the brunt of this degradation by being forced to produce,
consume and live in the toxic environment created by this abuse. Human society
must recognize that all beings have a right to exist for their own sake, and
that humans must learn to live in balance with the rest of nature.
Upon first
reading it might appear curious to seek an ecological or antiindustrialist
theoretic within anarcho-syndicalism. Syndicalism is supposedly just another
version of narrow economism, still constrained by workerist assumptions.
Certainly, that is the criticism consistently raised by social ecology guru
Murray Bookchin [1980, 1987, 1993, 1997].
Bookchin’s
work has served as a major focal point for much discussion, at least in
libertarian Left and anarchist environmental circles. Even, Marxist ecologists,
in journals such as Capitalism, Nature, Socialism, have given much time to
discussions of Bookchin’s writings.
His recent
[1995] re-discovery of social anarchism aside, social ecologist Bookchin has
displayed a longstanding hostility to the possibilities for positive working class
contributions to social movement struggles.
Bookchin’s
critique rightly engages a direct confrontation with productivist visions of
ecological or socialist struggles which, still captivated by illusions of
progress, accept industrialism and capitalist technique while rejecting the
capitalist uses to which they are applied [Rudig, 1985; Blackie, 1990; Pepper,
1993]. These productivist discourses do not extend qualitatively different
forms, but merely argue for proletarian control of existing forms.
Bookchin’s
critique of the workplace, by asserting the inseparability of industry from its
development and articulation through technology, offers a tentative beginning
for a post-Marxist discussion of productive relations and the obstacles or
possibilities they might pose for ecology.
Severe limits
to Bookchin’s social theorising are encountered, however, within the
conclusions he draws in his attempt to derive a theory of workers’
(non)activism from his critique of production relations. Bookchin [1987: 187]
makes a grand, and perilous, leap from a critical anti-productivism to an
argument, couched within a larger broadside against workers, that struggles
engaged around the factory give ‘social and psychological priority to the
worker precisely where he or she is most co-joined to capitalism and most
debased as a human being – at the job site’.
In his view,
workers become radical despite the fact that they work rather than through
their work experiences.1 He concludes that the efforts of socialists or
anarcho-syndicalists who might organise and agitate within the realm of the
workplace are typically only strengthening those very same aspects of workers’
identities which must be overcome in the radical transformation of social
relations. And, moreover, this is correct in so far as workplace discourses are
limited to purely corporatist demands of a quantitative nature [Gramsci, 1971;
Telò, 1982]. However, within Bookchin’s schema the Marxist error is repeated,
only this time in reverse.
For Bookchin,
workers’ relations to capital, rather than being objectively antagonistic as in
the Marxist rendering, are depicted as being necessarily conciliatory. In each
case workers’ positions are drawn as one-sided, derived from a supposedly
external and objective realm, in abstraction from the diversity of their often
contradictory expressions and outside of any transformative articulation.
Bookchin, as with the Marxists, substitutes an abstraction ‘the proletariat’
for the complex web of subject positions – including that of ecologist,
feminist and worker – constitutive of specific subjectivities.
Bookchin is correct
in asserting that categories ‘worker’ and ‘jobs’ as presently constituted are
incompatible with ecological survival. Likewise, industrial production has
already been rendered ecologically obsolete. But how can the authoritarian
‘realm of economic necessity’ [Bookchin, 1980] ever be overcome except through
direct political action at the very site of unfreedom?
There is no
disagreement with Bookchin as regards the importance of overcoming the factory
system; a difference emerges over the position of workers’ self-directed
activism in any democratic articulation toward such an overcoming. It cannot be
expected, except where an authoritarian articulation is constituted, that
industrialism will be replaced by non-hierarchical, ecological relations without
workers’ confronting the factory system in which they are enmeshed.
It is
difficult to follow the logic of Bookchin’s leap from a critique of
industrialism as ‘social relations’ to his explicit rejection of any and all
working-class organisation. Bookchin insists upon a grass-roots politics,
including any of the new social movements, but he is unclear how a movement
might be grassroots and communitarian while at the same time excluding an
articulation with people in their subject-positions as workers.
