Greenman's Occasional Organ

Ecosocialist. Syndicalist. Critical Techno-Progressive.

Saturday, April 29, 2006

Nottingham May Day March

Reading: Guardian, Independent and BBC News Websites. Current Socialist Worker (SWP) and The Socialist (SPEW-CWI), some pages of Finnegans Wake.
Listening: Radio Five morning show.

Nottingham held its Mayday march today, (the nearest Saturday to May 1st) a small turnout by some standards, but a cheerful and noisy crowd of several hundred led by a band and drummers in good weather! It was good to see a march occuring as it did not happen last year. This year the lead was taken by local refugee campaigners, which gave the march an appropriate internationalist flavour. Banners on the march were from Nottingham Stop The War, Nottingham CND, and local communists of various stripes. A disappointing lack of union banners reflecting the low ebb of organising in Nottingham - hopefully to be countered by the valiant efforts of a number of activists from NUT, FBU and other unions who are producing a bulletin. Also contributing to the lack of organised workers presence may be the transformation of the London Mayday event on Monday into a national event and the perennial popularity in the North Midlands of the Chesterfield Mayday event on Monday. A single Unison tricolour reminded us it was an International WORKERS Day celebration. Unison also contributed the one union speaker, Jean Thorpe of the union's NEC ( talking about the NHS crisis and pensions). Other speakers at the rally in the Brewhouse Museum Yard were from NAIL (Nottingham Against Incineration and Landfill) speaking about the planned expansion of the Eastcroft incinerator in the city, and opposition to it, a speaker from the refugee support group; speakers from the Nottingham No2ID group; a rather scary Maoist talking about Nepal; and finally the "star speaker", Rosie Kane of the Scottish Socialist Party (who made a good rousing speech but disappointingly failed to mention climate change and envirionmental destruction amongst the list of things that the workers and progressive movements are fighting.) There was also some good musical entertainment from local and international musicians. On a sad note the rally remembered Ian Juniper who was a locally well known, lifelong voluntary and community sector and trade union movement activist who had done much to help organise previous TU and Mayday events, but who died recently and whose funeral is on Wednesday. We were told that despite his terminal illness Ian was still supporting workers and communities in struggle to the end, marching with Nottinghamshire public service workers on their recent strike day over pensions.
Stalls at the rally were from the SWP, SP, and RIM, Greenpeace and Friends of The Earth, No2ID, Cuba Solidarity Campaign, the Nottingham Refugee Campaign Group, CND/Stop The War, and the local animal rights group. Food and information about their "May Day Minus One" social gathering came from local stalwarts Veggies and the Sumac Centre. http://www.veggies.org.uk/arc/event.php?ref=684

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Friday, April 28, 2006

Workers' Memorial Day

Reading: Guardian, Independent and BBC news websites; Urban 75 Politics and General forums, Green Party (GPEW) Website latest news, Morning Star, more of Prince and Picknett's latest and some pages of Finnegans Wake.
Listening: Local radio at work. Radio Five in the Morning.
Viewing: Coronation Street.

Today is Workers' Memorial Day, marked with lots of events.
More information -http://www.hazards.org/wmd/index.htm
One area that has been emphasised this year is the terrible toll that unsafe working environments involving asbestos have taken. Before the celebrations of Mayday it is good to remember the cost of work to many working people - and good to remember the solemn fact that there is still much to do in Britain, as in the rest of the world, before it can be said that everything has been done that can be done to protect people at work. It is also a reminder of the necessity for workplace organisation and vigilance.

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Wednesday, April 26, 2006

Celebrate May Day

Reading: Guardian, Independent and BBC News Websites, The Morning Star, local freesheets, some pages of Prince and Picknetts latest tome and some pages of Finnegans Wake.
Listening: Mozart (Royal Philharmonic)
Viewing: Channel 4 News headlines, SkyNews.
May Day is almost upon us. The traditional time to celebrate international workers' solidarity, the coming of spring, hope for the future and the the struggle for a better world. Remembering the struggle for the eight hour day and the Haymarket Martyrs. Hopefully in Britain the Green left will be present on lots of May Day marches - I will certainly be attending one or two (made possible by some marches being on Saturday and some on May D ay itself) distributing the Ecosocialist Manifesto, the Green Revolution Statement and Green Party Trade Union Group leaflets.
Here are details of some of the bigger ones -

