My knowledge of
the Transition Town Movement (TTM) has until now been meager. So I am very
thankful to Esther and Samuel for providing us with so much information on it
and pointing out the aspects that require sympathetic criticism. Here is the
link:
In the 1980s, I was enabled by the United
Nations University (Tokyo) to make a participatory research study of the (at
that time) New Social Movements (NSM) in West Germany plus a study of the
origin, development and “end” of the German green party Die Grünen.* I guess it might be useful for all
concerned to hear what thoughts went through my head – 30 years later – while
and after reading Esther and Samuel’s solid paper.
I do not want to mention the points with
which I concur. So below I am making some other points, only those, which have
not been made in the paper and which I consider to be important for developing
a strategy
for bringing about the changes we want. They are based on my studies as well as
experience both in India and Germany, both as an activist and as participant in
discussions.
Problems with the goal
1. Discussions on strategy presuppose that the participants at least
roughly agree on the goals that are
to be attained by means of the strategy.
The goal of the TTM is to make society resilient against the shocks that are
coming and are partly ongoing. Specifically mentioned are peak oil, global
climate change, and global financial and
economic crisis. Many other less important issues have been mentioned
too: localization, social justice, solidarity, inclusiveness etc. They are
goals as well as means to attain the main goal. Esther & Sam’s paper shows
how problematic the resilience discourse is. The TTM wants to make society
resilient, in order that it does not totally break down. The goal is not to
change the present social system that not only has caused the shock-like
problems the TTM is addressing but is also totally inadequate for the purpose.
It is, moreover, an unjust social system. That is too little and too bad. I
contend that nothing less than a fundamentally new social system must replace
the existing one, so that the shocks in question can be successfully weathered.
That means, in short, movements like the
TTM ought to pursue a greater goal,
which, apart from being good in
itself, is necessary to attract
people and encourage them to join it. We need not set an ideal society as our goal. An
ideal will perhaps always remain an ideal. But an acceptably good and peaceful world society is
possible and can therefore be our goal. (This naturally requires elaboration
and detailed discussion.) Very important here is the term world society. To make Totnes or even one country (England or
Germany or Italy) resilient and its society good and peaceful, and to forget
the others, would not be a great goal, but a selfish one unworthy of a big
social movement. Moreover, the efforts to achieve it would also be a futile
one. The wretched of the earth are already storming the gates of these and
similar countries in search of a safe haven. Neo-Nazis and xenophobic right
reactionary parties are already gaining ground in such countries.
Despite this criticism, I praise the TTM. It
is better than the NSM of Germany of the 1980s. The latter was a conglomeration
of several one-point movements. One of it, the ecology movement, was also a
conglomeration of various and separate one-point movements: the
anti-nuclear-energy movement, the movement against dying of forests, movement
for better air quality, movement for protecting endangered species etc.
Compared to that, the TTM has a broader spectrum of goals. That is some
progress. On the other hand, the TTM is worse than the NSM; for it seems to
avoid the subjects of consumption and economic growth, which most activists in
the NSM (particularly in the ecology movement as a whole) used to consider as
very important. But that was before the mid 1980s, when opportunists of Die Grünen started talking of the
possibility of ecologizing industrial society, i.e. capitalist industrial
society.
In Die
Grünen, a large number of leftists (including communists) from various backgrounds had sought to
combine ecological goals with their societal goals. Their ultimate vision was
some sort of an eco-socialist society (the term was also used). But they were
pushed out of the party by the opportunistic majority, who wanted the party to
become a governing party.
2. Another thing to be noted in connection with the goal-question is this:
The greatest difficulty in attracting the masses to a genuinely ecological movement is its goal itself. The ecology
movement is the only social movement that promises, if successful, a lowering
of the standard of living of all, even curtailing to some extent various
freedoms: for instance, the freedom to travel, freedom to consume luxury goods
and goods imported from far away (e.g. to eat pineapple in Norway), the freedom
to publish one’s own newspaper (there will be a scarcity of paper) and,
generally speaking, all freedoms which involve a high degree of resource
consumption. All other social movements, who assume that economic growth will
continue, promise an improvement in these respects. Indeed, for a long time,
higher wage demands of the working class movement could regularly be fulfilled.
