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  <title>E.2 What do eco-anarchists propose instead of capitalism? | Anarchist Writers</title>
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    <h1>E.2 What do eco-anarchists propose instead of capitalism?</h1>
<p>Given what eco-anarchists consider to be the root cause of  our ecological problems (as discussed in the <a href="secE1.html">last section</a>), it  should come as no surprise that they think that the current  ecological crisis can only be really solved by eliminating those root causes, namely by ending domination within humanity and  creating an anarchist society. So here we will summarise the  vision of the free society eco-anarchists advocate before  discussing the limitations of various non-anarchist proposals  to solve environmental problems in subsequent sections.</p>
<p>However, before so doing it is important to stress that eco-anarchists consider it important to fight against ecological and social problems today. Like all anarchists, they argue for direct action and  solidarity to struggle for improvements and reforms under the  current system. This means that eco-anarchism <i>"supports every effort to conserve the environment"</i> in the here and now. The key difference  between them and environmentalists is that eco-anarchists place such  partial struggles within a larger context of changing society as a  whole. The former is part of <i>"waging a delaying action against the rampant destruction of the environment"</i> the other is <i>"a create movement to totally revolutionise the social relations of humans to each other and of humanity to nature."</i> [Murray Bookchin, <b>Toward an Ecological Society</b>, p. 43] This is one of the key differences between an  ecological perspective and an environmental one (a difference  discussed in <a href="secE1.html#sece12">section E.1.2</a>). Finding ways to resist capitalism's  reduction of the living world to resources and commodities and its  plunder of the planet, our resistance to specific aspects of an  eco-cidal system, are merely a starting point in the critique of  the whole system and of a wider struggle for a better society.  As such, our outline of an ecological society (or ecotopia) is not  meant to suggest an indifference to partial struggles and reforms  within capitalism. It is simply to indicate why anarchists are confident  that ending capitalism and the state will create the necessary  preconditions for a free and ecologically viable society.</p>
<p>This perspective flows from the basic insight of eco-anarchism, namely that ecological problems are not separate from social ones. As we are  part of nature, it means that how we interact and shape with it will be  influenced by how we interact and shape ourselves. As Reclus put it <i>"every people gives, so to speak, new clothing to the surrounding nature. By means of its fields and roads, by its dwelling and every manner of construction, by the way it arranges the trees and the  landscape in general, the populace expresses the character of its own ideals. If it really has a feeling for beauty, it will make nature more beautiful. If, on the other hand, the great mass of  humanity should remain as it is today, crude, egoistic and inauthentic, it will continue to mark the face of the earth with its wretched  traces. Thus will the poet's cry of desperation become a reality: 'Where can I flee? Nature itself has become hideous.'"</i> In order to transform how we interact with nature, we need to transform how we interact with each other. <i>"Fortunately,"</i> Reclus notes, <i>"a complete  alliance of the beautiful and the useful is possible."</i> [quoted by Clark and Martin (eds.) , <b>Anarchy, Geography, Modernity</b>,  p. 125  and p. 28]</p>
<p>Over a century later, Murray Bookchin echoed this insight:</p>
<blockquote><p><i> "The views advanced by anarchists were deliberately called <b>social</b>  ecology to emphasise that major ecological problems have their roots  in social problems -- problems that go back to the very beginnings of  patricentric culture itself. The rise of capitalism, with a law of life  based on competition, capital accumulation, and limitless growth, brought  these problems -- ecological and social -- to an acute point; indeed, one  that was unprecedented in any prior epoch of human development. Capitalist  society, by recycling the organise world into an increasingly inanimate,  inorganic assemblage of commodities, was destined to simplify the biosphere,  thereby cutting across the grain of natural evolution with its ages-long  thrust towards differentiation and diversity.<br>
</i></p>
<p><i>"To reverse this trend, capitalism had to be replaced by an ecological  society based on non-hierarchical relationships, decentralised communities,  eco-technologies like solar power, organic agriculture, and humanly scaled  industries -- in short, by face-to-face democratic forms of settlement economically and structurally tailored to the ecosystems in which they  were located."</i> [<b>Remaking Society</b>, pp. 154-5]</p>
</blockquote>