What he
actually recommends sounds more like the radical elitism so often attributed to
ecology [Adkin, 1992a; 1992b]. Bookchin’s rigid dualism of community/workplace
further interferes with his critique of syndicalism. The idea, which Bookchin
attributes to syndicalism, that social life could be organised from the factory
floor is but a simplistic caricature. ‘This caveat is, of course, pertinent to
all institutions comprising civil society. It would be impossible to nurture
and sustain democratic impulses if schools, families, churches, and the like,
promoted an antithetical ethos’ [Guarasci and Peck, 1987: 71]. While he rightly
criticises those, such as Earth First! co-founder Dave Foreman, who permit a
wilderness/culture duality he falls into a similar trap himself in his vulgar
separation of workplace and community.2
Finally,
Bookchin’s biases are especially curious in light of his own ecological
conclusion regarding the resolution of ecological problems: ‘[t]he bases for
conflicting interests in society must themselves be confronted and resolved in
a revolutionary manner. The earth can no longer be owned; it must be shared’
[1987: 172]. This provides a crucial beginning for a radical convergence of
ecological social relations articulated beyond a ‘jobs versus environment’
construction. In turn it must be recognised, even if Bookchin himself fails to
do so, that questions of ownership and control of the earth are nothing if not
questions of class.
For his part,
R.J. Holton [1980] explicitly rejects the characterisation of syndicalism as
economistic. He suggests that such perspectives result from the gross
misreading of historic syndicalist struggles. In the works of Melvyn Dubofsky
[1969], Jeremy Brecher [1972], David Montgomery [1974], and Kenneth Tucker [1991]
one finds substantial evidence against the positions taken by radical
ecologists such as Bookchin, Dave Foreman [1991] and Paul Watson [1994].
Guarasci and Peck [1987] stress the significance of this class struggle
historiography as a corrective to theorising which objectifies labour. Tucker
[1991] argues that much of the theoretical distance separating new movements
from workers might be attributed to a refusal to explore syndicalist
strategies.
Historic
anarcho-syndicalist campaigns have provided significant evidence that class
struggles entail more than battles over corporatist concerns carried out at the
level of the factory [Kornblugh, 1964; Brecher, 1972; Thompson and Murfin,
1976; DeCaux, 1978; Tucker, 1991]. In an earlier article, Hobsbawm [1979]
identifies syndicalist movements as displaying attitudes of hostility towards
the bureaucratic control of work, concerns over local specificity and
techniques of spontaneous militancy and direct action. Similar expressions of
radicalism have also characterised the practices of ecology.
Class
struggles have, in different instances and over varied terrain, been
articulated to engage the broader manifestations of domination and control
constituted alongside of the enclosure and ruthlessly private ownership of vast
ecosystems and the potentialities for freedom contained therein [Adkin, 1992a:
140–41].
From a
theoretical standpoint Tucker’s [1991] work is instructive. His work provides a
detailed discussion of possible affinity between French revolutionary syndicalism
and contemporary radical democracy. Tucker suggests that within French
syndicalism one can discern such ‘new’ themes as: consensus formation;
participation of equals; dialogue; decentralisation; and autonomy.
French
syndicalist theories of capitalist power place emphasis upon an alternative
revolutionary worldview emerging out of working-class experiences and offering
a challenge to bourgeois morality [Holton. 1980]. Fernand Pelloutier, an
important syndicalist theorist whose works influenced Sorel, argues that ideas
rather than economic processes are the motive force in bringing about
revolutionary transformation. Pelloutier vigorously attempted to come to terms
with ‘the problem of ideological and cultural domination as a basis for
capitalist power’ [Holton. 1980: 19].
Reconstituting
social relations, in Pelloutier’s view, becomes possible when workers begin
developing revolutionary identities, through self-preparation and
self-education, as the means for combatting capitalist culture [Spitzer, 1963].
Thus, syndicalists have characteristically looked to labour unrest as an agency
of social regeneration whereby workers desecrate the ideological surround of
class domination, for example, deference to authority, acceptance of capitalist
superiority and dependence upon elites. According to Jennings [1991: 82],
syndicalism ‘conceived the transmission of power not in terms of the
replacement of one intellectual elite by another but as a process of
displacement spreading power out into the workers’ own organizations’.
