Though I’ve written a lot on technological, energy, and geopolitical futures, this has largely been to the neglect of ideology. Part of the reason is that making accurate predictions on this topic is far harder, because of the inherent intangibility of belief systems. Nonetheless, it is necessary, because of their overwhelming influence on the historical process; for instance, the 20th century would have been totally different had Communism, fascism, and Islamism failed to overtake major states such as Russia, Germany, or Iran.
Furthermore, I do not think it is an impossible endeavor. While forecasting specifics such as Stalinist central planning or the mystical millenarianism of Nazism would have been impossible for an observer in 1911, entertaining the possibility of the emergence of such regimes was entirely possible by drawing on the main strands of contemporary intellectual thought on new types of politics and society, which at the time resolved around Marxism, utopian socialism, Social Darwinism, and futurism.
What trends would a similar exercise reveal for today? I would argue that the equivalent themes, largely marginalized now but with the potential for explosive growth under the right conditions of socio-political stress, include: the Green movement (ranging the gamut from local sustainability activists to authoritarian ecosocialists); the technoutopians (include the open-source movement, Pirates, technological singularitarians, Wikileaks activists); and a revival of fascist, far-right thought in the guise of ethnic chauvinism and various Third Position ideologies. Bearing in mind the profound instability of today’s world order, we may be seeing some of these ideologies coming into political fruition sooner rather than later.
Ecotechnic Dictatorship
The foremost challenge of the 21st century is managing or adapting to the havoc that will be wrecked by accelerating global warming. Drought, heat, and flooding threaten to decimate crop yields in much of the global South (and in the worst case scenario, make them uninhabitable). As their carrying capacity shrinks, their political systems will fray, creating chaos and waves of “climate refugees”.
One ideological product of these development will be many different manifestations of what I termed “Green Communism“. In an age of diminishing resources and climate chaos, the political system with the best promise of offering both stability and fairness is authoritarian ecosocialism (or “ecotechnic dictatorship“). This would involve a ruthless drive towards a sustainable society and radical downsizing of the industrial system, but in such a way as to minimize the impact on human welfare. Popular resentment at the decline in consumer purchasing power will be tempered by greater equality and dedication to meritocracy and transparency. Advances in operations research and computer networks mean that the central planning needed to build ecosocialism can be far more viable and efficient than in the late USSR.
Since there will be enemies, both within and without, intent on sabotaging any embryonic Green Communist state, a certain degree of repression will be an inescapable condition of its early survival. Though the ideological foundations for a degeneration into unbounded chiliasm are admittedly present, the risks of that happening can be controlled by a system of universal two-way “sousveillance“, allowing for the early detection of corruption, free-riding, or tyrannical tendencies on the part of individuals.
Bearing in mind its current political system and ecological fragility, China may adopt something approximating ecotechnic dictatorship in the decades ahead (with a heavy nationalist tinge).
The Green Ideology
Ecotechnic dictatorships are a mere subset of a far larger emerging Green movement, which will have increasingly transformational effects across the entire political spectrum as every political system is forced to confront Limits to Growth. But amongst some countries and peoples, the manifestations of Green ideology will be much stronger than in others.
Consider the plight of climate refugees. Uprooted from their traditional communities, denied access to higher and cooler ground by anti-immigrant sentiment in the developed countries that were largely responsible for their predicament in the first place, and facing a profoundly uncertain future. These people will need a narrative. Hence, the inevitable Greening of anti-imperialism and Third Worldism.
Then there are their compatriots in the developed world. The restrictive practices of the US towards Latin American immigrants arouses resentment among Hispaniacs, both those in the US and in Mexico, Guatemala, etc. There is a similar situation with regards to Europe and Africans. But whereas today the southern peoples are merely denied economic opportunities, in the future it may become a matter of life or death. The collapse of Third World states, coupled with developed countries raising their moats, will enrage immigrant communities; some of their members may try to get back at the rich world-destroyers, e.g. through biological or ecological terrorism, and their sources of inspiration may include thinkers such as Derrick Jensen, the anarcho-primitivist who asks himself whether he should write or blow up a dam on waking up every morning.
There will be few countries where Green ideology is explicitly recognized as the bedrock of the state. One exception is Bolivia, which recently enshrined natural rights on an equal footing with human rights; there are whiffs of similar trends in Ecuador, Venezuela, Costa Rica, and Cuba.