<p>The vision of an ecological society rests on the obvious fact that people can have both positive and negative impacts on the environment. In current society, there are vast differences and antagonisms between privileged  whites and people of colour, men and women, rich and poor, oppressor and  oppressed. Remove those differences and antagonisms and our interactions with ourselves and nature change radically. In other words, there is a vast  difference between free, non-hierarchical, class, and stateless societies  on the one hand, and hierarchical, class-ridden, statist, and authoritarian  ones and how they interact with the environment.</p>
<p>Given the nature of ecology, it should come as no surprise that social anarchists have been at the forefront of eco-anarchist theory and  activism. It would be fair to say that most eco-anarchists, like most anarchists in general, envision an ecotopia based on communist-anarchist principles. This does not mean that individualist anarchists are  indifferent to environmental issues, simply that most anarchists are unconvinced that such solutions will actually end the ecological crisis we face. Certain of the proposals in this section are applicable to  individualist anarchism (for example, the arguments that co-operatives will produce less growth and be less likely to pollute). However, others are not. Most obviously, arguments in favour of common ownership and against the price mechanism are not applicable to the market based solutions of individualist anarchism. It should also be pointed out,  that much of the eco-anarchist critique of capitalist approaches to  ecological problems are also applicable to individualist and mutualist  anarchism as well (particularly the former, as the latter does recognise  the need to regulate the market). While certain aspects of capitalism  would be removed in an individualist anarchism (such as massive  inequalities of wealth, capitalist property rights as well as direct  and indirect subsidies to big business), it is still has the  informational problems associated with markets as well as a growth  orientation.</p>
<p>Here we discuss the typical eco-anarchist view of a free ecological  society, namely one rooted in social anarchist principles. Eco-anarchists,  like all consistent anarchists advocate workers' self-management of the economy as a necessary component of an ecologically sustainable society.  This usually means society-wide ownership of the means of production and  all productive enterprises self-managed by their workers (as described  further in <a href="secI3.html">section I.3</a>). This is a key aspect of making a truly ecological  society. Most greens, even if they are not anarchists, recognise the  pernicious ecological effects of the capitalist "grow or die" principle;  but unless they are also anarchists, they usually fail to make the  connection between that principle and the <b>hierarchical form</b> of the  typical capitalist corporation. The capitalist firm, like the state, is  centralised, top-down and autocratic. These are the opposite of what an  ecological ethos would suggest. In contrast, eco-anarchists emphasise  the need for socially owned and worker self-managed firms.</p>
<p>This vision of co-operative rather than hierarchical production is a common position for almost all anarchists. Communist and non-communist social  anarchists, like mutualists and collectivists, propose co-operative  workplaces but differ in how best to distribute the products produced. The  former urge the abolition of money and sharing according to need while the  latter see income related to work and surpluses are shared equally among all  members. Both of these systems would produce workplaces which would be  under far less pressure toward rapid expansion than the traditional  capitalist firm (as individualist anarchism aims for the abolition of  rent, profit and interest it, too, will have less expansive workplaces).</p>
<p>The slower growth rate of co-operatives has been documented in a number  of studies, which show that in the traditional capitalist firm, owners'  and executives' percentage share of profits greatly increases as more employees are added to the payroll. This is because the corporate hierarchy is designed to facilitate exploitation by funnelling a disproportionate share of the surplus value produced by workers to  those at the top of the pyramid (see <a href="secC2.html">section C.2</a>) Such a design gives  ownership and management a very strong incentive to expand, since, other  things being equal, their income rises with every new employee hired.  [David  Schweickart, <b>Against Capitalism</b>, pp. 153-4] Hence the  hierarchical form of the capitalist corporation is one of the main  causes of runaway growth as well as social inequality and the rise of big business and oligopoly in the so-called "free" market.</p>
