Martin O'Beirne: Via people contacting this blog, and with conversations
through the social network profiles I have created over time, I have had an
interesting vantage regards the feelings people have toward the ecosocialist
movement. People identifying themselves under the umbrella term of
‘ecosocialists’ represent a very mixed bag. There are those with a well
considered sense of their political standing, describing themselves in manifold
ways: non-market socialists, Marxist-autonomists, anarcho-syndicalists, deep
ecologists! etc. Others have more mainstream social-democratic type
leanings, are environmental activists or
are those waking up to economic and environmental crises for the first time and
are yet to develop a sense of political identity.
ST The thing that often strikes me, particularly in the UK is how many
ecosocialists are politically unaffiliated but looking for an organisation to
be a part of. I can relate to this, it took me a long time to join a party;
generally disillusioned by politics and politicians whatever colour flag they
wave.
Eventually I decided to join the Greens, in the absence of a
significant number of people making like Zapatistas! and in the context of the
unfolding ecological and economic crisis, joining the greens seemed like the
best fit. There are elements of the party I struggle with; alas a complex
democratic structure will never be perfect for each individual, and party
politics is not the only battleground as I see it. I was particularly happy
that the party officially recognised occupy and of course there is the Green
Left, the omission of which would probably have had me looking elsewhere.
MB So my first question is this: If the greens are a social
democratic party occupying the political space left by labour’s turn to
neoliberalism and war, why should young people/any people think that the Greens
are worthy of their affiliation i.e. why would the greens not be contaminated
by the same forces that led Labour to occupy an indistinct position that
Galloway recently described as one arse with three cheeks (Labour,
Conservative, Lib Dems)?
ST As Green parties in Europe and elsewhere have grown,
developed a bureaucracy and full time leadership of professional (or would be
professional) politicians, their
‘natural’ trajectory seems to have been to gradually make more and more
accommodation to the political establishment until they have been largely absorbed
into it, like the German and Irish Greens. However, over the past four or five
years, the Green Party in Britain
has tended to move to the left.
This is, I think, the result of a number of factors. First,
the development of New Labour created a
huge vacuum on the left, into which the Green Party has been sucked - almost by
default. Second, despite the narrow reformism and environmentalist niche
politics that (traditionally) the bulk of Green Party members have felt
comfortable with, the objective reality of British involvement in seemingly
endless imperialist adventures, the greatest world financial crisis in history
and the ever growing threat of climate change, have combined to lead to
increasing numbers of Greens to develop a more generalised critique of
capitalism. Third, while this tendency to move to the left has been effectively
counteracted within other Green parties by the lure of elected office, in
Britain the electoral system serves to marginalise us - and thus to some degree
offsets the pressure to conform and accommodate. Fourth, the collapse of Labour
Party membership and the increasing irrelevance of the far left sects over the
last few years has resulted in a steady (if modest) stream of homeless
socialists of various hues and traditions into the party.
MB Based on specific policy examples can we describe GPEW as
an explicitly socialist party?
ST I don’t think so. It is de facto a social democratic
party - but I mean a proper social democratic party rather than the post social
democratic neoliberal parties like Labour in Britain
and the SDP in Germany .
By social democratic, I mean that it is implicitly (and to a modestly
increasing degree, explicitly) anti-capitalist, but that it has no real
analysis of the nature of capitalism and the state, and consequently no overall
strategy for how to get from where we are to where we want to be. As a result, the politics of the party tends
to be a jumble of crankish nostrums, modest reformism and a few elements of
various strands of socialist theory.
However, that is no reason for socialists not to be members
of the Green Party; I was for a good few years a member of the Labour Party,
which claimed to be socialist and until 1994 had an explicitly socialist
constitution, though it was clearly a pro-capitalist party. So I feel perfectly
comfortable being a member of a party way to the left of Labour, whose leader
has repeatedly proclaimed it to be anti-capitalist and whose policies, though
muddled and contradictory, are in many respects socialist.
The only reason that socialists should be active in this or
that political formation is because they believe that it has the potential to
play a part in building the mass movement of working people this is the only
agency capable of rebuilding society. I
think that can be said of the Green Party.
MB Some green party members have argued that the Green Left
is not relevant, after all the Green Party is ‘left’. How would you respond to
that?
ST The Green Party is certainly a party of the left and is -
fuzzily - anti-capitalist, but its politics are syncretic and impressionistic,
having largely developed out of a narrow and essentially middle class
environmentalism, mixed with elements of pacifism, feminism and (increasingly
explicit) radical egalitarianism. It is,
in some ways, the heir of the politics of the ‘fruit juice drinkers and sandal
wearers’ of the ILP that so irritated Orwell.
As a result, to a large degree the Party’s politics are built on
sentiment rather than rigorous analysis. This is compounded by the fact the the
Party has a very weak tradition of organised internal debate and political
education.
It seems to me, therefore, that the role of Green Left
within the Party should be, as Lenin put it, ‘to patiently explain’ the nature
of capitalism and the interrelationship between it and the looming
environmental and resource crises. Our role should be to make connections and
point out conclusions to be drawn. In particular, we should be endeavouring to
ensure the maximum amount of political discussion and debate at every level of
the Party at all times.
In his essay Towards a Revolutionary Party, Duncan Hallas, wrote:
‘Such a party cannot possibly be created except on a
thoroughly democratic basis; unless, in its internal life, vigorous controversy
is the rule and various tendencies and shades of opinion are represented, a
socialist party cannot rise above the level of a sect. Internal democracy is
not an optional extra. It is fundamental to the relationship between party
members and those amongst whom they work.’
