Socialism, ecology, and democracy: toward a strategy of conversion

At the time of the Russian revolution, in 1917, the capitalist world's great powers were embroiled in a war that could well be seen as portending the system's collapse. Three-quarters of a century later, as socialism's first epoch draws to a close, the capitalist system officially breathes triumphalism and invincibility.

At one level, this confidence in the status quo is understandable. History's first sustained socialist challenge has been effectively overwhelmed. Every aspect of socialism's collapse seems to show the tenacity of capitalist precepts--whether in the succession of counterrevolutionary military threats, in the habits of hierarchy perpetuated by states of siege, in the acceptance of economic competition on enemy terms, or in the eventual seduction of the people by the glitter of consumerism and illusions of democracy.

What capitalism has not done, however, has been to emerge from its own condition of crisis. The system continues to generate, on a vast scale, problems that it is incapable of solving. The polarization of wealth and misery, after a few decades of partial interruption, has reasserted itself with a vengence. Globally, the incidence of material deprivation is unprecedented. And on top of all this now comes a dramatic deterioration of the physical/biological environment.

The environmental crisis is, at its core, a crisis of capitalism. It is a function of the characteristically capitalist commitment to growth and expansion at any cost, reinforced by--and increasingly inseparable from--a pervasive, technologically sophisticated military machine, which is a major and potentially catastrophic polluter in its own right.

In considering the alternatives to this arrangement, it is important to stress at the outset that the well known environmental depredations of hitherto existing socialism are clearly traceable to its capitalist context, both internal and external. The internal aspect consists of the habits of private ambition, hierarchy, and repression that were inherited from the old regime and solidified under conditions of military encirclement. The external aspect includes, in addition to this encirclement, the technology, the emphasis on growth, and the fear of "falling behind" that came directly from the industrialized capitalist countries.

The implications of this relationship will occupy us further below. My more general concern here is to show that despite all the disappointments and failures of socialism's first epoch, a socialist approach--properly understood--remains the only possible framework for reversing environmental breakdown. Because the consequences of such breakdown will become increasingly inescapable, the setting for a renewed public discussion of socialism will not be long in coming. But it is not too soon to articulate the alternative in practical terms, encompassing immediately visible steps and proposing measures to avoid the repetition of earlier disasters.

This prospect of a healthier "second epoch" of socialism rests on an indispensable self-critical attitude, on the part of the left, with regard to the first epoch. To say that the latter's deficiencies reflected the continuing strength of capitalism, while true, is not to say that nothing could have been done differently. Similarly, to insist that socialism requires (ultimately) the elimination of capitalist influence is not to deny that important steps toward socialism can be taken despite such influence. But these steps can only be effective if they confront each potential distortion--be it a social practice or a mode of governing--in the light of its historical association with capitalism.

The role of democracy in advancing such a process is widely invoked; but the popular understanding of democracy is often hampered by the way the term is used in the capitalist media and even, in some instances, by progressive critics. In particular, democracy is frequently put forward as an alternative to socialism--a view that has been superficially strengthened by the return of multiparty politics to Eastern Europe in conjunction with the drive toward full restoration of capitalism.

But the actual workings of democracy cannot be described without reference to the social/economic setting within which its mechanisms are installed. In its capitalist setting, democracy--such as it is--has been notably deficient in implementing environmental policies that correspond to public need or, still more surprisingly, that even go far enough to satisfy explicitly formulated public demands.

Indeed, environmental policy under capitalism suffers under much the same kind of constraint that affects democracy itself: the constraint of class interest. On the other hand, if socialism is to serve the environment better--compared both to capitalism and to its own past--it will need to integrate environmental and democratic concerns consciously into every phase of its practice.

The Capitalist Environment

Capitalism is an inherent threat to the environment because of the primacy it gives to the profit motive. The profit motive is anti-ecological because it treats the natural environment--along with the human working class--simply as something to be used, without regard for the long-term impact that such use may have. While defensive actions against capital--whether by workers or environmentalists--may curb some of its abuses, there are limits to what such measures can accomplish so long as the owners or agents of capital retain their positions of power. Capital seeks to evade any constraints. If it cannot defy them outright, then it will either exert control over the regulatory process or else simply shift the sphere of its operations.

