Some background, to help contextualize this piece for those who might be new to this discussion. This past January, I published a short essay “Social ecology needs development, dissent, dynamism” on the Social Ecology Blog hosted on the Institute for Social Ecology’s website. My intention was not to specifically articulate my own evolving perspective but to try and establish some space for “development, dissent, and dynamism” with respect to the social ecology of Murray Bookchin. For those who might not be aware, Bookchin was a co-founder (with Dan Chodorkoff) and longtime director of the Institute for Social Ecology and his body of work is the clearly recognized basis for the particular notion of “social ecology” that has inspired the Institute for Social Ecology, among various other projects, movements, and organizations including the Communalism Journal that has continued as New Compass Press.
I’m a graduate of the ISE’s MA program in Social Ecology (in association with Prescott College) and current ISE Board member. I have engaged in close study of Bookchin’s work and the history of projects, movements, and organizations rooted in his ideas. As such, I feel a strong need to be respectful and accountable to the generous support, encouragement, and stimulation I’ve received from the ISE community over the past few years. Furthermore, the influence of Bookchin’s work on the development of my own perspective is undeniable.
It is for those reasons that I sought to provoke an open, critical discussion in posing two primary questions:
Which aspects of Bookchin’s social ecology are essential and what elements might, at least for some self-identifying social ecologists, deserve critique and revision?
Can there be social ecologies—that is, varying interpretations, philosophies, and modes of praxis that differ in some ways but remain in solidarity with one another and identified with the social ecology tradition?
By way of inspiring furthering discussion on these points, here’s some brief ideas:
First, we ought to always be striving to create an open and critical culture around a social ecology community or network such that there isn’t a continuation of the nearly exclusive focus on Murray Bookchin or a reproduction of the positioning of a single person (or a few persons with little or no publicly dissenting views) as responsible for defending the “integrity” of social ecology. For social ecology to be dynamic rather than static, public, critical discussion should be encouraged–not ignored, trivialized, or evaded.
Second, I want to say to other people who identify or associate with Bookchin’s social ecology that my intention is to contribute to a critical reconstruction of the social ecology tradition that Bookchin inspired, identifying both the enduringly valuable aspects of his work as well as that which is deserving of critique and transcendence. I believe we will inevitably have substantive disagreements. My feeling is that we agree on much more than we disagree and that I hope that whatever dialogue or debate that comes from this will proceed with a shared acknowledgement and respect of the substantial common ground that does exist.
Third, this whole post is a sketch, written in a couple of hours, by a graduate student who is very much in the midst of intense study and various other personal commitments. As such, I ask that you approach this text with some generosity: please ask for clarification if something is unclear. I’m planning something significantly more specific, well-cited, and so forth for submission to the 2011 ISE Colloquium. I hope that a focus on my particular point of view will not forestall a public dialogue on any aspect of social ecology among any people who identify with Bookchin’s social ecology.
My primary concerns with Bookchin’s work and, thus, the conception of “social ecology” that has animated the ISE, Communalism/New Compass Press, etc. generally stem from his clear and definitive defense of the Enlightenment project and the polemical situation of his work within that tradition. Bookchin’s work demonstrates a polemical unwillingness to recognize the value and, perhaps, inevitability of a variety of epistemologies and cultural value systems (cosmologies, perhaps, is a useful word here?) and instead proclaims his work a part of The Single Enlightened Tradition capable of bringing about The Third Revolution which would usher in Utopia. Accordingly, Bookchin’s vision of The Third Revolution will be brought about by Libertarian Municipalists, who are characterized as Rational Humanist Citizens in opposition to the, generally speaking, incoherence, irrationality, and/or misanthropy (Bookchin’s characterizations) of those who orient by any tradition other than The Single Enlightened Tradition. Similarly, those who fail to orient in the Most (Only?) Enlightened Way–i.e Bookchin’s social ecology–to the The Single Enlightened Tradition (for example, some marxists or anarchists), are also subject to polemic and denigrations.
