On eco-socialism

A Red-leftist take: “Build the Green Party into a working-class-oriented revolutionary eco-socialist political party that’s serious about taking and exercising state power and using it to help facilitate the end of capitalism and the creation of an eco-socialist society.”

Alternative: “The Green Party should embrace eco-socialism, viewing it as a vehicle to open pathways toward a Green society … the ultimate vision being a world of diverse and decentralized bioregional commonwealths.”

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“Commonwealths.” That sounds like an advocacy of socialized property relations.

Well, yes, my own bias is concordant with that of Samuel Alexander, who talks about a preference for “an economy where worker cooperatives, community enterprises and not-for-profit models are the dominant forms of economic organization, paying people living wages but reinvesting surpluses back into the local community. Less role for profit-maximizing corporations, especially those owned by absentee shareholders. Most wealth and power should be held in common, rather than concentrating it in private hands.”

Nonetheless, I think leftists should avoid the kind of social engineering mentality that prescribes universalist “best ways” to handle economic relations (or to handle any of the issues of human lifeways), appreciating that a world of decentralized bioregional communities are sure to exhibit an enormous range of cultural diversity … that being the natural, healthy, sane way.