London
May Day 2006 assembles at Clerkenwell Green, Islington - close to Farringdon tube and Mount Pleasant Sorting Office - from 12 noon to move off at 1300.
The March then goes along Cklerkenwell Road to Theobalds Road, past Red Lion Square down to Holborn tube, down Kingsway to Aldwych, along Strand to Trafalgar Square.
Expect to arrive at the Square 1415-1430 with the rally starting at 1430.
The Rally will last until about 1600.
Speakers so far include -
Gloria Mills President TUC, Brendan Barber GS TUC, Tony Bemm, Tony Woodley GS TGWU, Randall Howard GS South African Transport & AWU, Maria Helena Andre ETUC, Paul Kenny GS GMB, Dave Prentis GS UNISON, Derek Simpson GS AMICUS, Greg Combet Australian CTU, Bob Crow GS RMT, plus international speakers and Gate Gourmet .
3 bands are confirmed so far and more are expected.
The Rally will be welcomed by Ken Livingstone, Mayor of London.
I think that the Green Party TU Group Banner will be in attendance as a rallying point for green trade unionists.

Chesterfield

01/05/06 CHESTERFIELD TUC MAY DAY CELEBRATIONS
29th People's Gala and Demonstration
May Day is recognised as a day of celebration for workers throughout the world. From Africa, Asia, Latin America to Europe people celebrate International Workers Day. Chesterfield has a proud record of being part of these world-wide celebrations showing both international solidarity to fellow workers in struggle in other countries and also providing a focus for the campaigns and struggles of working class people in Britain and here in the East Midlands. The theme for this year's May Day is "Defend Trade Union Rights".

Come along and join in, bring the whole family.

Assemble for March at : 10:30 a.m. at the Town Hall (don't forget to bring your banners, flags, whistles - we want this to be the biggest, nosiest and most colourful march to date)

Rally in New Square : 12 noon.

Nottingham May Day march - Saturday 29th April, focussing on refugee rights and international solidarity -
http://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/2006/03/337037.html

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Monday, April 24, 2006

National Anti-Incinerator Campaign to Kick Off

Reading: Guardian, Independent and BBC News Websites, The Morning Star, some pages of Finnegans Wake, Green World.
Listening: Mozart.
Viewing:BBC News.
The good news is that the wave of projected incinerators and the new labour government's enthusiasm for waste incineration as the main plank of their waste strategy signalled by their recent statements is provoking a wave of locally based campaigns of resistance. The even better news is that these campaigns are linking up and there is a national meeting of incinerator campaigns to be convened by SAIN (Slough Against Incineration) in London in May.
Incineration is another industry dominated by corporate power, prepared to spend vast amounts of their (and often our!) money to ensure their future profits. One only has to look as far as Sheffield to see the effect that the adoption of an incineration based waste strategy has - to sabotage and de-incentivize recycling. With the pressure on landfill in terms of site exhaustion, regulation and cost the corporations have scented profit and the government and many councils are swallowing whole their lies about "safe", "green" incineration. If we allow them to, this unholy alliance of big business and politicians looking for a quick fix to their "waste problem" will pepper the country with new incinerators spewing dioxins, creating toxic ash and blighting communities.
The campaigns have an chance to build on the good work of groups like Friends of The Earth and promote a positive approach that sees waste as an opportunity, not a problem and aims for a "Zero Waste" strategy like that being investigated by a growing number of progressive local authorities. It is no surprise that many of the incinerators are planned for working class communities - another clear example of environmental injustice linked to social injustice. Greenman wishes the anti-incinerator campaigners the best of luck in launching their national campaign and urges all greens and ecosocialists to support them.

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Saturday, April 22, 2006

The importance of symbols

Reading: The Guardian, Independent and BBC News websites. The Morning Star. Green World and Green Party (GPEW) Activist Bulletin. Some pages of Finnegans Wake. Urban 75 Politics Boards.
Listening: Editors, local radio, Radio Five.
Viewing: Chelsea Vs Liverpool (Well done Liverpool!) Doctor Who, episode two of current series on BBC1 (amusing subversive republican subtext!)

