alternative ideologies

I call the Green ideology “eco-communitarianism” (of course, it’s easier just to say “Green”!).

In our time there are two prominent alternative ideologies: Green and Libertarian. By “alternative” I mean they’re alternative to the mainstream ideologies (liberalism, conservatism, socialism) and alternative to each other.

People are not very clear on the differences. The Greens and the Libertarians both seem to be critical of the centralized government, its imperialism and militarism. But the Greens and the Libertarians have in mind very different alternative visions of what would constitute a sane, just, sustainable, and satisfactory social reality.

From https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Nozick … “As a student Nozick joined the Young People’s Socialist League, and at Columbia University he founded the local chapter of the Student League for Industrial Democracy [which in 1960 became SDS]. He began to move away from socialist ideals when exposed to Friedrich Hayek’s The Constitution of Liberty, claiming he ‘was pulled into libertarianism reluctantly’ when he found himself unable to form satisfactory responses to libertarian arguments.”

So let us form satisfactory responses to libertarian arguments:

In their literature and campaign talking points the Libertarians [I’m referring to the Libertarian Party] advocate either “smaller government” or “minimalist government.” The latter is a little esoteric, so you’ll primarily hear them talking about smaller government. It has a lot of appeal. In most of the modern mega-states the centralized governments are remote, opaque, bureaucratic, impersonal, irresponsible, etc. etc. An awful lot of taxation revenues go toward statist boondoggles and/or militarism.

Plenty of people are dissatisfied with, even resentful of, the federal governments. Rightfully so. It explains the rise of populist parties in so many countries.

In the U.S., when the Libertarians tout that they are more consistently heralds of minimalist government than the Republicans are, the message resonates. But that appeal is at a simplistic level. People aren’t much aware of or don’t think through the implications of the superficial Libertarian messaging. What the Libertarians have in mind is a world of atomized hyper-individualism where individuals (and voluntary associations of individuals) are embedded within a social context of a mostly laissez-faire market economy. They disdain collectivism.

Wikipedia: “Nozick says that ‘there is no social entity … there are only individual people,’ and that we ought to ‘respect and take account of the fact that [each individual] is a separate person.’”

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Let’s consider the issue of collectivism. Libertarians say they are fine with voluntary associations, but many of them really have a “Don’t Tread On Me” kind of mentality. Yet: collectivism is the natural human habitat. Until the relatively recent (recent from the standpoint of our full species history) rise of the states and empires five thousand years ago the context of all human life was tribal- or village-oriented. Within that context people did not live so much as atomized Separate Persons. There was a high degree of mutuality. That meant mutual obligations and even, sometimes, subordination of individual preferences to the needs of the community. Personal liberty was not quite so sacrosanct as Libertarians tend to hold out as the desirable norm.

“Collectivism” has become associated with the worst manifestations of Communism, so it’s better to message in terms of “community.” The Greens have done so since inception. One of the Ten Key Values of the U.S. Green politics movement is: Community-based Economics. Another is: Decentralization. Rather than talking about “minimalist government” in a general kind of way, the Greens rightfully bring in the issue of scale.

It’s not a question of government being inherently overbearing or taxation necessarily being theft. If you want to refer to government that’s smaller in scale and more local than what we confront in our era of hypertrophy and nation-states … fine, call it “Coordination” or “Administration” rather than “Government.” What’s fundamental to understand is that the alternative vision of the Greens holds that polities and their governments ought to be smaller in scale, more locally-oriented, and more communitarian in essence. This is in keeping with the bioregionalist ethos. It’s very, very different from the vision of the Libertarians. Greens disdain the impersonality, irrationality, incoherence, instability, and injudiciousness of the laissez-faire market. We’d like to see the economy decommodified to the greatest extent possible.

Because collectivism is the natural human habitat there has never actually been (and, I think, never will be) a society adhering to the full-vision Libertarian ethos. On the other hand, the dawning recognition of how problematic it is that community life has withered under conditions of ecologically and socially unsustainable industrial modernity argues in favor of increasing resonance for Green messaging . . . which says that the “greening of society” must entail a radical re-direction of our civilizational trajectories if we are to forge pathways toward a thriving human future. Contrast that with how Libertarians just go around saying things like: “Smaller government. Private Property. Free markets. Individual rights. Personal freedom.” Their simplistic “alternative vision” doesn’t really point the way forward.