Caroline Lucas described the 2010 Westminster manifesto as "left-wing plus", an apt description of a boldly redistributive platform, causing some to compare the party to a watermelon: green on the outside but deep red where it matters.
We should indeed view our party's contribution in essentially materialist terms, concerned firstly with the most sustainable solution to the basic economic problem of scarce resources and (supposedly) limitless demand. What's more, if we lose sight of the materialist grounds of politics there is the danger of becoming dangerously authoritarian or quixotic and irrelevant.
And I would add that, if we are socialists, we should be quite unrecognisable as such to the rhetoricians of class struggle, of big, centralised statism, and of bureaucratic unionism. We should not be a party that despises markets, neither should we deny the elegance of the price mechanism, even if we are rightly suspicious of their use in capitalist quasi-libertarianism. In fact, it is perfectly possible to articulate our aspirations in libertarian terms, because there is nothing neutral or natural about the disconnect of people from land, of wealth from the production of resources. Any interventions to restore this link could justifiably be viewed in terms of responding to market failure.
Importantly the shared core of Green politics is actually quite simple: a belief in entropy, a belief that growth is far from an adequate indicator of prosperity, that we now have to refuse to keep growing and growing if we don't want to undermine the ability of our species to live freely and securely on planet earth. Is this socialist? Well it's anti-capitalist, but I'd not like to go much further than that. The manifesto was exciting precisely because it took such a broad view of freedom, understanding that sanctifying economic growth in a world governed by entropy is a system of collective masochism in which the poorest suffer first.
Of course, the Green Party should be a place wherein we find space for the conversations that are not being had elsewhere, about the effective hierarchy of rights, about personhood (animal rights, abortion, bioethics), about the role of nations and supranationalism in a world that needs localism more than ever.
However any policy positions in these areas shouldn't define us as much as our profoundly countercultural economic position. Beyond that, our other distinctive could be hospitality to a genuine plurality of views.
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Did you write this for a particular context (other than here)?
Yes and no. It's an issue that's been bugging me a bit this week. I'm hoping I can get a conversation going with various Green friends on here and see how my unscientific sample views the 'core' of Green.
‘The Green Party not left not right – out in front’ 1990s Green party newsletter.
I can’t find the words socialist or socialism once in the Green manifesto, sorry if I missed it. The anti capitalist line is some what restrained by the use of the Vince Cable term – Casino Capitalism.
Green politics should transcended the old prejudices of right and left and take a holistic view of society, individuals and humanity; and their place on the planet.
However I am convinced that the Green Party and to a certain extent green politics has been captured of by an unreformed and unelectable hard left. Which is why I moved (like Norman Baker) from Green to Liberal.
There are two dimesnions to this. First is how to get from here to where we need to me - the locally based light resource use future. We will need a strong state to enable that move in the face of global capitalism and the forces therein. That puts us in the Red corner - at least for the transition.
But the end result is surely neither Red nor Blue .....
Thanks Debra. Don't you think LVT would be a sufficient leg-up in many ways, alongside things like heavy taxation of unproductive high stakes speculation and so on? Though these are quite robust interventions which effectively change the rules of the game, they don't require heavier, more centralised bureaucracy. I worry that if we pursued the latter too many people would benefit from a centralised status quo to pursue the second stage of localism.
Is there no room for Schumacher in the modern Green Party.
I sure hope so Anon.
If you are going to massively raise taxes, why not spend it on fixing environmental problems. Rather than redistribution - i.e. making sure more people can afford Sky sports.
It might help resolve some of these questions of what the Green Party's core ideology is, if you could prioritise the challenges we face in this way.
