Oldal 136 [136]
134 | Tue PuicosoPuy or Eco-Pozrrics
medaires, intermediary bodies.”!*! On them is built the strategy of The
Third Way, which requires decentralisation, the ending of monopolies,
the limitation of state intervention and the control of the markets by
local communities. He also recommends the widespread sharing of
property, the ,,...development of new, non-proletarian forms of industry,
reduction of all dimensions and conditions to the human mean;
elimination of over-complicated methods of organization, specialization
and division of labour.”'*?
I believe that the writings of Röpke (and Hungarian authors like
László Németh or István Bibó sharing similar views) can still prove
instructive for ecological politics as it seeks its own way — even if,
unsurprisingly, they too proved more inventive in criticising the pre¬
existing than in creating a positive program. They recognised the
importance of a third factor, the self-regulation of communities, besides
state force and market mechanisms. Yet eventually they still arrived
either at a more democratic socialism reconciled with the principle of
private property or in the footsteps of Ropke’s conservative liberalism,
at the capitalism of industrious small business entrepreneurs, “...in a
society in which the greatest possible number of people leads a life based
on private property and a self-chosen occupation, a life that gives them
inward and as much as possible, outward independence, which enables
them to be really free.”
In effect, they were struggling with the same dilemma which the
Greens were unable to avoid either. Left-wingers still condemn free
market capitalism and take the freedom of the individual under their
wing in the same breath. Meanwhile, conservatives dream of a capitalism
flourishing within the framework of an organic community. They do
not like to acknowledge that it was the “organic” logic of capitalism that
destroyed these communities and which led to the concentration of
profit, state power and information.
‘These are tricky questions not only for the third way, but for current
ecological politics as well. How can one justify a politics which lends
support to private enterprise and the local market but rejects their
spontaneous development, corporate giants and the world market? First
of all, it is worth clarifying that the difference between private property
and corporate empire is one of quality, not quantity. The moral
121 Rôpke, Ibid. p.85. Corps intermedaires: Robert Nisbet also appeals to the concept
derived from Montesquieu in his book Conservativism: Dream and Reality.
2 Ibid. p.179.
23° Ibid. p.178.