Now the Labour Left is stone cold dead, are the Greens the best hope for the left?

[treelover]

I don't really agree with that: if you don't have at least, a class based approach, (not a class based fetish, btw) then imo, you will prioritise things differently according to your political beliefs. In terms of the Greens and their 'prime directive' as it were to 'save the planet', you may impose green taxes which will hurt the poorest the most, something a socialist party for instance would be very wary of. That doesn't preclude the obvious compassion that Greens have for the underdog, those on low incomes, etc, just the logic of their ideology may push them in a different direction


I also think the GP in Germany supported the Harz laws, cutting benefits, though i may be wrong

Quite. In the absence of clarification, one can only guess what is meant there.

It's probably not very important except to members of parties who are wedded to that way of thinking though.

On the other hand, if you are sceptical about the whole idea of a 'vanguard' class segment, and see more potential in bringing together all of those class segments whose interest diverges from that of neo-liberal capitalism, perhaps with the idea of reconstructing civil society out of the fragments created by division of labour, then those sorts of arguments against the potential value of political phenomena like the Greens don't really carry much weight.
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[Matt S]

>Did the Greens in England/Wales or Scotland comdemn the German Greens? >We can see exactly what is meant by "unified Green Parties of the world". >Unified in defence of capitalism and imperialism.

Yes, they were condemned actually, strongly. Don't let that get in the way of your polemic though.

Matt

 

[Bernie Gunther]

I don't really agree with that: if you don't have at least, a class based approach, (not a class based fetish, btw) then imo, you will prioritise things differently according to your political beliefs. In terms of the Greens and their 'prime directive' as it were to 'save the planet', you may impose green taxes which will hurt the poorest the most, something a socialist party for instance would be very wary of. That doesn't preclude the obvious compassion that Greens have for the underdog, those on low incomes, etc, just the logic of their ideology may push them in a different direction


I also think the GP in Germany supported the Harz laws, cutting benefits, though i may be wrong

Well, I suppose that I should have made it a bit more clear that I was speaking for myself rather than the GPEW, of which I am not a member.

I find the Greens an interesting and hopeful political phenomenon, but I would tend to agree that as a party, they lack a foundation in class analysis. That's not the same thing at all as simply dismissing them 'because they're middle class' though.

Regressive 'green' taxation, foisting new 'climate change insurance' debts on the poor South via the World Bank/IMF (as proposed in the Stern Report) and all that stuff seem to me to be neo-liberal capitalism exploiting popular concerns about environmental issues. These policies are by no means confined to or unique to 'Green Parties' though. Indeed nuLabour seem quite keen on them.

One problem is that any progressive party that gets involved in electoral politics is only ever going to be able to do 'deals' with capital. The old democratic left was effective because it was able to do 'deals' with capital on behalf some specific class segments, which I think might be the ones that some of our fellow posters would want to call 'working class'.

To my mind we're now coming to the end of the Keynesian 'deal' and it's time to look for a new approach. In parallel with that political shift, science has uncovered a whole range of ecological and resource issues that were not on the horizon of the old left. Those issues call capitalism into question in ways that a strictly Marxist analysis, still less a Leninist one, did not and from the point of view of the interests of a potentially wider range of class segments.

So you have a second potential problem, which is that the science is saying to me, and apparently to many others who've had a really good look at the numbers, that (very roughly) we'd need to reduce our consumption of resources to about 20% of current UK per/capita consumption (this level of consumption would of course be a big improvement in standards of living in many parts of the world) in order to be potentially sustainable. This sort of conflicts with the 19th century notions of 'progress' embedded in much old left thinking. It's what the science seems to be saying though as far as I can make out, and I wasn't at all happy to find this because prior to doing the arithmetic, I was a fairly serious fan of that notion of 'progress' myself.

For that reason, I think that (small 'g') green politics that is founded on a class analysis is the way to go, but I think that the class analysis required needs to take into account changing class composition. So pre-21st century notions of class are very much subject to question, from my point of view.

 

[Tom A]

In terms of the Greens and their 'prime directive' as it were to 'save the planet', you may impose green taxes which will hurt the poorest the most

Not if there were exemptions which mean that the poorest didn't have to pay any green taxes, whilst simultaneously charging many times more for the richest.

 

[Red Leicester]

Yes, they were condemned actually, strongly. Don't let that get in the way of your polemic though.

Sorry, I was in Germany at the time so missed it. Can you show me where I can read this strong condemnation? Was it in a conference resolution or anything official like that? Was this from the England/Wales Greens or the Scottish Greens or both? Or just a few individual members?

I understand that Derek Wall was censured by the "Green Party" (not exactly sure which bit of it) for criticising the Leeds Greens for their coalition with the Tories and LibDems during which they agreed to the privatisation of the local airport.