Joe - The two seem interconnected. Poverty is one of the great causes (as well as results) of environmental degradation. However, you're right that this doesn't apply as directly to the kind of "poverty" that means I can't afford to watch Sky sports (BTW, I can't afford to watch Sky sports for reasons that are not limited to economic!). Nonetheless, if, for ecological reasons, you're going to question the whole system of endless economic growth as basic operating paradigm, then the question of distribution will inevitably raise its head. The true opiate of the masses is the promise of trickle down wealth (Sky sports!). Monbiot had a very interesting piece on this back in December. Here is the relevant bit:
"Hanging over everything discussed here is the theme that dare not speak its name, always present but never mentioned. Economic growth is the magic formula which allows our conflicts to remain unresolved. While economies grow, social justice is unnecessary, as lives can be improved without redistribution. While economies grow, people need not confront their elites. While economies grow, we can keep buying our way out of trouble. But, like the bankers, we stave off trouble today only by multiplying it tomorrow."
Bryon
"The two seem interconnected. Poverty is one of the great causes (as well as results) of environmental degradation."
Is that true? If so, then is prosperity/growth one of the solutions to environmental degradation?
If the point of redistribution is to sweeten the pill of the end of growth for the poor (and further embitter it for the rest) you could still wait until we are closer to the end of growth before redistributing, and spend in the present on environmental problems.
As it is, this talk of paradigm shift just seems to be a way of avoiding picking your priorities.
But the manifesto didn't seem anti-growth to me. You don't use the term New Deal, Green or otherwise unless you intend to boost the economy.
So if you're not stopping growth, and not spending these extra taxes on tackling environmental problems, then it seems you're neither doing less to cause less harm (the point of no growth) nor fixing the consequences of doing more (which would be my preference).
Thanks for your comments Joe, Byron.
I would argue that the Greens are (ultimately at least) anti-growth. Pat Harvie's excellent interview on Newsnight Scotland basically framed the whole of Green politics as an alternative economic vision, an analysis beyond growth. The Basic Economic Problem (scarce resources vs. infinite demand) is fundamentally and environmental problem, but the environment is treated as a given. 'Ceteris paribus' is the economist's favourite bit of Latin.
While the manifesto is clearly for growth in some sectors, it is against the net growth of the economy. It's like the old light bulb example: the economy grows if people continue to buy incandescent light bulbs; a huge boom in the energy-saving light bulb sector will cause the economy to shrink because there's less throughput of goods, services and money.
Now if the destination is zero or negative growth, redistribution seems critical to me. Not only does sustainable living require time, the transition requires considerable disposable income. Perhaps fundamentally, poverty forces short-term economic decisions, even against one's own interests and certainly against those of society. Returning to light bulbs (!), when you have no money, do you buy an energy-saving light bulb that will save you several times the amount of money, or the cheapest light bulb available?
I don't agree that buying a CF lightbulb instead of a tungsten filament one shrinks the economy - because the money I save I will spend on something else.
It would only shrink the economy if I reduced my hours and therefore my earnings by the amount saved. (And nobody was hired to replace that lost productivity.)
Some people do want to reduce their hours and they should be free to do so. But some want to increase their hours, or skills, or in some other way earn more. Socialists and I will support them in that, and Greens won't. Because you seem to be suggesting that the best way to tackle the environmental challenges we face, is to stay in bed longer and generally do less work - not less of specifically damaging things but less work in general.
No, not at all. The light bulb point simply hints that the ad infinitum increase in the quantity of throughput is impossible when our inputs are in fact finite and our waste 'sink' is intimately related to it. Herman Daly's stuff on this is pretty solid.
Meanwhile, you equate work with the production of surplus, the only alternative to which is staying in bed! Pretty depressing view of life. Or might we be misrepresenting each other's views a little?
...but 2% growth represents a 2% increase in value this year - and hopefully next etc - not an infinite increase in quantity.
That's 2% not infinite.
And value not quantity.
Do I "equate work with the production of surplus"? I hadn't noticed. I'm not even sure what surplus is in this context. Does this matter? But by all means interpret my point as being narrowly about economic work, or about work that is useful to other people, if you like. Then any profounder sense of what work is needn't muddy the waters.
