Oldal 138 [138]
136 I THE PHirosorny or Eco-PoLıtics
themselves from the remit of market conditions. At the same time,
private ownership of the means of husbandry seems inseparable from
the principle of personal responsibility and autonomy. And since the
individuals, enterprises or cooperatives engaging in business have to
communicate with each other somehow, it is better for them to be able
to do it freely, so long as they keep the rules that bind everyone, than
to do so on command, according to a unified plan. ‘Therefore, market
exchange cannot be rejected, unless we have a custom or sacred tradition
that every participant follows out of inner conviction (without
regulations). The democratic deliberation that occurs with the
participation of those involved (employees, consumers, locals)
supplements — or if needs be, overrides, but never rules out — the
perspectives of market interests and bureaucratic expertise. Its task is
rather to counterbalance the excessive power of the impersonal
mechanisms of compulsion (state, market, information systems).
Ecological politics should therefore take a stand beside free private
enterprise, voluntary association and market exchange regulated by the
affected communities. It can appeal to these, i.e., the defence of local
markets — in defence of local entrepreneurs and employees as much as
of natural resources, in firmly rejecting all the artifices of corporate
empires, financial networks and supra-national bureaucracies to limit
or evade the sovereignty of (necessarily local) political communities.
Strengthening local autonomies does not mean questioning the right to
exist of the national and supranational political level: in the age of global
interdependence, the reliable, coordinated operation of the larger units
is essential.
In my opinion, the debate of globalists and localists is based on two
misunderstandings. On the one hand, local autonomies not only do not
weaken the state’s ability to act; they in fact strengthen it. On the other,
the worldwide cooperation needed for addressing global problems, if it
is even possible, will be realised through the cooperation of states, not
above their heads. Ecopolitics does not want to dismantle the institutions
that hold society together, but to build them, i.e., place them on a firmer
foundation. ‘The solid foundation is this: individual responsibility, mutual
solidarity and the self-regulation of communities. The state is either built
bottom-up, as the community of communities or it becomes a tyrannical
power that supresses its subjects. It is clear that the same applies to
international and supranational organisations as well, if they attain
political power, with the difference that exercising social control over
them is practically impossible.