I have posted some ideas for a Green Socialist, green libertarian socialist or ecosocialist flag below. Emblems, colours and symbols are often underestimated for their power as weapons in the struggle. The most powerful weapons of this kind are the simplest and most easily recognisable. Fortunately the two designs below are virtually unused internationally (apart from a few departmental or heraldic flags) but are admirably simple and recognisable (and quite pretty). The diagonally divided one resembles the black and red flag of the anarchosyndicalists of Spain made famous by the CNT and FAI in the Spanish civil war and revolution. In red and green I think it may have been used at some time by the British socialist youth movemnt, The Woodcraft Folk, though their more recognisable symbol is the red gold and green rising sun, fields and trees design. As the Spanish and later international libertarian left used the juxtaposition of red and black as the marriage of anarchism and syndicalism (or libertarianism and socialism), so the emerging ecosocialist movement could use the similar red and green flag to symbolise the marriage of (libertarian) socialism and ecological politics. The other flag with a horizontal divide is similar to the horizontally divided red and black flag of the Nicaraguan Sandinistas. Again the juxtaposition of the two colours emphasizing the coherence of our current and its drawing on the wisdom and experience of green and socialist movements. I would be interested in what ecosocialists think and how they feel we might go about agreeing and popularising a design.

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Another suggestion for an ecosocialist flag

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Suggestions for an ecosocialist flag

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Friday, April 21, 2006

Ecosocialists in England and Wales Get Organised

Reading: Guardian and Independent websites, The Big Issue, The Socialist, The Morning Star, some pages of Finnegan's Wake and the beginning of Ken McLeod's The Sky Road .
Listening: Editors-The Back Room, Radio Five morning programme (Well done Caroline Lucas MEP, called upon to comment for the Greens on Cameron and Blair's latest environmental pronouncements and doing very well - that is the way to treat Campbell and Co's usually aggressive interviewing!), local radio (at work).
Viewing: News bulletins, Coronation Street.

Ecosocialists in the Green Party in England and Wales are making serious efforts to get organised and have come together to publish a statement of intent. The new group, provisionally titled "Green Revolution" is planning a much larger gathering in June to look at a more comprehensive statement and begin to plan activities and establish links. This is very encouraging, there have been previous green socialist groupings within the English and Welsh Party that have played a key role in fighting off liberal and right wing currents' attempts to "modify" the party in their own image. Hopefully the new grouping can support the vital work of the newly re-established Green Party Trade Union Group to build links and solidarity with the broader workers movement. It would also be hoped that the group could reach out to non-aligned and sympathetic socialists outside the party and build unity in action with the broader left. The initial statement also contains the worthy aim of boosting the organised Green Party presence on important demonstrations and protests.

The Statement :

Green Revolution

Green Revolution has been launched as a network for socialists and other radicals in the Green Party of England and Wales. It will act as an outreach body that will communicate the Party's radical policies to socialists and other anti-capitalists outside of the Party.

GR is based on the assumption that capitalism is a system that wrecks the planet and promotes war. A green society must be based on social justice. GR in short works to promote ecosocialism as a solution to our
planetary ills.

GR supports the democratic structures in the party and encourages transparency, accountability and engagement in all organs of the party. We also see the Green Party as a 'bottom up' political organisation where the principles of the membership are paramount and not a 'top down' one where a self-designated political elite decide on policies and principles.

GR aims to raise the international links of the Green party building globe links with radical greens and ecosocialists across the planet. It will work closely with members of other European Green Parties to reform the workings of the European Green party structures that must be democratised. Green politics must realise the slogan 'think globally, act locally' by linking practical local campaigns to global issues of ecology, democracy, justice and liberation.

GR aims to act as a ginger group within the Green Party so as to raise Green Party politics to meet its radical policies. Green politics needs to be based on dynamic campaigning and hard intellectual ground work to create workable alternatives.

