Here’s an article by Barry and published at On Line Opinion . The comments thread at On Line Opinion is worth reading too.
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In the political discourse around green issues, the world outlook associated with various green groups is portrayed as left wing. This is largely because the green world outlook generally opposes capitalism, its leaders frequently use the rhetoric of the Left, are promoted as being left wing by the mainstream media, and usually identify themselves as being of the Left.
Moreover, many green leaders and activists were radicalised in the 1960s and 1970s and have genuinely left wing backgrounds. They see the green movement as a continuation of their previous left wing radicalism.
The measure of whether an outlook is on the Left needs to be assessed against criteria based on core values that have given meaning to the concept historically. Left wing traditions have never been green and, I would argue, the identification of the green outlook with left wing politics has only been possible over the past few decades because of the decline of the Left.
Contrary to what right wing commentators declare, the green movement is not the Left in new form but a product of its absence as a significant force in contemporary politics. Like nature, politics abhors a vacuum. Green ideology has filled the vacuum created when the Left went into hibernation in the mid 1970s, after a spectacular rise during the second half of the previous decade.
What then are the core values that determine a left wing outlook, and what are the traditions of the Left in regard to nature and the non-synthetic environment?
The values of the Left are based on two interconnected qualities: opposition to oppression and tyranny (i.e., support for democracy and freedom); and enthusiastic support for material progress, for a world of (as we used to say in the communist party) “abundance for all”. These values have defined the Left since 1848, when Karl Marx issued the Communist Manifesto.
Marx, and the genuine Marxists, wanted to overthrow capitalism, not because it was supposedly bad for the natural environment, but because the key contradiction within it – between the social nature of production on one hand and private appropriation on the other – stood in the way of personal freedom for the workers and a real unleashing of the productive capacities of human beings.
Marx believed that “wage slavery” was based on exploitation and alienation, and that the workers should rise up and seize the means of production for their own ends rather than for the profit of the small group of owners. In a sense, Marx was a real supporter of “free enterprise”: but for the producers rather than the owners. There is nothing green at all in a Marxist position.
Marx’s comrade, Frederick Engels, compiled the booklet Socialism: Utopian and Scientific precisely to defeat the influence of the “greenies” (i.e. utopians) of his time. Marx and Engels established a left wing tradition that fully embraced – indeed waxed lyrical about – modernity and the achievements of industrial capitalism.
Their opposition to capitalism, I repeat, was based on an analysis that saw it as retarding social and material progress. Their views on the relationship between progress and nature were consistent with the “Age of Reason” and the scientific revolution: nature, to the Left, has never been something with which to seek harmony and balance – let alone with which to live “sustainably”.
The classical Marxist view was expressed at the left wing lastsuperpower website in the following way:
The whole history of humanity is that we are a species that does not adapt its lifestyle to its environment but develops “unsustainablly” in ways that require transforming our environment our technological forces of production and our social relations of production. Our unsustainable development has already terraformed most of this planet so that it is no longer a “wilderness”, substituted “synthetic” for “natural” products for everything we live on (including ancient things like domesticated wheat and other food staples) and will go much further both intensively here and extensively across the universe and at the same time it has totally transformed the way we relate to each other and will continue to do so.
Throughout our history there have been progressives wanting to speed up the movement forward and reactionaries demanding that we should live within our means. These ideologies are closely connected with the fact that ruling classes fear the instability and threat to their domination that goes with changes undermining our old mode of life while oppressed classes always want more from life than what their exploiters think they should live on.
According to Engels, the struggle for human liberation required the overcoming of the limitations placed on people by the natural environment. Science, technology, and politics were ways by which humans constantly created something new, rendering the old “unsustainable”.
It’s hard to imagine a more reactionary and conservative notion than “sustainability”, but it has permeated the psyche of the populations of the advanced industrial nations and has become a mantra. It is a “buzzword”, basically meaning let’s not take risks, let’s get cosy with nature rather than continue to transform it for our own benefit; as we have done since the harnessing of fire.