There are many compelling critiques of notions of the supremacy of the Enlightenment project that have been developed by (in alphabetical order, no intended privileging) anarchists, anti/post-colonialists of varying positionalities including indigenous and other land-based peoples, feminists, radical ecologists, and queer theorists. That list is certainly not exhaustive. Briefly, to take one critique I find especially compelling given my position as a settler in North America, the insistence upon a singular or hegemonic Enlightenment cosmology is indicative of and perpetuates the ongoing colonial violence being experienced by indigenous peoples whose knowledges and practices do not fall within the Enlightenment project. Following the trajectory of Bookchin’s work, those traditional knowledges and practices ought be polemicized against for their “incoherence, irrationality, and/or misanthropy.” Ultimately, for Bookchin, all of Humanity ought Rationally unite under the aegis of “universal humanitas” and adopt The Single Enlightened Tradition as a universal cosmology. Here I believe that Bookchin reproduced the logic of domination he so fully dedicated himself to unravelling throughout his long and prolific life.
Bookchin’s philosophy (“dialectical naturalism”) is, in many ways, an elegant system for deriving a valuable ethics. Bookchin’s politics (“libertarian municipalism”) is, in many ways, a compelling articulation of valuable political praxis. However, these are not and should not be conceived of as the singular basis for bringing about “… the unfolding of a decentralized, truly democratic, non-hierarchical, ecological society.” (from A Statement from the ISE Board) What I am arguing for is a recognition of the value of what some feminists and anti/post-colonialists (among others) sometimes refer to as standpoint theory and situated knowledges. That is, the need for a recognition and appreciation of complexity, difference, and multiplicity commensurate with the unique time/space circumstances each person faces. To head off the likely charges of a “collapse into relativism,” let me emphasize that, in my view, a recognition of standpoint and situated knowledges obliges a similar recognition of the inevitability of complexity, difference, and multiplicity but does not oblige an uncritical acceptance of all cosmologies or forms of political praxis. But rather than reproduce the problematic masculinist “soapbox” polemic culture that Bookchin emerged from and, clearly perpetuated, I would suggest (and, yes, I know this is broad language) principles of solidarity, affinity, and generosity as the basis of the culture of the ISE, in particular, and social ecologies, plural, generally.
In terms of the basis for “solidarity, affinity, and generosity,” following the language articulated by the ISE Board, those who hold a commitment to a “decentralized, truly democratic, non-hierarchical, ecological society” ought be recognized as sharing sufficient affinity to be approached with generosity and in the spirit of solidarity. But I’d suggest that the basis of affinity, solidarity, generosity is enduringly dynamic–it’s emergent and ought be seen as an ongoing collective and processual project of whomever would identify with social ecology. As such, I see Communalists, and those who draw on Bookchin’s dialectical naturalism as a basis for an ethics, as allies, comrades, and friends. I’m curious and excited to continue this dialogue.
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Well, MB liked reason much and just wanted a New Enlightenment. He defended much of science against metaphysics and mysticism, and certainly wasn’t idealizing the old Enlightenment. In ‘The Ecology of Freedom. The emergence and dissolution of hierarchy’ Bookchin wrote :
In our reaction to the Enlightenment thought we must rescue reason without becoming “rationalistic,” without reducing reason to mere technique. (page 160, edition of 2005)
Advancing some reason against myth was important for the Enlightenment thinkers, no? I may not like all of the things the Enlightenment thinkers did but at least they liberated us long ago a bit from the dark ages of patriarchal and racist religion being so much influential.
I think one of the problem many thinkers experience is lack of understanding of dialectical reasoning. If a thinker doesn’t have a comprehension of dialectical thinking, s/he might easily misunderstand what a dialectical thinker express.
A simple example for that is the relation between an acorn and an oak tree. A dialectical thinker sees an oak tree in an acorn as a potentiality and s/he doesn’t separate them, but another thinker might be separating them maybe considering only acorn as it is or a rotten one that hasn’t realized its potentialities.
For Bookchin early Enlightenment thinkers were vanguards of rational thinkers started a tradition against metaphysics, mysticism and religious dogma. They need to be understood with those conditions humanity desperately needed to overcome such an oppression and darkness –like an acorn need to grow in soil without sunshine. Their success opened a path to develop later universalism of revolutionary thinkers. But of course even universal ideas of those revolutionaries, Marx, Kropotkin or others were limited as it will always be limited until those religious or secular dogmas totally disappear and the whole humanity finds a way to overcome that duality (maybe in next century).
