Oldal 134 [134]
OCR
132 I THE PHirosorny oF Eco-PoLirics the radical left searches for the revolutionary class it could lead but makes do with repressed minorities, the dissatisfied masses join rightwing populist movements or take out their frustration in manufactured identity-political hysteria. No positive program or social basis can be tied to being left-wing anymore. It survives as an intellectual martial art in the universities of the Western world, as long as it can find a suitable right-wing to distance itself from. Ecological considerations draw the Greens towards a program more radical than that of the left: the just distribution of goods and rights no longer suffices. They also know that the appropriation of the appropriators, as foretold by Marx, would not solve anything. They must reject the whole system of industrial mass societies built upon the increase of production and the “scientific” organisation of society. Above all, they must reject the inhumanity that has long lain hidden within even the most reasonable forms of political centralisation — which, let us admit, the socialist and communist left had no intention of doing. Ecological politics sees the solution in localisation, the rethinking of the goals of the good life, the revolution of eco-friendly technologies and the reexamination of modernity’s view of man and nature — by no means from anti-modern motives. They wish to create the conditions for all this by restoring the human scale of things. This cannot happen without ensuring the self-regulation of communities, i.e., the development of grassroots power structures, because this alone makes possible the responsible participation of those concerned in decision-making. ‘This, if I am not mistaken, is neither a specifically left-wing nor a right-wing program. Conservatives and freethinkers alike can boldly call it their own; this is made more difficult by the left-wing label attached to it. It cannot be repeated often enough that ecopolitics does not revolve around “environmental” issues. Rather, it seeks a way out of a civilisational crisis. It moves beyond the age of politicising that pits against each other the “liberal” perspective of freedom, the “socialist” perspective of equality/justice and the “conservative” perspective of fraternity/community. It focuses on the connection between the three fundamental Enlightenment-era principles in the conviction that they refer to three complementary sub-systems of social homeostasis, which can only ensure the comparatively balanced — sustainable — functioning of the system together. If any of the three, be it the market-individualist, the bureaucratic-centralist or the consensual-solidarist, attain predominance, the result is an oppressive force on the individual. Sooner or later, it will damage the fabric of society irreparably.
