Green socialism-is it a good idea ?

[Dugsie]

Can anybody tell me why this site isn't more active ?

Of course, you could ask why the Red Pepper site isn't more active too ?


http://groups.yahoo.com/group/green_socialists/?yguid=247529517

[treborc]

might be due to people being more interested in the theory of Marxism then politics of today.

[Dugsie]

Marxism can and has been applied to green politics and by members of the Green Party.

[Johnnywas]

yes and no

I am concerned about the environment and inequality

but I am concerned about the motives of those who claim that the environmental crisis is solely a product of capitalism

it suggests an ordering of priorities that puts socialism  (often Marxism) first and puts on hold the green agenda. when in fact we need to make the argument for environmental policies to governments of all shades and we need to start now if we want to stop global warming

and too often so called "Green Socialists" pretend that their prescriptions for a reordering of ownership provide an easy solution to overconsumption when infact the need to think about the environment means that we will have to persuade left governments as well right wing ones of the need to pursue policies that promote sustainability

so lets do the green thing and the socialist thing but lets not mix them up in our minds

[Dugsie]

Question- to what extent is the neoliberal agenda and the drive towards profit maximisation, which is a part of it, capable of being reversed ?

There is now a great deal of awareness of the dangers of global warming, although perhaps some continuing disagreement about its causes, but, it seems to me that, so far, there has been only a token response towards redressing a very serious problem. Indeed, carbon trading appears to be being used as a way of avoiding taking hard decisions. If CO2 emissions are the problem, how do we reduce them without affecting the profits of big business ?

[christie malry]

Of course, you could ask why the Red Pepper site isn't more active too ?

We need more pedants. Without pedants there is no nit-picking. Without pedants, there is no obsessive checking of threads.

We also need trolls. Trolls annoy the heck out of everyone and a whole community can enjoy sticking the boot in. Just look at JREF - it's troll city there and everyone wins!

Failing that, I'm blaming it on the Judean People's Front.

[treborc]

heck boys and girls ID cards have gone, Ms Smith was standing in front of the Camera's telling us we need it, it's good for us, but it's dead, another U Turn, nope it's a miracle.

[Dugsie]

Yes, but why hasn't the idea of green socialism taken off ? Am I being pedantic about this ?

[treborc]

Ok I  put out my waste on a Thursday it's sorted into boxes glass, paper plastic, all nice all sorted the lorry comes around and it thrown into the Lorry, we just found out the Lorry then goes into a yard tips up it's load and large lorry comes along and the whole lot is placed onto a ship and transfered to China, China takes out anything which is worth money and the rest like plastic is sent to a hole in the ground. Now the council says it has to do this because our holes are full up.

Whats the use of filling up holes in other countries all we are doing is removing the problem from here to another country.

Minister will not give up the Jags or large cars, they will of course look at perhaps removing cars from the poor who can walk.

Look at this new report of the green Olympic games in London, no cars will be allowed, yesterday the officials stated 3,000 cars must be found for the big boys of the Olympics to travel around in, they must be posh large and not green.

What a bloody mockery. and people see the taxation as being taxation for the money, not green issues

[Dugsie]

I would have thought that outrage at such a situation would have produced an active green socialist movement by now.

[Mike777]

Green socialism (or ecosocialism) is slowly taking hold both inside and outside of Green parties. I saw Angela Davis speak at the London Women’s conference last week, and she said she will be voting Green in the US presidential election (I am told that she is a member of the US Green party).

In the English Green party an group has formed called Green Left and I hear that Socialist Resistance (part of Celebrity Respect) have taken on board the writings of Joel Kovel, and call themselves ecosocialists. There was a recent meeting of Ecosocialism International in Paris, with representatives from many countries attending.

Socialism needs to be ecocentric. Ecosocialist writers such as Kovel have identified capitalism’s ecodestructiveness as the second contradiction of capital, i.e. growth is finite due resources being so, and if the system continues, we are all f*cked.

It seems to me that avoiding ecological destruction is impossible under a regime of capital. Which doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t press for a reduction in greenhouse gas emissions now, rather like Trotsky’s ‘transitional demands’ (Trotsky was not green at all).