Therefore it is recognition of where the ideas of freedom, equality and justice come from. A dialectical thinker doesn’t analyse a phenomenon as a static entity and her/his analysis should be understood with a perspective of the dynamic of potentialities.
@Rafa
I think the article about postmodernism, you have sent the link for, is really important even though it is an old one. It should be discussed to see whether there is an agreement on that. Then maybe you can find a good article about postmodernism and identity politics. As much as I see it is a popular subject in the US and postmodernism is injected into identity politics in many different forms.
Chuck, I might be coming up against the limits of my own understanding and power to explain, but anyway … Bookchin’s argument obviously pivots around a defence of capital H History, capital P Progress and capital C Civilization in a provocation to the strains of postmodernism that were prominent at the time (the intellectual terrain is different now so can see how the emphasis feels wrong in retrospect). He argues what gives these categories coherence as categories are universals such as the rational, the good, the ethical etc.
He is careful to say “History in the sense that I am describing it”. I read History as it is used in the article not as referring to, or not only as referring to, history in the sense of the history of Europe or the history of capitalism or the history of the Enlightenment etc. I read it as History as the emergence of our very species from the natural world. It takes place at an entirely larger frame where it may make sense to look for universals like the good or the rational or however else you want to invest meaning into our species being.
You said he defined history as everything as good and rational and everything else as “event”. This seems to me like a gross simplification. The essential point is that he looks to the good and the rational as giving coherence to our species being and History (in the sense of the History of our species being) as reflecting this. Whatever evils occur along the way he regards as contingent (belonging to small “h” history) and not of consequence to who we essentially are, which is a different to saying they don’t matter to our understanding of particular historical periods involving imperialism and the like.
There is one sentence of consequence that contains the word “Europe” that you pick out from this 13 page article. I think the main importance of this reference to the argument as being rhetorical effect and provocation (given that everyone then and since was busy deconstructing Europe and all it represents). I’m saying that within this article the European location also belongs to small h history and question its importance to an argument that takes place at an entirely larger frame.
As I’ve said, I’m not sure what I think of Bookchin’s more general approach — focusing on the movement from first to second nature — but the main issue here is Bookchin’s apparent Eurocentrism. Here’s my concession to you: If he is in fact collapsing these two levels of historical argument as you seem to think then I agree that would be a problem. But let’s at least start from an fair and accurate understanding of what is being argued.
Not sure if this discussion has any puff left but would be interested in hearing (perhaps in a separate post) from those who identify as social ecologists and would want defend the broader argument about the move from first to second nature from which you ground a set of universals. I might find myself on the side of the critics in that discussion as long as it didn’t mean the abandonment of the unfinished enlightenment project, humanism, historical process, rationality etc.
Hey Gary,
I think your comments on this essay are very sensitive and insightful, although I’m not sure if I’m persuaded by your defense of Bookchin’s argument here.
I don’t think that Bookchin distinguished between history on a meta level and, for example, history as it is taught in history classes. As a dialectical thinker, I believe that Bookchin believed that *everything* was historical and historical in exactly the same way (subject to the same laws of development, identity, change, etc).
I think you’re right to say that Bookchin’s comments about Eurocentrism were polemical. Definitely, but I’m not sure if that’s a good defense. I mean, if he wasn’t Eurocentric, then why make these claims about Europe? Just to infuriate his supposed critics? Well, OK, but using historical discourse for such purposes seems just as cynical as attempts to divest history of meaning altogether.
You write: “The essential point is that he looks to the good and the rational as giving coherence to our species being and . . . . [w]hatever evils occur along the way he regards as contingent (belonging to small “h” history) and not of consequence to who we essentially are.”
I think that’s a very fair reading of his argument, but I disagree with this view and think it reflects his excessive identification of humanity with the good and rational. This causes numerous problems: for instance, if we (like Bookchin) regard patriarchy as irrational, then we would also have to regard the millennia-long history of patriarchy as “not of consequence to who we essentially are.” Do you see the problem there? This defense of history requires a disavowal of so much of our human experience.