<p>By contrast, in an equal-share worker co-operative, the addition of more members simply means more people with whom the available pie will have to be equally divided -- a situation that immensely reduces the incentive to expand. Thus a libertarian-socialist economy will not be under the same pressure to grow. Moreover, when introducing technological innovations or facing declining decline for goods, a self-managed workplace would be more likely to increase leisure time among producers rather than increase workloads or reduce numbers of staff.</p>
<p>This means that rather than produce a few big firms, a worker-controlled economy would tend to create an economy with more small and medium sized workplaces. This would make integrating them into local communities and eco-systems far easier as well as making them more easily dependent on  green sources of energy. Then there are the other ecological advantages to  workers' self-management beyond the relative lack of expansion of specific  workplaces and the decentralisation this implies. These are explained  well by market socialist David Schweickart:</p>
<blockquote><p><i> "To the extent that emissions affect the workers directly on the job (as they often do), we can expect a self-managed firm to pollute less. Workers will control the technology; it will not be imposed on them  from without.<br>
</i></p>
<p><i>"To the extent that emissions affect the local community, they are  likely to be less severe, for two reasons. Firstly, workers (unlike  capitalist owners) will necessarily live nearby, and so the  decision-makers will bear more of the environmental costs directly.  Second . . . a self-managed firm will not be able to avoid local  regulation by running away (or threatening to do so). The great  stick that a capitalist firm holds over the head of a local community  will be absent. Hence absent will be the macrophenomenon of various  regions of the country trying to compete for firms by offering a  'better business climate' (i.e. fewer environmental restrictions)."</i>  [<b>Op. Cit.</b>, p. 145]</p>
</blockquote>
<p>For an ecological society to work, it requires the active participation  of those doing productive activity. They are often the first to be  affected by industrial pollution and have the best knowledge of how  to stop it happening. As such, workplace self-management is an  essential requirement for a society which aims to life in harmony with its surrounds (and with itself, as a key aspect of social  unfreedom would be eliminated in the form of wage slavery).</p>
<p>For these reasons, libertarian socialism based on producer co-operatives  is essential for the type of economy necessary to solve the ecological  crisis. These all feed directly into the green vision as <i>"ecology points  to the necessity of decentralisation, diversity in natural and social  systems, human-scale technology, and an end to the exploitation of  nature."</i> [John Clark, <b>The Anarchist Moment</b>, p. 115] This can only be achieved on a society which bases itself on workers' self-management  as this would facilitate the decentralisation of industries in ways  which are harmonious with nature.</p>
<p>So far, all forms of social anarchism are in agreement. However,  eco-anarchists tend to be communist-anarchists and oppose both mutualism and collectivism. This is because workers' ownership and  self-management places the workers of an enterprise in a position  where they can become a particularistic interest within their  community. This may lead to these firms acting purely in their own  narrow interests and against the local community. They would be,  in other words, outside of community input and be solely accountable  to themselves. This could lead to a situation where they become  "collective capitalists" with a common interest in expanding their  enterprises, increasing their "profits" and even subjecting themselves  to irrational practices to survive in the market (i.e., harming  their own wider and long-term interests as market pressures have  a distinct tendency to produce a race to the bottom -- see  <a href="secI1.html#seci13">section I.1.3</a> for more discussion). This leads most eco-anarchists  to call for a confederal economy and society in which communities  will be decentralised and freely give of their resources without  the use of money.</p>
<p>As a natural compliment to workplace self-management, eco-anarchists propose communal self-management. So, although it may have appeared that  we focus our attention on the economic aspects of the ecological crisis  and its solution, this is not the case. It should always be kept in mind  that all anarchists see that a complete solution to our many ecological  and social problems must be multi-dimensional, addressing all aspects of  the total system of hierarchy and domination. This means that only anarchism,  with its emphasis on the elimination of authority in <b>all</b> areas of life,  goes to the fundamental root of the ecological crisis.</p>