This
displacement of power would originate in industry, as an egalitarian
problematic, when workers came to question the status of their bosses. ‘This
was not intended as a form of left “economism” but rather as a means of
developing the confidence and aggression of a working class threatened with the
spectre of a “sober, efficient and docile” work discipline’ [Holton, 1980: 14].
Towards that end syndicalist movements have emphasised ‘life’ and ‘action’
against the severity of capitalist labour processes and corresponding cultural
manifestations.
It might be
argued that, far from being economistic, syndicalist movements are best
understood as counter-cultural in character, more similar to contemporary new
social movements than to movements of the traditional left. Syndicalist themes
such as autonomy, anti-hierarchy, and diffusion of power have echoes in
sentiments of the new movements. This similarity is reflected not only in the
syndicalist emphasis upon novel tactics such as direct action, consumer
boycotts, or slowdowns.
It also finds
expression in the extreme contempt shown by syndicalists for the dominant
radical traditions of its day, exemplified by Marxism and state socialism, and
in syndicalist efforts to divorce activists from those traditions [Jennings,
1991]. Judi Bari [1994: 2001] emphasised the similarities in the styles and
tactics of labour and ecology against common depictions within radical ecology,
as exemplified in the positions held by Bookchin. Towards developing this mutual
understanding green syndicalists have tried to engender an appreciation of
radical labour histories, especially where workers have exerted themselves
through inspiring acts which seem to have surprisingly much in common with
present-day eco-activism.
Attempts have
been made within green syndicalism to articulate labour as part of the
ecological ‘we’ through inclusion of radical labour within an ecological
genealogy. Within green syndicalist discourses, this assumption of
connectedness between historic radical movements, especially those of labour,
anarchism and ecology has much significance. In this the place of the IWW is
especially suggestive.
The IWW, as
opposed to bureaucratic unions, sought the organisation of workers from the
bottom up. As Montgomery [1974] notes, IWW strategies rejected large strike
funds, negotiations, written contracts and the supposed autonomy of trades.
Actions took the form of ‘guerilla tactics’ including sabotage, slowdown,
planned inefficiency and passive resistance.
Furthermore,
and of special significance for contemporary activists, the Wobblies placed
great emphasis upon the nurturing of unity-in-diversity among workers. As Green
[1974] notes, the IWW frequently organised in industrial towns marked by deep
divisions, especially racial divisions, among the proletariat.
Interestingly,
Montgomery [1974] notes that concerns over ‘success’ or ‘failure’ of strikes
were not of the utmost importance to strikers. Strikes spoke more to ‘the
audacity of the strikers’ pretensions and to their willingness to act in
defiance of warnings from experienced union leaders that chance of victory were
slim’ [Montgomery, 1974: 512]. This approach to protest could well refer to
recent ecological actions. Such rebellious expressions reflect the mythic
aspects of resistance, beyond mere pragmatic considerations or strict pursuance
of ‘interests’.
As the ones
most often situated at the nexus of ecological damage [Bullard, 1990; Kaufmann
and Ditz, 1992] workers in industrial workplaces may be expected to have some
insights into immediate and future threats to local and surrounding ecosystems.
Such awareness derived from the location of workers at the point of
production/destruction may allow workers to provide important, although not
central, contributions to ecological resistance.
However, this
possibly strategic placement does not mean that any such contributions are
inevitable. Those people who suffer most from ecological predations, both at
workplaces and in home communities, are also those with the least control over
production as presently constituted through ownership entitlements and as
sanctioned by the capitalist state [Ecologist, 1993; Faber and O’Connor, 1993;
Peet and Watts, 1996].
These
relations of power become significant mechanisms in the oppression of not only
workers but of non-human nature as well. Without being attentive to this web of
power one cannot adequately answer Eckersley’s [1989] pertinent questions
concerning why those who are affected most directly and materially by assaults
upon local ecosystems are often least active in resistance, both in defending
nature and in defending themselves. Thus the questions of workplace democracy
and workers’ control have become crucial to green syndicalist theoretics.
‘The IWW
stands for worker self-management, direct action and rank and file control’
[Miller, 1993: 56]. For green syndicalism workers’ control becomes an attempt
by workers to formulate their own responses to the question ‘what of work?’
