An open letter to the Ecological Movement

With the opening of the eighties, the ecology movement in both the United States and Europe is faced with a serious crisis. This crisis is literally one of its identity and goals, a crisis that painfully challenges the movement’s capacity to fulfill its rich promise of advancing alternatives to the domineering sensibility, the hierarchical political and economic institutions, and the manipulative strategies for social change that have produced the catastrophic split between humanity and nature.

To speak bluntly: the coming decade may well determine whether the ecology movement will be reduced to a decorative appendage of an inherently diseased,anti-ecological society, a society riddled by an unbridled need for control, domination and exploitation of humanity and nature — or, hopefully, whether the ecology movement will become the growing educational arena for a new ecological society based on mutual aid, decentralized communities, a people’s technology, and non-hierarchical, libertarian relations that will yield not only a new harmony between human and human, but between humanity and nature.

Perhaps it may seem presumptuous for a single individual to address himself to a sizable constituency of people who have centered their activities around ecological concerns. But my concern for the future of the ecology movement is not an impersonal or ephemeral one. For nearly thirty years I have written extensively on our growing ecological dislocations. These writings have been reinforced by my activities against the growing use of pesticides and food additives as early as 1952, the problem of nuclear fallout that surfaced with the first hydrogen bomb test in the Pacific in 1954, the radioactive pollution issue that emerged with the Windscale nuclear reactor “incident” in 1956, and Con Edison’s attempt to construct the world’s largest nuclear reactor in the very heart of New York City in 1963. Since then, I have been involved in anti-nuke alliances such as Clamshell and Shad, not to speak of their predecessors Ecology Action East, whose manifesto, The Power to Destroy, The Power to Create, I wrote in 1969, and the Citizens Committee on Radiation Information, which played a crucial role in stopping the Ravenswood reactor in 1963. Hence, I can hardly be described as an interloper or newcomer to the ecology movement. My remarks in this letter are the product of a very extensive experience as well as my individual concern for ideas that have claimed my attention for decades.

It is my conviction that my work and experience in all of these areas would mean very little if they were limited merely to the issues themselves, however important each one may be in its own right. “No Nukes,” or for that matter, no food additives, no agribusiness, or no nuclear bombs is simply not enough if our horizon is limited to each one issue alone. Of equal importance is the need to reveal the toxic social causes, values, and inhuman relations that have created a planet which is already vastly poisoned.

Ecology, in my view, has always meant social ecology: the conviction that the very concept of dominating nature stems from the domination of human by human, indeed, of women by men, of the young by their elders, of one ethnic group by another, of society by the state, of the individual by bureaucracy, as well as of one economic class by another or a colonized people by a colonial power. To my thinking, social ecology has to begin its quest for freedom not only in the factory but also in the family, not only in the economy but also in the psyche, not only in the material conditions of life but also in the spiritual ones. Without changing the most molecular relationships in society — notably, those between men and women, adults and children, whites and other ethnic groups, heterosexuals and gays (the list, in fact, is considerable) — society will be riddled by domination even in a socialistic “classless” and “nonexploitative” form. It would be infused by hierarchy even as it celebrated the dubious virtues of “people’s democracies,” “socialism” and the “public ownership” of “natural resources.” And as long as hierarchy persists, as long as domination organizes humanity around a system of elites, the project of dominating nature will continue to exist and inevitably lead our planet to ecological extinction.

The emergence of the women’s movement, even more so than the counterculture, the “appropriate” technology crusade and the anti-nuke alliances (I will omit the clean-up escapades of “Earth Day”), points to the very heart of the hierarchical domination that underpins our ecological crisis. Only insofar as a counterculture, an alternate technology or anti-nuke movement rests on the non-hierarchical sensibilities and structures that are most evident in the truly radical tendencies in feminism can the ecology movement realize its rich potential for basic changes in our prevailing anti-ecological society and its values. Only insofar as the ecology movement consciously cultivates an anti-hierarchical and a non-domineering sensibility, structure, and strategy for social change can it retain its very identity as the voice for a new balance between humanity and nature and its goal for a truly ecological society.

