OPINION:

We Need an Updated Manifesto, One Focussed on the Goal of a Radically-Democratic Eco-Communal World

Charles Posa McFadden and Karen Howell McFadden

The Green Social Democrat, Fall 2018

Why eco-communal? Eco-Communal specifies an equitable relationship between people engaged in a sustainable relationship with the rest of nature.

Why radically-democratic? Radically democratic emphasizes engagement in decision-making beyond the levels achievable within a capitalist (class-based) society, but necessary for a sustainable relationship with the rest of nature.

Our species is a communal one, characterized by sociality and altruism. For over 90% of our history, we lived by hunting and foraging within small communally organized and functioning groups, linked by clan relationships with others of our species, extending as far as entire continents. It has only been during the most recent geological period, the Holocene, that environmental conditions favoured larger settled communities often able to gather and store surplus resources.

Within many of these settled communities, class differentiation took place, freeing some members from the necessity of productive activity, in turn enabling development of knowledge and technology and hence the potential for gradual but unevenly shared advances in human welfare. This advantage, however, came with associated costs, especially to dispossessed classes and to the capacity of the immediate environment to sustain those living within it.

Class struggle and environmental disasters, limited in space and time, have characterized the history of human existence within class-divided societies. With the globalization of capitalism and the concentration of economic and political power no longer containable within nation-states, only a successful global movement to end capitalism and replace it with a viable alternative has the possibility of preventing environmental catastrophe and mutual destruction.

In our view, a radically-democratic eco-communal global order is the alternative direction for humanity.

Why global? Because there are no physical boundaries within the biosphere that can limit in space or time the influence of human activity (past, present and future) on the circulation of matter and energy within the Earth’s atmosphere and through its oceans and other waterways. And because there are no longer single nation-state governments or groups of governments with both the will and the authority to limit the economic effects of the private-for-profit transnational corporations that now dominate the global economy.

Is this a viable alternative to capitalism and are there feasible means to achieve it? Pro-capitalist nation-state governments license and maintain private-for-profit corporations, right up to the transnational behemoths that dominate the global economy. However, none of these nation-state governments can function without social license. Under present circumstances, including the existence of weapons of mass destruction, only a peaceful transition is viable, and only to a global order in which all nations and every person has a place.

So, what then must be the content of a radically-democratic eco-communal global order?

The new global order, in our view, must be:

• Green = stewardship responsibilities and usufruct rights
• Social = human rights as fundamental law
• Democratic = democratic decision-making with respect to all matters that have consequential effects on human welfare and the natural environment, with the local level as the primary one (in a bottom-up form of democracy, the opposite of a top-down hierarchical form of decision-making)

This would be a classless society, brought into existence by the people themselves, motivated primarily by environmental concerns and communal aspirations, led by environmentalists and human rights activists and political movements and political parties dedicated to this outcome. The First Nations would play a leading role.

The model for the new global order is to be found from our history as a communal species and from our continuing communal practices and ongoing struggles to resume our original communal journey, unencumbered by class divisions, based on respect for the rest of nature as the source of our own existence and for each other as equal partners in this continuing journey.

Principles that can guide us in this journey include those identified by the Global Greens:

• Ecological wisdom
• Social justice
• Participatory democracy
• Nonviolence
• Sustainability
• Respect for diversity (c)

For a more comprehensive argument elaborating on this manifesto and placing it into historical perspective, see Towards a Green Social Democratic Alternative to Capitalism at www.greensocialdemocracy.org.