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Background: After 2016 a number of young supporters of Bernie Sanders came into the Youth Caucus of the Green Party and successfully advocated to have the name of the caucus changed to “Young Eco-Socialists [YES].”
As the recent controversy progressed, one of the elders wrote: “Eco-socialism is a vital part of being Green. But, it is not the whole of being Green.”
I responded:
OK, good. But the YES caucus tends to present it as the essence and the focus of our ideology.
You know there is discomfort among many about the name-change from “Youth Greens” to “Young Eco-Socialists.” Let’s address the discomfort directly. These ideas do matter.
The Green politics movement emerged during the 1970s in order to provide an alternative to all of the old ideologies … liberalism, conservatism, nationalism, socialism, etc.
Many of us used to wear a button that said: “Alternative: The Greens” … and that was the implication … Green: a new alternative that better understands the human condition in the troubled modern world, that shows a new way forward. Some of us elders remember the hope and the inspiration of the paradigm shift of that time.
Yes, we hate capitalism, but we came to the realization that there’s a Green way toward social transformation that goes much deeper than the old socialist movement ever recognized.
A period of eco-socialism might be needed to defang the ruinous capitalist system . . . and it’s fine for Greens to point that out. But our ultimate vision must be more transformational. It should draw more on the traditions of bioregionalism, communitarianism, and indigenism than anything ever found in the modernist-progressivist writings of Karl Marx.
If the Young Eco-Socialists are studying Marx, then they’re backsliding . . . and that’s unfortunate and it should be articulated as such. If they’re all about Bernie-ism or workerism or identity politics, then they’re losing what’s new, what’s resonant, and what was truly advanced in that original slogan: “Alternative: the Greens.”
Green Party elders can work toward reclaiming the vital new insights and vision that made our movement distinctive.
