What Green electoral
culture?
A discussion by D.
Orton about the philosophical
direction for the Canadian Green Party
"Canada's
constitution is silent on the rights of non-human forms of life."
Judith McKenzie, Environmental Politics In Canada.
"Of all the
aspects of our society, the military is the most directly an errand boy
for the Americans."
George Grant, Lament For A Nation.
"The Greens
have identified themselves - critically - with the industrial system
and its political
administration. Nowhere do
they want to get out. Instead of spreading consciousness they are
obscuring it all along the line. They are
helping to patch up the cracks in the general consensus.
The theorists
of realpolitik state directly that nothing else
will do but to 'rule out' extremes."
Rudolf Bahro, June 19, 1985, in
his Resignation
Statement from the German Green Party.
Bahro was one of the co-founders
of the Party.
I have been thinking for some time about how Green
Party people, both
at the federal and provincial levels,
see the
electoral culture, and
what practice needs to be embraced. Should the focus be on getting
Green MPs
elected and
"getting out the vote", or should we focus on
changing public consciousness in Canada? What
follows, if we
choose one
of these orientations, or can these two orientations go hand in hand?
The circulation
of the booklet
"2006 Leadership and Council Elections
and Constitutional Review" by the federal Green Party,
prior to the
August convention in Ottawa, outlines the aspirations of those party
members seeking office within
our party.
This document has helped
precipitate, along with related literature and a tenure in the shadow
cabinet as
deep ecology spokesperson, this comment on Green electoral
culture.
Voting for the Greens should not be about sending
someone to
parliament. It should be about changing
popular
consciousness so that
humans come to make their peace with Nature before it is too late, and
that we have
the societal courage to make those fundamental changes
which protecting the Earth requires.
The federal party claims not only electoral
legitimacy as a political
party but also, constitutionally, that it
represents and
speaks for the
"broader Green Movement" in Canada. However, one sees an overwhelming
emphasis on
electoral considerations, and, within this, the emphasis is
organizational - "towards growth and
development",
and not theoretical
or philosophical. Yet for deeper Greens, the ongoing destruction of the
natural world
and the ecological crisis are the primary concern. We see
an urgent necessity for alternative
visions to be
presented for public
discussion around various issues, such as climate change, peak oil and
energy use,
industrial forestry and agriculture, increasing destruction
of other life forms and their habitats,
growing highly
addicted
consumer populations, etc. We have to bring together the general
ecocentric vision
rooted in deep
ecology, and show how it relates to a
particular issue. (I have tried to do this over the years
in my
environmental and green movement work. For a couple of recent articles
illustrating this, see
"Reclaiming the Commons: Responding
to Climate
Change and Peak Oil", June 2006, circulated
on Green Party
lists and
the internet, and also reproduced by Canadian Dimension magazine on
their
web site;
and the Green Web Bulletin #74, "Off-highway
Vehicles and Deep Ecology:
Cultural
Clash and Alienation from the Natural World"
An
edited version of this article is being included in
an anthology
of
dissenting views on off-highway vehicles, being published by the
Foundation for Deep
Ecology, due
out next year. This off-highway
vehicle book would perhaps be similar to the anti-industrial
forestry
book Clearcut, which came out
in 1993, and which has been so helpful
to forestry activists.)
We should not join forces with the ideologues of
industrial consumer
capitalism in providing a "green"
varnish to
their theories and
practices. Such people, some of whom are to be found in the Green
Party,
provide what I
see as "green wash" consulting services to the
business class in industrial capitalist society.
This provides
a bias,
in my view, towards eco-capitalist-type thinking by such practitioners
within the party.
It means
taking the continuity of industrial
capitalist society as a given and as the only possible paradigm
for
resolving ecological and social problems. Examples would be the
promotion of light green ecological
theories, such
as. "natural
capitalism" and "sustainable development", or opposing the immediate
withdrawal
from NAFTA and Afghanistan as Green Party policies. I am
willing to compromise on some
issues, but
not on matters of principle,
such as whether or not the Canadian Green Party should support
Canadian
troops as part of a US inspired military occupation of Afghanistan. The
perspective of that
wonderful
conservative philosopher the late George
Grant, as given in the above quotation from
Lament For A
Nation, is
surely insightful here, in the days of a decaying superpower.
Polarization
and conflict
around "hot" issues is often good, as it
brings about deeper discussions and reveals where
people
actually
stand. (Personally, I believe the federal Green Party has Canadian and
Afghan blood
on its hands
for refusing to support a motion to
immediately withdraw Canadian troops from
Afghanistan.)
Our overall concern should be dismantling the
existing industrial,
growth-conditioned, capitalist society
which has
produced the growing
ecological and social crisis, and rebuilding society on deep green
ecological and
social justice principles. If this is not being
advocated, then polling ten per cent or more of
a
constituency's vote,
or being "endorsed" by some mainstream newspaper, are not indications
of growing
support for
Green Party values. Rather, they are indications
of a "light greening" of our message, so that it is
no longer
threatening to the survival of industrial capitalist society itself.
This lack of vision was well shown, to my own mind,
by the national
distribution of the embarrassing,
watered-down
one-page flyer (but
featuring five montages of the Leader) called "Yep. We're a
one-issue
party", in the closing days of the 2006 federal election
campaign. As
electoral Greens in
Central Nova,
we refused to distribute this. We
were put on the spot by this flyer and had to rush to
produce our
own,
more consciousness-changing pamphlet, although most of the electoral
campaign had
passed us by
as we waited for the promised literature from
headquarters to arrive. The election pamphlet
we eventually
produced
can be seen at Make Peace with Nature We do have to pay
attention to the
packaging of
our ideas and how they
are presented, but content must always remain primary,
otherwise we
will lose our way. We will then betray that ecological trust which the
Canadian public is
starting to
accord to Greens.