This identity and this goal is now faced with serious erosion. Ecology is now fashionable, indeed, faddish — and with this sleazy popularity has emerged a new type of environmentalist hype. From an outlook and movement that at least held the promise of challenging hierarchy and domination have emerged a form of environmentalism that is based more on tinkering with existing institutions, social relations, technologies, and values than on changing them. I use the word “environmentalism” to contrast it with ecology, specifically with social ecology. Where social ecology, in my view, seeks to eliminate the concept of the domination of nature by humanity by eliminating the domination of human by human, environmentalism reflects an “instrumentalist” or technical sensibility in which nature is viewed merely as a passive habitat, an agglomeration of external objects and forces, that must be made more “serviceable” for human use, irrespective of what these uses may be. Environmentalism, in fact, is mqrely environmental engineering. It does not bring into question the underlying notions of the present society, notably that man must dominate nature. On the contrary, it seeks to facilitate that domination by developing techniques for diminishing the hazards caused by domination. The very notions of hierarchy and domination are obscured by a technical emphasis on “alternative” power sources, structural designs for “conserving” energy, “simple” lifestyles in the name of “limits to growth” that now represent an enormous growth industry in its own right — and, of course, a mushrooming of “ecology”-oriented candidates for political office and “ecology”-oriented parties that are designed not only to engineer nature but also public opinion into an accommodating relationship with the prevailing society.

Nathan Glazer’s “ecological” 24-square-mile solar satellite, O’Neil’s “ecological” spaceships, and the DOE’s giant “ecological” windmills, to cite the more blatant examples of this environmentalists mentality, are no more “ecological” than nuclear power plants or agribusiness. If anything, their “ecological” pretensions are all the more dangerous because they are more deceptive and disorienting to the general public. The hoopla about a new “Earth Day” or future “Sun Days” or “Wind Days,” like the pious rhetoric of fast-talking solar contractors and patent — hungry “ecological” inventors, conceal the all-important fact that solar energy, wind power, organic agriculture, holistic health, and “voluntary simplicity” will alter very little in our grotesque imbalance with nature if they leave the patriarchal family, the multinational corporation, the bureaucratic and centralized political structure, the property system, and the prevailing technocratic rationality untouched. Solar power, wind power, methane, and geothermal power are merely power insofar as the devices for using them are needlessly complex, bureaucratically controlled, corporately owned or institutionally centralized. Admittedly, they are less dangerous to the physical health of human beings than power derived from nuclear and fossil fuels, but they are clearly dangerous to the spiritual, moral and social health of humanity if they are treated merely as techniques that do not involve new relations between people and nature and within society itself. The designer, the bureaucrat, the corporate executive, and the political careerist do not introduce anything new or ecological in society or in our sensibilities toward nature and people because they adopt “soft energy .paths,” like all “technotwits” (to use Amory Lovins’ description of himself in a personal conversation with me), they merely cushion or conceal the dangers to the biosphere and to human life by placing ecological technologies in a straitjacket of hierarchical values rather than by challenging the values and the institutions they represent.

By the same token, even decentralization becomes meaningless if it denotes logistical advantages of supply and recycling rather than human scale. If our goal in decentralizing society (or, as the “ecology”-oriented politicians like to put it, striking a “balance” between “decentralization” and “centralization”) is intended to acquire “fresh food” or to’“recycle wastes” easily or to reduce “transportation costs” or to foster “more” popular control (not, be it noted, complete popular control) over social life, decentralization too is divested of its rich ecological and libertarian meaning as a network of free, naturally balanced communities based on direct face-to-face democracy and fully actualized selves who can really engage in the self-management and self-activity so vital for the achievement of an ecological society. Like alternate technology, decentralization is reduced to a mere technical stratagem for concealing hierarchy and domination. The “ecological” vision of “municipal control of power,” “nationalization of industry,” not to speak of vague terms like “economic democracy,” may seemingly restrict utilities and corporations, but leaves their overall control of society largely unchallenged. Indeed, even a nationalized corporate structure remains a bureaucratic and hierarchical one.