The green outlook’s opposition to capitalism does not qualify it as being on the Left because its opposition is to the industrial and social advances ushered in by capitalism. The greens look backwards to small-scale production, to a social system based on village/community life, to a society in which humans were more in touch with nature. This type of society has existed, prior to capitalism, during the feudal era. However, capitalism, as Marx enthusiastically asserted:
… has put an end to all feudal, patriarchal, idyllic relations … Constant revolutionising of production, uninterrupted disturbance of all social conditions, everlasting uncertainty and agitation distinguish the bourgeois epoch from all earlier ones … All that is solid melts into air, all that is holy is profaned, and man is at last compelled to face with sober senses, his real conditions of life, and his relations with his kin. ( See: Karl Marx, Chapter 1, Communist Manifesto, 1848).
Support for turning back the clock to small-scale production based on village/community life found expression in Australia in the 1940s, with the publication of B. A. Santamaria’s The Earth, Our Mother. Santamaria was on the far right of politics and never renounced his support for Mussolini and the Italian fascists. It made sense that someone on the right would support such a backward social system, and bemoan the liberating consequences and direction of modernity because this was the tradition of the right.
Leftists are the ones who want to “overcome nature” rather than be submissive before it. We are the ones who want to reach for the stars!
To understand just how completely opposite to the left wing position Santamaria’s view was, and how completely opposite to the left wing view the green world outlook is today, one can consider Engels, writing in Anti-Duhring (1877). Engels speculates about the radical consequences of man finally confronting the material conditions of existence, and understands humanity’s mastery of nature as the key to its social liberation: the leap from the “kingdom of necessity to the kingdom of freedom”.
… for the first time man, in a certain sense, is finally marked off from the rest of the animal kingdom, and emerges from mere animal conditions of existence into really human ones. The whole sphere of the conditions of life which environ man, and which have hitherto ruled man, now comes under the dominion and control of man who for the first time becomes the real, conscious lord of nature because he has now become master of his own social organisation. The laws of his own social action, hitherto standing face to face with man as laws of nature foreign to, and dominating him, will then be used with full understanding, and so mastered by him. Man’s own social organisation, hitherto confronting him as a necessity imposed by nature and history, now becomes the result of his own free action. The extraneous objective forces that have hitherto governed history pass under the control of man himself. Only from that time will man himself, with full consciousness, make his own history – only from that time will the social causes set in movement by him have, in the main and in a constantly growing measure, the results intended by him. It is the humanity’s leap from the kingdom of necessity to the kingdom of freedom.
Not surprisingly, there are left wingers around the world who speak out against the green outlook. Their views are rarely heard in the mainstream media but their critiques can be read at sites such as Spiked Online, Strange Times / lastSuperpower. Both are basically Marxist when it comes to the green issue. The UK-based editors of Spiked Online previously ran the journal Living Marxism. There are also occasional anti-green Marxist-influenced books, such as Austin Williams’ Enemies of progress: the dangers of sustainability and David McMullen’s Bright future, but these receive minimal publicity in the mainstream compared to the voices of doom and gloom.
Conclusion
OK, so there’s no left wing green tradition, and the greens are antithetical to left wing values. Who then are these green ideologues who are described as, and claim to be, left wingers?
To me, a new concept is needed to understand their politics and that concept is “pseudo-left”. The concept has been around for a few years now and has been used by public intellectuals such as Christopher Hitchens and Nick Cohen. In Australia it is promoted by us bloggers at strangetimes/lastsuperpower. It is time for the “pseudo-left” descriptor to be taken up by many more people, so that the green outlook can be situated where it rightly belongs.
