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What can I hope for (from politics)? 1119
such, an intrinsic ethical value... I choose the term conviviality to
designate the opposite of industrial productivity. Í intend it to mean
autonomous and creative intercourse among persons and the intercourse
of persons with their environment." The Convivialist Manifesto, the
statement of dependence published by notable French intellectuals in
2013, effectively echoes these thoughts, without, however, giving
precision to the content of the new community-based political
philosophy.
The Greens’ political program was first connected with the principle
of spontaneous self-organisation and unruled community by Murray
Bookchin, the father of social ecology. Besides the classics of anarchism,
Bookchin appeals to Aristotle and advises the socialist left to finally
replace the economy-centred Marxist ideology with Aristotle’s
community-centred views. Other thinkers were inspired by
communitarian authors such as Charles Taylor or Alasdair MacIntyre,
who distanced themselves from the left — as the passionate adherents of
which they started their careers — through the simultaneously anti¬
individualist and anti-collectivist approach to the relation of individual
and community.
But whether they proclaim themselves anarchist or conservative, the
communitarian Greens share the conviction that with our liberty we
can live only as members of communities which exercise free decision
over their own fate. On the one hand, they think that the individual
cannot be free independently of his/her companions, in the political
sense of the word, but rather only in his/her relations with his/her
companions, as part of a community where the members mutually
recognise and assist one another’s liberty. On the other hand, they
assume that such communities are capable of reaching an agreement on
their common goals and that better decisions will arise from the
unforced dialogue of the many convictions than if distant authorities or
the considerations of market profitability were to decide.
However, the communitarians have to contend with notable
objections. Firstly, it is common knowledge that there is no agreement
among people. Secondly, let there not be, for if there is, it is due to the
groups who possess the privilege of knowledge and the means of
influencing opinion forcing their preferences on others. Thirdly, public
agreement has fundamentally nothing to do with truth. (However, I
would point out that philosophers from Plato until today mostly agree
12 Tvan Illich: Tools for Conviviality, p.24. Harper & Row, New York, 1973.