Society has traditionally defined itself as
human-centered - that
Nature is there for the taking. What
we need to do,
is to shift to an
ecocentric all-species consciousness, and extend our sense of personal
identity to
include the well-being of the Earth. This is the importance
of deep ecology to the Green Party.
If put into
practice, it would
distinguish us from the other, human-centered, political parties. While
social
justice is
important, it needs to be the more inclusive
all-species justice, not just a human-centered justice.
In
post-industrial societies like Canada, Greens need to grasp that our
attitudes towards Nature or the
natural world
become the main political
cleavage and challenge, not the Left/Right social justice concern -
important as
this is.
The ecocentric endeavour seems to be having a
spreading impact. Three
recently published books
illustrate
this. These books are Philip
Sutton's Nature, Environment and
Society, Judith McKenzie's
Environmental Politics in Canada,
and Fred Bender's The Culture Of
Extinction. McKenzie's
Green Political Theory
chapter, should be
required reading for electoral greens so that they can
self-rate
their
politics in the Green Party: "The
two broad visions of green thought -
environmentalism as ideals and beliefs that can be accommodated within
the traditional liberal
democratic
tradition and environmentalism as
new ideology, commonly referred to in the literature
as ecologism,
ecocentrism, or deep ecology." The three books mentioned all
take deep
ecology as
setting a
defining bar and theoretical stage for analysis of
the world around us. We do see, with these
authors, that
deep ecology
is becoming an orientation, not only in university teaching subjects,
but also in
contemporary
culture and politics.
I find a general theme in the federal party voting
booklet is that many
candidates for various positions,
who are asking
for organizational
support within the party, emphasize winning parliamentary seats and
taking the
party to "the next level" organizationally. As one leaflet
put it: "Our
focus: preparing to elect
Green Party
MPs. That's our
challenge." But who will educate the Green MP educators, to
paraphrase
a saying from Marx from long ago? Green electoral politics should be
about promoting a
fundamental
shift in peoples' consciousness towards a
sustainable planet for humans and for other species,
and not about
accumulating votes or gaining parliamentary seats.
Another theme seems to be that one uses the other
political parties as
a model but with the proviso that
Greens just do
things more
efficiently and with fewer funds. Hence the mimicking of shadow cabinet
positions in
the Green Party with those of contending political
parties. Yet how can the well-being of the
Earth and all
the other
species which share the planet with us be "represented" in a Green
Party shadow
cabinet,
whether federal or provincial, if we follow this
model? How can such non-human interests be
reflected in
decision making
within a Green Party? What does ecocentric governance mean, as opposed
to human
governance, and how is this being reflected in Green Party
internal and external federal elections?
This is a
discussion which
needs to take place by those seeking office in our party.
"Overselling" by those in leadership positions
is worrisome for
me. What I mean by this is exaggerating
during federal
elections
possible electoral success, or party ecological insights, or putting
over-the-top spin
on the latest
polling firm data as it concerns the
Green Party. Such talk eventually erodes credibility. It is much
better
to have the more realistic attitude of humility towards the daunting
tasks which face us and the various
abilities
which we collectively
bring to address such tasks.
Another substantial bother for me, is the decision
to have "a full
slate" for an election. This causes the
acceptance of
candidates who
may have minimal ecological literacy and no record of participation in
environmental
and/or social justice struggles. Such was the situation
in the recent provincial election in Nova
Scotia. Does
this perspective
imply that the quality of a particular candidate is not too important?
In its early
days, the
German Green Party proclaimed itself the
"anti-party party", but eventually "parliamentary realism"
and
absorption to the functioning dress, lifestyle and servility codes of
parliament asserted themselves. Are we
on the path to
sell out even in
nominating candidates? Are those like myself, who raise dissenting
voices about
the electoral
culture we are rushing to embrace, in the
business of "feeling morally pure", as some have said?
In my view,
some
Greens betray their unique vision potential and aspire to become
conventional politicians
skilled in the
art of "realpolitik" - a
betrayal of the Earth, in my terms.
My own quite limited green electoral experience, as
within the shadow
cabinet, is that those who defend
light green
policies will not accept
being politically labelled this way. They often claim that they too
share the
dark green or
deep ecology ideals, but are more "practical"
and "must relate to where the public is at", if greens
are to get
elected. They may call themselves supporters of "revolutionary
pragmatism", for example. How one
wishes that
this was true! Getting
elected is, from the light green or reformist perspective, the name of
the
electoral
game. But before society can radically change, the ideas
advocating the required changes have to be
aired and gain
a public
constituency. If electoral greens do not raise such ideas, who will? I
do not accept that
there is some
kind of absolute distinction between
being theoretical and being practical. Good work has to try
to combine
both aspects.
We have to defend what is left of the natural world
by putting, not
only our votes, but, more importantly,
our minds, our
hearts and our
bodies on the line in its defense. We must truly see ourselves as part
of the larger
green movement
and incorporate this in how we conduct
ourselves. This requires major discussion within the
party. We
cannot
lag behind the ecology, peace and social justice movements, which too
often is the situation
today.
Canada's Constitution fosters "furthering economic
development"
(Section 36b). But as Judith McKenzie
shows us in
her quotation, our
Constitution is totally silent on defending the rights of non-human
life forms.
This is our
non-voting constituency. Green electoral
culture needs to show clearly that we speak for all life and
not only for
humans. Voting for us means voting for the trees, for the birds and
for the other animals. It means
voting for the
rivers, oceans and
mountains, and for clear air and clean water.
July 16, 2006
David Orton
Federal candidate in Central Nova in 2006, and
national
Green Party deep ecology spokesperson.
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Last updated: July 23, 2006