GR aims to build regional campaigns and contribute to coalition building through coherent alignments and open discussion with progressive anti-capitalists. It is vitally important that the Green Party works to develop the climate change campaign and the continuing movement to stop the war. GR will work to enhance Green Party contributions to demonstrations, marches and other solidarity events.

While GR is keen to build fraternal links with faith communities it will not compromise on of human rights including issues of gay and lesbian rights and womens liberation.

Since William Morris's activism in the Social Democratic Federation in the 1880s, there has been an ecosocialist tradition in Britain, Green Revolution believes that ecosocialism provides an alternative to a society based on alienation, ecological destruction and war. Such an alternative demands that we 'educate, organise and agitate'

Green Revolution..Sarah Farrow, Joseph Healy, Penny Kemp, Tim Summers and Derek Wall. Headcorn 2006.

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Thursday, April 20, 2006

An Ecosocialist Manifesto

Reading: Guardian and Independent websites, Morning Star, some pages of Finnegans Wake, Urban 75 Politics Boards.
Listening: Stone Roses, Editors.
Viewing: The second episode of Jimmy McGovern's (excellent) drama "The Street" on BBC1, news bulletins.

So what is this "ecosocialism" then? As a start I will post the Ecosocialist Manifesto that started circulating in late 2001.

An Ecosocialist Manifesto

Introduction
The idea for this ecosocialist manifesto was jointly launched by Joel Kovel and Michael Lowy, at a September, 2001, workshop on ecology and socialism held at Vincennes, near Paris. We all suffer from a chronic case of Gramsci's paradox, of living in a time whose old order is dying (and taking civilization with it) while the new one does not seem able to be born. But at least it can be announced. The deepest shadow that hangs over us is neither terror, environmental collapse, nor global recession. It is the internalized fatalism that holds there is no possible alternative to capital’s world order. And so we wished to set an example of a kind of speech that deliberately negates the current mood of anxious compromise and passive acquiescence. This manifesto nevertheless lacks the audacity of that of 1848, for ecosocialism is not yet a spectre, nor is it grounded in any concrete party or movement. It is only a line of reasoning, based on a reading of the present crisis and the necessary conditions for overcoming it. We make no claims of omniscience. Far from it, our goal is to invite dialogue, debate, emendation, above all, a sense of how this notion can be further realized. Innumerable points of resistance arise spontaneously across the chaotic ecumene of global capital. Many are immanently ecosocialist in content. How can these be gathered? Can we envision an "ecosocialist international?" Can the spectre be brought into being?

Manifesto
The twenty-first century opens on a catastrophic note, with an unprecedented degree of ecological breakdown and a chaotic world order beset with terror and clusters of low-grade, disintegrative warfare that spread like gangrene across great swathes of the planet--viz., central Africa, the Middle East, Northwestern South America--and reverberate throughout the nations. In our view, the crises of ecology and those of societal breakdown are profoundly interrelated and should be seen as different manifestations of the same structural forces.

The former broadly stems from rampant industrialization that overwhelms the earth's capacity to buffer and contain ecological destabilization. The latter stems from the form of imperialism known as globalization, with its disintegrative effects on societies that stand in its path. Moreover, these underlying forces are essentially different aspects of the same drive, which must be identified as the central dynamic that moves the whole: the expansion of the world capitalist system.

