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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.
