Green Hopes: The Future of Political Ecology

Rating:
Summary: why "green" is the end of the "red" revolution
Review: Lipietz makes a cogent and compelling case for the sharedglobal and revolutionary nature of both the "red" (worker's,Marxist, socialist) movements and "green" (ecologist, environmental) movements. He draws clever analogues to demonstrate that "green" thought has reconciled the final "alienation", of man from his natural environment. In fact it is quite clear on examination that all utopian visions, from the Marxist anarchic end-state to the Paradise of Islam to the Garden of Eden that many Christians interpret as the Kingdom of God, share this vision of natural surroundings and a healthy ecology. Green positions range from very rational to very emotional, but all have in common (with the "red" revolutionary predecessors) this commitment to re-integration with nature itself, and most importantly, a commitment to represent those beings that cannot represent themselves.

So, in the green ethic, the representatives are not representing the Green Party, but are rather representing the voiceless and helpless beings - the ecosystems themselves, the higher animals we share our emotional nature with, current children growing up in danger of pathogens and crowding and future generations which may not be able to grow at all. There is a new and natural "proletariat"!

The book's only flaw is failing to demonstrate that these principles are scientific in nature, and that they are not an ideology but a set of naturally-derivable causalities. We have bodies: this is what red and green know that blue does not!

Rating:
Summary: why "green" is the end of the "red" revolution
Review: Lipietz makes a cogent and compelling case for the sharedglobal and revolutionary nature of both the "red" (worker's,Marxist, socialist) movements and "green" (ecologist, environmental) movements. He draws clever analogues to demonstrate that "green" thought has reconciled the final "alienation", of man from his natural environment. In fact it is quite clear on examination that all utopian visions, from the Marxist anarchic end-state to the Paradise of Islam to the Garden of Eden that many Christians interpret as the Kingdom of God, share this vision of natural surroundings and a healthy ecology. Green positions range from very rational to very emotional, but all have in common (with the "red" revolutionary predecessors) this commitment to re-integration with nature itself, and most importantly, a commitment to represent those beings that cannot represent themselves.

So, in the green ethic, the representatives are not representing the Green Party, but are rather representing the voiceless and helpless beings - the ecosystems themselves, the higher animals we share our emotional nature with, current children growing up in danger of pathogens and crowding and future generations which may not be able to grow at all. There is a new and natural "proletariat"!

The book's only flaw is failing to demonstrate that these principles are scientific in nature, and that they are not an ideology but a set of naturally-derivable causalities. We have bodies: this is what red and green know that blue does not!