Also their non-material demands can be fulfilled more or less easily. The
wishes of the civil rights movement can be granted, women can enjoy more
rights, gays can be given the right to marry, immigrants can be given long-term
resident permits and even communal voting rights etc. etc. But the ecology movement opposes economic
growth; what is worse, it demands economic contraction. But, although millions
of people know about the serious ecological crisis, no one has ever rioted for
austerity, as Esther and Sam write. That is also the reason that the trade
unions were opponents of die Grünen
in the latter’s early years. That is why less developed countries, especially
China and India, are vehemently refusing to commit themselves to reducing their
CO2 - emission.
3. Of course, this difficulty can be overcome by spreading illusions of
sustainable development, green growth, technological solutions to ecological
problems (e.g. renewable energies/resources), green capitalism etc. But genuine eco-activists are not (should
not be) interested in ephemeral gains in public support based on such
illusions. They must tell the ecological truth. So what can they offer to
attract more support from people. They can offer the prospect of a peaceful,
egalitarian, exploitation- and oppression-free world as compensation for a
lower standard of living. They can offer that in their good society nobody will
be involuntarily unemployed, nobody will be discriminated against on any
grounds, nobody will be tortured by the police. These too are material things.
Anybody who has suffered unemployment or insecurity, anybody who has lived in
the midst of war or civil war, anybody who has experienced the threat of being
evicted from her home or has not been able to take out a medical insurance
knows the value of these security guarantees. They will, in such a society,
also feel freer to speak out against government policy. Of course, entrepreneur
type of people, those who want to produce and sell something, anything, or
speculate with stocks and currencies in order to become rich will not be
attracted by this vision. We have to ignore them. They are being criticized
even in the present system, even by average people.
I am convinced that for achieving the goals
of genuine ecologists capitalism must be overcome and an eco-socialist society
must be built up. (For details of my argumentation see my book Eco-Socialism or Eco-Capitalism?**)
4. One very important point I missed in the program of the TTM (as
summarized by E & S) as well as in the critique thereof is the population problem. In Europe and
other rich countries of the North (including those down under), it is a common
blind spot in most discussions on the ecology crises and questions of poverty.
The reason for this is evident: Firstly, the problem does not exist any more in
these countries. And secondly, they are afraid of mentioning it lest the people
of the less developed countries (mostly black and brown to boot), where the
population is still growing, get furious. After all, even the ecologists of the
rich countries of the North, most of them, enjoy their much higher standard of
living and are not doing their best to save the planet. Bu no program for
saving the planet is convincing unless also the population problem is
addressed.
Problems with Strategy
5. I share the TTM’s view that at present not much can be expected from the
states and the ruling politicians. The latter are careerists. At present, in a
democracy of the kind we have in place, any politician will be voted out of
power if she dares to speak of the necessity of stopping economic growth, let
alone to advocate economic contraction. Even those who are not in power want to
be reelected. Politics is after all their profession. So they too would not
stand up against economic growth. The simple truth is that the great majority
of the voters are not better than the politicians. And a people gets
politicians that it deserves. But some
people must do this, i.e. tell the ecological truth. They may be criticized as
imagining themselves to be the avant-garde. But nothing will happen unless an
avant-garde takes the initiative. Such people must be free from the temptation
and/or requirement of getting their projects funded by established foundations
or government agencies, so that they remain truly free to tell the ecological
truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth. The ecological truth and the
logical and compelling proposals for
solving the problems must be widely disseminated, so that in a few years time
the intellectual and journalistic
hegemony in the sense of Gramsci can be achieved (Gramsci talked of
cultural hegemony). The activists of the TTM do not seem to be doing that, not
at the moment at least. They are victims of some illusions that they are
themselves spreading.
When the intellectual and journalistic
hegemony has been achieved, it would be manifested e.g. in sentences like this:
Yes, you are right with your ecological truths, but what can I do? I am only an
ordinary person. We could then hope that voters would not vote a politician out
of parliament if she expresses the views that genuine ecologists hold. Later we
might have grounds to hope that no matter
which politician and which party comes to power, the parliamentary majority
would not be afraid to take measures in the direction of true ecological
sustainability. This hope can be compared with the situation today. No matter
which politicians and which parties govern a country, the government will
continue to pursue neoliberal globalized capitalist policies, because this line
of economic thought gained hegemony in
the 1990s and is still holding its ground.
