Within the movement: Socialists, Communitarians, Bioregionalists
(This has been excerpted and adapted from Simplicity Institute Report 16a by Samuel Alexander. The Simplicity Institute is an education and research center based in Melbourne, Australia. It seeks to foster a “revolution in consciousness” highlighting the urgent need to move beyond growth-oriented, consumerist forms of life and envision a Simpler Way at a time when the old myths of progress, techno-optimism, and affluence are failing us.)
Among those who recognize the need for a deep green social transformation in our time we find adherents of varying ideological currents, including eco-socialism, communitarianism, and bioregionalism. Most agree that voting for representatives every two or four years is an impoverished conception of democracy. They advocate, rather, for a participatory eco-egalitarian politics. Their vision is of a localized politics with a global perspective — beyond the state and yet, at times, pragmatically engaged with the state. But there is disagreement about how, and to what extent, to engage. These points are the subject of vital debates being conducted throughout the movement regarding strategy and ultimate destination.
SOCIALISM: A SYMPATHETIC CRITIQUE
Marx famously argued, with some plausibility, that the state under capitalism is an instrument of the capitalist class, meaning that politicians (knowingly or unknowingly) tend to enact laws and policies that further the narrow interests of that class. From this perspective, what is needed is a revolutionary movement, driven by the working class, which would overthrow the capitalist state, abolish private ownership of society’s major productive assets, and establish social control of most means of production.
Marx believed that he had uncovered the “motive laws of history” and that the inherent contradictions of capitalism would inevitably lead to a “next higher stage.” And then the twentieth century happened. Various socialist regimes came to power. The results were generally disappointing, and the left was compelled to re-examine the ideology derived from Marx’s system. It was recognized that Marx’s vision had been embedded in the nineteenth century “productivist” industrial growth paradigm and that socialism needed to undergo a fundamental revision in order to remain relevant in our era of overlapping environmental crises. A promising theoretical revision, eco-socialism, started to emerge toward the end of the twentieth century; an associated body of scholarship has developed in recent years.
The essential logic of eco-socialism can be summarized: if capitalism has a “growth imperative” built into its structure, and limitless growth is environmentally unsupportable, then capitalism is incompatible with sustainability. Therefore, capitalism must be replaced with a post-growth or steady-state form of eco-socialism that operates within planetary limits. In the most developed regions of the world, this environmental equilibrium must be preceded by a phase of planned economic contraction, or “degrowth.”
Eco-socialist and degrowth theory aspire to provide a basis for an advanced and coherent political praxis. But unresolved questions remain, such as: Which alternative ownership structures should be prioritized? How can the industrial system be downscaled most efficaciously?
LOCALISM: A SYMPATHETIC CRITIQUE
Eco-communitarians tend to believe that political power is over-concentrated in modern national-scale governments; therefore, socialization of industries by such governments can potentially exacerbate the problem. Moreover, governments beyond a bioregional scale are not conducive to a participatory form of democracy — they’re too large, too remote, and inherently bureaucratic, often just as socially unresponsive (and sometimes just as ecologically irresponsible) as the corporations. So the best strategy for starting to move in the direction of an eco-egalitarian society is for individuals and communities to live the new world into existence, here and now, with a minimum of dependence upon state support.
Communitarians tend to focus on prefigurative projects — creating alternative institutions, ecovillages, localist economic structures — for the most part disengaging from the industrial state and its corporate enterprises. While this has much to recommend it, we know that there are many deep and powerful obstructionist vested interests that would work to impede such a movement if it became a significant social force.
BEYOND (AND BETWEEN)
Eco-socialism recognizes the reality that structures and systems within which we live deeply shape and influence the norms of living that are available to us. It is all well and good for communitarians to try to ignore the state to death, or ignore capitalism to death, but that may be naïve, given that there is an urgency to our predicament.
Even if it would be more desirable for grassroots movements to progressively “build the new world within the shell of the old,” a case can be made that the depth of the transition needed requires a greater degree of centralized state action than the communitarians acknowledge. Establishing things like new public transport networks, new energy systems or new banking and monetary systems are arguably more readily achievable in the short term via state policy. Similarly, in a crisis or collapse situation it could be the case that the state is needed simply to maintain and administer the most basic social services and infrastructure. What Brendan Gleeson calls a “Guardian State” may be required in such times to avoid complete societal breakdown and the suffering that economic or ecosystemic collapse would bring. The idea is that it would be better to plan, design, and start to implement such a functional eco-socialist economy in advance of collapse.
