International Socialists

Radical credentials?

Since the 1999 election, when the Greens got 5.2% of the vote and seven MPs in parliament, they have carefully cultivated an image of radicalism. In 2000, Green MPs Sue Bradford and Nandor Tanczos received much media publicity while attending the anti-globalisation S11 protests against the WEF in Melbourne. A bill was introduced into parliament in the same year to restore the Emergency Unemployment Benefit to students and was opposed by all the other parties - including the Alliance.

 

The Greens are the only party committed to the decriminalisation of cannabis. Most recently Sue Bradford and co-leader Jeanette Fitzsimons attended the Waitangi Day ceremonies and joined a protest where Mäori activists were demanding sovereignty.

 

Most of the Green MPs have activist backgrounds - Sue Kedgley in the women's liberation movement, Rod Donald in the Anti-Apartheid movement, Sue Bradford in the unemployed workers movement and the socialist left, Keith Locke in the Socialist Action League, and Nandor Tanczos who has a past involvement with anarchism. This helps the Greens to project themselves as being a party that combines activism directed towards environmental and other major issues with parliamentary politics.

 

Finally, when George W. Bush declared war on Afghanistan in the wake of the terrorist attacks in September last year, the Greens were the only parliamentary party to actively oppose the war. Alliance leader Jim Anderton initially uncritically supported Labour's pro-war stance, before rank-and-file Alliance members forced him to backtrack. Perhaps more than anything else it was this principled anti-war stance that enabled the Greens to earn the respect of those on the left who oppose the war, and to emerge as the main party to the left of Labour.

 

 

The limits of Green radicalism

We agree with the Greens on a significant number of issues ranging from the logging of native timber on the West Coast (it must be permanently stopped!) to the decriminalisation of cannabis use (do it!) We applaud them for having the guts to oppose the war when neither Labour nor the Alliance would. And we recognise that many of the best progressive political activists in this country are in the Greens.

 

But we can also see that there are very real limits to the "radicalism" of the Greens. The major problem with the Greens can be summed up in a phrase: the veneer is radical but the substance is not. Ultimately the Greens are committed to reforming rather than transforming the existing capitalist system. This is particularly clear with respect to the way in which the Greens explain the destruction of the natural environment and equate socialism with Stalinism.

 

 

What's causing the environmental crisis?

Many people support the Greens because they are concerned about the destruction of the natural environment - both locally and globally. The mounting environmental crisis can be seen with respect to atmospheric pollution (ozone depletion and the greenhouse effect); deforestation of the world's major rainforests; declining stocks of non-renewable resources; and the increasing concentration of hazardous pollutants in rivers, soil and the ocean.

 

Surprisingly, the Greens do not provide a convincing explanation of this destruction. It is explained with reference to population growth, industrialisation and sometimes human nature. Environmental problems are being caused by a rate of population growth that is unsustainable and by a process of industrialisation driven by the human urge to exert rational control over nature. Other aspects of human nature such as human greed and material acquisitiveness drive people to continually increase production in order to create more wealth, using up non-renewable resources and destroying the natural environment in the process.

 

None of this is particularly convincing. Food production has increased at a faster rate during the past century and there is no evidence to support the view that the world's current population is unsustainable. However, even if it were the case that human population growth is excessive, this is unlikely to be resolved until the world's resources are more equally distributed. One of the major reasons that people in the so-called "third world" have large families is precisely because they lack even the most basic level of material security.

 

 

Industrialisation

The process of industrialisation is driven forward by the capitalist desire for profit and can only be adequately understood in these terms. Finally, greed and material acquisitiveness are not general characteristics of human nature - all of the historical and anthropological evidence points to the fact that they are behavioural characteristics systematically fostered by capitalism.

 

What is missing from Green explanations of environmental destruction can be summed up in one word: capitalism. The so-called "industrial revolution" was actually driven by the emergence of a specifically capitalist system of production, distribution and exchange. In capitalism firms strive to maximise profits in conditions of market competition. This has resulted in a higher rate of growth than that produced by any other mode of production in human history. But it has also led to the destruction of the natural environment on a scale never seen before in history.

 

Capitalism is inherently and unalterably environmentally "unfriendly" because the process of capital accumulation internalises and privatises profits while externalising and socialising costs. When large industrial corporations run plants that pump pollutants into the sky and/or waterways the costs of this pollution are externalised or pushed onto others. The profits, however, go to the executives, directors and major shareholders who own and control these corporations.

 

It is not a case of the odd business being "irresponsible" as the Greens imply, but of all businesses necessarily seeking to maximise profits by minimising costs. Because recycling and technology that reduces pollution add to production costs and reduce profits, business will generally try to avoid investing in these areas.