In any case, I really appreciate your commentary.
@ Arlen
Another historical perspective on Europe.
I am not sure that it is appropriate to describe Bookchin as ‘Eurocentric’. He may have been born in the USA, but as Jews, his family had escaped from a Europe that was rampant with anti-Semitism in Russia, Prussia, Poland, Germany. From 1921 onwards the rise of National Socialism in opposition to Soviet Socialism led to the mass extermination of peoples that were considered as inferior aliens by the Nazis.
The so called ‘enlightenment’ concerned the academic elite of France, Britain, and the Holy Roman Empire, including Newton, Descartes, Voltaire, Kant, who were busy releasing themselves from the constraints of the Catholic, or Anglican, or Puritan or Islamic churches, and outlining a universe that was physical, not metaphysical; where the sun was the centre, not the earth; and could be explained by mathematics.
But the ‘enlightenment’ had little effect on the politicians. Europe was the site of continuous wars up to the present time. In 1800, there was no Europe as we know it now. There were the Empires of Great Britain; Napoleonic France; the Holy Roman Empire, including the Hapsburg Empire, and the German empire of Prussia and Poland; the Russian Empire; the Ottoman Empire in the Balkans, and across North Africa. These empires were ruled by political and religious elites, who lived in luxury and regarded their citizens as subject to their whims. Absolute poverty was the norm. At the same time there were many city-states, such as Milan, Venice, Rome, the cantons of Switzerland, and the kingdoms of Saxony, Bavaria, Bohemia, Silesia, Hesse, Lichtenstein, among many others in Germany, all of whom were busy fighting each other. The notion that smaller is better, more peaceful, and friendly has been totally disproved in the lands of the Holy Roman Empire across a thousand years.
It is well to remember that matters were not much better in the land of the free! I have been watching the History Channel programmes about the American War of Independence from Britain. It is made clear that the leaders of the War were Euro-American elites, farmers and entrepreneurs who were the largest slave holders in Virginia, the Carolinas, Georgia, Pennsylvania, and active in the transport of slaves by the East India Companies, and Royal African Company [all supported by the Royals of Great Britain]. When they talked about the rights of man, and independence, and freedom of citizens, they were not talking about their slaves nor the Indian tribes in the surrounding territories. The United States of America was founded by white elitists on a base of slavery and racism. One has to consider the white elitists as the scourge of human societies across the world.
In Europe, by 1900, there were still the Empires of Britain; the Austro-Hungarian Empire; the Russian Empire; the Ottoman Empire. There was little unity. The empires, and their estates, were disrupted by language, religion, historic loyalties.
In 1914, the First World War started, following an assassination in Serbia by the Black Hand gang. The assassination contravened treaty obligations between Serbia, Austria, Hungary, and sparked the war. It marked the end of the Austro-Hungarian Empire; and the Ottoman Empire, which was relegated to Turkey; and the Russian Empire.
1920 saw the emergence of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics.
1930 saw the rise of the National Socialists in Germany,[Hitler] and Fascists in Italy,[Mussolini] and Spain [Franco]. It is worth noting that they gained power by democratic vote.
1919 onwards there was rampant anti-semitism in Russia and Germany leading to the mass migration of Jews, and their mass extermination in the Holocaust by the Nazi government, 1939 to 1945.
1939 the start of the 2nd World War: whereby Nazi Germany and Austria, with Fascist Italy, attack Poland, France, the USSR, GB.
It is not surprising that the formation of the EU was a conscious effort to bring historical enemies to the negotiation table and to break the cycle of conflict.
1770 to 2000 was a period of constant wars between the city states, countries and kingdoms of Europe. It should not be seen as a model for international relations.
It may have started with the Enlightenment, and the liberation of science and mathematics, but it led to the discovery of the atomic structure of matter and the creation of atomic bombs, and the destruction of millions of people by mechanical means.
This period of history is marked by the mass destruction of people: at first, hand to hand, and then by machine. It is characterized by great differences between the rich and the poor, and the extermination of people who are considered undesirable by the elites.