All this may take too much time, in which
case the collapse cannot be prevented. But an armed revolution is not possible,
because the well-paid and well-armed professional soldiers and policemen of the
ruling classes are ready to kill revolutionaries and ordinary people when
ordered. The coming collapse will probably lead to some sort of dictatorship,
most probably one of right reactionaries. They will try to tackle the problems
in their own way and with their own methods and would not care for the state of
the planet, welfare of the future generations etc. etc.
6. In contrast to my top-down strategy
of first achieving intellectual and journalistic hegemony which will hopefully
lead an increasing number of parliamentarians of the ruling parties to support
our ideas, there are also bottom-up
strategies for change. The TTM’s
strategy for building up resilience at the local level is a concrete example
thereof. But the TTM’s objective is not any systemic change. That is why it is
(it would be) easy to co-opt it. In fact, all reformist movements for change
can be easily co-opted. History is full of examples of this process. In
Germany, today, both the remnants of the NSM (the big ecological associations)
and the Party die Grünen are partners
of the ruling classes.
In the 1980s, in Germany, several communes – both rural and urban – were
founded by revolutionary young people. They lived and worked there (in the
students’ communes, however, the main activity was discussing theory and
psychological issues). Their idea was to anticipate and try out the communist society of the future. The
point I want to make here is that most of them soon failed. Moreover, most of
them were no examples of a self-reliant, self-organizing grassroots economic
unit. They were comfortably embedded in a prosperous welfare state. Many
members of the communes received transfer payments from the state. They were
not responses to any challenge.
Ted Trainer’s grassroots, self-organizing,
radical-democratic (i.e. anarchistic) communes (or communities) must however be
self-reliant, because Ted visualizes them as coming up in response to the
(impending) collapse of the state. It seems to me that Ted thinks collapse is
unavoidable. I would rather still try to prevent it through my strategy. But it
is true, mankind does not have much time left for the purpose. So it is
rational to exert ourselves at both ends, at the top as well as at the bottom,
simultaneously.
At least in our times, no commune or
community would truly be self-sufficient; we are not living and would not like
to live in the Amazon jungle. All communities would need things that they
cannot themselves produce, salt for example. So some kind of more or less
long-distance exchange must take place, and some state-like organization must
regulate exchange and maintain order. It would be good if this organization
were a socialist one. For when the collapse is there, it will be necessary to
share whatever is available. That is why it would be good to promote an eco-
socialist perspective and strengthen egalitarian thinking. These are moreover inspiring ideas, as we know from history. We should prepare ourselves for the collapse and subsequent actions. We
must also be ready with a convincing perspective and an activities plan.
7. One last point: Can individuals
as individuals do something, i.e. contribute to the project of saving the
planet and making human society better? It has often been suggested that
reducing one’s own consumption is an effective means of achieving our goal. The
great advantage of this strategy is that to do this the private person does not
need a law passed by a majority in the parliament. Nor does she need a lot of
money from parents or big donors, as most big bottom-up projects like rural
communes, eco-villages etc. do. Many sensitive eco-friendly people are indeed
practicing this non-consumption strategy; it can also be called a simple
lifestyle strategy. However, there are limits to what even a determined
non-consumptionist can do. The compulsions
arising from living in a present-day capitalist industrial society are many.
For example, one must today have a PC with internet connection in order just to
be able to communicate with relatives, friends and comrades. Even the good old
telephony inflicts a lot of damage to the environment. A person living in a
village must have a car. The one area in which a person has more scope is food
and clothing. But to forgo e.g. meat is very difficult for a westerner and to
forgo sugary snacks is very difficult for a Bengali. After all, it would not be
a happy world if people are unhappy even in such simple matters of life like
eating. Having said that, it cannot be denied that a wide-spread
non-consumption movement would surely have at least some effect on politics and
economy. Eco-activists must however refrain from nagging friends and relatives
for their eco-sins. That is the surest way to lose sympathizers. Let everybody
do what she can and hope that others would emulate her example.
*
Green-Alternative
Politics in West Germany:
Vol. I. The
New Social Movements (1993)
Vol. II, The
Greens (1994)
Both published
by The United Nations University Press (Tokyo)
**
Eco-Socialism
or Eco-Capitalism ?– A Critical Analysis of Humanity’s Fundamental Choices.
(1999). London: Zed Books.
Completed on 13.08.2014