From a pragmatic point of view, all the electoral space (certainly in the UK) is on the left, so it makes sense for Green parties to move over to fill the void.   

[Dugsie]

That all sounds rather more encouraging Mike.

[treborc]

But New Labour budget is a farce, I will be waiting for the queen and Blair and Brown to come down the road in a 1.4 Clio next week then.

Not to long ago I wrote about a coal fired power station being fed by a coal mine in my area, well I was right about the power station wrong about the mine, it's coming from China, we have enough coal they say for 400 years in Wales, but it's cheaper to fetch from China then pay a decent wage in Wales.

The problem with the world is not that they want to go green they want to make money out of it. My family has not used plastic bags for a year, we have recycled for about ten years.

But now we are being told our rubbish which we recycled is going into ground fill sites in China.

So it s a lie

[Mike777]

All the neo liberal parties (and I include NuLab in that) are aware that green issues, particularly concern over climate change, are becoming fashionable. So they develope 'greenwash' policies and the same can be said of their chums in big business, like BP having a flower as a logo. But their intention is not to be really green, but to make money out appearing to be green. The govt will raise green taxes, which will adversely affect the poorest most. The Lib Dems want to reduce income tax, and replace it with green taxes, again hitting the poorest most.

We can see this clearly in the idea of carbon trading. The city institutions aim to make a fortune out of trading emissions permits. But this is like putting the lunatics in charge of the asylum, as these people have got us into this situation, so who can trust them to solve the problem?

Socialists and Greens have a common enemy - capital.

[Johnnywas]

Socialists and Greens have a common enemy - capital.

neat piece of reductionism

means you can trot out the same old prescriptions

and ignore completely the possibility of finding workable short term solutions to prevent global warning



 


 

[Mike777]

They are not 'the same old prescriptions'.

I suggest you educate yourself my friend. Try reading 'The Enemy of Nature' by Joel Kovel and then challenge me to a debate about it.

You could also look at the English Green Left webpage and blog http://gptu.net/gleft/greenleft.shtml

And I have already mentioned transitional demands as short term goals. Sounds as though you have swallowed all the Richard Branston will save the earth type of crap.

[Johnnywas]

transitional demands aren't short term goals - they are  demands which by their nature cannot be delivered by a capitalist society and which are designed to strengthen the workers movement

there are plenty of people committed to changes in environmental policies. for instance, Friends of the Earth have a number of campaigns to promote environmental change to government, including support for the Kyoto agreements.

they are changes that we should support regardless of whether they contribute or not to the development of a socialist society

possibly, mike we agree on more than we disagree on - but we must have regard to christie's plea for more pedantry

[Dugsie]

They are not 'the same old prescriptions'.

I suggest you educate yourself my friend. Try reading 'The Enemy of Nature' by Joel Kovel and then challenge me to a debate about it.

You could also look at the English Green Left webpage and blog http://gptu.net/gleft/greenleft.shtml

And I have already mentioned transitional demands as short term goals. Sounds as though you have swallowed all the Richard Branston will save the earth type of crap.

An interesting webpage . Does this tempt anyone to join the Green Party ? Those who aren't already members, that is. If there is a need for a Green Left within the Green Party, does that imply that the others are too far to the Right ? Is there an organisation for the Green Party Right ?

What are the prospects for a Green Party electoral breakthrough under FPTP ?

[Mike777]

Some members have said that Green Left attracted them to join the Green party. The English Green party are a party of the left (broadly defined), but one of the ideas of forming Green Left was as an outreach to those on the left to come and join the Green party.

As far as electoral propects (parliamentary that is) we have good chance of winning in Brighton Pavillion next time and also in Norwich South. Also, but more of a long shot is Lewisham Deptford and Peter Tatchell standing in Oxford East. Of course we have about 120 local authority councilliors who were elected by FPTP, but this system makes it very difficult for us.

[Dugsie]

The alliance between Ken and the Greens in London shows what is possible when you abandon FPTP.