New Labour's right wing policies
since 1997 have increased the
level of interest in electoral
alternatives, among which the
Green Party has been one of the
more successful in winning seats
in councils, and in PR elections
for the Scottish and European
parliaments.
While many on the left have
remained unconvinced by the
Green Party's rather eclectic
platform of policies and
occasionally opportunistic
alliances, sections of the antiwar movement have seen the
Greens as the only major antiwar party, and have welcomed
the leading role played by Green
MEP Caroline Lucas's on this as
well as her correct challenge to
New Labour's reactionary laws
on asylum and immigration.
So what are the politics of the
Green Party? Why are leading
elements such as chair Hugo
Charlton and executive member
Spencer Fitz- Gibbon so bitterly opposed to any kind of electoral coalition with socialists? And why are they eager to witchhunt leaders of the SWP within Respect, after years in which the
Green Party in Oxford, for example, happily shared council office in coalition with the Liberal Democrats? JOHN LISTER investigates. M any believe the Green Party (GP)
stands to the left of Labour. It I claims that up to 30 percent of its new members come from the Labour Party. So it may seem strange that the Greens should be so wary of socialism, and claim with such glee that New Labour's crisis means that "the socialist flag was not waving but drowning".
The answer lies in the curiously apolitical, utopian platform which underlies the GP's environmental and other policies.
The GP proudly counterposes its own radical stance on issues such as the Private Finance Initiative, top-up fees, and its commitment to "tackling corporate globalisation and global exploitation" to "Labour's dogmatic big-business sponsored leaders". GLA Green councillor Jenny Jones sat on the committee negotiating London fire
But the word "exploitation" - in the context of exploitation of people - is signally missing from the Party's "Philosophical Basis", as indeed are the words "capitalism", "profit" and "class".
Socialists argue for action by the working class and the oppressed to end capitalism though seizing the power, confiscating the wealth of the ruling rich, and reorganising society and production in the interests of the majority. Revolutionary socialists argue that in the last resort this has to be done through extra-parliamentary means that will smash the existing capitalist state machinery: "Old Labour" reformists and the Communist Party believe such measures could be carried out peacefully, through electing a government that would take powers through an "enabling act" to nationalise the top monopolies B y contrast, while they have been
happy to be identified as part of the anti-capitalist movement, capitalism is the "c" word which the Greens are strangely reluctant to use. Neither the GP's • ships and tanks of the Zionist state, with the Philosophical Basis nor its extensive manifesto section on the Economy offers any analysis of the existing capitalist social order.
Lacking any analysis of the material base of society, Green politics fail to grasp that the profits of the ruling rich flow from the exploitation of the labour of the working class, and remain confined to an idealistic level of general statements and prescriptions:
"Every person should be entitled to basic material security...
"Our actions should take account of the well-being of other nations, other species and future generations...
"A healthy society is based on voluntary co-operation between empowered individuals in a democratic society...
TEACHER SH ICE LON fighters' pay, and objected to "intimidation" by the Fire Brigades Union campaign,
Without exploring the class divisions in society, the Green Party has no basis to recognise the key role that must be played by the working class in the fight to overturn capitalism: and without identifying the exploitation which is the very kernel of capitalism, there is no material basis to prefer socialism as a system that eliminates that exploitation.
The absence of any class analysis also undermines any understanding of the role of the capitalist state as the mechanism to uphold the rule of the minority of exploiters over the majority of exploited.
Since they see ending discrimination, and providing "material security" for every individual as achievable through a process of peaceful persuasion, the Greens feel able to insist on the need for "non-violent solutions" to conflict situations. They ignore the way in which the capitalist state machine has assumed a monopoly on the use of violence to repress any who challenge the power and property rights of capital.
So while many Greens may instinctively side with the Palestinians facing the jets, gunoccupied Iraqis, and with oppressed and exploited workers around the world, other Greens may adopt Zionist positions. And the GP's insistence on peaceful means of protest would condemn the oppressed to remain indefinitely as the victims of state violence.