Neo-fascism
In the wake of the economic recession, and the increasing visibility of Islam, there has been a far right resurgence in Europe. But today’s crop of neo-fascists are a different breed from the Brown Shirts and jack-booted militarists of the 1930’s. The far right politicians who actually come to power may be ethnic chauvinists, but they do not favor the military expansionism and slave empires dreamed of by wartime Germany, Italy, and Japan. Instead, they are intent on reasserting the “rights” of the “indigenous” population (read: whites), closing down the borders to poor countries, and deporting as many “unintegrated” immigrants as possible.
As mentioned above, global warming will produce failed states and climate refugees, stoking Third World resentment and radicalizing immigrant communities in the developed world. One general consequence is a further strengthening of already latent neo-fascist sentiments in Europe and the US.
However, outcomes will vary greatly country by country. Due to the stability of its two-party system and the very long-term survival of its liberal democracy, the US is unlikely to regress into far-right dictatorship (but a semi-authoritarian corporatocracy is entirely feasible). Prospects for Europe seem much bleaker. The ghettoed Muslim communities of the continent aren’t going away, and as economies falter under the pressure of debts and peak oil, they will make an ever more attractive target for demagogues yammering about imminent Eurabia and welfare state parasites. Even as they mount imperialist wars for resources, as France did in Libya, the Europeans will close off their borders and subject unwelcome minorities to repressions under the convenient guise of anti-terror laws. Deportations will also become prevalent, as with the recent expulsion of the Roma people from France.
Objectively, Russia has most of the prerequisites for neo-fascism: corporatism, ethnic chauvinism, unaccountable power agencies, an overweening executive, and the deference to hierarchy embodied in the power vertical. Almost 50% of Russians support the idea of “Russia for Russians”. For now, the Kremlin explicitly rejects nationalism; however, should its political legitimacy wane, e.g. on the back of economic stagnation or rising dissatisfaction with corruption, then it may bow to nationalist pressures if not lose power to them. And those nationalist revolutionaries aren’t necessarily going to be National Bolshevik brawlers or Young Guard fanatics; more likely, they would wear suits, and speak the language of liberalism, while taking the country into neo-fascism.
As a nation under rising Malthusian stress, any far right upsurge in China would logically hew to more historical lines. Countries like Russia, Germany, or France have more than enough land for all their citizens; they might just not want any more of them. But China will need more land, for food and minerals; a nationalist regime in Beijing would have no problems with traditional methods of territorial expansion.
There will be a strong ecological element to modern neo-fascism. Read most far right thinkers today, and you’ll find that they focus on zero population growth and land conservation; indeed, adoration of pre-industrial mores has always been a staple of the Third Position. Immigrants not only crowd out indigenous peoples, but accelerate environmental degradation; as such, they are not welcome.
The Pirates
The Pirates are the most solidified exemplars of modern anarchism, leading a Romantic resistance against the corporate state for information freedom. Closely aligned strands are the open-source movement, which stresses voluntary and collaborative work to produce free software; and the Wikileaks project, whose guiding philosophy is that authoritarian conspiracies rely on secrecy for their effectiveness and dissipate when revealed to the light of mass scrutiny.
It is hard to imagine a Pirate Party ever forming a hard political force, given their anarchic nature. Nonetheless, their ideology – in both theory and practice – will serve to undermine authoritarianism (be it a mild extension of today’s “anti-terror” climate, or full-blown Green Communist or neo-fascist constructs of a new kind).
In a more general sense, this counter-culture also stands for shortcuts and living smartly. They like concepts such as internationalist geoarbitrage or living off Internet “muses” as opposed to traditional employment and national loyalties, and are interested in things such as virtual reality, life extension, nootropics and psychedelic drugs, and the technological singularity. Obviously, few states like such folks, least of all authoritarian ones.
Myriads of Hybrids
Commenting on 20th century history, many observers have acknowledged that in many cases, it was difficult to tell where fascism ended and socialism began; likewise, the boundaries between authoritarianism and totalitarianism were always blurry. For instance, just what is the Libyan Jamahiriya?
Likewise, real world examples will inevitably diverge from the templates suggested in this post. For instance, take China. Most opponents of the Communist Party’s hegemony aren’t liberals as such, but either ecosocialists or nationalists. Now if the Communists were to falter, or open themselves up to a wider political spectrum, would they sooner embrace the ecosocialists or the nationalists? Or perhaps they’d try to accommodate both?