Why did the Green Party here feel able to condemn the German Green Party but felt it necessary to censure Derek for criticising Greens in Leeds?

All very strange.

 

[chilango]

Interesting post from Bernie above...

From my point of view the "class analysis" demanded by many posters here is going down an evolutionary dead end.

Why?

First, there is huge confusion (especially amongst leftists) as to how to define class. With so many opposing definitions it is impossible to orientate to the working class - nobody seems to REALLY know what it is.

Second, people seem to forget WHY class was so important to Marx etc. Let's remember that Marx was a bourgeois revolutionary who saw in the industrial proletariat of his time the economic power to destroy capitalism that the bougoisie and peasants didn't have.

How does that translate to the Greens today?

Well, if you stick to the idea of defining class economically (in order to follow the idea of economic power) as opposed to a sociological or cultural muddle, then we can say that the Green Party is a predominately working class party orientated to the working class - that those people who are waged labourers and who do not have the capital to survive without selling their labour power.

Do the Greens adequately organise/advocate the use of this labour power to undermine capitalism?

Probably not. I think this is an area that the GPEW could look further into...how workers (in the broad sense) can use their position AS WORKERS to halt the destruction of the planet and the sysytem behind it...

...but as regularly noted here, organised labour is very weak at the mo, and the leftists have been unable to halt this, so maybe other approaches as advocated by the Greens (and others) such as grass roots action in other arenas such as the community are a necessary step in the meantime.

 

[poster342002]

we'd need to reduce our consumption of resources to about 20% of current UK per/capita consumption

Yes, but what do you mean "we"? As far as I can see, the rich of the UK consume far, far more than the poor of the UK. It should be the rich who get lectured to reduce their consumption.

 

[Fisher_Gate]

... Marx was a bourgeois revolutionary ...

I think not ... maybe a proletarian revolutionary, who had some of the trappings of a bourgeois lifestyle to sustain him, was what you meant?

 

[chilango]

I think not ... maybe a proletarian revolutionary, who had some of the trappings of a bourgeois lifestyle to sustain him, was what you meant?

Nope.

He was a bougeois revolutionary, who advocated a proletarian revolution.

 

[Tom A]

Nope.

He was a bougeois revolutionary, who advocated a proletarian revolution.

So we should disregard everything he had to say then, lest the revolution gets tainted with his bougeois decadence? (the same goes for Bakunin and Kororptin btw)

 

[chilango]

So we should disregard everything he had to say then, lest the revolution gets tainted with his bougeois decadence? (the same goes for Bakunin and Kororptin btw)

Not at all.

That's the opposite of my point.

My point is that a "class orientation" need not have anything to do with the class of the person (or organisation) taking that position.

Simply adopting a "working class and proud" posture does not mean your politics actually engage with the role of the working class in political change...nor does being "middle class" (whatever that means) prevent you from understanding/advocating this role.

Too much of what passes for the Left/Anarchos whatever spends its time engaging in sociological posing imho.

 

[Tom A]

Simply adopting a "working class and proud" posture does not mean your politics actually engage with the role of the working class in political change...nor does being "middle class" (whatever that means) prevent you from understanding/advocating this role.

Too much of what passes for the Left/Anarchos whatever spends its time engaging in sociological posing imho.

Good, nice to know I may yet escape being against a wall staring up the barrel of an AK47

 

[taffboy gwyrdd]

Interesting post from Bernie above...

From my point of view the "class analysis" demanded by many posters here is going down an evolutionary dead end.

Why?

First, there is huge confusion (especially amongst leftists) as to how to define class. With so many opposing definitions it is impossible to orientate to the working class - nobody seems to REALLY know what it is.

Second, people seem to forget WHY class was so important to Marx etc. Let's remember that Marx was a bourgeois revolutionary who saw in the industrial proletariat of his time the economic power to destroy capitalism that the bougoisie and peasants didn't have.

How does that translate to the Greens today?

Well, if you stick to the idea of defining class economically (in order to follow the idea of economic power) as opposed to a sociological or cultural muddle, then we can say that the Green Party is a predominately working class party orientated to the working class - that those people who are waged labourers and who do not have the capital to survive without selling their labour power.

Do the Greens adequately organise/advocate the use of this labour power to undermine capitalism?

Probably not. I think this is an area that the GPEW could look further into...how workers (in the broad sense) can use their position AS WORKERS to halt the destruction of the planet and the sysytem behind it...

...but as regularly noted here, organised labour is very weak at the mo, and the leftists have been unable to halt this, so maybe other approaches as advocated by the Greens (and others) such as grass roots action in other arenas such as the community are a necessary step in the meantime.

Agree with so much of this. Class politics just doesnt resonate with that great an amount of the electorate today - for better or worse and whatever the reason.

Over 100 years ago the Labour movement was born out of thousands acting in small radical activist ways to change society.

Today it is The Green movement going through this type of growth.