One of Marx's most enduring insights about capital is his observation about its indifference to national boundaries. This has been shown in capital's longstanding pursuit of cheap raw materials, cheap labor, low taxes, and captive markets. To these objectives, capital has more recently added its search for the most regulation-free sites for environmental destruction, whether in the form of deforestation, pesticide poisoning, dangerous industrial processes, or toxic waste dumps. The result is an arrangement in which the most severe scourges of the system--in environmental as in other matters--often emerge at great distances from the metropolis.

This is in the classic pattern of imperialism, but with a new twist. In earlier times, the ravages of empire did not affect the metropolitan populations directly unless the conquered people actually rose in revolt, provoking a costly intervention. What is new with the environmental crisis is that nature has even less regard for national borders than does capital. Toxic wastes, petroleum pollution, and deforestation--not to mention processes more confined to industralized countries, such as the use of CFCs--have a global impact. The environment, or what Barry Commoner calls the ecosphere, thus dramatizes a feature of capitalism that is still largely ignored in mainstream debate, namely, the link between capital's achievements in one portion of the world and the devastation it has wrought elsewhere.

In sum, the various faces of the environmental crisis correspond to the various faces of world capitalism. In the United States, with its economy of automobiles, disposables, junk mail, space shuttles, and high-tech weaponry, the generation of waste in all its forms is unmatched anywhere. Other industralized countries are not far behind, though their extravagance is partly checked by structures carried over from earlier times (e.g., mass transit) and by a lesser military role. What used to be called the second world or socialist bloc was never able to distance itself from capitalist criteria of success; in its current phase of disintegration, we find nuclear weapons hawked on the free market as the last word in toxic waste disposal. In what is still called the third world--misleadingly in view of its lack of economic independence--the cumulative impact of the scramble for resources takes the form of technological anomalies, unregulated chemical hazards, sporadic war, and chronic hunger.

Why a Socialist Alternative Is Necessary

Despite the global scope of capital's impact on the environment, there is still a widespread tendency, even among progressive and activist commentators, to resist seeing capitalism as the root of the problem. The argument put forward regarding environmental destruction parallels older arguments regarding sexism, racism, and war. In each case, it is contended that the phenomenon was present in some form before the introduction of capitalism and that it has persisted--and in the case of the environment actually worsened--even where capitalism has been superseded. Therefore, so the conclusion goes, we are faced on each count with a distinct human propensity which, if at all modifiable, must ultimately be confronted on its own terms--by implication, as a separate problem.

It is worth considering this argument in its general form before we return to our focus on ecology.

What is at issue is not whether or not sexism, racism, and war each deserve immediate focused attention and action, but rather whether or not they can be effectively dealt with independently of their links to capitalism.

The argument separating these practices from capitalism invokes history, but does so in a misleading way. It rests on a simplistic, either/or view of social configurations, according to which a given practice (like sexim) either exists or does not exist, and a given social system either has or has not completely replaced another. We have already noted the complex and problematic nature of socialism's first epoch, in which capitalism and its associated practices continued to assert themselves with great force. The assumption, therefore, that capitalism was anywhere simply "superseded" is without foundation; and the persistence--e.g., in the USSR--of social practices developed under capitalism is hardly surprising. As for the earlier transition into capitalism, it is indeed the case that it preserved many already existing inequities. But capitalism, in altering their context, transformed their meaning. It absorbed them into its own system of power and, in so doing, intensified their severity to an almost unimaginable degree, thus giving rise for the first time to a widely felt perception that they should--and could--be abolished.

