Hello:
I recently posted the message below to greens who are in the federal
Green Party (GP) of Canada. There is a federal election on now. There
has been among greens considerable discussion about various NDP (New
Democratic Party) inspired criticisms of the GP. (For non Canadians,
the NDP is a social democratic party.) I decided to write something
on this topic and thought it may be of interest to others outside the
GP who are interested in ecopolitics. Hence the posting below.
Best and for the Earth,
David
Hello fellow greens:
Some members of the Green Party become quite excited (almost
frothing!) when people associated with the NDP make various
criticisms of the party. I believe one should always be open to
hearing criticisms and look at one's own practices, to see if some
rectification is needed. I make a distinction in my own mind between
those who criticize the GP from a position of fundamental opposition
to what Greens stand for, as opposed to those who believe in the
overall green agenda to a large extent, but who raise various points
of disagreement with what we are doing and how we are going about it.
I think sometimes that GP policies are all over the map, and that
perhaps a particular environmental policy of the NDP may be more
progressive than that to be found in the GP. However, it is only
within our party that a certain kind of debate is taking place, about
the fundamental shift in consciousness needed in how we humans have
to relate to the Earth. We need this debate as the existing
industrial capitalist societies in Canada, and worldwide are
destroying the very conditions of life, not only for humans, but for
other species and the Earth itself. The GP, theoretically - although
the struggle is ongoing - sees itself as a voice for those species
who have no representation, hence our stated support for deep ecology
and our welcomed stand finally, after long internal struggle, on
opposing the annual seal slaughter. This debate cannot take part in
the NDP, a capitalist human-centered reform party, but a party which
does have a record of bringing social justice concerns to the
foreground in Canada. This past social justice (and civil liberties)
contribution should be acknowledged by GP members engaged in debates
with NDP opponents.
But the NDP has nothing to do with socialism (I'm a socialist). It is
a capitalist reform party, and has always upheld the parliamentary
road. The NDP is opposed to serious extra-parliamentary struggle and
has not hesitated to remove or neutralize more radical voices, who
were seen as threatening in some way the electoral acceptability of
the party, eg the Waffle, and later the so-called "green caucus"
within the NDP who failed to realize that more economic growth,
unionized jobs and rising consumerism, will always win out in this
party over long term environmental concerns, or the ecological
justice concerns of non-human species. (The Waffle was a socialist
and nationalist group within the NDP whose leaders were Mel Watkins
and James Laxter. It was established in 1969 and reflected the New
Left Politics of the time. The Waffle group were ultimately purged
from the electoral party.) Canadians concerned about social justice
in some way have in the past gravitated to the NDP. Many GP members
have come from such a background, although as the late Rudolf Bahro,
one of the co-founders of the German Green Party has said, the
ecology movement draws from all the "isms" in society. So we need to
keep this in mind too and welcome (but not capitulate to) green
Tories or green Liberals who cross over. I believe that in general,
Greens should be more sympathetic to the NDP than to the Liberals or
the Tories, because of their past and ongoing social justice
contribution, both federally and provincially, to Canadian politics.
This is certainly the way I feel and act politically.
The NDP, because of its overall orientation, cannot be an ecological
party, except perhaps in the "shallow ecology" orientation sense
written about so long ago by Arne Naess, the founder of the deep
ecology philosophy. ("Shallow" here means thinking that the major
ecological problems can be resolved within and with the continuation
of industrial capitalist society.)
Many honest hard-working environmentalists from the mainstream
movement in Canada, e.g. Sierra Club, CPAWS, Greenpeace, etc. have
gravitated to NDP politics. Such people have usually been
human-centered and also believe that environmental policies can only
be achieved by working with and massaging the existing economic and
political system. This behaviour, while sometimes 'successful' in the
short term, upholds the very legitimacy of the industrial capitalist
system which has created the ecological and social problems in the
first place. So these mainstream environmentalists are "system
loyalists", not ecocentric radicals. The GP should not quiver before
the pronouncements of such people but see if there are any grains of
truth in any unflattering comparisons between the NDP and the Green
Party. Unfortunately many GP members do not seem to have an activist
environmental history, and appear, if not in total denial mode,
easily intimidated by the spokespersons of the mainstream
environmentalists. At the same time, we need to understand the basic
political point that there is some competition here for a particular
coveted social base by the NDP and the GP. While ecological justice
for all species needs to be primary for the federal GP, the party
must also uphold social justice for the human species. But for deeper
greens, social justice often gives way to ecological justice and this
will never be true for the NDP. (See here the Left Biocentrism Primer
which illustrates this fundamental point:
http://home.ca.inter.net/~greenweb/lbprimer.htm Those who orient to
the Primer - a number of GP members - pay strong attention to social
justice questions but within a deep ecology context.)