<p>The eco-anarchist argument for direct (participatory) democracy is that effective protection of the planet's ecosystems requires that all people are able to take part at the grassroots level in decision-making that affects their environment, since they are more aware of their  immediate eco-systems and more likely to favour stringent environmental  safeguards than politicians, state bureaucrats and the large, polluting  special interests that now dominate the "representative" system of government. Moreover, real change must come from below, not from above as this is the very source of the social and ecological problems that we face as it divests individuals, communities and society as a whole of their power, indeed right, to shape their own destinies as well as draining them of their material and "spiritual" resources (i.e., the thoughts, hopes and  dreams of people).</p>
<p>Simply put, it should be hardly necessary to explore in any great depth the sound ecological and social reasons for decentralising  decision making power to the grassroots of society, i.e. to the  people who have to live with the decisions being reached. The  decentralised nature of anarchism would mean that any new  investments and proposed solutions to existing problems would be tailored to local conditions. Due to the mobility of capital, laws passed under capitalism to protect the environment have to be created and implemented by the central government to be effective. Yet the state, as discussed in <a href="secE1.html">section E.1</a>, is a centralised structure  unsuited to the task of collecting and processing the information and  knowledge required to customise decisions to local ecological and social  circumstances. This means that legislation, precisely due to its scope,  cannot be finely tuned to local conditions (and so can generate local  opposition, particularly if whipped up by corporate front organisations). In an eco-anarchist society, decentralisation would not have the threat of economic power hanging over it and so decisions would be reached which  reflected the actual local needs of the population. As they would be  unlikely to want to pollute themselves or their neighbours, eco-anarchists  are confident that such local empowerment will produce a society which lives with, rather than upon, the environment.</p>
<p>Thus eco-communities (or eco-communes) are a key aspect of an ecotopia. Eco-communes, Bookchin argued, will be <i>"networked confederally through  ecosystems, bioregions, and biomes"</i> and be <i>"artistically tailored to  their naturally surrounding. We can envision that their squares will  be interlaced by streams, their places of assembly surrounded by  groves, their physical contours respected and tastefully landscaped, their soils nurtured caringly to foster plant variety for ourselves, our domestic animals, and wherever possible the wildlife they may support on their fringes."</i> They would be decentralised and <i>"scaled to human dimensions,"</i> using recycling as well as integrating <i>"solar,  wind, hydraulic, and methane-producing installations into a highly variegated pattern for producing power. Agriculture, aquaculture, stockraising, and hunting would be regarded as crafts -- an orientation that we hope would be extended as much as possible to the fabrication of use-values of nearly all kinds. The need to mass-produce goods in highly mechanised installations would  be vastly diminished by the communities' overwhelming emphasis on quality and permanence."</i> [<b>The Ecology of Freedom</b>, p. 444]</p>
<p>This means that local communities will generate social and economic  policies tailored to their own unique ecological circumstances, in  co-operation with others (it is important stress that eco-communes do not imply supporting local self-sufficiency and economic autarchy  as values in themselves). Decisions that have regional impact are  worked out by confederations of local assemblies, so that everybody  affected by a decision can participate in making it. Such a system  would be self-sufficient as workplace and community participation  would foster creativity, spontaneity, responsibility, independence,  and respect for individuality -- the qualities needed for a  self-management to function effectively. Just as hierarchy shapes those subject to it in negative ways, participation would shape us in positive ways which would strengthen our individuality and  enrich our freedom and interaction with others and nature.</p>
<p>That is not all. The communal framework would also impact on how industry  would develop. It would allow eco-technologies to be prioritised in terms  of R&amp;D and subsidised in terms of consumption. No more would green alternatives and eco-technologies be left unused simply because most  people cannot afford to buy them nor would their development be  under-funded simply because a capitalist sees little profit form it  or a politician cannot see any benefit from it. It also means that the  broad outlines of production are established at the community assembly  level while they are implemented in practice by smaller collective bodies  which also operate on an egalitarian, participatory, and democratic basis.  Co-operative workplaces form an integral part of this process, having control over the production process and the best way to implement  any general outlines.</p>