I think that his view of the necessity for internal
democracy and organised political debate is as relevant for the Green Party
today as it was for the International Socialists 40 years ago - and Green
Left’s central role should be to act as vigorous advocates of both ever more
debate and ever more democracy in the Party.
MB You know Joel Kovel. What is it about his work that you
have found particularly inspirational and informative?
What most impresses me about Joel is his intellectual
courage and rigour. For example, his book Overcoming Zionism is a fearless and
damning analysis of Zionism and what he calls the ‘state sponsored racism’ of Israel . He knew
that to publish it would be to expose himself to organised abuse and would
endanger his academic career, but he still spoke out - and lost his
professorship as a result.
His book The Enemy of Nature remains one of the most
important expositions of ecosocialist theory yet written. In it, he brings his
original background as a psychiatrist and psychoanalyst to play in making a
creative contribution to a Marxist understanding of the concept of human nature
and the dialectical relationship between humanity, social production and
‘nature’. He writes:
‘There is an inescapable tension between humanity and
nature. From one side, a fully embodied creature, obeying all the laws of the
universe; from the other, a stubborn, proud and willful creature who
distinguishes the self from nature and even chooses to protest the natural. We
can say it is a facet of human nature to quarrel with nature and even to reject
the purely natural given…
Both social production and consumption are are direct
extensions of human nature, in that each transforms nature through an
engagement with the imagination and the ensemble of human powers. Production -
and the human capacity for labour - is, as Marx insisted, a matter of looking ahead:
every object that gets made exists in the imagination before it does so in
reality’
In a speech to Occupy Wall Street a few months ago, he said:
‘An association of free people will take care of nature
because they see themselves as part of nature. They will struggle for a new
world based on a new kind of production that gives nature intrinsic value. They
will develop the tools for overcoming and healing the cancer of accumulation
and the ecological crisis it generates. Such a society will be in harmony with
nature and not nature’s enemy. I would call it “ecosocialism,” and I hope you
will join in its building. ‘
Stirring stuff.
MB You have recently written a chapter for a book, soon to
be released. Can you tell us a bit about that book and your contribution?
ST The book is titled Capitalism, Crisis and Alternatives.
It is a collection of essays attempting to present a comparative analysis of
the world crisis in different regions and to contribute to the debate about
alternatives to neoliberal policies, with particular reference to the the
multiple dimensions of the crisis.
My contribution is a chapter entitled A Green Industrial
Revolution. Starting from the position advocated in the Million Green Jobs
pamphlet I argue that if we are to use the process of de-carbonising Britain to
create more aggregate demand and hundreds of thousands of socially useful jobs,
it will be necessary for us to rebuild our industrial base - to strategically
re-industrialise in fact. However, we need to explicitly develop clear aims and
objectives (that are completely different to those of the British ruling class)
and new democratic forms of common ownership, control and planning. I suggest
what some of those aims and objectives might be and use the electrical
generation and distribution, transport and construction sectors as exemplars,
as they would provide the base for all further re-industrialisation.
MB I think the
Green Left, the anti-capitalist – ecosocialist group within the GPEW has
enormous potential to grow and attract many of those unaffiliated ecosocialists
I mentioned in my intro. Do you think this to be the case and would you have
any suggestions for how it could move forward.
ST I agree, but perhaps not in the way that many comrades in
Green Left or on the left in the Green Party would first think of. I don’t
believe that we should aim to be primarily a recruiting sergeant for the Green
Party within the wider labour movement, nor that we should just focus our
efforts on drafting motions for conference which will notionally move Green
Party policies to the left - and we certainly shouldn’t see ourselves as the
beginning of yet another sect. I think that we should be building what Hal
Draper, author of The Twin Souls of Socialism, described as a political centre.
What Draper meant by a political centre was not a sect that
claims for itself exclusive rights on the Full and Correct Programme and which
calls on working people to climb up to its level, nor an internal faction that
is concerned almost exclusively with getting the correct line passed at
conference and getting the right people elected to party office. He saw it
primarily as a non or informal membership propaganda/educational centre as
distinct from a membership group enclosed in organisational walls. He gave the
loose grouping round Monthly Review at the time as an example - a contemporary
British example might be Compass.
I see the key tasks of such a centre (or tendency) as being:
to mutually develop a body of ideas and analysis and to publish a body of
political literature expressing and promoting them; to form cadres of party
workers and militants around this political core; to establish its ‘kind of
socialism’ as a presence in left politics, with its own physiognomy and name.
For us, that ‘kind of socialism’ is ecosocialism, and the task of Green Left is to develop and
explain ecosocialist ideas, not only to members of the Green Party, but to all
activists we work with in the wider movement. In my view, that means that first
priority of Green Left should be building its capacity to be a forum for the
development of ecosocialist ideas and as a broadcaster of those ideas in a
range of media, starting with the regular publication of the Watermelon.
Second, Green Left must be much more outward looking and seek to provide a
forum for all those interested in ecosocialist ideas. Our membership
requirements are pretty loose at the moment; all that is required is membership
of the Green Party and a small subscription to cover running costs. I believe
that we should open up Green Left to all socialists regardless of what party
they are or are not members of. We should aim to be, if you like, a red/green
equivalent of Compass.
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