Some of the dimensions of this transformation can be quickly sketched. Capitalism did not invent class exploitation; peasants had long had to give up a portion of their produce to an owning class. Only with capitalism, however, did manual workers have to surrender control over their time, their tools, and their work processes. Similarly, women had long had different economic roles from men, but when capitalist industry separated work from home--and as capitalist market forces later broke up family and neighborhood networks--their lives tended to grow even further apart. As for racial differences, these had little importance so long as life revolved around locally self-sufficient communities. It was Europe's imperial expansion--the groundwork for capitalism--that turned race into a pretext for exploitation, as conquered peoples were enslaved and racist myths were devised to justify their suffering. The transformation of war, finally, was particularly calamitous, as it involved turning what was mainly a mutually charged collision between direct combatants into the coldly administered mass production of civilian deaths.

This kind of overview of the historical process is what we owe to Marx. Unfortunately, its integrative core is what is most often lost, even in commentary that claims to be informed by Marxism. Considerable intellectual energy has been devoted to establishing not only that "existing socialist" practice was deficient, but also that Marx himself shared many of the now-outdated assumptions of the time in which he lived. All these observations may broaden our understanding of why things happened as they did. What they reflect, however, is a reality in which the consciousness of capitalism's enormities could not possibly emerge in every dimension at once, even in the mind of the system's most prescient critic. That consciousness depended on specific historical processes which came to fruition at different times (e.g., the introduction of capitalist industry predating conditions that could spark race-or gender-based mobilization). This in turn reflects the complexity of capitalism, as a system that touches every aspect of human existence.

The history of environmental awareness clearly exemplifies these considerations. In precapitalist society, an explicit notion of environmental limits was lacking, for the simple reason that those limits had not as yet been approached. On the other hand, ecological "insights" which nowadays seem to require extensive research were at that time matters of common knowledge (e.g., the advantages of crop rotation and composting). Present-day environmental "consciousness" arose only after those earlier, environmentally benign approaches had been destroyed. What destroyed them was not any higher development of environmental science, but rather the routine functioning of the capitalist market (in which commercial agriculture gravitates toward large-scale monoculture).

Living in a world in which capitalism is thoroughly entrenched, it requires a considerable effort of historical imagination to appreciate the all-encompassing character of the changes that this system brought. Such an effort has a particular importance at the present moment, because without the kind of understanding it yields, one can all too easily argue--as do so many commentators--that the unfinished socialist revolutions of the twentieth century actually constituted a new system. This is an ominous argument, but it is also a superficial one. It is ominous because it implies that problems proven to have been intractable under capitalism are equally intractable when capitalism has been done away with. But the argument is superficial because it implies that an authentic change of system can be made without moving to uproot every prop of what went before.

Capitalism, in establishing its hegemony, did just this. It left no dimension of life untouched. Work and play, family and community, war and governance, city and country: all were transformed, and all came to bear the distinctive stamp of the system that had transformed them. The process was spread over a period of centuries, and the displacement of earlier conditions or practices was very far from being simultaneous, either as between regions or as between spheres of human activity. England, for example, became capitalist before Japan; the north of Italy did so before the south; and outlying regions were conquered at different times. Similarly, the capitalist market was slow in reaching its full present-day scope: much food and clothing production was still outside the market in the late nineteenth century; now, with TV, even domestic leisure has been drawn into its web.

But whatever the pace at which capital took over, it was relentlessly consistent in imposing its governing principle: the pursuit of profit through the market. From the standpoint of the environment, the most general implication of this is what we noted earlier: the treatment of nature as a mere resource or instrument, and a lack of concern for any priorities other than those of capital itself. However much these traits may have been preserved or even intensified by any "socialist" regime, their capitalist character was inscribed on them at birth.

Positive Ecological Models

If a second epoch of socialism ever emerges, it will differ from its predecessor in a number of ways. First, the initial region of socialist hegemony will already have had to free itself--as a precondition to its existence--from any externally based counterrevolutionary threat. Second, it will appear at a time when no capitalist country can any longer serve as a model to emulate, even in economic terms. Third, a greater number of the appropriate changes in human attitudes and conduct will already have gained currency before the structural changes are introduced. This means, among other things, that both the taking and the exercise of power will be marked by a higher level of egalitarianism and democracy. Finally, the whole process of building up to any transition will have generated far more in the way of specific proposals for revolutionary change.