 

Business has far greater resources than workers and environmentalists to influence government in a direction favourable to their interests. Power and resources are very unequally distributed in environmental conflict precisely because capitalism is a system of exploitation that generates class inequality. While many Greens recognise that big business is able to exert a disproportionate influence over government, few think of this as being part of the normal operation of a capitalist society in which a small greedy capitalist minority actively exploits the large working class majority.

 

 

The Green critique of socialism

The Greens are reluctant to identify capitalism as being at the heart of the global environmental crisis because this would commit them to acknowledging that much of the socialist critique of capitalism is sound. It would also commit them to taking socialism seriously as a democratic and environmentally sustainable alternative. Instead of doing this, the Greens opt for the politically convenient path of equating socialism with the brutally repressive and environmentally devastating regimes that existed in Eastern Europe (and still exist in China and North Korea).

 

The problem with the Green position on this is the fact that these Stalinist regimes presided over a system of heavily bureaucratised state capitalism that had nothing in common with the radically democratic vision of socialism developed by key figures in the Marxist tradition like Marx, Trotsky, Lenin, Luxemburg and Gramsci. According to these Marxists socialism involves the comprehensive democratisation of society - something clearly not existing in Russia or China. It is, therefore, fundamentally misleading and dishonest to suggest that Stalinism was "really existing socialism."

 

 

The support base of the Greens

Another reason that the Greens are reluctant to criticise capitalism is due to the fact that many of those who support the Greens do quite nicely out of it. Alternative lifestylers are for the most part members of what Marx referred to as the petit bourgeoisie - small business owners. The Greens also have a lot of support amongst the professional New Middle Class and students. They have very little support amongst the industrial working class. In short, the Green Party of Aotearoa is very much a party of the middle classes.

 

 

Green Party policy

The policies of the Green Party are spelled out in a number of documents that can be downloaded from their website. Thinking Beyond Tomorrow (TBT) released in November 1999 and Green 2000 - Framework for an Eco-Nation give a good sense of the Greens' overall policy framework. What is most remarkable is the complete absence of any kind of critique of capitalism. In TBT the Greens outline their "vision of a country where human needs are met without damage to the other species that share the earth with us." They argue that "Government, citizens and business must work together to make it happen."

 

Specific policies include: changing the way economic growth is measured in order to take account of resource depletion and environmental destruction; reduction of greenhouse gas emissions; "tax pollution more, work and enterprise less"; increase government investment in public transport; increase government investment in "pure research and the arts"; "actively promote fair, rather than so-called 'free' trade in international agreements"; tighten controls on foreign investment; and increase government support for small business through the establishment of "small business centres, new venture agencies, employment resource centres and similar organisations which provide mentoring and support for small to medium, community and cooperative enterprises." Democracy will be improved by giving local government "the power to make decisions on a wider range of issues."

 

 

Socialism and Green politics

Socialists share the Greens' concern about the destruction of the natural environment. We also seek to work cooperatively with the Greens in struggles like the GE Free campaign. But we reject completely the idea that the Greens' four key principles - ecological wisdom, social justice, non-violence, democratic decision-making - can be achieved while capitalism dominates the globe.

 

The assumption underpinning all of the Greens' policies is that a partnership between "government, citizens and business" is both possible and desirable. This completely ignores the fact that under capitalism production is organised for corporate greed and not human need. The huge inequalities that exist in the world between rich and poor are caused by the exploitation that is at the core of the capitalist system. Further, because capitalism internalises the benefits of industrial production in the form of profit, while externalising the costs in the form of environmental destruction and pollution, there is no way that the world's major environmental problems can be solved as long as capitalism continues to exist.

 

Nothing in the Greens' policies addresses the fact that tinkering with the electoral system and the legislative framework for local government will do little to seriously increase the amount of influence that citizens can exert over government. Even if they were implemented the Greens policies would do little to seriously reverse the neoliberal policy agenda that has made the rich much richer, and most of us poorer. In particular, the Greens, unlike the Alliance, are not committed to increasing taxes on big business and high income earners.

 

Even worse, most of the "eco-taxes" proposed by the Greens, such as the introduction of carbon tax on petrol, coal and gas, will actually hit the poor hardest. Consumption taxes like this are unfair because the poorer you are, the higher the proportion of your income that you spend on consumption rather than saving and investment. In contrast, the rich can usually find ways of avoiding these taxes. If the Greens were serious about using the tax system to create a more equal and environmentally sustainable society, they would increase the taxation of corporate profits instead of increasing the amount of consumption tax paid by workers and the poor.

 

For these reasons, amongst others, we argue that if you really are concerned about the destruction of the natural environment, social justice and democracy, the place to be is in the International Socialists fighting for a democratic and environmentally sustainable socialist alternative to capitalism.