20.08.1998
The greening of socialism
Terry Liddle of the Green Party opened a discussion on red-green cooperation at Communist University ’98. Here are extracts from his contributions
Green politics are the politics of the 21st century. One of the criticisms that many people in the Green Party would make is that a lot of socialists seem to be living in the 19th century - or at least in the first part of this century.
What I propose to do is throw out ideas from people who occupy various points on the red-green spectrum and take it from there. The first example comes from an article by John Bridge in the Weekly Worker (July 2):
“Finally there is the green question. The greens are a petty bourgeois movement happily containing within themselves a wide spectrum ranging from the critically utopian to the overtly fascist. Its best thinkers have written savage indictments of capitalism which supply wonderful ammunition for the class struggle. Despite that most green ideas are confused, naive and at the end of the day reactionary. There is an underlying neo-Malthusian assumption which sees human beings as the fundamental problem. A general prejudice also exists against economic growth and technological progress. The world’s ecological problems could be solved through an impossible return to nature, itself of course a social construct.”
That seems to be the attitude of John Bridge - if not of the Communist Party as such - to greens. Hardly a good start, if what we are after is to form some kind of red-green alliance and perhaps beyond that new politics, based at least in part on a fusion of red and green ideas.
That’s one side of the problem. The other side is exemplified in a pamphlet called Red sails in the sunset by Sandy Irvine. Irvine started off in the Labour Party Young Socialists, then became a member of the Socialist Workers Party and eventually found himself on the far right of the Green Party. He says:
“Socialism, then, brings with it so much anti-ecological baggage that a red-green fusion could lead only to a quick divorce or loss of greenery. There is a yawning chasm between the politics of ecology and that of all major traditions of socialist theory and practice.”
If you saw those as the only representatives of socialism and green thought, you would probably say, ‘Yes, Irvine is right: there is a great “yawning chasm”.’ Is even attempting to bridge it any kind of worthwhile project, or is this merely whistling against the wind?
Few would deny that there is an ecological crisis. The nature of this crisis is so profound that it could, unless it is checked, lead to the extinction of our own species and possibly to the extinction of most forms of life on this earth. Already every day, due in no small part to human activity, hundreds of species are becoming extinct, because humans are destroying their natural habitat.
The question is what can be done. How even with the technology available now, are we going to plan an economy which does not screw up the eco-system, but rather guarantees food, water, etc for the whole of our species and at the same time the continuance of life for other species? It is a global problem, which has to be solved globally. But how do you start? We are talking about acting locally but at the same time thinking globally. The place you start is where you are at.
My argument is that what is needed is a sustainable economy. What this means is that unlimited economic growth of the kind seen in the few hundred years of capitalism is no longer possible. The natural resources upon which this was based are finite. There is in the world only so much in the way of fossil fuels, so much in the way of minerals, so much in the way of wood, so much in the way of water, so much in the way of land upon which it is possible to grow food to sustain human and other forms of life.
The only way you can guarantee a sustainable economy is through socialism. Capitalism looks mainly to the short term. Its attitude is ‘take the money and run’. No matter how many ‘green’ taxes are imposed, this will not alter the fundamental nature of the beast. All capital will do is move its industrial operations to other countries where these laws do not apply.
For sustainability you need socialism. A simple definition of socialism is of course the old one: the common ownership and democratic control of the means of production. I was brought up in a socialist tradition which precluded sustainable growth. Into our household came the Daily Worker, glossy magazines like Soviet Union and China Reconstructs. What they contained were reports of massive new factories, altering the course of rivers with great dams, tilling the virgin lands and planting corn where corn should not grow, and surpassing the Americans in terms of production.
Look at what happened in the Soviet Union, certainly since the five-year plans of 1929 onwards: While it undoubtedly increased the quantity of production, its quality left a lot to be desired. It produced ecological disaster. Lands became barren because the type of agriculture practised on them was not appropriate.
Yet according to that rationality all human problems could be solved through a technological and scientific fix. The answer was portrayed as ongoing growth and the expansion of production, supposedly to meet human need - but of course in the so-called socialist countries the needs met were mostly those of the bureaucracy, and very often people at the bottom were no better off and in many ways worse off than their counterparts in the bourgeois democracies. But that is the image that socialism has had, both in its Stalinist form and to some extent in its social democratic form, where industries have been nationalised into vast corporations.
If such growth continues, it threatens the future of life on earth. Socialists must take on board these criticisms from the green movement.
I would now like, if I may, to answer some of John’s criticisms. I think he has a rather skewed idea of what a lot of greens are about, particularly the Green Party. The Green Party is only a small part of a far wider, very important green movement which takes in all sorts of people: single-issue campaigns, things like Greenpeace, Reclaim the Streets, The Land is Ours, Earth First.
He says: “The greens are a petty bourgeois movement.” What does that mean? As I always I understood it, the petty bourgeoisie are small shopkeepers and self-employed artisans. Looking at my own branch of the Green Party, we have teachers, nurses, a park ranger, carers and unemployed people. How can they be described as petty bourgeois?
John describes greens as “happily containing within themselves a wide spectrum ranging from the critically utopian to the overtly fascist”. Critical utopians are not a bad thing. One that springs to mind is William Morris and his News from nowhere. I find the reference to the “overtly fascist” rather insulting. Maybe you are thinking of David Icke, who got into anti-semitic theories. One could be ungenerous and say that Joseph Stalin also got into anti-semitic conspiracy theories. Unfortunately he was in a position to do more about it than David Icke, who was booted out of the Green Party.