Barry your argument falls at the first hurdle. “Moreover, many green leaders and activists were radicalised in the 1960s and 1970s and have genuinely left wing backgrounds. They see the green movement as a continuation of their previous left wing radicalism”. Last time I looked most of the green activists were in their twenties and thirties; not even born in the ’60s. Their leaders with few exceptions also belong to this cohort. It is so sad to see once radical leftists such as yourself trying to justify your swing to the right with such pathetic crap.
Dalec
Whatever. The fact remains that a move greenward is a move rightward. More people will realize this, as the left wing critique becomes heard by a larger audience. Barry
Actually I agree that the so called green movement is largely reactionary. It is also incapable of proper scientific investigation and is fond of what I call “solar nostrums”.
However your attempt to hold the (pseudo?) left responsible for the sins of the greens rather falls into the following category:
“The desire to discover invisible scapegoats – to argue that complex realities are the fault of some malevolent actor – is motivated by a primitive search for simplistic answers. In the Dark Ages, people’s illnesses and epidemics of plague were blamed on evil witches who were often burned at the stake. In Stalinist Russia, the phrase ‘it is no accident’ was routinely used to imply that every negative event was really an act of carefully orchestrated collusion among hostile forces.”
Frank Furedi.. http://www.frankfuredi.com/index.php/site/article/264/
It’s an old trick Barry, invent a”pseudo left” and you explain every-thing. The problems of the “real” left are caused by these evil “pseudo leftists” who were once part of “us” and now must be expelled to purify the “movement”.
Scapegoats are useful eh?
Dalec
I would have thought that you would know, from your days long ago on the left in the Vietnam solidarity/protest movement, that there is such a thing as a pseudo-left. It’s not exactly new. They were the ones wanting peace rather than a victory for the Vietnamese and actually opposing a Vietnamese victory. Remember? I stand by the claim in my article that “The measure of whether an outlook is on the left needs to be assessed against criteria based on core values that have given meaning to the concept historically… The values of the left are based on two interconnected qualities: opposition to oppression and tyranny (i.e., support for democracy and freedom) and enthusiastic support for material progress, for a world of (as we used to say in the communist party) ‘abundance for all’”. Barry
My post should have read: By all means try to understand dialectic idealism and materialism, and the catastrophically evil destruction they wrought last century [ http:/johndawsonblog.blogspot.com/2008/10/socialism-reminder.html
] then throw them in the philosophic trash can where they belong and look for a rational philosophy for living on earth.
Since when has it been Left to be Green? Since the failure of communism became so glaring that the Left had to find another ideology it could use against the hated enemy: capitalism.
Yes, capitalism is vastly superior to tribalism, feudalism, and the fascist form of socialism; and it is vastly superior to communism, democratic socialism and every other political / economic system. Why? Because it is the system that bans force from the economy and guarantees the freedom that is the fountainhead of rational productivity and prosperity.
Wage earners are not slaves. Slavery is the application of force to economic activity. A capitalist can’t forcefully compel anyone to work for him; he has to trade a wage for his employee’s work, if the employee doesn’t think he would be better off after the trade than before it, he doesn’t take the job.
By all means try to understand dialectic idealism and materialism, and the catastrophically evil destruction they wrought last century, [ http://johndawsonblog.blogspot.com/2008/10/socialism-reminder.html ] then throw them in the philosophic trash can where they belong and look for a rational philosophy for living on earth.
I put this as a comment about a “left wing” Green on another blog but I think it relevant here “… demonstrates my point about the irrelevance of “left” & “right”. He considers himelf “left” but his views on how the state should prevent any increase in national wealth for at least a couple of decades would be considered stupidly reactionary by Lady Catherine de Burg. So long as absolutely nobody on the “left” is willing to denounce any other “leftist” for being an obvious looney then the only possible futre the term can have is as a home for loonies. At the absolute minimum “leftists” should agree on human progress being desireable.”I think what might be called sensible leftists are to be blamed for not objecting to Greens coming into their tent. With the failure of centralised Soviet socialism & the strong evidence that individual marketism works more efficiently I can see why they did it. Marx’s justification of socialism was that productivity would be better when the control of the means of production were in the workers hands. When that so obviously failed the Greens provided an easy answer – that productivity is a bad thing – saving many leftists from having to do the hard brainwork of invent a more successful socialism. But it is an intellectual dead end.