This last point, which embodies the reintegration into socialism of its utopian component, is most directly pertinent here.

It is obvious that any ecologically viable form of society will have to restore certain conditions and practices that prevailed before the rise of capitalism. In particular, it will have to overcome some of the specialization bequeathed by capitalism, both in the ecosystem and in the capacities of human beings. But it will have to do all this in a way that nonetheless accommodates the vastly increased human population that the capitalist epoch has generated. In order to reconcile these partially conflicting requirements, it will have to make selective use of the scientific, technological, and cultural innovations that have developed in the interim, whether under the sponsorship of capital or in opposition to it.

But ecological strategy cannot limit itself to consideration of the ultimate goal. It has to offer immediate guidance, both in identifying useful steps and in warning against pseudosolutions.

The most effective short-run steps, as Commoner has emphasized, are those that entail prevention (e.g., laws banning lead additives and DDT). All such measures have been the fruit of public campaigns and have had to overcome business opposition. Prevention has a more radical thrust than regulation, since regulation can be coopted by the very forces that created the problem to begin with. Prevention, by contrast, in overcoming those forces, embodies an extension of the sphere of socially grounded priorities.

While the strongest expression of such priorities is in legislation and ultimately in social ownership, they may also under certain conditions be transmitted through the market. This can happen when the level of public information is high and when the subject of concern is a product sold directly to individual consumers and easily replaceable by a healthier alternative. Hence for instance the growing tendency of U.S. winemakers to abandon pesticides and herbicides in favor of an organic approach to viniculture.

Examples like this, however, cannot justify any general reliance on market-adaptability. On the one hand, the initial spread of ecologically informed opinion reflects the work of public-interest organs operating independently of the commercial media. On the other hand, even the most widespread ecological awareness could not by itself alter the organization of such complex services as electricity and transportation. Least of all would it suffice for the redefinition of defense needs.

Two additional market-oriented approaches deserve to be mentioned. At an individual level is the practice of "socially responsible investment"; and at the level of national priorities is the notion of the "social market economy."

The former involves limiting one's own investment to ventures that satisfy certain ethical criteria; however, it does nothing to block the flow of other funds to less savory pursuits. In a competitive setting, these will always attract the moneys required to keep them going. Thus the recycling practiced by "socially responsible" companies will not stem the efforts of others to concoct ever-new consumer needs--or to uncover ever-new oil deposits--for the sake of additional sales.

As for the social market economy--a capitalist economy tempered by a strong public sector and social services--several remarks are in order. First, the countries that fit this model (e.g., Germany and Japan) are not noted for the parsimony of their energy consumption. Second, their achievements in the domains of ecology and social justice have been attained despite rather than because of their market character. Third, the dominant interests in these countries have no principled commitment to "social" priorities, especially in the face of possible challenges to their position in international competition. Fourth and most generally, it needs to be repeatedly stressed that the issue of the environment is global in scope, and that territorially defined models are therefore of limited positive worth except to the degree that they approach self-sufficiency.

More promising are the steps that can be taken through ecologically inspired political action. Local measures, despite their limitations, are of interest in part because of their accessibility. An opening occurred in 1981 in London, with the election of a radical municipal government. Among its acts was what one might call a market-transmitted antipollution measure in the form of reduced busfares, leading to reduced automobile traffic. The success of this and other popular enactments was rudely undone in 1986, however, when the national government (under Margaret Thatcher) simply abolished the Greater London Council. In Bologna (Italy), the Communist city government sponsored even more sweeping public measures during the early 1970s. Buses ran free of charge during rush hour, and a process of organized public discussion led to redirected traffic flows and the elimination of cars from most of the central city. But despite the popularity of these reforms, most of them were undermined as the city became more thoroughly absorbed--through buyouts--into the national economy.

Measures such as those of London and Bologna, like various municipal recycling programs, show something of what can be done at the level of public services. But unless such measures are part of a comprehensive program, they tend to be haphazardly introduced, often without enforcement mechanisms. In the absence of strong official encouragement, they are then easily neglected.

