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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 preexisting 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.