On the other hand, the possibility must be considered that, to the contrary, in a context of crisis or collapse we may not be able to rely on state administration of the situation — and thus the focus should be on learning the art of communitarian self-sustenance as soon as possible. Furthermore, eco-communitarians question the very possibility of a post-capitalist transition driven by the state. We live in a globalized capitalist economy, in which it has never been easier for capital to move from nation to nation. This means the moment any government seems to be mobilizing for an eco-socialist agenda, the perceived threat will induce “capital flight” and/or provoke economic turmoil.
TOWARD A BIODIVERSITY OF RESISTANCE AND RENEWAL
Perhaps the tensions could be resolved by recognizing that prefigurative efforts at the micro level and transformational statist policies at the macro level need not be viewed as mutually exclusive. There is so much work to be done raising cultural consciousness about the necessity to transcend capitalism and move beyond the ecocidal economics of growth that eco-communitarians and eco-socialists should proceed as allies and view their disparate efforts as complementary.
Fostering a cultural shift in consciousness can take the myriad forms of resisting the most egregious aspects of the status quo via direct action, endeavoring to elect Green candidates pushing for transformational legislation, and meanwhile, at the same time, creating local small-scale examples of new post-capitalist modes of existence. Not only can the small-scale demonstrations function to begin the dauntingly large task of regeneration, they can also be justified on the grounds of being a practical form of education. After all, being exposed to new experiments in living can be one of the most effective ways to engage people about the issues motivating the experiments.
These strategies could galvanize support for an eco-socialist agenda in parliament. Communitarians should appreciate that visions of system change can help people see that “other worlds are possible.” There will be no deliberate transition beyond capitalism — whether eco-socialist, eco-communitarian, or any other way — until more people affirm the potential for liberatory change.
In that light, we might say that we need a flourishing biodiversity of resistance and renewal. The real problem today isn’t so much getting the ultimate vision precise, the real challenge is figuring out how to open up people’s imaginations to the very possibility of alternative modes of existence. Too often we hear that it is easier to imagine the end of the world than the end of capitalism.
In regard to how a successful transition might transpire: If an eco-communitarian movement were to emerge strongly through countercultural activity, it likely would find it expedient, at some stage, to use the state to advance its agenda. Indeed, if this approach was successful, we can imagine the policies for eco-socialism first decentralizing the state and then encouraging the state to “wither away.”
Revolution today should not be conceived of as some future event where a mobilized citizenry, vanguard party, or class-conscious proletariat storms the Bastille, so to speak, for Empire has no Bastille to storm anymore. Its nodes of politico-financial power are so widely dispersed that the system can evade a centralized confrontation of the old kind. Consequently, the new revolutionary politics must be immediate and ongoing. We should not aim to destroy capitalism in the future but, rather, stop sustaining it, here and now.
CONCLUSION
The purpose of this essay has been to try to carve out a space for cooperation between radical, post-capitalist schools of political thought and practice. By unpacking the tensions and antagonisms between eco-socialists and eco-communitarians, it is hoped that the relationship between them can be better understood and the potential for collaborative activism clearer.
In addressing an uneasiness about using the term ‘socialism’ . . . it may seem unnecessary, even lacking in intellectual integrity, to think about how best to “brand” one’s political perspectives. Shouldn’t we just be as clear as possible, even if the culture isn’t ready for us? Despite being theoretically sound, that perspective might be pragmatically or politically naïve. We can’t just be “right,” we also need to be “heard,” and that means being cognizant of the diversity of audiences and the differing vocabularies that may need to be used to maximize our engagement with potential supporters. Admittedly, this is not conceptually neat — there is a tendency to desire a single banner under which the Great Transition should march. But it could be that our broad post-capitalist cause would be best served by using a multitude of vocabularies.
In fact, we see this diversity of expressions already in existence today. Just think of the range of activities and movements that could easily be considered elements of the greening of society: transition towns; the divestment movement; sharing networks; intentional communities and ecovillages; permaculture groups; the voluntary simplicity movement; community energy projects; activist and artist hubs; alternative journalism; mutual aid groups; farmers’ markets and community-supported agriculture; re-skilling and re-wilding workshops; progressive nonprofit enterprises and worker cooperatives; bioregional confederations; Green political parties; and the ever-expanding network of radical environmental and social justice groups that exist across the cultural landscape. Although sometimes beyond conventional political classification, activism in these various forms can be seen already growing out of the ever-widening cracks of a globalized system in decline. None of these movements or approaches have all the answers but, arguably, all of them will need to play a role in moving us beyond the dystopia of capitalism.