Within the IWW, decisions over tactics are left to groups of workers or even
individual workers themselves. Worker selfdetermination ‘on the job’ becomes a
mechanism by which to contest the power/knowledge nexus of the workplace.
Labour
insurgency typically articulates shifting relations within transformations of
production and the emergence of new hegemonic practices. Times of economic
reorganisation offer wide-ranging opportunities for creating novel or
unprecedented forms of confrontation on the parts of workers. The offensives of
capital can provide a stimulus to varied articulations of renewed militancy.
Such might be the case within the present context of capital strike,
de-unionisation, and joblessness characterising cybernetised globalism.
Of course the
emphasis must always remain on possibility as there is always room for more
than one response to emerge. Green syndicalists recognise that ecological
crises have only become possible within social relations whose articulation has
engendered a weakening of people’s capacities to fight a co-ordinated defence
of the planet’s ecological communities.
Bari [1994:
2001] argued that the restriction of participation in decision-making processes
within ordered hierarchies, prerequisite to accumulation, has been a crucial
impediment to ecological organising. And it seems to me that people’s complicity
should be measured more by the amount of control they have over the conditions
of their lives than by how dirty they get at work. One compromise made by a
whitecollar Sierra Club professional can destroy more trees than a logger can
cut in a lifetime [Bari, 1994: 105].
The
persistent lack of workers’ control allows coercion of workers into the
performance of tasks which they might otherwise disdain, or which have
consequences of which they are left unaware. Additionally the absence of
self-determination results in workers competing with one another over jobs or
even the possibility of jobs. Workers are left more susceptible to threats of
capital strike or environmental blackmail [Bullard, 1990]. This susceptibility
is perhaps the greatest deterrent to labour/ecology alliances. Without job
security and workplace power workers cannot provide an effective counterbalance
to the power of capital.
Radical
ecology, outside of green syndicalism, has failed to appreciate these negative
consequences of diminished workers’ control for participation in more
explicitly political realms. Only through a development of political confidence
can such activism be engaged. Furthermore, the degree of workplace democracy
can depend largely upon the influence of supposedly exterior concerns such as
impacts upon nature. In recognising the relationship between workplace
articulation and political participation green syndicalism poses a challenge to
received notions within ecology.
Participation
as conceived by green syndicalism cannot come from management. ‘Such awareness
has to question unflinching deference to experts, as part of a more general
attack on centralized power and managerial prerogatives’ [Guarasci and Peck, 1987:
70]. Direct participation is understood as contributing to worker
self-determination, constituted by workers against the veiled offerings of
management which form part of ecocapitalism.
Eco-capitalist
visions leave the megamachine and its power hierarchies intact and thus offers
no alternative. Production remains undemocratic and profitability is the final
word on whether or not resources should be used. Thus, eco-capitalism
introduces to us the wonders of biodegradable take-out containers and starch-based
golf teas [Purchase, 1994].
Green
syndicalism emerges, then, as an experiment in more creative conceptions of
workplace participation. For Purchase [1994, 1997a, 1997b], productive control
organised around face-to-face, voluntary interaction and encouraging
self-determination might be employed towards the freeing up of vast quantities
of labour from useless, though profitable production, to be used in the playful
development of life-affirming activities.
Thus a common
theme of working-class radicalism becomes an important element of an ecological
theoretic. Leftists have long argued that eventually human needs must become
the primary consideration of production, replacing profitability and
accumulation. Such critiques of production must now go even further, raising
questions about the ‘needs’ of ecosystems and non-humans.
The decreased
demand for labour, within cybernetised capital relations, means that
corporations are less compelled to deal with mainstream trade unions as under
the Keynesian arrangement.3 If unions are to have any influence it can only
come through active efforts to disrupt the labour process. These disruptive
efforts may include increased militancy within workplace relations. Evidence
for a rebellion among workers has been reflected typically in such activities
as sabotage, slowdowns and absences.
IWW activists
explicitly agitate for ‘deliberate inefficiency’ as a means to encourage the
desecration of work relations. For green syndicalists the desired tactics
against corporate-sponsored destruction of the environment include such direct,
non-bureaucratic forms of action as shop-floor sabotage, boycotts, green bans
and the formation of extra-union solidarity outside of the workplace, within
workers’ home communities. Of course, strikes, the power to halt production, is
unmatched in its capacity to confront corporate greed.