As an individual who has been deeply involved in ecological issues for decades, I am trying to alert well-intentioned ecologically oriented people to a profoundly serious problem in our movement. To put my concerns in the most direct form possible: I am disturbed by a widespread technocratic mentality and political opportunism that threatens to replace social ecology by a new form of social engineering. For a time it seemed that the ecology movement might well fulfill its libertarian potential as a movement for a non-hierarchical society. Reinforced by the most advanced tendencies in the feminist, gay, community and socially radical movements, it seemed that the ecology movement might well begin to focus its efforts on changing the basic structure of our anti-ecological society, not merely on providing more palatable techniques for perpetuating it or institutional cosmetics for concealing its irremediable diseases. The rise of the anti-nuke alliances based on a decentralized network of affinity groups, on a directly democratic decision-making process, and on direct action seemed to support this hope. The problem that faced the movement seemed primarily one of self-education and public education — the need to fully understand the meaning of the affinity group structure as a lasting, family-type form, the full implications of direct democracy, the concept of direct action as more than a “strategy” but as a deeply rooted sensibility, an outlook that expresses the fact that everyone had the right to take direct control of society and of her or his everyday life.

Ironically, the opening of the eighties, so rich in its promise of sweeping changes in values and consciousness, has also seen the emergence of a new opportunism, one that threatens to reduce the ecology movement to a mere cosmetic for the present society. Many self-styled “founders” of the anti-nuke alliances (one thinks here especially of the Clamshell Alliance) have become what Andrew Kopkind has described as “managerial radicals” — the manipulators of a political consensus that operates within the system in the very name of opposing it.

The “managerial radical” is not a very new phenomenon. Jerry Brown, like the Kennedy dynasty, has practiced the art in the political field for years. What is striking about the current crop is the extent to which “managerial radicals” come from important radical social movements of the sixties and, more significantly, from the ecology movement of the seventies. The radicals and idealists of the 1930s required decades to reach the middle-aged cynicism needed for capitulation, and they had the honesty to admit it in public. Former members of SDS and ecology action groups capitulate in their late youth or early maturity — and write their “embittered” biographies at 25,30, or 35 years of age, spiced with rationalizations for their surrender to the status quo. Tom Hayden hardly requires much criticism, as his arguments against direct action at Seabrook last fall attest. Perhaps worse is the emergence of Barry Commoner’s “Citizen’s Party,” of new financial institutions like MUSE (Musicians United for Safe Energy), and the “Voluntary Simplicity” celebration of a dual society of swinging, jeans-clad, high-brow elitists from the middle classes and the conventionally clad, consumer-oriented, lowbrow underdogs from the working classes, a dual society generated by the corporate-financed “think tanks” of the Stanford Research Institute.

In all of these cases, the radical implications of a decentralized society based on alternate technologies and closely knit communities are shrewdly placed in the service of a technocratic sensibility, of “managerial radicals,” and opportunistic careerists. The grave danger here lies in the failure of many idealistic individuals to deal with major social issues on their own terms — to recognize the blatant incompatibilities of goals that remain in deep-seated conflict with each other, goals that cannot possibly coexist without delivering the ecology movement to its worst enemies. More often than not, these enemies are its “leaders” and “founders” who have tried to manipulate it to conform with the very system and ideologies that block any social or ecological reconciliation in the form of an ecological society.

