Murray Bookchin and Janet Biehl
A Critique of the Draft Program of the Left Green Network
Editors note: The Left Green Network is in the process of writing, developing
and debating its program. The draft proposal for the program was published in
the April/May 1991 issue of the Network's organizing bulletin, Left Green Notes,
number 7. The following critique was written in response to that program. The
proposed program will be debated at the upcoming continental conference of the
Network, over the July 4 weekend in Chicago, Illinois. To receive a copy of the
draft program, and/or information about the continental conference, please write
to the Social Ecology Project at the masthead address, or to the Left Green
Network, P.O. Box 5566, Burlington, Vermont 05402.
The proposed Left Green Network program, as it was published in Left Green
Notes, is very much at odds with itself. Lacking coherence, it mixes high-minded
revolutionary rhetoric with pragmatic, often blatant forms of social
engineering, leaving the thinking reader confused as to its essential intentions
and goals. The "strategy" section of the proposed program, for example, states
that the Left Green Network "refus[es] to take responsibility for the impossible
task of making an irrational system rational," a formulation with which we
certainly agree, having emphasized it in our own statements. The proposed
program also defines the Left Green Network as a "fundamental opposition" and
defines Left Greens as social ecologists. Splendid! This is very much to the
good. The same is true for the brief explanation of libertarian municipalism and
similar broad views.
But often quite suddenly the reader then encounters concrete demands for
"reconstruction" that are little more than liberal in character. In some of its
most far-reaching sections, the proposed program presents Left Greens as
fundamentally antihierarchical and antistatist, yet ironically, many of its
planks presuppose the very existence of the nation-state that it is committed to
abolishing. Similarly, the proposed program presents Left Greens as
anticapitalist, but some of its key demands can easily be satisfied within the
very capitalistic system it so forcefully opposes. In what follows, we shall
single out some of the more important - at times, even absurd - errors that we
believe Left Greens should carefully consider in altering the proposed program
or in developing a new one.
Integrate the Hierarchy?
"The various forms of hierarchy and domination that permeate our society,"
the proposed program reads, "are integrated by two overarching institutions
today: the capitalist economy and the nation-state If we are to have an
ecological society, capitalism and the nation-state must be uprooted and
replaced by new decentralized forms of grassroots political and economic
democracy." So far, so good. And the proposed program commendably makes an
attempt to define short-term goals (minimum program) and long-term goals
(maximum program). But unfortunately, these two types of goals become convoluted
in the text so that they are often not clearly distinguished from each other and
sometimes interlace with each other somewhat carelessly. Many of the minimum
demands, in fact, contradict the maximum program. Thus, at the same time that
the proposed program calls for the destruction of hierarchy and the state on the
one hand, it makes demands that presuppose the existence of state and hierarchy,
on the other hand.
We read under "public health service," for example, that Left Greens want
"national health service boards." Perhaps the use of the word national here was
simply an oversight. But we also read that Left Greens want to "democratize the
United Nations," of all things, and we find this formulation astonishing!
Obviously, the United Nations is actually the United Nation-States. This demand
thus amounts to tacit recognition of nation-states - presumably, as long as
their participation in the UN is "democratically" organized! We regret to say
that this formulation is silly as well as contradictory. We further read that
Left Greens want to extend "sovereignty" to native peoples. Although the
document does not say what the word sovereign means, the implication is the
establishment of a state of some kind: for example, a sovereign Native American
state, outside the existing sovereign United States, and presumably Canada and
Mexico.
But are Left Greens really committed to creating more states in this overly
nationalistic world? Left Greens, we think, should support cultural autonomy for
Native Americans as for other groups who want it, in a decentralized
confederation of all peoples. Nobody should have "sovereignty" in the
conventional sense of the term in an ecological society, or in any society for
that matter, except human beings in free, face-to-face democratic assemblies.
Today, nationalism is one of the "real banes of our era, and in the past it was
perhaps the most powerful force that fragmented the workers" movement (as
witness the national divisions within the Socialist International at the
beginning of World War I). The "internationalism" of the Left Greens, namely
their abhorrence of all nation-states, should be one of their theoretical
hallmarks, whether they are dealing with a minimum or maximum program. This
point cannot be stressed too emphatically.
To continue: The proposed program calls for "genuine representative
democracy" - but only a statist mentality would not see that "representative
democracy" is an oxymoron. Have discussions of the difference between democracy
and representation not filled a library of volumes? Still further, we read that
Left Greens think that "if a woman is a manager, she should be called a manager
and paid accordingly, rather than called an executive secretary and paid much
less." Really! In other words, the proposed program thinks that Left Greens want
to call women by their appropriate ranks in a bourgeois status hierarchy, lest
women not get due recognition of their place in it or due remuneration.
Presumably, if Left Greens accept this document, it means that they would like
their hierarchies to be very clear-cut and people in different ranks to be paid
according to their hierarchical status. Come now! Much as we believe that people
are discriminated against in their jobs, we shall show that this is not a
problem intrinsic to capitalism as such, and a great deal can be said about the
nature of work and its remuneration today. However well intended this demand may
be, as it stands, it basically presupposes the very hierarchy that other parts
of the document claim Left Greens are trying to eliminate. Would Left Greens
advocate women generals, too, with equal pay, as an emancipatory step? Or that
women should aspire for titular and remunerative "equality" in a managerial
status system? Such demands reveal a traditionally economistic bias in which
equality of pay becomes so important that it tends to override the serious
effects of hierarchical structures and ways of thinking. In seeking equal pay
for equal work, the proposed program unconsciously absorbs the hierarchical
structures and titles that have always been so oppressive in human history.
Further instances of an implicit acceptance of hierarchy and/or the state
permeate the proposed program: Independent politics is defined as independence
of the Democratic and Republican parties. (Independence of the Canadian NDP, we
think, should also be emphasized, as well as independence of the Institutional
Revolutionary party in Mexico, the repellent claimant to the traditions of the
Mexican Revolution.) But this very narrow definition of the term independent
politics implies that a third party in the United States might be acceptable to
Left Greens, as long as it is not one of the mainstream parties. "Independent
politics" of this kind could give Left Greens carte blanche to run for
statewide, provincial, and national office. We would like to think that Left
Greens are trying to establish an independent movement, one that has no parallel
or equal on the present political horizon. The Left Greens, we would like to
think, are trying to reflect an entirely new outlook toward politics, freedom,
and ecological problems - indeed, a new outlook toward the natural world itself
- not simply a collection of programmatic planks that can be matched up with,
contrasted with, or melded with those of other parties and movements. We believe
that the term independent politics should be defined more broadly to include a
"new politics" and a commitment to free citizens, independent of the
nation-state and its institutions, as well as independent of all parties.
We further read that Left Greens want to "dismantle the national security
state apparatus." But if the Left Greens want to dismantle the state, of which
this apparatus is a major part, why single out the "natural security state
apparatus," as if it had a life apart from the state? Either this passage is
redundant, or it implies that Left Greens would tolerate the existence of other
parts of the state, such as its vast bureaucracies, its judicial, legislative,
and executive institutions, and the like. Similarly, the demand to "cut the
Pentagon budget by 95 percent" implies that Left Greens are prepared to accept
at least the existence of a Pentagon, ...
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