We reject all euphemisms or propagandistic softening of the brutality of this regime: all greenwashing of its ecological costs, all mystification of the human costs under the names of democracy and human rights. We insist instead upon looking at capital from the standpoint of what it has really done. Acting on nature and its ecological balance, the regime, with its imperative to constantly expand profitability, exposes ecosystems to destabilizing pollutants, fragments habitats that have evolved over aeons to allow the flourishing of organisms, squanders resources, and reduces the sensuous vitality of nature to the cold exchangeability required for the accumulation of capital. From the side of humanity, with its requirements for self-determination, community, and a meaningful existence, capital reduces the majority of the world's people to a mere reservoir of labor power while discarding much of the remainder as useless nuisances. It has invaded and undermined the integrity of communities through its global mass culture of consumerism and depoliticization. It has expanded disparities in wealth and power to levels unprecedented in human history. It has worked hand in glove with a network of corrupt and subservient client states whose local elites carry out the work of repression while sparing the center of its opprobrium. And it has set going a network of transtatal organizations under the overall supervision of the Western powers and the superpower United States, to undermine the autonomy of the periphery and bind it into indebtedness while maintaining a huge military apparatus to enforce compliance to the capitalist center We believe that the present capitalist system cannot regulate, much less overcome, the crises it has set going. It cannot solve the ecological crisis because to do so requires setting limits upon accumulation—an unacceptable option for a system predicated upon the rule: Grow or Die! And it cannot solve the crisis posed by terror and other forms of violent rebellion because to do so would mean abandoning the logic of empire, which would impose unacceptable limits on growth and the whole “way of life” sustained by empire. Its only remaining option is to resort to brutal force, thereby increasing alienation and sowing the seed of further terrorism . . . and further counter-terrorism, evolving into a new and malignant variation of fascism. In sum, the capitalist world system is historically bankrupt. It has become an empire unable to adapt, whose very gigantism exposes its underlying weakness. It is, in the language of ecology, profoundly unsustainable, and must be changed fundamentally, nay, replaced, if there is to be a future worth living. Thus the stark choice once posed by Rosa Luxemburg returns: Socialism or Barbarism!, where the face of the latter now reflects the imprint of the intervening century and assumes the countenance of ecocatastrophe, terror counterterror, and their fascist degeneration.

But why socialism, why revive this word seemingly consigned to the rubbish-heap of history by the failings of its twentieth century interpretations? For this reason only: that however beaten down and unrealized, the notion of socialism still stands for the supersession of capital. If capital is to be overcome, a task now given the urgency of the survival of civilization itself, the outcome will perforce be “socialist, for that is the term which signifies the breakthrough into a post-capitalist society. If we say that capital is radically unsustainable and breaks down into the barbarism outlined above, then we are also saying that we need to build a “socialism” capable of overcoming the crises capital has set going. And if socialisms past have failed to do so, then it is our obligation, if we choose against submitting to a barbarous end, to struggle for one that succeeds. And just as barbarism has changed in a manner reflective of the century since Luxemburg enunciated her fateful alternative, so too, must the name, and the reality, of a socialism become adequate for this time.

It is for these reasons that we choose to name our interpretation of socialism as an ecosocialism, and dedicate ourselves to its realization.
Why Ecosocialism?
We see ecosocialism not as the denial but as the realization of the “first-epoch” socialisms of the twentieth century, in the context of the ecological crisis. Like them, it builds on the insight that capital is objectified past labor, and grounds itself in the free development of all producers, or to use another way of saying this, an undoing of the separation of the producers from the means of production. We understand that this goal was not able to be implemented by first-epoch socialism, for reasons too complex to take up here, except to summarize as various effects of underdevelopment in the context of hostility by existing capitalist powers. This conjuncture had numerous deleterious effects on existing socialisms, chiefly, the denial of internal democracy along with an emulation of capitalist productivism, and led eventually to the collapse of these societies and the ruin of their natural environments. Ecosocialism retains the emancipatory goals of first-epoch socialism, and rejects both the attenuated, reformist aims of social democracy and the the productivist structures of the bureaucratic variations of socialism. It insists, rather, upon redefining both the path and the goal of socialist production in an ecological framework. It does so specifically in respect to the “limits on growth” essential for the sustainability of society. These are embraced, not however, in the sense of imposing scarcity, hardship and repression. The goal, rather, is a transformation of needs, and a profound shift toward the qualitative dimension and away from the quantitative. From the standpoint of commodity production, this translates into a valorization of use-values over exchange-values—a project of far-reaching significance grounded in immediate economic activity.

The generalization of ecological production under socialist conditions can provide the ground for the overcoming of the present crises. A society of freely associated producers does not stop at its own democratization. It must, rather, insist on the freeing of all beings as its ground and goal. It overcomes thereby the imperialist impulse both subjectively and objectively. In realizing such a goal, it struggles to overcome all forms of domination, including, especially, those of gender and race. And it surpasses the conditions leading to fundamentalist distortions and their terrorist manifestions. In sum, a world society is posited in a degree of ecological harmony with nature unthinkable under present conditions. A practical outcome of these tendencies would be expressed, for example, in a withering away of the dependency upon fossil fuels integral to industrial capitalism. And this in turn can provide the material point of release of the lands subjugated by oil imperialism, while enabling the containment of global warming, along with other afflictions of the ecological crisis.

