A green anarchism?

The above sets of critiques of the state are common to most Green theorists and practitioners. One question which arises is whether this amounts to Green political theory being a variant of anarchism, arguing for the dismantling of state structures in favour of small scale, self-reliant commu­nities organized politically amongst themselves as direct democracies and between themselves as loose confederations.

First is a claim that small-scale anarchistic communities would be too parochial and potentially self-interested to provide atmospheres conducive to cross-community co-operation (e.g. Dobson 1990: 101, 124). Part of this argument is therefore that it would be stultifying or oppressive for those within the community, but it also suggests that they would be unconcerned with effects across their borders.

Second is a more general critique which suggests that in rejecting the state Greens reject modernity itself, and that they have a romanticized account of an idyllic past which is both misplaced and utopian (in the pejorative sense).

A third line of criticism of the anarchist conclusions of Carter, Bookchin, and others, is that small-scale self-reliant communities would be unable to deal effectively with those ecological problems which have a global character. The logic of the argument here is usually game-theoretic (Goodin 1992: 156-68). Game theory is a widely used approach coming from economics which analyses the strategic interaction of actors in situations where each relies on the actions of others for the realization of their own goals. On this basis, Goodin argues that small-scale communities would be unable to deal with global environmental problems as there would simply be too many in existence to secure co-operation even if the game structure was a straight­forward co-ordination game (where it doesn’t matter particularly what actors do as long as they do the same thing - which side of the road to drive on is a paradigm example).

A fourth criticism concerns questions of social justice and economic redistribution. Social justice is widely held to be a key element in Green platforms. Recognizing the reality of increasing socio-economic inequality and poverty, both globally and within societies, the green movement(s) also recognize the limits of existing social policy and state responses to this. But at the same time this involves seeing the state as a necessary (but not suffi­cient) institution for regulating the corporate-dominated global economy and lessening socio-economic inequality. Many socialists and social democrats would have similar accounts of contemporary injustices. Where the green position is distinctive is in a rejection of the dominant social-democratic view that only by redistributing the fruits of a growing capitalist, competitive economy can inequality, social exclusion and environmental improvement be achieved. In fact the reverse is held to be the case - the fostering of economic growth necessarily entails acceptance of social inequalities. From this point of view, neoliberals and social democrats have more in common than many from either perspective would want to accept - both, if for different reasons, assume growth is the goal of politics. Rather the green path to tackling inequality is premised on redistribution (of existing social wealth) without the commitment to unsustainable and undifferentiated economic growth, alongside a radical shift from money and commodity­based measurements of welfare to a focus on well-being, quality of life and free time. Thus, while accepting the importance of states in redistributive politics, the character of state intervention to secure this is significantly different from conventional views.

Improving the quality of life of individuals and communities requires shifting attention away from income and benefit measurements alone (the fruits of economic growth) towards the non-income (and non-employment) components of quality of life and well-being.

Overall, our view here is that many of these critiques of green anarchist theory are perhaps at best half right. Certainly, for example, the point that small communities are parochial tends to draw on historical examples that are pre-modern and therefore fail to ask the question of what happens when modern societies self-consciously rescale themselves but retain many other elements of modernity such as universalist ethics. It also misses the fact that nation-states themselves are often strikingly parochial and that the institution of sovereignty, as well as nationalist ideologies, support and entrench such parochialism. There are also flaws with the argument concerning international co-operation, in part because many of the criticisms levelled at green anarchist arguments could similarly be levelled at defenders of the sovereign state.

The strongest is the one focusing on inequality. It is hard to see here how Greens can pursue egalitarian politics without some state-like institutions to enact measures to reduce inequalities of various sorts. But what is clear from the discussion of this, is that in order to mitigate inequalities in the ways that Greens envisage, it is the character of state-economy relations which is key to understanding the possible ‘greening’ of the state that we discuss below.

Our view is the way to see the weaknesses in the green anarchist critique, is not so much that they are fundamentally flawed, but that they have a weak sense of the historicity of states and statehood, and thus a weak sense of the contradictory nature of the state. In other words, green critics of the state are at the same time right, but tend to operate within an assumption that the state is a static thing - draw on an essentialized Weberian image, rather than a historicized account of the state. As alluded above, if one sees states in terms either of historical sociology, or in Marxian terms of contradictions/regimes of accumulation, etc., then the state becomes not so much a static thing which we have to be for or against, but a complex undergoing continuous contestation, re-formation, and to which new purposes (and contradictions) can be added. In Eckersley’s terms, the point is thus not to engage in transcendental critique of the state, but rather immanent critique (2004). An immanent critique is one which focuses on those elements within an existing political order which suggest the possibility of moving towards a fundamentally different order. This thus creates the possibility for Greens of envisaging not so much dismantling the state as greening it.