The establishment of democracies, along with the freedom and independence of peoples, are all fantasies being worked out through the games the elites play! These elites may not be as obvious as they once were. They use their wealth in investment funds to finance modern day capitalism. They all come out of the woodwork to attend Royal events like the wedding of Prince William and Kate on April 29.
@Simon Batterbury
@Karl
I want to pick up a theme that was introduced by Simon concerning the situations in many poor countries in Africa and South America.
From the earliest times, the recognition that human safety depends on collaboration has been a motivating factor for the formation of village communities, cities, and nation-states. At present, the social ecology movement, in the USA and in Norway, and Finland demand that direct, participatory democracy, with the citizens working together for the benefits of the municipality and the local environment, is the sole hallmark of a social ecological approach.
I wish to propose that the current World Development Report, published by the World Bank group in April 2011, has offered evidence that indicates that this direct democracy model is not relevant for many communities and countries in other parts of the world. Whereas the direct democracy model assumes that the communities are at peace, are secure and law abiding, willing to debate and negotiate, are not in conflict, nor fragile, and not violent nor criminal, the World Development teams observed that in countries affected by fragility, conflict, and violence, insecurity has become the primary development challenge of our time.
They reported that at least one-and-a-half billion people live in areas affected by fragility, conflict, or large-scale, organized criminal violence. The World Development teams visited twenty low- and middle income countries including Afghanistan, Bosnia, Colombia, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Haiti, Iraq, Kenya, Mali, Nepal, Pakistan, Papua New Guinea, Rwanda, Solomon Islands, Somalia, South Africa, Sudan, Timor-Leste, Vanuatu, West Bank and Gaza, and Yemen. They concluded that :
No low-income fragile or conflict-affected country has yet to achieve a single United Nations Millennium Development Goal (UN MDG);
New threats—organized crime and trafficking, civil unrest due to global economic shocks, terrorism—have supplemented continued preoccupations with conventional war between and within countries;
Violence and conflict have not been banished: one in four people on the planet, more than
1.5 billion, live in fragile and conflict-affected states or in countries with very high levels of criminal violence.
Many countries and sub-national areas now face cycles of repeated violence, weak governance, and instability. These conflicts often are not one-off events, but are ongoing and repeated: 90 percent of the last decade’s civil wars occurred in countries that had already had a civil war in the last 30 years. New forms of conflict and violence threaten development: many countries that have successfully negotiated political and peace agreements after violent political conflicts, such as El Salvador, Guatemala, and South Africa, now face high levels of violent crime, constraining their development. People in fragile and conflict-affected states are more than twice as likely to be undernourished as those in other developing countries, more than three times as likely to be unable to send their children to school, twice as likely to see their children die before age five, and more than twice as likely to lack clean water.
In highly violent societies, many people experience the death of a son or daughter before their time: when children are late coming home, a parent has good reason to fear for their lives and physical safety. Everyday experiences, such as going to school, to work, or to market, become occasions for fear. People hesitate to build houses or invest in small businesses because these can be destroyed in a moment.
The direct impact of violence falls primarily on young males—the majority of fighting forces and gang members— but women and children often suffer disproportionately from the indirect effects. Men make up 96 percent of detainees and 90 percent of the missing; women and children are close to 80 percent of refugees and those internally displaced.
And violence begets violence: male children who witness abuses have a higher tendency to perpetrate violence later in life.
Drug and human trafficking, money laundering, illegal exploitation of natural resources and wildlife, counterfeiting, and violations of intellectual property rights are lucrative criminal activities, which facilitate the penetration by organized crime of the already vulnerable sociopolitical, judicial, and security structures in developing countries.