There was an organisation at one time called Green Wave which was a front for one of the third positionist splits from the National Front. We have made it clear that nobody in the Green Party should have anything to do with this. We have an anti-fascist, anti-racist working group, and our members have been active in the fight against racism and fascism.
John rightly refers to the “savage indictments of capitalism” made by greens. But then he states that “most green ideas are confused, naive and at the end of the day reactionary”. I do not think that green ideas are as coherent as they should be, but at least we are trying to work on it. I could add in mitigation that the Green Party is only 25 years old, whereas there has been at least a century of Marxist activity and propaganda in this country. They don’t seem to have got it right either. The thing to do if our ideas are not clear is to try and clarify them.
I am not quite sure what he means by “at the end of the day reactionary”. “Reactionary” is one of those words which have been overused. What is it we are reacting against? Yes, we are reacting against capitalism, but socialism is a reaction against capitalism too.
Then we come to ‘neo-Malthusianism’, “which sees human beings as the fundamental problem”. Malthus said that human populations rise faster than food production. So the answer is to let surplus human beings starve to death. Nobody in the Green Party advocates that human beings should be left to starve to death.
If you read our Manifesto for a sustainable society,you will find this passage: “We believe that every individual in society has an equal right to food, water, warmth and housing. For life to have quality and meaning and to allow individual dignity and respect, the basic requirements must be adequate and must be accessible.” Nothing there about starving people to death. We go on to say: “Our central principle is that the necessities of food, energy, material shelter and meaningful and satisfying work should be available to all.”
Now we come to population - and this is where socialists and greens disagree. There seems to be an assumption among socialists that population is not a problem. Yet the land available for people to live on and upon which food can be grown is finite. Due to the inappropriate use of agricultural techniques the amount of land available for food is decreasing. The Green Party talks of a reduction in the population of the UK of around 15-20 million.
How are we going to do this? The only way is through an educational programme. People must become acquainted with the consequences of overpopulation. In the advanced capitalist countries this has to some extent happened already. In the third world countries, there is a tendency to have large families as a hedge against old age. Often there is no social welfare provision and people depend on their children. If there was a fully comprehensive welfare system, if the provision of all necessities was guaranteed, then with better education and access to contraception attitudes would change.
It is difficult to estimate the time over which this reduction in population could be achieved. We say, “Draconian legislation is both unpalatable and unrealistic”; and we add: “The Green Party recognises any form of compulsory birth control not only constitutes a totally unacceptable infringement of human rights which is likely to be morally repugnant, but is also a potentially extremely dangerous tool for social repression.” We are not in favour of starving people to death.
We are against economic growth on the grounds that it is not sustainable. John says we are against technological progress. Does that mean that we are in favour of people sitting in caves chipping away with flint tools? We are not against technological progress as such: we are saying that it should be appropriate and should take place within the bounds of sustainability.
“The world’s ecological problems could be solved through an impossible return to nature, itself of course a social construct.” I do not see that nature is a social construct. You could say that our perception of nature and its relationship to us and each other is a social construct. But the natural world exists. It seems we are being tarred with the brush of the anarcho-primitivists.
The left - whether or not you include the greens - has become very fragmented, very atomised, very isolated, very marginalised. The reality is the majority of people are either totally indifferent to any kind of socialist ideas or actively hostile to them. One way of breaking out of this is for reds and greens to work together for commonly agreed aims and specific projects, interchanging ideas with a long-term view to achieve a red-green party. In the short term we ought to be preparing joint lists of candidates for the London Assembly and other elections - or at least ensure that we do not stand candidates against each other.
Although some people want to rush ahead, my feeling is that any kind of red-green organisational unity is a long way off. I adhere to the idea that we have about 80% agreement, but the 20% disagreement should not be ignored. It is real and covers many fundamental principles, which need to be argued out. Whether this is a viable project of itself or in the context of a framework of Socialist Alliances needs debating. You may even think it is a distraction from your core project, which seems to be reforging the Communist Party of Great Britain - although perhaps some people might say there is not much point in breathing life into a corpse.
There needs to be a redding of the greens. The Green Party needs to accept that the only way we can have a sustainable society is through socialism. Through getting rid of capitalism and its crazy werewolf lust for profit and having a society based on the common ownership and control of the means of production. I am not a pacifist. I would like to see such a transition without violence. But I do not believe there can be any peaceful, parliamentary road to socialism. If it should prove necessary, then I would not draw the line at shooting capitalists.
There also needs to be a greening of the reds. Socialists must accept that the only way we can guarantee the survival of our species is through a sustainable economy.
The Socialist Alliances provide an immediate forum for such a coming together. I do not want anybody put out of the Socialist Alliances. Instead of looking to exclude people, to draw lines between ourselves and others - which unfortunately a lot of people on the left have tended to do in the past, sometimes with really bizarre results - we should be looking at who the hell we can include.
Serious debate
Comrade Liddle replied to the debate on that followed his opening with these words:
“You get far more understanding out of face-to-face discussions like this than out of long-range sniping through the written word. This has been an excellent discussion. It has certainly clarified a lot of my ideas about where you are coming from. Some people seem to think that the CPGB has horns on its head and a tail coming out of its backside. But it is obvious to me that you are very serious people trying to address very serious questions. You are also quite willing to listen to other people.
Because I think that this is a very important discussion I have invited a comrade from the CPGB to put his point of view to my branch of the Green Party next month”.