Failing to address the global ambitions
• of the US, or the continued exploitation of the developing countries by the imperialist nations of the North, the Greens say simply that they want a "radicalreformed and revitalised United Nations", "international law", "justice and human rights".
Between their largely electoral politics on the one hand, and the Greens' worthy if vague objectives on the other, there is little
evident connection: we are told that the current set up "must end", but not who is to end it -or how. Instead we are told:
"The pursuit of economic growth as a force driving over-exploitation of the Earth must cease to be an automatic aim of human societies.... As human beings we have the potential to live cooperatively and harmoniously with each other.
So what gets in the way? What is the underlying source of the divisions that the Greens so strongly oppose? Since the "C" word is excluded, the Greens have no answer.
Instead we are told that "traditional politics divides humans from nature and the individual from society," and that the Greens fundamentally reject "this way of seeing the
What do they want to take its place?
"The Green Party places both personal and political change at the heart of its response to the ecological crisis and is committed to creating a society in which individuals, through their ability to satisfy their basic needs more fully, are then better able to contribute to future sustainability. This principle is reflected in the radical Green agenda both for changes in values and lifestyles, and for reformed social, economic and political structures".
But the ruling rich, whose drive for profits is at the very centre of capitalist societies around the world, are clearly disengaged from the objectives and politics of the Greens. She achieved simply on the basis of o could a fundamental social change
sections of the oppressed and exploited deciding as individuals to change their values and lifestyles?
All of history says no.
Indeed social divisions between rich and poor are wider than ever at national and international level, and genuine economic power is more than ever concentrated in the hands of a tiny, and fabulously wealthy ruling elite.
So what weight can we attach to the Greens' earnest insistence that: "A healthy society is based on voluntary cooperation between equal individuals in a democratic society"? How likely are the billionaires to heed Green Party's suggestions that "What wealth there is must be shared in such a way that everyone has a guarantee of economic security"
And if the Party is willingly confining itself to persuasion and purely peaceful forms of protest, how are they expecting to introduce new property laws "designed to ensure that all have access to the things they need?"
The Philosophical Basis strikes a more
familiar note when it concedes that the Party
"will even work with those who disagree
with us when sufficient common ground can
be found to do so
"However we do not seek power at any
price, and will withdraw our support if we
are asked to make irreversible or fundamental compromises."
Given that there have been Green
alliances with the anti-socialist Liberal
Democrats, but that the Greens have now
rebuffed any notion of an alliance with the socialists of Respect, we may conclude thatdespite the illusions cherished by many
Green socialists - the fundamental issue of
contention has to be the Green Party's rejec tion of socialism.
The Greens' pledge "to shift the balance of
economic power in favour of individuals and households, and away from large scale, remote private companies and central government" may read as a drastically watereddown anti-capitalism: but it is also politically consistent with the Lib-Dems as the junior party of business.
Lib-Dems could also live with Green policies "to increase local investment land the circulation of local finance within the community" and the call to encourage "more local, smaller businesses - the real backbone of the economy -rather than the multinationals". The Greens insist they want:
"To encourage responsible companies that are rooted in and serve the communities in which they're based."
And while the Greens' international economic policies include a cancellation of debt for developing countries, the Party calls for "international capital controls to ensure profits made by Transnational Corporations are reinvested in countries of origin" - apparently oblivious to the fact that this would result in ever larger sections of developing coun tries' economies being owned by billionaires in the wealthy countries
Many Green Party supporters, especially an important layer of Green socialists, are the natural allies of the left in the battle against New Labour's reactionary social agenda and Bomber Blair's alliance with Bush: but that is often because their politics flow from an instinctive radicalism rather than the timid package of politics embodied in the Green Party's own programme.
The left needs to develop a stronger environmental policy, and some of those on offer from the Greens would logically complement the socialist platform of the Respect coalition, offering a common focus for the anti-war vote, although their advocacy of big increases in fuel tax would be divisive.
However their political limitations and aversion to socialism mean that the leading Greens won't countenance any such alliance in the short term, and are clearly looking to their right rather than the left for their political alliances and support in period ahead. • All quotations taken from press releases and official policy publications that can be found on the Green Party website www.greenparty.org.uk.
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