Environmentalists
can stop production for a few hours or a few days. There is no more effective
counter-force to capital accumulation and the pursuit of profit than the power
of workers to stop work to achieve their demands. Ecological protection, as
with work conditions, benefits or wages, must be fought for. Where workers are
involved this means they must be struck for. This, however, requires that
workers develop a position of strength. This, in turn, means organising workers
so that they no longer face the prospects of ‘jobs versus environment’
blackmail. In order for this to occur, non-unionised workers must be mobilised.
(Otherwise they are mobilised by capital – as scabs.) Recognising this the IWW
gives a great deal of attention to organising the traditionally unorganised.
A green
syndicalist conception of workers’ organisation rejects the hierarchical,
centralised, bureaucratic structures of mainstream unionism. Economistic union
organisations and bureaucrats who have worked to convince workers that
environmentalists are responsible for job loss point up the need for
syndicalist unions organised around ecologically sensitive practices.
This is not
to say that green syndicalists refuse to act in solidarity with workers in
mainstream unions. Indeed, Local 1 worked in support of workers in Pulp and
Paper Workers, Local 49 and Judi Bari points out that many actions would have
been impossible without inside information provided by workers in that local.
Green syndicalists do work with rank and file members of mainstream unions and
many are themselves ‘two-carders’, simultaneously members of mainstream and
syndicalist unions.
Neither is it
true to say that strong environmental policies cannot come from mainstream
unions. Mainstream unions can and do at times take up specific policies and
practices of syndicalism but the lack overall vision and participatory
structures means that such policies and practices are not part of overall
strategy and are often vulnerable to leadership control or the limitations of
bargaining with employers.
The green
syndicalist responses might be understood, most interestingly, as
characterising a broader revolt against work. ‘The one goal that unites all IWW
members is to abolish the wage system’ [Meyers, 1995: 73]. Ecological crises
make clear that the capitalist construction of ‘jobs’ and ‘workers’ are
incompatible with the preservation of nature. It is, perhaps, then, not
entirely paradoxical that green syndicalism should hint at an overcoming of
workerness as one possible outcome.
Radical
ecology activists have increasingly come to understand jobs, under the guise of
work, as perhaps the most basic moment of unfreedom, one which must be overcome
in any quest towards liberty. Too often, previously, the common response has
been one of turning away from workers and from questions relating to the
organisation of working relations. Green syndicalism hints that radical theory
can no longer ignore these questions which are posed by the presence of jobs.
Indeed it might be said that a return to the problematic of jobs becomes the
starting point for a reformulation of radicalism, at least along green lines.
Green
syndicalism conceives of the transformation of work as an ecological
imperative. What is proposed is a radical alteration of work, both in structure
and meaning. Solutions to the problems of work cannot be found merely in the
control of existing forms. Rather, current practices of production along with
the hierarchy of labour must be overcome.
Production,
within a green syndicalist vision [Purchase, 1994, 1997a, 1997b], may include
the provision of ecologically sensitive foods, transportation or energy. Work,
newly organised along decentralised, local, democratic lines might allow for
the introduction of materials and practices with diminished impact upon the
bioregion in which each is employed.
Green
syndicalist discourses are raised against the undermining influences of work in
contemporary conditions of globalism. Far from being irrational responses to
serious social transformations, workplace democratisation and workers’
self-determination become ever more reasonable responses to the uncertainty and
contingency of emerging conditions of (un)employment.
Green
syndicalists emphasise workers’ empowerment and selfemancipation – against
pessimistic or cynical responses such as mass retraining which simply reinforce
dependence upon elites. They offer but one initiative towards the overcoming of
work and a movement towards community-based economics and productive
decision-making.
The mass
production techniques of industrialism cannot be reconciled with ecological
sustenance, regardless of whether bosses or sturdy proletarians control them.
To be anti-capitalist does not have to imply being pro-ecology. In this regard
the utopians have surely been more insightful. Ending capitalist relations of
production, however, remains necessary for a radical transformation of the
social since these relations encompass many positions of subordination.
However, this is only one aspect of radical politics.
