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What can I hope for (from politics)? 1137
‘The decentralisation of hierarchically built systems that far surpass
the human scale is an existential question for ecological politics. Global
interdependence and communication networks accessible from anywhere
by no means contradict the aim of localisation; quite the contrary. The
rapid development of telecommunications technologies at once makes
possible and superfluous the centralisation of power; in reality it
decidedly favours connections based on purely horizontal contact
between local communities. It has been proven countless times that
those immediately affected by the issues of their village/town, vocation
or workplace are more capable of evaluating and solving these than the
bureaucracy operating above their heads. Experts’ competence and
problem-solving capacity usually decreases in direct proportion with
distance in the social sphere. (Except, of course, the solution of problems
created by the technocratic mentality itself to justify the need for
centralisation and experts.)
The importance of local autonomies and personal responsibility is
emphasised just as strongly by the Anglo-Saxon conservative tradition
from Edmund Burke to Alasdair MacIntyre as by members of the
radical new left such as Cornelius Castoriadis or Murray Bookchin. The
attraction to human-scale communities was a common characteristic of
the extremely varied counter-culture that developed in the sixties and
seventies, which formed the source of ecological thought. As is usually
the case, some mentioned the kinship to anarchism, others to
conservatism. Some claimed outright that ecological politics begin where
left and right cannot offer authentic alternatives for the situation and
therefore political philosophy should instead be differentiated according
to the position taken on the issue of centralisation and decentralisation
on the one hand (on a scale of “state strength”) and the relation of
individual and community on the other.!? The Greens, being mostly in
favour of decentralisation, would naturally be drawn to the views of the
anarchist left and distance themselves from the (state)socialist left. Their
take a similar approach to the conservatives: they oppose the
authoritarian conservatives, especially if the order these support is the
current order of industrial mass society. At the same time, their views
closely resemble those of the communitarian conservatives, who protect
the traditional diversity of ways of life and the principle of organic
26 András Lányi: Az ökológia mint politikai filozófia. (Ecology as Political Philosophy) In
András Lányi: Elképzelt közösségeim (My Imagined Communities), Scolar, Budapest, 2016.