"Official," in the U.S. context, refers to commercial as well as governmental institutions. The capacity of these organs to change human behavior is quite remarkable, provided that all signals point in a consistent direction. A relatively benign example is the campaign against smoking. While this was initiated by independent groups, it could in part be coopted, because it pertained to individual behavior, and the self-destructive effects of the habit could be displaced--for market purposes--onto more vulnerable subjects, both at home and abroad. Within these limits, though, the anti-smoking campaign has had an effectiveness which suggests something of what could be accomplished by a serious educational campaign on environmental issues.

Such a campaign, however, would have to go beyond exhortations to individuals. It would have to target the industrial processes themselves--with legal restraints as well as propaganda--and would also have to call into question the ways in which individual market behavior is shaped. This kind of approach is at least implicitly anticapitalist and can only be led by forces that are firmly independent of corporate sponsorship. A model project along these lines is the Labor/Community Watchdog's campaign against air pollution in Los Angeles.

Finally, despite all the limitations and the primarily even negative environmental impact of first-epoch socialism, we should nonetheless take note of what instances do exist of a constructive approach to the environment under the regimes in question. Some of these are described and discussed in an important article by Richard Levins on agriculture in Cuba. After giving an intriguing firsthand account of how a socialist framework facilitated the adoption of a pesticide-free approach, Levins makes this telling observation: "Although socialism is all too obviously no guarantee that immediate goals will not obstruct ecological wisdom, it does practically eliminate vested economic interest in perpetuating harmful practices. Therefore, a debate over technological directions is only an argument, a confrontation of opposing beliefs, but not a confrontation of opposing interests." ("The Struggle for Ecological Agriculture in Cuba," Capitalism, Nature, Socialism, no. 5 [October 1990], p. 140.) Particularly in countries that have been subjected, as economic colonies, to capitalism's most severe environmental abuses, any reduction of the capitalist presence offers great scope for improvement. Nicaragua under Sandinista leadership thus made notable strides toward freeing itself of pesticide dependence.

Overall, a revolutionary political setting offers a number of distinct advantages from an ecological standpoint. Apart from reducing if not eliminating the capitalist presence, it generally presupposes an organized and alert population, more than usually confident of its own capacities and receptive to the need for change. Revolutions also find supporters in other countries, and as the Nicaraguan experience showed, the internationalists who have technical expertise are far more likely than the advisers of the old regime to favor environmentally benign technologies. (This observation takes on added weight with the collapse of the Soviet bloc, whose support for Third World revolutions, though often essential to their survival, was nonetheless framed by attitudes that were traditionally productivist and that accepted the existing international division of labor.)

The final balance on socialism and the environment cannot yet be drawn, but even the record to date is enough to challenge widespread stereotypes. Two points are clear. On the one hand, the positive achievements within a capitalist setting reflect organized resistance to market pressure, even though market mechanisms may sometimes transmit such resistance (much as they would respond to an effective boycott). On the other hand, the largely negative environmental impact of first-epoch socialism reflects the degree to which it remained susceptible to capitalist drives and pressures. In the occasional instances in which the latter were transcended, some very promising achievements were recorded--however modest their immediate scope.

Toward a Global Solution

The importance of being socialist rests finally, from an ecological point of view, not on how much one might view socialist environmentalism as having so far accomplished--within whatever immediate economic setting--but rather on the sheer power, pervasiveness, and danger of capitalist practice.

The emphasis on this point distinguishes the socialist position not only from that of environmental "moderates," but also from certain types of ecological radicalism. The latter, in its extreme form, embraces a certain moral absolutism with a strong focus on individual behavior (e.g., not consuming animal products) and a tendency to endow natural beings with "rights" as over against humans. This "bio-centric" view is open to critcism on a number of grounds. First, humankind is itself a natural species which as such, even as it draws sustenance from the rest of nature, is not purely and simply "against" it. Second, the concept of rights, here being used to downgrade humans, is itself a human invention. Applying it to animals facilitates a caricaturing of ecological concerns, as in the question "Which is more important, owls or people?"--used as a debating point by those who are ready to destroy not just the owls but a whole ecosystem. Third, to attack indiscriminately every act of humankind upon the rest of nature is to lose all sense of proportion. The practical effect is to weaken any campaign against the most destructive assaults upon nature, which come not from humanity as a whole, but from the priorities, the artifacts, and the actions of particular sets of human agents, whose interests are as detrimental to the majority of humankind as they are to the natural environment.

