Social Movements in Global Politics by David West

Author:David West
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Wiley

5.5 Controversies and Critique

Environmental movements have certainly achieved some limited successes at the levels of consciousness, institutional reform and government regulation. With so far only minority support, green political parties have not yet achieved government except in coalition, usually with parties from the social democratic left. Prominent examples are green parties in Germany and Australia. As coalition partners, green parties have achieved some worthwhile reforms and policies: support for green energy, restrictions on carbon emissions, environmental protections and so on. But green parties have not yet reached levels of support required for permanent transformation of industrial society. At the same time, pressure from environmental and green movements has encouraged other political parties to adopt some environmental reforms. But these measures fall far short of what is required to ensure a healthy environment and flourishing human population. This failure is particularly obvious in the case of global warming, where international agreements have proved elusive or, when achieved, inadequate. There is a variety of diagnoses of this relative failure.

The ecological movement is accused of lacking an adequate theory of transition that would parallel the explanatory scope of scientific socialism. Despite (or perhaps because of) the closeness of radical ecology to revolutionary socialism, critics on the left argue that only socialism guarantees ecological survival and that only the strategic power of the working class as traditional agent of socialist revolution can ensure that transformation. But if the goals of the ecology movement depend on the success of revolutionary socialism, then its prospects are poor indeed. There are certainly some examples of working-class and trade union support for environmental campaigns and measures. The ‘green bans’ are a significant example in Australia.32 Movements such as Chipko and the Zapatistas in developing countries demonstrate that ecological policies are sometimes compatible with economic goals.33 There is no doubt as well that working-class support would be a great advantage to the environmental movement. But more often there has been conflict between environmentalists, workers and their trade union representatives. Workers in mining, forestry and nuclear power understandably oppose environmental measures that are seen to threaten jobs. The support of working-class people, who represent the majority of the population by most definitions, is essential; it is less obvious that the working class will be significantly involved in their role or identity as workers.

If green ideology is to gain more widespread support, it must find a broadly persuasive answer to issues of distribution and social justice. As critics point out, there are in fact materialist and anti-materialist, universalist and conflictual or zero-sum aspects to all forms of politics, both ecological and non-ecological. Socialists would argue that everyone will benefit from a less exploitative, less conflictual and less alienated society. Feminists and anti-racists can claim that, although men and dominant ethnic groups might lose some benefits as a result of greater social equality, they would gain emotionally and morally. That case is even stronger in the case of prejudice against sexual minorities, which benefits no one, except perhaps the psychologically insecure. Conversely, ecological politics is not entirely either anti-materialist or universalist and non-conflictual.

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