<p>It is for these reasons that anarchists argue that common ownership combined with a use-rights based system of possession is better for the environment as it allows everyone the right to take action to stop pollution, not simply those who are directly affected by it. As a framework for ecological ethics, the communal system envisioned by social anarchists would be far better than private property and  markets in protecting the environment. This is because the pressures that markets exert on their members would not exist, as would the perverse incentives which reward anti-social and anti-ecological  practices. Equally, the anti-ecological centralisation and hierarchy of the state would be ended and replaced with a participatory system which can take into account the needs of the local environment and utilise the local knowledge and information that both the state  and capitalism suppresses.</p>
<p>Thus a genuine solution to the ecological crisis presupposes communes, i.e. participatory democracy in the social sphere. This is a transformation  that would amount to a political revolution. However, as Bakunin continually emphasised, a political revolution of this nature cannot be envisioned  without a <b>socio-economic</b> revolution based on workers' self-management.  This is because the daily experience of participatory decision-making,  non-authoritarian modes of organisation, and personalistic human  relationships would not survive if those values were denied during working  hours. Moreover, as mentioned above, participatory communities would be  hard pressed to survive the pressure that big business would subject them  to.</p>
<p>Needless to say, the economic and social aspects of life cannot be considered in isolation. For example, the negative results of workplace  hierarchy and its master-servant dynamic will hardly remain there. Given  the amount of time that most people spend working, the political  importance of turning it into a training ground for the development  of libertarian values can scarcely be overstated. As history has  demonstrated, political revolutions that are not based upon social  changes and mass psychological transformation -- that is, by a  deconditioning from the master/slave attitudes absorbed from the  current system -- result only in the substitution of new ruling  elites for the old ones (e.g. Lenin becoming the new "Tsar" and  Communist Party aparatchiks becoming the new "aristocracy").  Therefore, besides having a slower growth rate, worker co-operatives  with democratic self-management would lay the psychological foundations  for the kind of directly democratic political system necessary to  protect the biosphere. Thus "green" libertarian socialism is the only  proposal radical enough to solve the ecological crisis.</p>
<p>Ecological crises become possible only within the context of social relations which weaken people's capacities to fight an organised  defence of the planet's ecology and their own environment. This  means that the restriction of  participation in decision-making  processes within hierarchical organisations such as the state and  capitalism firms help create environmental along with social problems  by denying those most affected by a problem the means of fixing it.  Needless to say, hierarchy within the workplace is a prerequisite to  accumulation and so growth while hierarchy within a community is a  prerequisite to defend economic and social inequality as well as  minority rule as the disempowered become indifferent to community  and social issues they have little or no say in. Both combine to create the basis of our current ecological crisis and both need to be ended.</p>
<p>Ultimately, a free nature can only begin to emerge when we live in a fully  participatory society which itself is free of oppression, domination and exploitation. Only then will we be able to rid ourselves of the idea of  dominating nature and fulfil our potential as individuals and be a creative  force in natural as well social evolution. That means replacing the current system with one based on freedom, equality and solidarity. Once this is achieved, <i>"social life will yield a sensitive development of human and natural diversity, falling together into a well balanced harmonious whole. Ranging from community through region to entire continents, we will see a colourful differentiation of human groups and ecosystems, each developing its unique potentialities and exposing members of the community to a wide spectrum of economic, cultural and behavioural  stimuli. Falling within our purview will be an exciting, often dramatic, variety of communal forms -- here marked by architectural and industrial adaptations to semi-arid ecosystems, there to grasslands, elsewhere by adaptation to forested areas. We will witness a creative interplay  between individual and group, community and environment, humanity and nature."</i> [Bookchin, <b>Post-Scarcity Anarchism</b>, p. 39]</p>