I’d like to comment on the posts by John Dawson and Neil Craig.
I disagree with John Dawson when he says wage earners are not slaves because the capitalists do not forcefully compel anyone to work for them. John, the compulsion is in the need on the part of the wage-worker to survive. If that need didn’t exist, we wouldn’t be spending the best part of our days working for them. The choice for the great majority is simply a matter of which owner of production to work for. That’s the ‘choice’.
Under a system of social ownership of the means of production, we’d be more or less working for ourselves. Voluntary work is the future. I’m still waiting for a convincing argument to the effect that the workers actually NEED a capitalist class.
I disagree with Neil Craig when he says the terms ‘left’ and ‘right’ are irrelevant but agree that the minimum criterion for being on the left should be a commitment to progress. When Neil says “So long as absolutely nobody on the “left” is willing to denounce any other “leftist” for being an obvious looney then the only possible futre the term can have is as a home for loonies”, I can see the logic but would point out that the term ‘pseudo-left’ came into being precisely to ‘denounce’ those claiming to be left-wing but who are essentially reactionary and conservative.
Please, Neil, help us promote that concept! (It entered the mainstream in a very minor way thanks to Hitchens and Nick Cohn having used it).
Another quality of the left, in my opinion, is that we realize the choice isn’t just between the big central state economy on one hand and ‘individual marketism’ on the other. Strangetimes contributor David McMullen has important things to say on social ownership and has a separate site devoted to discussing it.
Regards, Barry
Byork says that wage earners are slaves because they are compelled to work by their need of a wage to survive. “If that need didn’t exist, we wouldn’t be spending the best part of our days working for them.”
It is hard to know where to start.
If you are enslaved to people who you trade with to survive, its not only your employer you’re enslaved to, it’s your baker, butcher, doctor, mechanic, employee, wife etcetera, etcetera, as well.
It’s not your employers doing that you need money, food, clothing, shelter etcetera to survive. He didn’t steal your share of the money, food, clothing, shelter etcetera that rains from heaven so he could use it to compel you to be his slave. He created a business productive enough to pay the wage that sustains you. If that’s slavery, resign, and go hunt for food and chop down trees to build your shelter etcetera – but you will soon find that it’s harder to survive that way than by trading with other productive men. You can trade your time and effort for a portion of someone else’s enterprise (which makes you a wage earner), or trade some of your product for the help of others (which makes you an employer), or trade goods or services on your own (which makes you a self employed sole trader). Of course all these options require effort. If that’s what you mean by slavery, then all I can suggest is that you open your mouth and squawk in the hope that a mother hen will drop something in.
An employee is not a slave, and an employer is not a slave owner, they are traders for mutual benefit. If either one thinks he could do better on his own, or by trading with someone else, he is free to do so. Byork says the only choice “for the great majority is simply a matter of which owner of production to work for.” If that is the case they should be grateful that the employers have created the factory or shop or farm that can produce enough wealth to be able to offer wages that sustain them better than they could sustain themselves on their own.
Byork says that “Under a system of social ownership of the means of production, we’d be more or less working for ourselves.” You mean like they do in North Korea? Like they did in the USSR, Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, Albania, Bulgaria, Yugoslavia, Romania, Poland, Czechoslovakia, East Germany, Hungary, Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia, Mozambique, Angola, Ethiopia, Nicaragua, Cuba and Communist China? http://johndawsonblog.blogspot.com/
Byork says: “Voluntary work is the future.” Voluntary work is exactly what you get under capitalism. No one in a capitalist society can put a gun to your head and make you work like they do in socialist countries. But voluntary work for you means voluntary work for everyone else too, so you can’t put a gun at someone else’s head, or get the government to do so on your behalf, to compel them to work for you or provide you with your food clothing shelter etcetera.
