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144 | Tue Puitosopuy or Eco-Po.itics voluntary agreement (and reasonable non-agreement). ‘This program, which our authors previously characterised with the expressions selforganisation, self-regulation, conviviality and deliberation, is not at all new. It is well-known from the lives of the new types of communities which formed at least as indispensable a role around the development of modern civic society as the state and the market. It is also true, however, that dependence on our communities and its concomitant, the demand of agreement, can be just as cruel a tyrant towards the individual, if not more so, than the order of the state or the compulsion of economic efficiency. It is clear that only the balance of these three forces has any promise of tolerable conditions for man, insofar as they relativise and neutralise each other. Though one cannot be too careful with drawing biological parallels when examining social phenomena, it can be observed that the balance of processes in living systems is never maintained by a single regulatory system. The more complicated a system is and the more achievements it is capable of, the more complex its regulation and the more complicated the relation of the regulatory subsystems to one another. What can be said for sure is that this ceaselessly collapsing dynamic balance — the essence of self-organisation — can only be restored as long as the size of the organisation fits the nature of the association. This is why we emphasised that the ecological turn in politics means, above all, the restoration of the human scale of things, i.e., decentralisation in all areas of life. It encourages us to follow patterns formed in the local communities fighting for their self-determination. To quote from Simone Weil’s notebook once more: After the collapse of our civilization there must be one of two things: either the whole of it will perish like the ancient civilizations, or it will adopt itself to a decentralized world. It rests with us, not to break up the centralization (for it automatically goes on increasing like a snowball until the catastrophe comes), but to prepare to the future." 136 Jhid. p.177.