<p>So, to conclude, in place of capitalism eco-anarchists favour ecologically  responsible forms of libertarian socialism, with an economy based on the  principles of complementarily with nature; decentralisation (where possible  and desirable) of large-scale industries, reskilling of workers, and a  return to more artisan-like modes of production; the use of eco-technologies and ecologically friendly energy sources to create green products; the use  of recycled and recyclable raw materials and renewable resources; the  integration of town and country, industry and agriculture; the creation of self-managed eco-communities which exist in harmony with their surroundings; and self-managed workplaces responsive to the wishes of local community  assemblies and labour councils in which decisions are made by direct  democracy and co-ordinated (where appropriate and applicable) from the  bottom-up in a free federation. Such a society would aim to develop the individuality and freedom of all its members in order to ensure that  we end the domination of nature by humanity by ending domination within humanity itself.</p>
<p>This is the vision of a green society put forth by Murray Bookchin. To  quote him:</p>
<blockquote><p><i> "We must create an ecological society -- not merely because such a society is desirable but because it is direly necessary. We must  begin to live in order to survive. Such a society involves a  fundamental reversal of all the trends that mark the historic  development of capitalist technology and bourgeois society -- the minute specialisation or machines and labour, the concentration of resources and people in gigantic industrial enterprises and  urban entities, the stratification and bureaucratisation of life, the divorce of town from country, the objectification of nature and human beings. In my view, this sweeping reversal means that  we must begin to decentralise our cities and establish entirely  new eco-communities that are artistically moulded to the ecosystems in which they are located . . .<br>
</i></p>
<p><i>"Such an eco-community . . . would heal the split between town and country, indeed, between mind and body by fusing intellectual with physical work, industry with agriculture in a rotation or  diversification of vocational tasks. An eco-community would be  supported by a new kind of technology -- or eco-technology -- one composed of flexible, versatile machinery whose productive applications would emphasise durability and quality . . ."</i> [<b>Toward an Ecological Society</b>, pp. 68-9]</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Lastly, we need to quickly sketch out how anarchists see the change to an ecological society happening as there is little point having an aim if you have no idea how to achieve it.</p>
<p>As noted above, eco-anarchists (like all anarchists) do not counterpoise  an ideal utopia to existing society but rather participate in current  ecological struggles. Moreover, we see that struggle itself as the  link between what is and what could be. This implies, at minimum, a  two pronged strategy of neighbourhood movements and workplace organising as a means of both fighting and abolishing capitalism. These would work  together, with the former targeting, say, the disposal of toxic wastes  and the latter stopping the production of toxins in the first place.  Only when workers are in a position to refuse to engage in destructive  practices or produce destructive goods can lasting ecological change  emerge. Unsurprisingly, modern anarchists and anarcho-syndicalists have  been keen to stress the need for a green syndicalism which addresses  ecological as well as economical exploitation. The ideas of community and industrial unionism are discussed in more detail  in <a href="secJ5.html">section J.5</a>  along with other anarchist tactics for social change. Needless to say, such organisations would use direct action as their means of achieving their goals (see <a href="secJ2.html">section J.2</a>). It  should be noted that some  of Bookchin's social ecologist followers advocate, like him, greens standing in local elections as a means to create a counter-power to the state. As we discuss in <a href="secJ5.html#secj514">section J.5.14</a>,  this strategy (called Libertarian Municipalism) finds few supporters in the wider anarchist  movement.</p>
<p>This strategy flows, of course, into the structures of an ecological  society. As we discuss in <a href="secI2.html#seci23">section I.2.3</a>,  anarchists argue that the  framework of a free society will be created in the process of fighting the existing one. Thus the structures of an eco-anarchist society (i.e. eco-communes and self-managed workplaces) will be created by fighting the  ecocidal tendencies of the current system. In other words, like all  anarchists eco-anarchists seek to create the new world while fighting  the old one. This means what we do now is, however imperfect, an example  of what we propose instead of capitalism. That means we act in an  ecological fashion today in order to ensure that we can create an  ecological society tomorrow.</p>
<p>For more discussion of how an anarchist society would work, see  <a href="secIcon.html">section I</a>. We will discuss the limitations of various proposed  solutions to the environmental crisis in the following sections.</p>
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