Perhaps a system of green socialism will develop in Russia (or Canada), but with exclusionary and ethnic chauvinist tinges. Immigrants may be allowed in, but only as long as they agree to be electronically tagged, pay a huge percentage of their incomes in taxes, and to be barred from free or subsidized social services. If this is the form that right-wing sentiment predominantly takes, then we may see the emergence of caste systems throughout the northern hemisphere by 2100.
In any case, one thing seems sure -the coming decades will provide no shortage of new ideological developments and struggles. Those despairing that we are at end of history are unlikely to remain disappointed.
EDIT: This article has been translated into Russian at Inosmi.Ru (Радикальные идеологии 21-го века).
“Drought, heat, and flooding threaten to decimate crop yields in much of the global South…”
So far all of the impact has been on polar regions instead. Some have called it “Polar Warming”.
“Advances in operations research and computer networks mean that the central planning needed to build ecosocialism can be far more viable and efficient than in the late USSR.”
I don’t think that the late USSR was inefficient. The idea that it collapsed because it didn’t work is a myth. The system was abolished, and THEN all hell broke lose. Just one example: in many years of riding the Moscow subway under the late USSR I don’t remember a train stopping in the middle of the tunnel even once. No re-routing either. You can’t spend more than a couple of hours in the New York subway without a delay or a re-routing. This is just the first example that came to mind. I could come up with a thousand more.
“…in the developed countries that were largely responsible for their predicament in the first place…”
If you take religion away from people, they will recreate it under another name. I don’t really know if the A part of AGW has any basis in fact, but neither do most of the people who feel guilty in the way you described above. They have a psychological need to feel guilty, the traditional (religious) framework for doing that has disappeared, so now they’re using other means to get there. Humanity has sinned and must repent!
“But whereas today the southern peoples are merely denied economic opportunities…”
Why can’t they create those where they are? I think what you really mean to say is that they’re denied handouts. Why should anyone be entitled to handouts, to free lunch? Why should those who can be punished for their ability? And guilt-tripped about it too. If you get a good grade in college, but the guy sitting next to you in class doesn’t, do you feel guilty about denying him the “opportunity” to learn?
“Instead, they are intent on reasserting the “rights” of the “indigenous” population..”
I’m curious: why did you put the word indigenous in quotes? Do you deny that Europe has an indigenous population? Do you deny that only about Europe or about every continent? Same question about the quotes around the word rights. Do you believe that no one on Earth should have rights that are based on being indigenous, or do you only believe that about Europeans? If the former, then you could only maintain consistency by condemning any legal privileges and economic handouts afforded to Australian Aborigines, Native Canadians, etc, etc. If the latter, then wouldn’t you fall under a popular definition of a racist?
“…closing down the borders to poor countries…”
Do you think that any countries should have the right to guard their borders? Do you think that individuals should have the right to remove trespassers from their private property? If you think that the above comparison is unfair, why?
“…and their sources of inspiration may include thinkers such as Derrick Jensen…”
You’ve talked about the potential for Third World resentment, and yet the only ideologue of that resentment whom you cite has a name that couldn’t be more first-world unless it had a title of nobility attached to it. We’ve already been through this so many times. Neither Marx nor Engels nor Lenin nor Trotsky nor [long list of scoundrels] were workers or peasants, neither Abimael Guzman nor subcommandante Marcos are Indians, etc., etc. This just adds to the general feeling of farce that all of these ideologies evoke in me.
In Latin America there probably would have never been any indigenous (see, no quotes) revolts if there were no guys who look like Spaniards (I just remembered Che and Fidel) to ignite them. And why do they do it? Beats working. I hear Fidel has a double-digit number of kids. Quoting Hollywood, “it’s good to be the king.”
Politics is a series of fights among elites. You can’t rise to the top without talent, but you CAN do it without honesty, hence occasional cries of “I’m fighting against the elites” from the top. Politically it makes no difference what the bottom of the distribution thinks or feels.
“…yammering about imminent Eurabia and welfare state parasites.”
But there ARE welfare state parasites.
“Even as they mount imperialist wars for resources, as France did in Libya…”
I doubt that was about oil.
“…a nationalist regime in Beijing would have no problems with traditional methods of territorial expansion.”