Point taken on value, to an extent, and the internalisation of environmental externalities could bring the price mechanism to bear on undesirable growth. But it would surely be incorrect to suggest that capital can be generated ex nihilo, that resources aren't 'in the background'. Capital's function ultimately relates to its ability to turn resources into products. All I'm asserting (I think) is the relevance of the Second Law of Thermodynamics to economics.
'Work', meanwhile, probably needs to be kept separate from labour, which we can sell thereby (often) reducing the intensity of our relationship with what we produce. This is perfectly legitimate, but I'm not sure it equals work.
Anyway, I'd be interested in your thoughts about Land Value Taxation. My sense is that LVT could address some of the core problems with our dissociation from what we produce, and from the land resource which makes it possible to produce.
Not sure what you mean again. Capital goods are produced in much the same way as consumer goods. Or "Capital" can be a description of a particular use of money, i.e. of labour, goods, services, etc.
The 2nd Law of Thermodynamics applies to isolated systems, which this planet isn't. (It gets sunlight.)
LVT is a good idea because of the three factors of production: land, labour and capital, land is currently undertaxed, which considering it is the one that they aren't making any more anyway, is a missed opportunity that results in higher than necessary taxes on labour and capital, to the detriment of standards of living and growth.
I don't see LVT doing what you suggest it does, and it is unclear why greens ever supported LVT, other than it being a good radical (but liberal) idea outside the mainstream.
LVT seems to do more than simply liberate people from income disincentives. It internalises an elephant-in-the-room externality, namely the use of a particular parcel of land to the exclusion of everyone else. This is a social cost which, thus internalised, asserts our shared claim to land, ascribing a monetary value to it which can be redistributed on the basis of it belonging to everyone (more justifiably than with income?), and seems to me to be a statement of the importance of incorporating the scarcity (i.e. value) of much of the environment into economic decision-making, notwithstanding your thermodynamics quibble!
[On capital, I was just making the point that one can't escape the depletion of natural resources simply by focusing on the generation of capital (e.g. but not limited to capital goods) to generate growth.]
Yes I guess LVT does something like that. It's not so clear whether the outcome would be better for the environment or not, but it would be more economically efficient, so that is good.
On the "depletion of natural resources" I would observe that few resources - basically fossil fuels, uranium and endangered species - are non-renewable. The rest are renewable and basically impossible to deplete. Metals, for example constitute most of the mass of the planet (after oxygen and silicon), and throwing metal away doesn't actually change this at all.
And not all production has any significant resource input. Education, art, science and football are all about people and ideas.
So it seems to me that we very much can escape the depletion of natural resources.
On the "depletion of natural resources" I would observe that few resources - basically fossil fuels, uranium and endangered species - are non-renewable. The rest are renewable and basically impossible to deplete.
Fossil fuels are renewable. It just takes a few hundred million years. :-)
And this illustrates a problem with your point. Renewable resources, like arable soil, fish stocks or fresh water, can be depleted by being used faster than they are naturally renewed. Soil, water and fish (amongst various other resources) are in fact being depleted and constitute some of the most pressing ecological problems we currently face.
I disagree that those problems are particularly pressing.
Fresh water in this country is spectacularly cheap and plentiful. Most houses don't even have it metered - that is how cheap and plentiful it is. I daresay there will be some adaptation to do in future, but we can learn any lessons needed from other countries with less fresh water.
Overfishing means we get less fish than we could extract from the seas if we didn't overfish. A minor tragedy (of the commons) for the fishing industry and a minor tragedy for our diets, but pressing? No more than ever.
Arable soil, too, is not the limiting factor for food production in this country, rather it is matters of cost, EU subsidy, and comparative disadvantage.
Sure, these could become problems - so could many other things. And in other countries things may be different. But lets get our house in order - and decarbonising our energy would on its own more or less do that.
Joe - None of those three problems are minor. I was talking about global issues, not merely things that are currently affecting the UK. But even if you want to take a more parochial view, then the situation is serious.