In Central America, for example, several countries that regained political stability two decades ago are now facing the decay of the state, whose institutions lack the strength to face this onslaught. Transnational organized crime has converted some Caribbean countries into corridors for the movement of illegal drugs and persons toward Europe and North America. Bolivia, Colombia, and Peru, continue to be the main global cocaine producers, while Mexico is facing an unprecedented wave of violence given its border with the largest immigrant, drug consumption, and arms producing market of the USA. West Africa has become the newest passage of drugs coming from South America and destined for Europe. Several African countries suffer the illegal exploitation of their natural resources, while Asia is a hub for tons of opiates originating from Afghanistan. The unprecedented progression of organized crime could spell the collapse of many weak states as their institutions fall prey to the associated violence. The precarious economic development observed in many regions of the world provides a stimulus for consolidating these illegal activities, which will continue to thrive as a consequence of the impunity they encounter in developing countries.
Drugs provide the money that enables organized criminals to corrupt and manipulate even the most powerful societies—to the ultimate detriment of the urban poor, who provide most of the criminals’ foot-soldiers and who find themselves trapped in environments traumatized by criminal violence. The most vulnerable groups in society are frequently most affected by violence. Tied to their homes or places of work, the vulnerable have little of the protection that money or well-placed contacts afford. Poor child nutrition for those displaced or unable to earn incomes due to violence has lasting effects, impairing physical and cognitive functioning. Violence destroys school infrastructure, displaces teachers, and interrupts schooling, often for an entire generation of poor children.
War, looting, and crime destroy the household assets of the poor, and fear of violent
attacks prevents them from tilling their fields or traveling to schools, clinics, workplaces,
and markets.
People in fragile and conflict-affected states are more likely to be impoverished, to miss out on schooling, and to lack access to basic health services. Children born in a fragile or conflict-affected state are twice as likely to be undernourished and nearly twice as likely to lack access to improved water; those of primary-school age are three times as likely not to be enrolled in school; and they are nearly twice as likely to die before their fifth birthday. Over the last two decades, infant mortality has been falling in nearly all countries, but the reduction in infant mortality in fragile and conflict-affected countries has lagged behind .
As the world takes stock of progress on the MDGs, it is apparent that the gap between violence-prone countries and other developing countries is widening. Organized crime networks engage in a wide variety of illicit activities, including trafficking drugs, people, and small arms and light weapons; financial crimes; and money laundering. These illicit activities require the absence of the rule of law and, therefore, often thrive in countries affected by other forms of violence. According to various studies, organized crime generates annual revenues ranging from US$120 billion to as high as US$330 billion, with drug trafficking the most profitable. Other estimates suggest that the world’s shadow economy, including organized crime, could be as high as 10 percent of GDP globally: that is, up to $6 trillion.
The World Development Report proposes that: we need to adopt a layered approach. Some problems can be addressed at the country level, but others need to be addressed at a regional level, such as developing markets that integrate insecure areas and pooling resources for building capacity. Some actions are needed at a global level, such as building new capacities to support justice reform and the creation of jobs; forging partnerships between producer and consumer countries to stem illegal trafficking;
and acting to reduce the stresses caused by food price volatility. It may seem incomprehensible how prosperity in high-income countries and a sophisticated global economy can coexist with extreme violence and misery in other parts of the globe. The pirates operating off the coast of Somalia who prey on the shipping through the Gulf of Aden illustrate the paradox of the existing global system. How is it that the combined prosperity and capability of the world’s modern nation-states cannot prevent a problem from antiquity? How is it that almost a decade after renewed international engagement with Afghanistan, the prospects of peace seem distant? How is it that entire urban communities can be terrorized by drug traffickers? How is it that countries in the Middle East and North Africa could face explosions of popular grievances despite, in some cases, sustained high growth and improvement in social indicators?
The central message of the Report is that strengthening legitimate institutions and governance to provide citizen security, justice, and jobs is crucial to break cycles of violence. Institutional legitimacy is the key to stability. When state institutions do not adequately protect citizens, guard against corruption, or provide access to justice; when markets do not provide job opportunities; or when communities have lost social cohesion—the likelihood of violent conflict increases. The role of the State is to protect citizens, combat corruption, establish the rule of law, and prevent violent conflicts.
[Go to http://www.worldbank.org
Do you expect World Bank supporting direct democracy? Of course they are looking for “layered approach” of “governance”, which means an authoritarian government controlled by international institutions.