So far their entry into Africa looks like their earlier entries into SE Asia, US, Australia, etc. – individual entrepreneurs from the southern coastal provinces going out by themselves to do business, without government involvement. They’ve had that pattern for centuries. It’s not impossible that they would switch to a new pattern of course.
As for the big ideologies of the future, I’d guess that they would be East Asian nationalisms and Islam.
Thanks for your post, Glossy.
First off, I want to emphasize that my personal opinions on these ideologies aren’t fixed, but fleeting; mostly, I’m just describing them, not so much judging them.
Re-polar warming. It has been most pronounced there, but the carrying capacity impacts will actually be positive there. This is in stark contrast to southern regions, where even the smallest climatic shifts have the potential to cripple entire regions. For instance, the fall of Akkad – one of the world’s first civilizations – was trigged by a cooling of just a few 0.1’s of 1C. In the past decade, and especially the last few years, crop yields in the Arab Middle East, the world’s most fragile ecological region, have begun to plummet. These developments will probably later be replicated in sub-Saharan Africa, India, Asia, SE Asia, Central America, and Australia.
Re-Soviet inefficiency. That’s far too anecdotal. Yes, metro systems were efficient. Converting massive levels of industrial production, e.g. in coal or steel, to consumer goods? Not nearly as much. As for healthcare, it was the only industrialized country to see infant mortality rates actually increase for a long period (from the early 1970’s to mid 1980’s). With the sole exception of the early 1990’s, even Yeltsin’s Russia avoided that.
Re-AGW as religion. My main point is that many Third Worlders already feel aggrieved by perceived Western chauvinism and imperialism. The progress of AGW will only add kindling to these resentments.
Re-indigenous populations and welfare state parasites. I’m paraphrasing far right rhetoric, nothing more. Though on the topic of the latter, the parasitism of financial institutions on Western countries today far, far exceeds that of the lazy bums.
Re-paradoxes. Off course, some rich-world intellectuals will be as much in the vanguard of new Green Communist or anarchic movements as native-born Third World insurrectionists; quite possibly, they will even be their driving forces. Most revolutionaries come from the in-between and conflicted social classes and zones; the French Revolution, not in advanced Britain or backwards Russia; the Russian Revolution, not in Western Europe or the colonial periphery; the Bolshevik intelligentsia, middle-class, with few nobles or true workers or peasantry. The theorist behind “ecotechnic dictatorship” – AK, the rootless cosmopolitan in SF. 😉 That’s how it works, dude. I agree. So what?
Re-Libya motivations. We’ll have to wait and see. But it’s suspicious, to say the least, that interventionism only came to the fore when Gaddafi began to talk of replacing French and British oil firms with German, Russian, and Chinese ones; and the steady mission creep over the past few months, which has gone from using warplanes to protect Benghazi civilians to bombing Gaddafi’s tanks and now living compounds, and now regime change and EU ground intervention.
Re-China. There’s quite a bit of government support behind the Chinese push into Africa. First, it is very much in Beijing’s interests for their business compatriots – and let’s not forget that the Communist Party has far more influence over ostensibly private Chinese businessmen than the White House over American ones – to snap up minerals and land in foreign lands. Second, political and military penetration almost always comes after economic; at this point, it is far too early to tell how things will go, especially given that China’s position (in terms of food, energy security) is probably going to become much more precarious in the decades ahead.
Re-East Asian nationalism and Islam. I’d argue that the former already exists and is already well developed; it will merely “continue”. As for Islam, though Islamism is becoming more widely accepted in Muslim countries, it is also becoming more moderate; IMO, the model for its future can be found in Turkey.
“Though on the topic of the latter, the parasitism of financial institutions on Western countries today far, far exceeds that of the lazy bums.”
This is true. To me the late USSR’s lack of parasitism on either end, the top or the bottom, is an example of its efficiency.
As for efficiency in other spheres, obviously it varied from area to area. I believe that the quality of education was better than anywhere in the West except for the level of elite universities, where it was probably roughly equal. Soviet-made cars were worse than Western ones, life expectancy was lower, public safety was much better, public morals were much higher (for example, only a couple of kids in my class of about 30 came from broken families). High culture had a much larger audience (because it was promoted by the state), trash culture a much smaller one than anywhere in the West. For an American kid to have a childhood as innocent as my generation’s, he’d literally have to be Amish – that alone may outweigh everything else. Many manufactured goods were of higher quality than the Chinese stuff we all now use, but of lower quality than European stuff of that time.
