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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.