Water resources in the UK are not infinite and access to water is one of significant sources of international tension, contributing significantly to the problems in Israel/Palestine, with all kinds of flow-on effects on the UK (not to mention being an important factor in relations between India/Pakistan, US/Mexico, Turkey/Iraq, Jordan/Israel, and various other places). In some instances, UK citizens contribute to these problems through purchasing imports with a large amount of embodied water use.
Soil loss within the UK may be somewhat marginal (approximately 2.2 million tonnes of topsoil lost annually, affecting 17% of arable land, costing only a few hundred million pounds a year), nonetheless, soil depletion overseas and its effects on agricultural yields also affects the UK, considering that the UK only grows about 60% of its own food. Once again, environmental degradation is being outsourced where UK consumers purchase food grown using techniques that contribute to soil loss.
As for overfishing, fish stocks in the North Sea are at around 4% of their historic levels and the annual total catch for England+Wales is about 25% of what it was in the 1880s, despite using more than four times the energy. Major UN reports suggest that overfishing means that over three quarters of global fish stocks have collapsed or are under significant threat of collapse, and that by 2050, all commercially viable fisheries will be depleted.
These and various other renewable resources are not infinite, and no economic plan is feasible if it ignores this finite resource base.
Parts of England weeks away from drought.
We seem to be talking slightly at cross purposes here - I'm not, for example, defending overfishing. But it seems odd to try to limit parts of the economy that don't depend on fish, for the sake of the fish.
And there is no "economic plan" that ignores all these things. But we do, rightly, have policies to encourage investment and innovation, so providing more and better useful goods and services.
If any particular product does more harm than good, then we should do something about it, whether by regulation, by internalising externalities, or whatever. But it helps nothing to indiscriminately oppose investment and innovation.
But it seems odd to try to limit parts of the economy that don't depend on fish, for the sake of the fish.
Why is this odd? First, if we are causing massive damage to the oceans (through overfishing, pollution, acidification, nutrient run-off, oceanic warming and so on) on a scale that threats the viability of all kinds of ecosystems, then it is not just the fishing industry or the variety in our diets that is going to suffer. Preserving a living ocean is a worthwhile investment of our energy for all kinds of reasons (including but not limited to the stability of communities and nations with deep economic and cultural dependence on fishing).
Second, this issue is bigger than fish and the oceans. We need to join some of the dots between e.g. dying oceans, soil loss, water stress, biodiversity decline, climate change, fossil fuel dependence, agricultural production, social stability and the growth imperative of contemporary consumerism. There is a pattern of degradation throughout many or most of the living systems of the planet. And these negative effects are caused largely by human activity. Our economy is a wholly own subsidiary of the environment. If we undermine the ecological basis of our productivity, there is no economy worth saving.
There is a physical limit to the provision of useful goods. More and more is not always the best course to pursue, since it is leading to a situation where it becomes increasingly more difficult for many to secure the basic conditions of common life.
But we do, rightly, have policies to encourage investment and innovation, so providing more and better useful goods and services.
We don't simply encourage investment and innovation (which are indeed generally good things), we also have policies that encourage ever-increasing consumption (and so production) of physical goods. In turn this places an ever-increasing burden on the ability of natural ecosystems to cope.
I was a little sloppy to call this an "economic plan". I was referring to the system in which living standards are measured by economic activity and in which we are terrified of GDP stagnating or falling. That is a recipe for an ongoing and increasing ecological disaster (which is ultimately also an economic and social disaster).
Yes, GDP measures more than the production and consumption of physical goods since value is not the same as physical goods, but at the moment they are very closely correlated in the UK and most developed nations. Not all economic activity has equal ecological effect, but I'm not aware of any economy that has grown significantly for a sustained period without also increasing its consumption of resources.
So more precisely, the issue is not a growth economy per se. But in practice there is indeed a deep problem with a growth economy geared to the ever greater exploitation of natural resources (at rates beyond what is renewable).
However, this goes significantly beyond the point I first raised, namely, that even "renewable" resources can be depleted by over-consumption. Do you still stand by your claim that The rest are renewable and basically impossible to deplete?
Thanks both for continuing the conversation while I attempted to meet a deadline!
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