I would say that there is one more 20th century ideology – consumerist interest-group democracy that has overtaken the US.
From a British perspective we are full and we can’t absorb numbers of third world immigrants- even you admitted it in your country comparisons that Britain was full of unintegrated Islamic radicals. The numbers are so great they can ghettoise and that’s what happens. Also as a population increases, the quality of life suffers and people don’t have a sense of ‘togetherness’
Groups like the EU are good for negotiating things on a global scale (as it will all be about power blocs in the coming decades), but on an intra-Europe level, nations would prefer to keep their sovereignty- France has put border controls up recently because of all the Tunisisan refugees (think unskilled economic migrants) who have arrived in Italy. Egypt- 84 million people, dependant on food imports- we do not want and cannot absorb these people.
It’s not fascism- it is just that we want and expect to maintain our first wolrd lifestyle. It’s not racism because race does not matter- if they are highly skilled we will let them in. Religion itself isn’t really the issue- it is when they are fundamentalists though, or insist on their right to have 12 kids. We can’t even feed ourselves anyway– if our economy takes a dive, if the pound takes a dive we don’t want to be in a situation where we can barely afford to buy globally diminishing food outputs.
Even those on the political left see it for what it is (although you get some hard leftists who ‘don’t beleive in borders’.) In Britain, we have had 150 years of working class people fighting for our right to wages, working conditions and the vote. Migrant labour is undermining this. And while it is true that yes, most developed countires obtained their wealth by exploiting poorer countries, the wealth has allowed us to branch knowledge out into science, technology, medicine etc, including hte training of skilled specialists, which even the third world benefit from
Oh yeah, and about China being the new colonialists in Africa-to what extent will it benefit the native population, might Chinses technology and infrastructure negate the green ideology there?
People need to realise that Greenism is a specific located ideology contesting the public arena; an ideology people can argue for or against, like Neoconservatism or Islamism. Unfortunately Greenism is mostly just the unexamined default piety of our age, with carbon offsets as the new Papal indulgence. Every pop star, after they’re too old to sing convincingly about sex, goes through a “Sting” phase, when they think a bit of green pseudo-activism will make them seem more serious and important. This doesn’t encourage serious reflection.
Within Green-ism there is a division between religious/spiritual Gaia Greens – like the Bolivians who give legal rights to an imaginary Earth Mother – and Greens who are still post-Enlightenment rationalists. In the UK, George Monbiot & Mark Lynas – both rationalist greens – have recently written in favour of nuclear power. They believe – like you – that rising CO2 will be incredibly catastrophic for humans; so nuclear power, even with its dangers, is preferable to continued coal, oil and gas use. The religious Gaia Greens oppose nuclear power for mystical reasons, much as the Pope opposes condom use. Evidence is irrelevant to them.
I’m glad that “Spiked”, the magazine run by ex-members of the UK’s Revolutionary Communist Party, articulates a coherent anti-Greeen ideology. They thereby make clear that Greenism is itself a situated contestable ideology. There is a misanthropic strain in some Green ideology, which views humans as vermin, as no more than carbon emitters and polluters infesting the biosphere, and which even views our annihilation as positive. I suspect Derrick Jensen is like that, though I haven’t read him yet. “Spiked”‘s attack on that side of the Green movement is very welcome.
BTW I notice that many scientists are embarrassed by Lovelock’s Gaia Hypothesis, regarding it as a kind of Creationism For Hippies. If anything, I think there is a better case to be made for Peter Ward’s Medea Hypothesis, though even that reads too much like a pathetic fallacy for me.
The point is – as Slovaj Zizek says – that the Gaia / Mother Nature “Big Other” doesn’t exist. Zizek thinks our problem is that we are insufficiently alienated from nature; we still cling to the idea that nature nurtures and cares for us or has intrinsic balance and harmony. Yes we are embedded in nature, but nature is utterly indifferent to us.
Pascal had it right:
Man is but a reed, the most feeble thing in nature; but he is a thinking reed. The entire universe need not arm itself to crush him. A vapour, a drop of water suffices to kill him. But, if the universe were to crush him, man would still be more noble than that which killed him, because he knows that he dies and the advantage which the universe has over him; the universe knows nothing of this.
