history is not a process of “progressive development” manifesting in “higher and higher stages”
Central to the idea of advocating that the left transition its worldview “from Red to Green” is a deep re-thinking of directionality. Marxism, influenced by nineteenth century optimism about the industrial revolution and the human conquest of nature, viewed history as a positive process of progressive development.
The Green paradigm views our directionality as problematic. “Growth and development” has led to a generalized hypertrophy — in regard to the human ecological footprint, in regard to extraction, exploitation and inequality — resulting in the modern crisis characterized by an obliteration of human community and a degradation of natural habitat.
Retrograde leftism will tend to respond to that by saying: “The direction is not problematic. Historical progress that has fostered development of the modern industrial means of production has the potential to be liberatory. The crisis is a function of property relations, i.e., who owns and controls the means of production.”
How many attempts at social ownership of the industrial megamachine will it take for the left to notice that a Leviathan of hypertrophied scale and complexity can’t possibly be “owned and democratically controlled by the working class majority”?
The Green paradigm of social change derives from a different worldview and thus a very different discourse. Rather than “working class to power” is the idea of replacing a social reality that manifests in empires, nation-states, mega-institutions, and mega-technologies with one that can regenerate natural and social habitats. The latter involves the revitalization of local community life. That’s why we can say that the Green worldview is primarily communitarian. Ecosocialism should be viewed as a much-needed systemic transformation that can open pathways toward an ultimately sane communitarian social reality, one characterized by bioregional decentralization — and green ways of living more simply, more lightly, and more locally.