Thus, green
syndicalists reject the workerist premises of ‘old-style’ leftists who argue
that issues such as ecology are external to questions of production and only
serve to distract from the essential task of organising workers, at the point
of production, towards emancipation. Within green syndicalist discourses
ecological concerns cannot, with any reason, be divorced from questions of
production or economics. Rather than being represented as strictly separate
discursive universes, nature, production, economics or workplace become
understood as endlessly contested topographical features in an always shifting
terrain.
The workplace
is but one of the sites for extension of social resistance. Given the prominent
position of the workplace under capitalism, as a realm of capitalist discipline
and hegemony, activists must come to appreciate the significance of locating
struggles within everyday workplace relations. Within a green syndicalist
perspective workplaces are understood as sites of solidarity, innovation,
cultural diversity, and personal interactions expressed in informal networks
and through multiple antagonisms.
In turn,
those social realms which are typically counterpoised to the factory within
radical ecology discourses – Bookchin’s ‘community’ – should be recognised as
influenced by matters of accumulation, profit and class. The character of
either realm is not unaffected by workplace antagonisms.
This ‘steel
cage’ appears inescapable only because it remains isolated, practically and
conceptually, from a host of important social, cultural, and political-economic
dynamics operating inside and out of workplaces proper. Critical to any
discussion, work organizations must be seen as series of settings and
situations providing choices that are constrained, but not immutably, by the
broader fabric of the society into which they are woven [Guarasci and Peck,
1987: 72].
In addition,
the re-integration of production with consumption, organised in an egalitarian
and democratic fashion – such that members of a community contribute what they
can to social production – may allow for a break with consumerism. People might
consume only that which they’ve had a hand in producing; people might use free
time for creative activities rather than tedious, unnecessary production of
luxuries; and individual consumption might be regulated by the capacities of
individual production, (for example, personal creativity), not from the
hysterics of mass advertising.
Syndicalism
might be freed thusly from requirements of growth or mass consumption
characterising industrialism as ‘social relations’ [Purchase, 1994, 1997a,
1997b; Bari, 2001]. Green syndicalism, as opposed to Marxism or even
revolutionary syndicalism, opposes large-scale, centralised, mass-production.
Green syndicalism does not hold to a socialist optimism of the liberatory
potential of industrialism. Ecological calls for a complete, immediate break
with industrialism, however, contradict radical eco-philosophical emphases upon
interconnectedness, mutualism and continuity.
Simple calls
for a return to nature reveal the lingering fundamentalisms afflicting much
ecological discourse. The idea of an immediate return to small, village-centred
living as espoused by some deep ecologists and anarchists is not only utopian,
it ignores questions concerning the impacts which the toxic remains of industry
would continue to inflict upon their surroundings. The spectre of industrialism
will still – and must inevitably – haunt efforts at transformation, especially
in decisions concerning the mess that industry has left behind [Purchase,
1994]. How can we disconnect society from nature given the mass
interpenetrations of social encroachments upon nature, for example, global
warming, or depletion of the ozone layer? Where do you put toxic wastes? What
of the abandoned factories? How will decommissioning occur? One cannot just
walk away from all of that.
Without
romanticising the role played by workers, green syndicalists are aware that
workers may offer certain insights into these problems. In responding to this
dilemma, green syndicalists [Kaufmann and Ditz, 1992; Purchase, 1994, 1997a,
1997b; Bari, 2001] have tried to ask the crucial question of where those who
are currently producers might belong in the multiple tasks of transformation –
both cultural as well as ecological.
They have
argued that radical ecology can no longer leave out producers, they will either
be allies or enemies. Green syndicalism, almost alone among radical ecology,
suggest that peoples’ identities as producers, rather than representing fixed
entities, may actually be articulated against industrialism. The processes of
engaging this articulation, wherein workers understand an interest in changing
rather than upholding current conditions, present the perplexing task which has
as yet foiled ecology.
Dismantling
industrial capital, the radical approach to industrialism, would still require
the participation of industrial workers provided it is not to be carried out as
part of an authoritarian articulation. Any radical articulation, assuming it be
democratic, implies the participation of industrial workers in decision-making
processes. Of course, the democratic character of any articulation cannot be
assumed; the possibility for reaction, to the exclusion of workers [Foreman,
1991; Watson, 1994], is ever-present.