With all due respect, this is a misrepresentation of Gaia Theory. According to The Ages of Gaia, it is a scientific explanation of the Earth as a system in dynamic homeostasis, i.e. one in which the geosphere and biosphere form a unified system which self-regulated to maintain conditions for life. Daisyworld is a simplified model to illustrate the phenomenon.
It has acquired some mystical trappings in the past two decades, in part thanks to Lovelock himself. However, these questionable elements may be considered separately from the scientific foundations.
To quote Wikipedia:
The Medea Hypothesis is a term coined by paleontologist Peter Ward for the anti-Gaian hypothesis that multicellular life, understood as a superorganism, is suicidal; in this view microbial-triggered mass extinctions are attempts to return the Earth to the microbial dominated state it has been for most of its history.
Past “suicide attempts” include:
▪ Methane poisoning, 3.5 billion years ago
▪ The oxygen catastrophe, 2.7 billion years ago
▪ Snowball earth twice, 2.3 billion years ago and 790–630 million years ago
▪ At least five putative hydrogen sulfide-induced mass extinctions, such as the Great Dying, 251.4 million years ago…
Unlike Gaia theory, the scientific component of Media theory does not sound as convincing. At any rate, homeostasis has been far more successful up to this point than planetary suicide.
@ georges
Have you ever considered that these catastrophes killed lots of microbial life, sometimes even most of it? It actually means that in evolution from time to time new organisms emerge that put evolutionary pressure on others. Prokaryotes and archaea have the easiest information transfer via plasmids to adapt, eukaryotes, especially multicellular life, has a lot more difficulties to change its more complex design. That has zero to do with any suicide. The best, multicellular life could invent, were mind and technology, allowing to adapt as good or even better than prokaryotes and archaea.
Great post as usual. I have only one complementary comment: the country which is seemingly going towards a sort of neo-fascist type of regime is probably Hungary, which has just approved this month a new constitution which has been criticized for violating human rights: for example, Amnesty International believes the document “violates international and European human rights standards”, citing the clauses on fetal protection, marriage and life imprisonment, and sexual orientation not being covered in the anti-discrimination clause, whereas many members of the European Parliament asserted that it fails to protect citizens’ rights and reduces legislative checks and balances. Even , the United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon suggested the government should address concerns about the constitution.
See here for more details and comments:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Constitution_of_Hungary#2011_constitution
Thanks for interesting post! Ideologies are important and don’t receive enough attention in this anti-intellectual era, so it is refreshing to see someone discussing the struggle of ideas. Personally, I don’t see futurist ideologies like “Green-ism” replacing the oldies but goodies. Ecological crises, famine, climate change, etc., — they don’t negate the class struggle; if anything, they exacerbate it. So, in the end, it still comes down to “which class of people gets to own the world’s resources”, regardless of whether those resources are abundant or diminished. Recall that in Aeschylus’ Oedipus Rex, the answer to the riddle of the Sphinx was: “Man.” Not Earth, or Animals, or Gods, but Mankind. Hence, I believe the main ideological struggle of the 21st century will be Ayn Randism (=ideology of narrow clique of super-capitalists and international bankers) vs. good old-fashioned Marxism (=conscious or subconscious ideology of people who don’t own anything).
@AK
Your ecotechnic dictatorship looks like wishful thinking to me. Just like the dictatorship of the proletariat, it will be nationbound and some nation may even agree on it, but that’s far away from a dictatorship or a global scale.
The green movement means increased awareness of real or imaginary threats to the environment by man made technology of the current big industry development.
Part of that idea is to increase the well-being of themselves and their families, another part is social distinction because eco doesn’t come cheap and the last part is the constant struggle together against big bad powers. Sure, ideological indoctrination gives you the possibility for raising a dictatorship of people who know things better than everybody else, including the necessary lunatics. But the Greens have no narrative of wealth and job creation in the sense of creating more rather than better, so they lack the necessary component for creating a revolutionary mob that carries on. They have great problems enacting even their own ideas for future technologies as soon as they size power because it’s expensive and they’re self-defeating with their assembly of NIMBY(not in my back-yard) protesters as voters.
As someone who identifies with the actual Eco-Socialist movement happening today, I want to clarify that no one in the movement is looking to create a centrally-planned Eco-friendly USSR. We stand for small-scale, participatory, and ecologically rational planning by small communities such as city communes or industry co-operatives and worker unions.