The bio-centric position represents an extreme variant of an approach that is widespread among ecological thinkers and activists. The more common "Green" view does not take aim at the human species as such, but it nonetheless tends to distance itself from any sharply focused anticapitalism. Accepting the prevalent equation of the socialist idea with its first-epoch manifestation, this approach finds an inherent similarity between socialism and capitalism. Consequently, it views an environmentally sound economy--one of small decentralized units, renewable energy sources, and nonpolluting technologies--as being distinct from either.

But if the move toward decentralization is to embrace the entire society, it must reflect a public authority strong enough to overrule capitalist concentration. How can this be done without a configuration of class power that is entirely independent of capital? And what is such a configuration if not socialism? The power factor is crucial. To avoid facing it explicitly is to discard society's only protection against the danger that the formally public authorities might themselves become (once again) agents of capital.

The decisive link, however, between socialist and ecological approaches lies in the sheer scale of any process that could put in place an environmentally sound economy. This is the process that I call conversion, a term whose usage has traditionally referred to the switch from a military to a civilian economy. Ecological conversion includes the traditional variety but goes much further. It is guided by the awareness that while "small" is indeed "beautiful" (in the sense that natural diversity is preferable to labor-saving specialization and monotony), (1) you don't get the small--society-wide--except by breaking up the large, and (2) given the arbitrary composition of existing large production units and settlements, the chances of health for the small will be very low unless the breakup is systematic and permanent.

What this adds up to is the need for planning--a notion that arouses understandable but misplaced fears. For the problem is not whether or not planning takes place, but rather who does it, how, and for what purpose. Some sort of planning is urgent, though, because unless deliberate large-scale measures are taken, ecological efforts will be nullified by the continuation of existing ravages.

The planning must of course be democratic. This means not only that it must avoid the Soviet model, but also that it cannot proceed immediately to the level of decentralization that would be desirable in the long run. Authentic decentralization means more than just having a weak center; it means that there is effective popular control at the regional and local levels. If the center is gutted before the basis for such control is solidified (through education, through diversification within the regions, and through equalization between the regions), then power will continue being allocated via the usual capitalist-type scramble.

What democracy in the conversion-planning process has to mean is full popular participation, where people act through units to which they naturally belong, but within the framework of coherent sets of proposals which they evaluate with reference to their own needs. This process cannot be merely a vision dependent upon some future transformation. Insofar as the social institutions it requires are absent, they must be directly created by ecologically informed organizations with a popular agenda. These can then serve the dual purpose of developing the adaptive capabilities of each particular community and contributing to a movement that would eventually affect power at the center.

Where the socialist component remains essential is in understanding how the needs of the various communities can fit together in a way that leaves nobody out, but that also satisfies the environmental requirements that are global. Within a socialist framework, the sources of the largest-scale and most severe environmental destruction could be dealt with head-on, in a way that has already shown itself to be beyond the capacity--not to say against the interests--of capitalism.

For example, it is possible within a socialist framework to consider a transportation system that would reduce the number of automobiles by perhaps 95 percent, while still providing equal access to them for special purposes. Vast paved areas could then be restored to nature. Truck deliveries could be confined to a limited radius. The railroad system could be expanded and upgraded where it has fallen into neglect. People could use bicycles as a way to get places rather than as a mere exercising device. Drastically reduced auto traffic, in addition to cutting down the biggest single source of urban air pollution and a major source of greenhouse gases, would eliminate significant numbers of accidental deaths and injuries and a major burden on the health care, police, and legal systems.

