Election linup
Why Greens are not always good for you
WITH New Labour having travelled so far and so fast to the right, and the Liberal Democrats lacking any real conviction in their efforts to appear as a left bourgeois alternative, many young and older voters have considered backing the Green Party, seeing it as a radical alternative.
The Greens have cashed in on mounting concern for the environment, worries over the food we eat and the impact of agribusiness, and on the growing anti-capitalist current – within which a substantial layer have drawn few substantive political conclusions.
But on none of these areas which might be seen as the strengths of the Green Party does it have a serious analysis or a viable policy other than seeking election as effectively another reformist party committed to working within the system.
In office – as we have seen on Oxford City Council, where Green councillors share control with the Lib Dems – this approach leads to policies very similar to those of the Labour Party, seeking first and foremost to balance the books of the council, and little connection with the interests of working people whose jobs and conditions are at stake.
While some within the Green Party define themselves as socialists, and embrace at least elements of an understanding of capitalism – as a system of class rule and exploitation of the majority by the wealth-owning majority – this elementary starting point is strikingly absent from the Green Party’s own Manifesto for a Sustainable Society.
The section on the Economy, for example, talks in New Labour style the "equitable distribution of wealth", but does not address the issue of the ownership of the means of production. Under the heading "companies, ownership and the stakeholder principle" it points out that:
"The unaccountable exercise of economic power by large corporations has done much to destroy the environment and convivial social structures. Green policies will establish greater community and environmental accountability."
Indeed the Green analysis of the capitalist system falls at the first hurdle, with its insistence that the land, rather than the labour of working people, is "the primary source of all real wealth".
Without an understanding of the class structure of capitalist society, and the relentless drive for profit which has propelled the banks and multinational corporations into their reckless plundering and destruction of much of our natural environment, it is hard to see the root cause that must be tackled if an ecologically sustainable economy is to be established.
Without recognising the profits that are being stacked up in the world’s wealthiest capitals it is impossible to tackle the poverty that is being generated by the same system – for the billions who live in the world’s poorest countries.
Of course the system not only enriches the wealthy few, but also exploits and enslaves the vast majority of the world’s population: this gives millions of working people a material interest in organising to fight back for their own rights and for a world fit to live in.
Socialists draw from this the need to build and work consistently in the organisations of the working class, which must play the leading role in the overturn of capitalist control.
Cut off from this analysis, the Greens have little perspective to offer but the quest for piecemeal reforms coupled with moral exhortations to individuals to live better lives.
The Socialist Alliance has made a point of incorporating the fight on environmental questions into its manifesto, and seeking to win the best anti-capitalist fighters to a consistent socialist policy.
The Greens, by contrast, wind up in alliances with other bourgeois reformist parties which share their reluctance to confront and challenge the power of capitalism – locally, nationally or globally.