No one can read these prescriptions without thinking, first, of how many practical and theoretical questions they raise, and second and more dishearteningly, of how remote they are from the present configuration of the world, both as this is anchored in institutions and as it is registered in consciousness. We need not elaborate these points, which should be instantly recognizable to all. But we would insist that they be taken in their proper perspective. Our project is neither to lay out every step of this way nor to yield to the adversary because of the preponderance of power he holds. It is, rather, to develop the logic of a sufficient and necessary transformation of the current order, and to begin developing the intermediate steps towards this goal. We do so in order to think more deeply into these possibilities, and at the same moment, begin the work of drawing together with all those of like mind. If there is any merit in these arguments, then it must be the case that similar thoughts, and practices to realize these thoughts, will be coordinatively germinating at innumerable points around the world. Ecosocialism will be international, and universal, or it will be nothing. The crises of our time can and must be seen as revolutionary opportunities, which it is our obligation to affirm and bring into existence.

Joel Kovel and Michael Lowy

Paris, Sept 2001

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Wednesday, April 19, 2006

Now they are all at it!

Reading - Guardian and Independent online, Morning Star, Urban 75 general and politics boards, Wikipedia on Robert Anton Wilson and other topics.
Listening - More Stone Roses
Viewing - BBC 6 O'Clock and BBC and ITV late News, Sky News and music videos from Robbie Williams, Alex Parks, Coldplay and others at the Gym.

Yes, after yesterday all the parties are at it and the media has caught on - one news bulletin had an amusing film with leaders of the three grey parties turning green. They are all weighing in with their green tokenism - they must be really scared of some local election upsets, or desperate to link themselves to a vote winner for the upcoming local elections. But no mention of the REAL Green Party in the news item, though, so no change there. And the Tories have even been hinting they might oppose nuclear power. Hardly a big surprise and not too much of an ideological leap for the Tories as the nuclear power industry can only survive in Britain with massive state intervention and public subsidy, and the Tories have no issues with buying in power from overseas. The nuclear industry is one of those examples where capitalist economics actually do weigh in on the environmentalist side. Doesn't mean the Tories are "Green" though, anymore than their vicious butchering of the mining industry in an act of open class warfare was "Green" because it may have led to lower carbon emissions. So expect big help for the corporations if nuclear plants decommission under the Tories, and very little for the workers. Still, at least all this greenwashing is a break from the media and parties giving free publicity to the fascist threat in the local elections.

On another note, with all that is going on in the world, does the BBC really think that one of the many birthday bashes Elizabeth Windsor (as Plaid Cymru member Leanne Wood famously called her in the Welsh Assembly) is having (and a fairly low key minor part of her celebrations in any case) are the Number one news item?

Anyhow, enough of this media commentary. Greenman's bed beckons.


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Tuesday, April 18, 2006

Tory Green Revolution??????

Today's reading - The Morning Star and The Daily Express, The Independent and Guardian web pages, a few pages of Finnegans Wake, Urban 75 and web pages on Joel Kovel and Murray Bookchin.
Today's listening - The Stone Roses
Today's viewing - BBC 6 O'Clock News