The NDP, while having this social justice past, if called upon by the
business class, has always defended the interest of Capital. They
have no alternative economic model other than a more fettered (with
more rules and regulations) capitalism, rooted in more economic
growth. They have not hesitated in the past to bring in
"back-to-work" legislation to break workers' strikes. NDP radicals
have filled the pages of _Canadian Dimension_ for about 30 years now,
moaning about how various progressive policies have been neutralized
or betrayed by the party hierarchy, but they still end up casting
their ballots for this party. The Cold War has now hopefully passed,
but the NDP always bent over backwards to prove its "loyalty" to the
Western economic and political model, e.g. the rabid anti-communism
of David Lewis, the former federal NDP leader. Today another rabid
but "holier than though" social democrat would be Tony Blair,
European front man for George Bush.
What is the role for a green Left either within the Green Party, or
for those holdouts within the NDP, who cannot yet see the
anti-ecology writing on the social democratic wall? Leading the move
from a human-centered to an ecocentric consciousness is fundamental.
We need to place the welfare of the Earth and all its life forms
first. "Community" has to include not just humans, but other animals,
plants and the Earth itself. In past animistic societies, this was
the situation. We need to bring back their sense of Earth
spirituality. There is not only a liberal capitalist democracy, with
all its limitations for deeper greens, but there is also an
ecocentric democracy and governance. Ecocentric justice is much more
inclusive than human justice. A Green Party has to decide about all
this, not just how to run its affairs democratically, from a
human-centered perspective. For the deep green, or ecocentric, Left,
what it means to be a "deeper" Green, is therefore the primacy of
ecocentric consciousness, that is, deep ecology, and that social
justice, while very important, is secondary to such a consciousness.
The left-right distinction is therefore secondary to the
anthropocentric - deep ecology divide.
This is why I believe GP members should stand tall before NDP criticisms:
- The NDP is committed to economic growth and consumerism within a
capitalist, taken-for-granted economic framework. Within such a
framework the corporation must always ultimately emerge victorious
because they are seen as the only economic motor in town. This party
is pro-capitalist and does not have a clue about what a different
type of ecocentric economy might look like, a discussion which is
supposedly ongoing in the GP. The NDP has no alternative economic
model to that of the global market economy.
- The NDP is totally human-centered in its overall orientation and
will always put human interests first, particularly unionized
workers' interests, which still play a major role in the party's
social base. The GP, at least theoretically, says it supports deep
ecology and the much larger community of all life forms.
- Everywhere the NDP has been in political power provincially, it
has always worked within the industrial capitalist exploitive and
expansionist paradigm, e.g. in forestry, agricultural and fisheries
policies. Thus, in industrial forestry the NDP has been firmly in the
clearcutting, spraying, "hand over forested crown lands to the
industry", all-out support to the pulpmills camp. NDP interventions
do have a bias towards workers' interests but both worker and
capitalist interests disregard the interests of the forests and their
non-human inhabitants and degrade the forest base over the long term.
Similar story for the industrial fishery and industrial agriculture.
The uranium industry in Saskatchewan is another shameful example of
the NDP's ecological ineptitude.
- Hostility to any consideration of population reduction as a
priority for an ecocentric world. For the NDP and the non ecocentric
Left, humans are essentially the only species to have value.
- The unions, as Bahro pointed out back in the 1980s, are united with
their employers in defending industrial society and their privileged
lifestyle. Generally, though there are exceptions, trade unions are
environmental enemies, not allies, of the environmental and green movements.
- The NDP and the Left minimize individual responsibility for
destructive social or ecological actions, blaming society, for
example, for the actions of the forest clearcutter, the gillnet or
dragger fisherman, or the farmer using pesticides and chemical fertilizers.
David Orton
Introduction to deep ecology:
"The main driving force of the Deep Ecology movement, as compared
with the rest of the ecological movement, is that
of identification and solidarity with all life."
Arne Naess, Norwegian founder of the deep ecology philosophy.
"We must live at a level that we seriously can wish others to attain,
not at a level that requires the bulk of
humanity NOT to reach." - Arne Naess
A brief deep ecology primer:
Deep ecology, which came on the world theoretical stage in the early
70s out of Norway with the philosopher Arne Naess,
has become extremely influential in the green and environmental
movements and also within any discussion of
environmental ethics. It provides the philosophical basis to oppose
"resourcism", the dominant human-centered world
view of industrial capitalist society, that the non-human world
exists primarily as raw material for the human purpose.
There is a well-known and widely accepted eight-point Deep Ecology
Platform. Three key ideas for many deep ecology
supporters are: non-human centeredness, the necessity for a new
spiritual relationship to Nature, and opposition to the
idea of "private property" in Nature. The ecocentric philosophy of
deep ecology means embracing a view of the world
where, in addition to humans, animals, plants, along with rocks,
oceans, streams, mountains and the rest of the natural world also
have spiritual and ethical standing. One's self-identity expands to
include the well-being of the Earth.
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Visit the Green Web Home Page at:
http://home.ca.inter.net/~greenweb/
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