Greens and Growth
IN OUR last issue, Steve Roberts argued that the Left in Britain should take on board the main planks of the
'Green' programme. Here PHIL HEARSE argues that the issue of economic growth is central to any dialogue
No socialist could be anything other than delighted by the fact that the anti-nuclear and anti-NATO Greens have replaced the pro-nuclear SLD and SDP as the third party in the opinion polls. The huge amount of media coverage of the Green Party conference is merely confirmation that ecological issues are here to stay as a major factor in politics. But before socialists merely try to 'add on' the Green programme to their own politics, it would be as well to take a critical look at what this programme implies. Creating a 'red-green' alliance might be more difficult than some comrades think.
Support for policies which defend the environment of course goes well beyond the Green Party. The Green Party itself has all the hallmarks of a radical petty bourgeois party, and is criss-crossed by numerous political currents from eco-socialism to the kind of eco-fascism expressed in the writings of Edward Goldsmith, editor of The Ecologist.
At the European elections, the 15 per cent of the vote won by the Greens came dis proportionately from former Alliance and Tory voters. Sara Parkin's attack at the Green conference on red-green "parasites', and the insistence of the Green leadership that their party is 'neither right nor left' is an obvious attempt to keep together the Greens new-found electoral constituency.
Opinion polls showed that 94 per cent of the electorate did not know what the Greens stand for. At a General Election they are like ly to gain a much reduced vote, both because the Tories will point out vigorously that this is an anti-NATO party, and because under the present electoral system the Greens can't form the government.
But whether Green 'speakers' like Sara Parkin and David Icke like it or not, the demands of the Green Party are incompatible with the needs of British capitalism and the big transnational corporations. Objectively the Green Party is a radical party, but evidently not a party of the labour movement. In fact, the British Greens - unlike their German counterparts formed on the basis of the peace movement mobilisation and including hundreds of former cadres of left wing organisations - are on the right of the intemational Green movement.
The Green Party in Britain has emerged in its present form because of the slowness with which the labour movement has responded to
DEBATE between socialists and the Greens. the ecological crisis. The dual task for socialists now is to work out a socialist response to that crisis, and to attempt to for an alliance with those sections of the ecological movement, inside and outside the Green Party on specific issues, and - on a more permanent basis - with those Greens who agree on a socialist solution to the ecological crisis.
Only the most Neanderthal socialists (Like the Revolutionary Communist Party in Living Marxism) now argue that the ecological crisis is a myth. The scientific evidence of global warming being linked to 'greenhouse' gasses like carbon dioxide and synthetic complex fluorocarbons like CFCs is irrefutable. This is just the most dramatic and potentially catastrophic form of environmental degradation which has effected not only the capitalist countries, but also the deformed workers states (sometimes more savagely).
It is impossible to tell whether the damage to the ozone layer has now gone so far that it is irreversible. We do not know whether we can prevent the catastrophe of violent climatic changes and the gradual melting of the poles. But since socialism requires a planet for the human race to live on we have to work on the assumption that the earth can be saved. If it can be, then it can only be done on the basis of the kind of international planning and regulation which only international socialism can provide. Ecological concems naturally come up against the interests of both capitalism and the bureaucracy in the stalinist-ruled workers states. The most consistent Greens are also socialists.
It is the issue of economic growth which is the most controversial issue between Greens and socialists. Many Greens posit a nil-growth or negative growth society. Some even argue for 'de-industrialisation'. While it is obviously true that ecologically damaging industrial and agricultural methods and processes are the prime cause of the environmental crisis, it is not proven that industrialisation itself is incompatible with and environment-friendly economic system.
Overcoming world poverty requires massive economic growth and further industrialisation. Socialism in its full sense - a society of "abundance" requires massive economic growth, even in the advanced countries like Britain. It would be quite wrong, for example, to argue that even in a country like Britain (where millions live below the poverty line) economic growth has gone far enough and all that is needed is the abolition of capitalism. The liberation of human race from drudgery and the slavery of alienated labour is impossible without enormous further economic growth. Indeed, the creation of a society of economic abundance is the centrepiece of any socialist project.
Socialists therefore have to argue for a programme of ecologically sustainable growth. Socialist planning would create the basis for the more rational use of existing resources and for the investment needed to find alternatives environmentally damaging industrial processes. There should be no illusions that working through all the neces sary changes and alternatives will be any easy process, but there are obvious areas which could be addressed immediately. Transport, for example, is one area where the socialist answer - better, cheaper public transport as an alternative to the millions of private cars - is automatically ecologically preferable.
It seems clear that the type of intensive economic development needed to create the basis for socialism will be based on computerisation and robotisation, which is still in its infancy, despite all the hype about the 'information technology society'. Even under capitalism, though, the application of this technology is becoming more widespread. There is no reason why it should be damaging to the environment.
There is nothing that has yet been dis covered in the silicon chip which is destruc tive to the environment. Provided that alternative energy sources to fossil fuels and nuclear power can be found, there is no reason why we cannot build a society based on 'automation plus workers control', opening the way towards international socialism. But still, the implementation of an environment-friendly programme of growth does presuppose the overthow of capitalism and the stalinist bureaucracies.
How then should socialists proceed? The strategic task is the fight to win the labour movement to campaigning on environmental issues and reworking the socialist programme in a 'green' direction - which, as we have said, cannot be achieved by trying to 'add on' the Green programme to socialism.
Revolutionary socialists have to try to forge an alliance with 'red greens' inside and outside the Green Party to fight together for a programme of ecologically sustainable socialist planning. The last two decades have shown us that the 'red' programme has to go 'green': but to be implementable in the real world the 'green' programme has to go 'red".