The lure of “influence,” of “mainstream politics,” of “effectiveness” strikingly exemplifies the lack of coherence and consciousness that afflicts the ecology movement today. Affinity groups, direct democracy, and direct action are not likely to be palatable — or, for that matter, even comprehensible — to millions of people who live as soloists in discotheques and singles bars. Tragically, these millions have surrendered their social power, indeed, their very personalities, to politicians and bureaucrats who live in a nexus of obedience and command in which they are normally expected to play subordinate roles. Yet this is precisely the immediate cause of the ecological crisis of our time — a cause that has its historic roots in the market society that engulfs us. To ask powerless people to regain power over their lives is even more important than to add a complicated, often incomprehensible, and costly solar collector to their houses. Until they regain a new sense of power over their lives, until they create their own system of self-management to oppose the present system of hierarchical management, until they develop new ecological values to replace current domineering values — a process which solar collectors, wind machines, and French-intensive gardens can facilitate but never replace — nothing they change in society will yield a new balance with the natural world.

Obviously, powerless people will not eagerly accept affinity groups, direct democracy, and direct action in the normal course of events. That they harbor basic impulses which make them very susceptible to these forms and activities — a fact which always surprises the “managerial radical” in periods of crisis and confrontation — represents a potential that has yet to be fully realized and furnished with intellectual coherence through painstaking education and repeated examples. It was precisely this education and example that certain feminist and anti-nuke groups began to provide. What is so incredibly regressive about the technical thrust and electoral politics of environmental technocrats and “managerial radicals” today is that they recreate in the name of “soft energy paths,” a specious “decentralization,” and inherently hierarchical party-type structures the worst forms and habits that foster passivity, obedience and vulnerability to the mass media in the American public. The spectatorial politics promoted by Brown, Hayden, Commoner, the Clamshell “founders” like Wasserman and Lovejoy, together with recent huge demonstrations in Washington and New York City breed masses, not citizens — the manipulated objects of mass media whether it is used by Exxon or by the CED (Campaign for Economic Democracy), the Citizen’s Party, and MUSE.

Ecology is being used against an ecological sensibility, ecological forms of organization, and ecological practices to “win” large constituencies, not to educate them. The fear of “isolation,” of “futility,” of “ineffectiveness” yields a new kind of isolation, futility and ineffectiveness, namely, a complete surrender of one’s most basic ideals and goals. “Power” is gained at the cost of losing the only power we really have that can change this insane society — our moral integrity, our ideals, and our principles. This may be a festive occasion for careerists who have used the ecology issue to advance their stardom and personal fortunes; it would become the obituary of a movement that has, latent within itself, the ideals of a new world in which masses become individuals and natural resources become nature, both to be respected for their uniqueness and spirituality.

An ecologically oriented feminist movement is now emerging and the contours of the libertarian anti-nuke alliances still exist. The fusing of the two together with new movements that are likely to emerge from the varied crises of our times may open one of the most exciting and liberating decades of our century. Neither sexism, ageism, ethnic oppression, the “energy crisis,” corporate power, conventional medicine, bureaucratic manipulation, conscription, militarism, urban devastation or political centralism can be separated from the ecological issue. All of these issues turn around hierarchy and domination, the root conceptions of a radical social ecology.

It is necessary, I believe, for everyone in the ecology movement to make a crucial decision: will the eighties retain the visionary concept of an ecological future based on a libertarian commitment to decentralization, alternative technology, and a libertarian practice based on affinity groups, direct democracy, and direct action? Or will the decade be marked by a dismal retreat into ideological obscurantism and a “mainstream politics” that acquires “power” and “effectiveness” by following the very “stream” it should seek to divert? Will it pursue fictitious “mass constituencies” by imitating the very forms of mass manipulation, mass media, and mass culture it is committed to oppose? These two directions cannot be reconciled. Our use of “media,” mobilizations, and actions must appeal to mind and to spirit, not to conditioned reflexes and shock tactics that leave no room for reason and humanity. In any case, the choice must be made now, before the ecology movement becomes institutionalized into a mere appendage of the very system whose structure and methods it professes to oppose. It must be made consciously and decisively — or the century itself, not only the decade, will be lost to us forever.