One sees this
within ecological fundamentalism or in strengthened corporatist alliances
pitting labour/capital against environmentalists, each calling for centralised
and bureacratic enforcement of regulations. In the absence of a grass-roots
articulation with workers any manner of authoritarian, elite articulation, even
ones which include radical ecology [Foreman, 1991; Watson, 1994], might be envisioned.
For their
part theorists of green syndicalism envision the association of workers towards
the dismantling of the factory system, its work, hierarchies, regimentation
[Kaufmann and Ditz, 1992; Purchase, 1994, 1997a, 1997b]. This may involve a
literal destruction as factories may be dismantled; or perhaps converted
towards ‘soft’ forms of localised production. Likewise, productive activity can
be conceived in terms of restoration, including research into a region’s
natural history.
Reconstruction
might be understood in terms of food and energy provision or recovery
monitoring. These are acts in which all members might be active, indeed will
need to be active in some regard. These shifting priorities – towards
non-industrial relations generally – express the novelty of green syndicalism
as both green and as syndicalist.
For green
syndicalism it is important that ecology engage with workers in raising the
possibilities for resisting, challenging and even abandoning the capitalist
megamachine. However, certain industrial workshops and processes may be
necessary [Purchase, 1994]. (How would bikes, or windmills be produced, for
example?) The failure to develop democratic workers’ associations would then
seem to render even the most wellconsidered ecology scenarios untenable. Not
engaging such possibilities restricts radicalism to mere utopia building
[Purchase, 1994].
Green
syndicalists argue for the construction of ‘place’ around the contours of
geographical regions, in opposition to the boundaries of nationstates which
show only contempt for ecological boundaries as marked by topography, climate,
species distribution or drainage. Affinity with bioregionalist themes is
recognised in green syndicalist appeals for a replacement of nation-states with
decentralised federations of bioregional communities [Purchase, 1994, 1997a].
For green syndicalism such communities might constitute social relations in an
articulation with local ecological requirements to the exclusion the
bureaucratic, hierarchical interference of distant corporatist bodies.
Local
community becomes the context of social/ecological identification. Eco-defence,
then, should begin at local levels: in the homes, workplaces, and
neighbourhoods. Green syndicalist discourses urge that people identify with the
ecosystems of their locality and region and work to defend those areas through
industrial and agricultural practices which are developed and adapted to
specific ecological characteristics.
One aspect of
a green syndicalist theoretic, thus, involves ecology activists helping workers
to educate themselves about regional, community-based ways of living [Bari,
1994; Purchase, 1994, 1997b]. A green syndicalist perspective encourages people
to broaden and unite the individual actions, such as saving a park or cleaning
up a river, in which they are already involved towards regional efforts of
self-determination protecting local ecosystems [Purchase, 1994].
The point
here, however, has not been (nor is it for theorists of green syndicalism
generally) to draw plans for the green syndicalist future. Specific questions
about the status of cities, organisation of labour, means of production, or
methods of distribution cannot here be answered. They will be addressed by
those involved as the outcome of active practice. Most likely there will be
many varieties of experimental living — some are already here, e.g. autonomous
zones, squats, co-ops and revolutionary unions. These are perhaps the renewed
politics of organising.
Human
relations with nature pose crucial and difficult questions for radicalism.
Those relations, under capitalism, have taken the form of ‘jobs’ where nature
and labour both become commodified. Indeed nature as ‘resources’ and work as
‘jobs’ provide the twin commodity forms which have always been necessary for
the expansion of the market [Polanyi, 1944].
Thus
capitalist regimes of accumulation, growth and commodification remain crucial
concerns for ecological politics. Questions concerning the organising of life
are still radical questions, though what might constitute acceptable answers
has changed. One might ask: ‘What does work – intervention in nature – mean for
ecology?’ Taking ecology seriously means that the realms of work, leisure
(work’s accomplice), sustenance, need etc. – what might be called production –
must be confronted.
Jeff Shantz is the author of Green
Syndicalism - An Alternative Red-Green Vision. He is professor in the
Criminology Department at Kwantlen Polytechnic University in Surrey, British
Columbia. His books include Radical Ecology and Social Myth: The Difficult
Constitution of Counter-Hegemonic Politics and Living Anarchy: Theory and
Practice in Anarchist Movements.