It would also be possible to drastically shrink the armed forces, limiting their roles to those of territorial defense and disaster relief, while stripping them of any functions having to do with foreign intervention or internal repression. To the extent that comparable changes took place in other countries, even the residual defense function could be reduced, while the civic role could be demilitarized and extended to encompass some of the large-scale emergency tasks of ecological conversion, such as reforestation, the decommissioning of toxic waste dumps, and the restoration of soil paved over by obsolete roads, gas stations, and parking lots.

A further example of ecological conversion--with significant cultural benefits on the side--would be the elimination of large-scale commercial advertising, whose paper component requires, even with recycling, a continuous massive depletion of forest resources--not to mention the fuel costs of processing and delivery. In a similar category belongs the bloated sector of private bureaucracies (including law firms) that deal with corporate and personal finance, insurance, and taxes. All these activities owe their entire existence to the system-requirements of capitalism; none provide in any way for the direct satisfaction of human need.

To the extent that ecological conversion calls for the termination of certain activities, capitalist practice has conditioned us to think that this inevitably means throwing people out of work. No so. Layoffs are a distinctively capitalist phenomenon, reflecting the enterprise owners' lack of concern for anything that does not directly affect their balance sheets (in this case, the fate of the laid-off workers). Conversion involves a redefinition of tasks; it entails a whole series of switchovers between different kinds of work. However, unlike the switchovers that are imposed by capital flight and plant closings, those associated with a conversion process form an integral part of the plan under which the process is carried out. As such, their terms are a subject of negotiation between the directly affected workers and the rest of the community.

The new tasks associated with conversion are almost limitless. Not only are there the emergency/transitional tasks of restoration and reconstruction. There is also the additional demand for human labor-power associated with the move away from energy-intensive and capital-intensive technologies. The new institutional arrangements have two further implications regarding work-reduction. First, should any such reduction be either necessary or possible, it can be equitably spread throughout the labor force. Second, whatever time might be saved by each worker from assigned tasks would be needed in order for him or her to participate effectively in the democratic planning process.

Back to the Present

It would be easy enough to dismiss these projections as being remote and farfetched. But in fact, they serve a number of important practical purposes. To explain this will be to clarify the basis for present action.

The first justification for a radical vision lies simply in the gravity of the problem. The threat to survival has become so imminent that a scenario of drastic change is now justifiable not only in objective or long-run terms but also, quite readily, in people's commonsense perceptions. As the promise of life-going-on-as-usual dries up, the readiness to take risks increases; but there has to be something with recognizable contours to aim at.

Some elaboration of the vision is important, secondly, in order to show that the changes required by a strict attention to environmental concerns do not fit the negative stereotypes of those who see critics of capitalist profligacy as "prophets of doom." On the contrary, it becomes clear that by doing what is necessary to restore the environment, we would also be addressing other widely recognized social ills (e.g., health problems, unemployment, alienation, violence). Putting an end to waste will not reduce the quality of our lives but will enhance it.

Conversely, an awareness of the alternative serves to highlight the links, in the existing order, between what we condemn (e.g., pollution) and what we take for granted (e.g., the prevalence of private cars). It thus prepares us for the inevitable failure of approaches that do not call the basic structure into question. It clarifies the overall outcome of the twenty-year experiment in environmentalism that began with Earth Day 1970: a few marginal improvements, but an overwhelming general deterioration, of which ozone depletion and global warming are only the most dramatic expressions.

Fourth, by looking at the measures that would be needed in the light of what is actually practiced, we gain a fuller sense of the impossibility of any collective turn to environmentalism on the part of the capitalist class. Companies with a primary environmental focus will remain marginal. For the rest, this or that company may take this or that measure, or--more frequently--make this or that public relations gesture, but any common action they might take, on environmental issues, would at best be guided by a concern to keep control of the process and prevent it from making any decisive inroads on capitalist growth-imperatives. Environmentalism would be treated as an external constraint rather than as a guiding principle.

