This sounds a bit like wanting to go back to the 1700's and live in villages powered by water mills to me. Which is basically what's wrong with the Greens - they see class based politics and nostalgia for feudalism as basically the same thing.
No problem.
Well, powered by solar panels and with a much more efficient use of resources. If our current lifestyle is flagrantly unsustainable then a shift to a more sustainable path might look like a step backwards in some ways. But then there is also sometimes a bit of a value judgement in it - 'without capitalism we won't have thing xyz that I have decided we don't really need'. Of course, then you get into what are true desires, what are artificial ones created by capitalism, is such a distinction valid, etc. etc.
elbows that is a good point, though has the assumption that political parties consider their actions post-election to be bound by the narrative pre-election, which I don't think is borne out by past form. So the Greens might or might not carry through on anti-austerity. Perhaps if another, external actor had a 'vote Green as the anti-austerity party' that might set up more of an expectation.
Going out on a limb, I think the left, to the extent that you can talk of 'the left', often has a very pessimistic view of its own performance and major actors, forever comparing things to a better, yet theoretical, alternative.
So people often talk of the left's failure in the economic sphere in the last few decades, but ignore the immense success of embedding social equality into the debate, such that Cameron is prepared to defy his party on gay marriage. I know most people on this board can't stand intersectionality and so on, but at the very least it has prompted renewed interest in and discussion of the left's ideas (just not the 'right' ideas for many).
Equally, the debate on Russell Brand. Maybe he's not the ideal figure but he's raising the issue of inequality in the minds of large sections of the population who simply aren't reached by the usual left figures.
Maybe the Greens will turn out be a disappointment, but I think it is promising that a party committed to anti-austerity, citizen's income and mutualisation is polling increasingly better and doing particularly well among the young. In an ideal world, would you have a more explicitly working class party? Fine, but there doesn't seem to be one so I think the Greens are worth a punt. The task is to keep them to the radical bits of their agenda.
I can see the reasoning that such things are just the establishment co-opting an ineffectual safety valve (my view on Tony Benn), but fuck, might as well give it a go.