Byork says “I’m still waiting for a convincing argument to the effect that the workers actually NEED a capitalist class.” A “capitalist class” is a Marxist myth. In a capitalist society there are just free traders. Some, who are more productive than others or who have created more productive means, have more wealth to trade than others. If you don’t NEED them, you don’t have to trade with them. You are free to go out and make your wealth on your own, or by trading with someone else, just as they did.
John,
The term “wage slavery” is distinct from the term “chattel slavery”. In the latter (classic) form of slavery the labourer is literally owned by his/her boss. You are correct in saying that in capitalist society workers are not literally the property of their employers. Neither are they forced to work at the point of a gun (obviously). In fact they are free to sell their labor power to the highest bidder,and this is an enormous advance on chattel slavery, surfdom, debt bondage etc.
My understanding of “wage slavery” is that it refers to the role of workers in capital accumulation. Workers hire out their labor power and are paid for it. Labor power is a commodity which can be offered for sale like anything else and its price is determined by the market like anything else.
The reason the sale of labor power can be referred to as “wage slavery” is that workers are paid the value of labor power rather than the value of their labor. That is how profit is made. Although a worker may work for 40 hours in a week, the wages received amount to only a fraction of the value created over that 40 hour period. In effect the worker engages in unpaid labor for part of each week. In that sense it’s a form of slavery. The reason capitalists can accumulate capital is because they don’t have to pay workers the full value of their labor.
The sense in which it is “forced” on people is that although it is possible to make the choice not to sell one’s labor power, that choice has extremely negative consequences. Most people choose to work.
That is the Marxist view anyway, perhaps not expressed very well.
The overwhelming majority of people in this society work for someone else by selling their labor power (this includes intellectual work as well as manual labor). Obviously we can’t all be capitalists. Even those who manage to become small capitalists (ie the self employed) are themselves exploited by larger capitalists.
You write:
“An employee is not a slave, and an employer is not a slave owner, they are traders for mutual benefit. If either one thinks he could do better on his own, or by trading with someone else, he is free to do so. Byork says the only choice “for the great majority is simply a matter of which owner of production to work for.” If that is the case they should be grateful that the employers have created the factory or shop or farm that can produce enough wealth to be able to offer wages that sustain them better than they could sustain themselves on their own. “
Sure, there is mutual benefit involved. That was also the case with chattel slavery. Slaves were fed and housed and to an extent “looked after” by slave owners.
Under capitalism workers are not literally tied to an employer, they are certainly legally free to change jobs in order to get “a better deal”. However even if a worker can ‘rise up’ and acquire a job in which the going rate for labor power is higher, the wages paid will not be equal to the value of his/her labor.
I don’t think it’s a matter of being “grateful that the employers have created the factory or shop or farm that can produce enough wealth to be able to offer wages that sustain them better than they could sustain themselves on their own. ” The very same thing could have been said to a chattel slave : “Be grateful that your master has created a farm that can produce enough wealth to be able feed, clothe and house you better than you could on your own. ”
Certainly workers benefit when capitalist enterprises do well. But those enterprises couldn’t do it without the workers. It’s possible for workers to be “glad” that they live under capitalism rather than under a system based on slavery or feudalism, but “grateful” …. well your very use of the word suggests a master-slave relationship.
I don’t deny that capitalism has encouraged enterprise in a way that no previous economic system has done and that as a consequence it has lifted living standards enormously. The spread of capitalism across the planet has been a good thing, I just wish it was happening faster.
Nevertheless, unlike you, I don’t see it as the end of history. The wonderful thing about fully fledged capitalism is that it creates modern people who are capable of thinking better, taking initiative, being inventive, and very importantly, accepting responsibility rather than remaining in thrall to their masters. At the same time, modernity brings with it an increased capacity to be motivated (ie reinforced ) by more than one’s immediate self interest.