I understand that some other people disappointed by Bookchin’s revolutionary approach because it doesn’t fit into current capitalist market system and “decentralization” under the control of centralized states. If you think that criminal problems can only be solved by targeting the root causes, I don’t think that you can see direct democracy irrelevant. Direct democracy is the way to build alternative communities to tackle all sorts of problems in “low- and middle income countries”. There are already examples and I think there will be more examples in near future.
The significance of the World Development Report is that it reminds us graphically that many communities are not living in peace and happiness,carrying out negotiations with each other about the best ways to organise their neighbourhood, but are living in poverty, fear, violence committed by their government, or by the army,by drug dealers, criminal gangs, or by the military gangs who come to steal, kill, rape. They are not talking about a handful of people. They are identifying 1.5 billion people across the world.
The process of direct democracy may be regarded as an ideal, towards which we should be working. We should not assume that it is a reality for the rest of the world, just because I/we/you/others live in a village or a neighbourhood cooperating, collaborating, negotiating, making decisions about our lifes in peace and love.
As social ecologists we should be more concerned about how to remove threats so that communities can live in peace. What do you do about the drug dealers, the paramilitaries, the tribal militia? For example, most of the people and the politicians of Northern Ireland have agreed to live together at peace. But the paramilitaries and terrorists continue to shoot, bomb, burn! What is to be done? In the Democratic Republic of Congo the tribal military gangs come into villages, gang rape all citizens,shoot, bomb and burn, steal valuable minerals like diamonds, silver. What is to be done?
The ecological and humanitarian investment in the developing world, and with the future efforts of the developed world itself, rather than the former economic and political incentives, will enable sustainable development options to promote global stability and to prevent and correct for the proportionate environmental degradation which had and could otherwise have occurred under the constraints of impoverishment and world market competition.
Obtaining an equitable perspective over international rights and responsibilities derives naturally from the concern for the expression of equality among one’s nation and community, enabling each group the opportunity and capacity for informed decisions and fair relations in and of the mechanisms of trade, economic stabilization, and political activity.
Realizing a standard for the quality of life inclusive of egalitarian, health, and sustainability objectives and criteria of a corresponding economic system capable of rationalizing and attaining equilibrium in terms of the aggregate value of the products and services introduced will require the education and orientation of all cultures towards the values and priorities of the highest of humanity’s understanding and concern for the survivability of each people and the foundations for the perseverance of reality itself.
I don’t think that direct democracy is not achievable during period of violance or under government threat. Athenians didn’t give up from democracy during war years (either against Spartanians or Persians). As much as I know the most active period of New England town meetings were the years of independence war.
More recent example is Zapatistas. They have built autonomous municipalities based on direct democracy while they were heavily threatened by the government and the military. The same process is happening in Northern Kurdistan to achieve democratic confederalism based on direct democracy.
As social problems become more urgent, people tend to organize more and demand more participation and democracy.
@visitor
I agree. It is often the case that communities under threat come together and organise: be they Kurds in Turkey, or Kurds in Bradford or London. But their direct democracy operates under threat, and on the assumption that they will be left alone. To my mind the WDR reminded us that there are many communities that are so vulnerable and abused and assaulted that they have become unable to plan their community lifes. They are not ‘left alone’ long enough to organise. Such communities are also subject to invasion by land-grabbers from Syria,Saudi Arabia, Korea, or miners from China, Australia, or loggers from Sweden or Russia. The weaker the social structures, the more vulnerable the communities.The more important it is for them to ‘organise’. But sometimes they need help from others.
@ Jesse
I agree that we have to think about the ‘quality of life’ of different communities across the world, and not assume that they live as we do in the US or UK or EU.
If we are to create and foster a world free of all international and regional injustice and hostility, with the resulting and contingent environmental cost and degradation, then each group will need to realize and trust that adequate ethical, equitable, and sustainable economic development strategies – and corresponding and conducive political frameworks and methodologies – are both possible and desirable, and that, with the gathering support and solidarity of each area and population demographic unto and of itself, the new spirit and consensus of the international community are actively and collectively mobilizing towards the accomplishment and protection of the reality of this potential for all peoples of the Earth, across and among all formerly separative and insular nationalities and cultures.