The prodigious scope of the environmental danger gives the struggle for socialism an unprecedented level of urgency. At the same time, the insights associated with environmental awareness have combined with the impact of other progressive movements--notably, those involving race and gender issues--to broaden the scope, the appeal, and the potential transformative impact of any movement that might reach the point of being identified with this struggle.

The fact that this evolution should now find itself placed against the backdrop of a seeming collapse of socialism is ironic, but of no more than passing significance. The economic, moral, and ecological weaknesses of capitalism reflect a process which, compared to that collapse, is more long-term and less remediable. The only remedies available to capitalism are the reforms like civil rights laws that it coopts from working-class and progressive struggles; but capitalism is always careful to keep these remedies within limits dictated by its own basic interests. For socialism, on the other hand, the prognosis is more hopeful. What is remediable about socialism is not the particular regimes that have now disintegrated; it is, rather, the larger thrust of the popular movements of which those regimes were a diseased--but in part deliberately posioned--offshoot.

To say that socialism is remediable is not to say that the process is guaranteed to succeed. The effort remains vital, however, because long-run survival will be impossible unless the needs of the whole--whether of humanity or of nature--are given priority over the acquisitive drive of a privileged minority. The current stampede toward privatization is, except for its direct profiteers, nothing more than a fad. Despite its forceful promotion in the capitalist media, it is already accompanied by moods of strong, even if ill-targeted, popular cynicism.

In terms of our present focus, the most pressing task is to break down the suspicion that still exists between discontented people on the one hand and those with an articulate and coherent global alternative--in short, a socialist ecology--on the other. Important first steps in this direction are beginning to appear, perhaps most dramatically in the form of auto workers themselves calling into question the automobile-centered transportation system. But much remains to be done, against enormous obstacles.

To the extent that an organized left movement encourages this process, particularly in its environmental dimension, it will be helping to repair a longstanding rift in left history: between the main currents of Marxism on the one hand and, on the other, the tradition going under the successive labels of utopian, anarchist, and Green.

Without going into the complex history of this relationship, we need to recall two points. The first is that, with all the strategic and political differences that separate the two traditions, they nonetheless share the long-run goal of a stateless society, i.e., one whose routine workings are structured by the people themselves rather than by a governing body placed over them. The second point is that neither tradition can succeed without the contributions of the other. Hitherto existing socialism was severely weakened by its eventual exclusion of a "utopian" component (i.e., by the loss of vision in its planning process). This reduced the ability of its implementers to recognize discrepancies between what they were doing and what they might have done. The Green approach, on the other hand, even in its humanistic (as opposed to bio-centric) form, suffers from the opposite problem. It places strong emphasis on long-term goals, but its proponents tend to argue their case as though remediable human ignorance was the only obstacle to everyone's heading in the same direction. In other words, they tend not to acknowledge the class basis for resistance to a social order that would do away with the primacy of greed.

If ecological conversion depends on democratic planning, it also depends on conversion in its older sense--i.e., the adoption of new values--at the level of the individual. Contrary to the messages of corporate environmentalism, however, this kind of personal conversion is not a simple matter of free choice. We cannot give up wanting a car unless we have a community that allows us to live--in the full sense of this term--without one. Personal and structural changes are mutually reinforcing; neither can succeed without the other.

At the present moment, it is the need for structural change that is most continuously evaded. Given the socialist implications of ecological requirements, and given capitalism's current show of power, this is not surprising. But as the environment deteriorates even further, the willingness of capital to sacrifice everything else to its own survival will sooner or later force the rest of us to act. Will we still have the ability to do so in a purposeful way?

NOTE ON SOURCES

Extensive references are given in the chapter from which this article is taken. The best theoretical work in this area is Barry Commoner, Making Peace with the Planet (New York: Pantheon, 1990). The most useful periodicals are The Ecologist, Greenpeace Magazine, Multinational Monitor, Worldwatch, and Capitalism, Nature, Socialism. An excellent work for general audiences, reflecting a certain radicalization on the part of mainstream environmentalists, is Worldwatch Institute, State of the World 1992 (New York: Norton, 1992).

COPYRIGHT 1992 Monthly Review Foundation, Inc.
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