You write:
“Byork says that “Under a system of social ownership of the means of production, we’d be more or less working for ourselves.” You mean like they do in North Korea? Like they did in the USSR, Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, Albania, Bulgaria, Yugoslavia, Romania, Poland, Czechoslovakia, East Germany, Hungary, Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia, Mozambique, Angola, Ethiopia, Nicaragua, Cuba and Communist China?”
No, I don’t think like that, and I’m sure Barry doesn’t either. All of those places were pre-capitalist societies and none of them developed socialism. We abhor the regimes in places like Cuba, North Korea, China.
On Monday evening (24 November), David Mc ( a Strange Times blogger) will be giving a talk on the ABC Perspective program. Here’s the topic of his talk as advertised on the ABC website:
“Should the financial crisis prompt another look at social ownership?”
We’ll start a thread based on that after his talk has been broadcast. This discussion probably should continue there.
Keza,
You say: ‘The reason the sale of labor power can be referred to as “wage slavery” is that workers are paid the value of labor power rather than the value of their labor. That is how profit is made. Although a worker may work for 40 hours in a week, the wages received amount to only a fraction of the value created over that 40 hour period.’
Yes, because his employer provides the tools and direction and coordinated organization (capital) that multiplies the productivity of his labor.
You say: ‘In effect the worker engages in unpaid labor for part of each week.’
No, he is paid more than his labor could produce without the multiplying effect provided by his employer. If this was not the case the employee would choose to work for himself.
You say, ‘In that sense it’s a form of slavery.’
No it’s not. Slavery implies physical force, and none is involved in free enterprise transactions.
You say, ‘The reason capitalists can accumulate capital is because they don’t have to pay workers the full value of their labor.’
No. The reason they can accumulate capital is that they have succeeded in applying sufficient intelligent innovation to economic activity to increase the productivity of his employees labour.
You say, ‘The sense in which it is “forced” on people is that although it is possible to make the choice not to sell one’s labor power, that choice has extremely negative consequences.’
Yes, the negative consequences of denying themselves the most productive use of their labour available due to the capitalist’s tools, organization etcetera. But to call this “force” is nonsense. The contradiction in terms you call “economic force” is the ability to offer someone something they want or need (e.g. a wage or a loaf of bread) in exchange for something you need or want (e.g. labour or money). But to call that “force” strips the concept of meaning. “Force” is something you do with a gun or club or threat thereof, not something you do by offering something someone needs or wants.
You say ‘Certainly workers benefit when capitalist enterprises do well. But those enterprises couldn’t do it without the workers. It’s possible for workers to be “glad” that they live under capitalism rather than under a system based on slavery or feudalism, but “grateful” …. well your very use of the word suggests a master-slave relationship.”
No it doesn’t. No slave should be grateful for what his master gives him to eat etcetera, he is forced to work and take what the master chooses to give him. The very fact that the master has to use force implies that the slave could do better elsewhere if he was unbound. To equate that slave with a so called “wage slave” is ridiculous.
You say ‘The spread of capitalism across the planet has been a good thing, I just wish it was happening faster.’
Me too.
You say ‘The wonderful thing about fully fledged capitalism is that it creates modern people who are capable of thinking better, taking initiative, being inventive, and very importantly, accepting responsibility rather than remaining in thrall to their masters. At the same time, modernity brings with it an increased capacity to be motivated (ie reinforced ) by more than one’s immediate self interest.’
I agree (but I’d underline “immediate”.)
You say ‘All of those [Communist] places were pre-capitalist societies.”
I agree. Nowhere did socialism rise out of Capitalism as Marx predicted. His theories were baseless rationalizations. And yet they dominated academic thinking for a century, and still do in many ways.
You say ‘And none of them developed socialism.’
I disagree. They are all the inevitable products of the “from each according to his ability to each according to his need” ideology. If you don’t like the examples I named, you tell me where it worked better.