Written by
Victor Wallis and published at Green Horizon and MR Online
The aspiration
to “build a new world within the shell of the old” has a long history. It is
typically associated with the traditions of cooperativism and anarchism. But it
is also part of the socialist/communist tradition, as articulated by Marx
himself. Marx characterized communist society, in Capital, as the
society of “associated producers.” Although he did not delineate this vision in
detail, he explicitly situated its embryo in the cooperative movements of his
time.
Viewing
producer cooperatives as a dimension of the labor movement, he argued that
their role in ultimately empowering the “associated producers” depended on
their embracing, along with their workplace practices, the wider class struggle
against the power of capital.
The tension
between the tasks of transforming one’s immediate surroundings and
restructuring the larger society has never abated. It reflects a duality that
is present in all living creatures. We are at once separate beings and units of
a collectivity. In the case of humans, especially, the collectivity exists at
multiple levels, with links of reciprocity not only between individuals and
their immediate communities, but also between any such local entities (as well
as individuals) and wider regional/national/global structures.
This
observation draws us back to recent arguments in Green Horizon,
where a certain impatience if not exasperation is expressed in regard to
socialist agendas, and it is suggested that our movement might more fruitfully focus
on transforming our immediate surroundings rather than aiming at state power.
More broadly, it is argued that socialism shares with capitalism a top-down and
productivist orientation that we should firmly reject, in favor of a supposed
Third Way that is neither capitalist nor socialist, but Green.
The
inspirational model for this non- and even anti-socialist approach lies
principally in the beliefs and practices of Indigenous peoples. I share the
appreciation of Indigenous societies, as I explain in a whole section of my
book on ecosocialism, in which I discuss the conditions under which the
priorities of those societies might come to gain wider acceptance. The view
that socialism or Marxism necessarily clashes with such an approach derives
from particular 20th-century experiences of revolution as interpreted through a
capitalist ideological prism.
The stereotype
of Marxism as inherently developmentalist, however, has been thoroughly
refuted, over the last three decades, in the writings of Richard Levins, John
Bellamy Foster, Paul Burkett, Kohei Saito, and Michael Lebowitz. The common
thread in their arguments is that the anti-Marxists attribute to Marx a
perspective–as with the labor theory of value–that Marx treats as belonging (on
the contrary) to the dynamics of capital, which he seeks to undercut. As he
puts it (contrary to widespread misconceptions about his position),
Marx’s approach,
in its refusal to view Nature through the eyes of capital, i.e., as a resource
which, like workers, can be used up and cast off at will, clashes frontally
with capital’s developmentalist stance. Thinkers who fail to see this then fall
easily into the “plague on both your houses” attitude expressed in many Green
Horizon articles that touch on capitalism and socialism.
These articles
consider capitalism and socialism side-by-side as if we were simply shopping
for our preferred system (including “neither of the above”). But there’s a
problem here, in that, without our having had any say in the matter, we are
actually living under capitalism. This is so obvious that one
easily forgets it. What it means, however, is that if we want to adopt any
other way of organizing our lives, the alternative does not just offer itself
to us on an even playing field with capitalism. In order to attain it, we must
first get out from capitalist domination; we must strip away the power of
capital!
No matter what
our ultimate goal might look like, this is the sine qua non. We can have
endless discussions about the precise contours of the society we want to
achieve, and I share with Green Horizon writers a preference
for as biodiverse, decentralized, and democratic an arrangement as possible.
But the framework for whatever arrangement we seek will be set by the process
through which we initially escape the claws of capital.
Given, then,
that our starting point is the rejection of capitalism, what we face is not an
either/or between socialism and a “green economy.” Our task instead is to
envisage the general contours of what we want and then assess the various
possible ways of getting there. While certain elements of a green or localized
economy can be introduced directly, the complete liberation it envisages cannot
be reached without dissolving the core institutions of capitalist power,
including its aggressive/competitive/exhibitionistic culture.
This has been,
and remains, the historic task of socialism. After all, what can replace the
power of a minuscule profit-driven propertied class if not the power of the
organized majority (whatever precise form this power might take)? And what is
it that can weld this majority into a political force, if not a common class
interest?
The reason so
many Green writers seem to balk at this conclusion is that, echoing the
surrounding capitalist consensus, they identify socialism by definition with
the harshest of its first-epoch manifestations (e.g., the Soviet Union under
Stalin), thereby refusing to challenge the negative impression of socialism
that they encounter in workers socialized by corporate media.
Lifting actual
socialist revolutions out of their historical context, they turn the outcomes
of particular mixes of national and conjunctural traits into ironclad axioms as
to what socialism entails. They see socialism as being inherently bureaucratic
and top-down, whereas in fact the revolutionary process brings numerous
impulses and tendencies to the fore, making for a range of possible outcomes.
What drives the
frequent negative or repressive traits is a mix of factors, which vary in
character and importance from one country or set of conditions to the next.
Some aspects of the prerevolutionary culture–e.g., patterns of hierarchy–may be
difficult to shake, especially under conditions of scarcity. Probably the
biggest adverse factor, however, is the drive of capitalist interests–whether
internal or external–to disrupt and destroy the revolution, even (or
especially) if it has wide popular support and could serve as an inspiration to
others.
To the extent
that a revolutionary process begins on a note of hope (for example with an
election victory by a socialist-oriented party or coalition), globally imposed
U.S. sanctions can be counted on to bring it grief, compromising its
achievements and giving corporate media and politicians a pretext to call its
leadership dictatorial (as in the present case of Venezuela).
Those with
“green” goals who seek to avoid such unpleasantness tout the scenario of local
grassroots organizing, including a multiplicity of diverse institutions. I do
not reject any of this; it plays a necessary role in drawing people into
activism and also in eventually running the society that we aspire to. The
problem, however, is that it does not address the current persistence of the
monster in the room, namely, overarching capitalist power.
Political
action to confront that power requires a unified movement. The view that such
unity precludes concern for the diversity of popular needs reflects precisely
the negative stereotype of socialism–and of revolution–that the capitalist
ruling class invokes to preserve its own legitimacy.
The point is
not to deny instances where revolutionary parties or regimes have done the
wrong thing; the point is to understand those moments and to recognize that
socialist movements and socialist-oriented governments are “works in progress,”
with conscious protagonists who have every reason to try to avoid the
consequent disappointments in the future.
If you really
want changes requiring the dismantling of capitalism–and this does include the
changes necessary to the imagined “green economy,”–then you will join in these
efforts rather than condemning the project that inspires them.
No comments:
Post a Comment