Oldal 121 [121]
OCR
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 antiindividualist 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.