Apparently Dave "I'm not the Tory Blair, honest" Cameron's latest wheeze is to proclaim that the Tories are the party of the "Green Revolution". Well, well, well. We are always pleased to see a sinner repent here at Greenman's Organ. But forgive me if I do not rip up my GPEW (Green Party of England and Wales) membership card just yet. While it is very easy for Dave to appoint Zac "Silver Spoon" Goldsmith to his toothless policy body, and to fit micro-renewables generating equipment on his house, and be seen riding his bike, and make noises about how seriously he takes climate change, and repeat old Tory pledges about clearing up litter and protecting parks.......one tends to think it will be a little more difficult to convert those in his party of a less green tinge to his new found faith, still more difficult to convert a party wedded to the motoring lobby, big business, free market zealotry and funding from some of the least environmentally and socially responsible elements to actually agree to any meaningful policy that does more than urge business to be "responsible". John "Vulcan" Redwood, for example, may be rumoured to have the same green blood as Spock, but he is about as "green" or amenable to green arguments as the oil industry sponsored american neo-con propagandists he is fond of quoting. And Redwood, whatever the new green, caring, socially responsible Tory leadership may think, is not totally unrepresentative of the Tory grassroots.
This is where, as ecosocialists, many of us can see the wood for the trees. You can urge businesses to be as ecofriendly as you like, but the nature of current capitalism is that the CHIEF duty of CEOs and directors is to MAXIMISE PROFIT. If they do not,( in the absence of the unlikely event of all their competitors following the same voluntary ecological path), they are likely not to be CEOs or Directors very long. Environmental sustainability, like social justice, is not a case of persuading bad enterprises to be good, or even educating ignorant enterprises to be wise - it is a structural matter. Bad money will drive out good. Cheap labour will replace expensive. Dodgy practice will drive out good. UNLESS action is taken, either by consumers or workers where this is possible, or governments/legislation where it is not, then capitalist enterprises are not going to throw away their competitive advantage just to "feel good" (though CEOs may throw a few scraps of good practice that do not affect overall profitability to feel good about themselves or for PR)
Modern conservativism (indeed modern liberalism and new labourism too, all representations of globalist neoliberal politics) is based on-
1/ A rejection, indeed demonisation, of radical and effective workers organisation and union action.
2/ An affirmation that you "cannot buck the market", which is always king and will punish you if you do not succumb to its' every demand.
3/ Almost complete capitulation (with the odd defence of some residual politically strategic sectors) to the ideology of neoliberal globalisation that accepts that industry will relocate to a more favourable location unless all its' demands are met.
and
4/ A rejection of an interventionist state in any other roles than greasing the palms of corporations, policing internally and externally and deconstructing any remaining obstacles to the creation of a world of economically liberalised, heavily policed, oligarchically run trading blocs.
This being the case, the main parties are forbidden to approach the ecological and social demands of the day, even if they honestly wanted to in any other way than politeley asking for better behaviour - workers action being beyond the pale, consumer action being accused (as with GM for example) of damaging competetive advantage, international co-operation being difficult given the commitment of so many other countries to neo-liberalism, public ownership of provision ruled out as inherently inferior to private as well as punishable in the strongest terms by international finance capital, and legislative action being seen as a cardinal sin of big government akin to the dreaded S word.
So, until proved otherwise, I will treat Dave's "green" project as at best something likely to run up against the obstacles listed above, and at worst simply another bit of meaningless media management and tomfoolery, what we old cynics have come to know as greenwash.

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Monday, April 17, 2006

First Links

I have added the first two links to my blog - to the interesting blogs of my fellow English ecosocialist Greens Derek Wall (Another Green World) and Matt Sellwood. Derek has posted the recent statement of ecosocialists in the Green Party of England and Wales on his blog in response to the ridiculously hyped Euston Manifesto of the pro-liberal imperialist commentariat and friends. As well as the nascent ecosocialist grouping the Green Party's Trade Union Group also goes from strength to strength and are looking at setting up regional groups. All this is very good for building the social justice pillar of green principles, something much needed in the current UK political climate.

Hello and Welcome

Hello and welcome to my blog.
As a busy, busy, busy, person I guess that this blog will live up to it's name and be occasional.
For those who wish to know more about me read my profile, suffice it to say that this blog is an extension of my online persona from the boards of that august cyber institution Urban 75. A visit there would allow you to see examples of greenman's infrequent entry into the cut and thrust of debate, largely on the politics boards. But because I am pseudonymous does not mean that my thoughts are any less my own - greenman, like the mask of "V" is a depersonalising device, to let the ideas come through, liberated. And I am more than just a political animal, man cannot live by bread alone.
So, come on in , and in future, with a good wind, there may be enough to read that you may, as they say on "urban", settle down, have a hobnob and consider the issues of the day, or yesterday, or tomorrow...............
In the meantime I have put some favourite books, films, topics etc on my profile for your amusement.