Green Syndicalism: An Alternative Red/Green Vision

4. Green Syndicalism

102 4 Green Syndicalism An Alternative Radical Ecology The greening of syndicalist discourses and practices is significant not only in offering practical examples of rank-and-file organizing and alliance building between union members and environmental activists . It also raises a number of interesting possibilities and questions regarding anarcho-syndicalism and ecology, indeed questions about the possibilities for a radical convergence of social movement organizing . While most attempts to form labor and environmentalist alliances have pursued Marxian approaches, more compelling solutions might be expected from anarchists and libertarian socialists. Numerous others (see Pepper 1993; Heider 1994; Purchase 1994, 1997a; Jakopovic 2007; Williams 2009a, 2009b) suggest that Greens should pay more attention to anarcho-syndicalist ideas, though few of those authors have examined green syndicalism in any detail. Pepper argues (1993, 198) that an infusion of anarcho-syndicalism might shake up the contemporary Green movement in North America just as syndicalism shook up the labor movement of the 1910s. Indeed Martel (1997), Harter (2004), and Early (2009) argue that confronting “jobs versus environment” blackmail requires nothing less than militant laborbased organizations, arming workers with the necessary weapons to confront the power of capital and to strike over ecological concerns. Green syndicalists have tried to emphasize the similarities in the styles and tactics of labor and ecology against common depictions within radical ecology, as in the positions of Foreman, Watson , and Bookchin. Toward developing this mutual, or equivalent, An Alternative Radical Ecology • 103 understanding green syndicalists have tried to engender an appreciation of radical labor histories, especially where workers have exerted themselves through inspiring acts that seem to have surprisingly much in common with present-day eco-activism. Attempts have been made within green syndicalism to articulate labor as part of the ecological “we” through inclusion of radical labor within an ecological genealogy . Within green syndicalist discourses, this assumption of connectedness between historic radical movements, especially those of labor and anarchy, and ecology has much significance. As I have suggested, green syndicalist articulations are important in informing or reminding ecology activists and workers alike that there are radical workingclass histories in addition to the histories of compromise; workers are not always willing pawns. The previous chapter examined specifics of green syndicalist organizing and connections between syndicalism, ecology, and feminism in practice. Still, little has been said about green syndicalism and its specific red/green vision. This chapter attempts to correct that oversight by offering a discussion of the varied perspectives, the different theoretical and practical strands, that make up a syndicalist ecology. Murray Bookchin’s Antisyndicalism Upon first reading, it might appear curious to seek an ecological or anti-industrialist theoretic within anarcho-syndicalism. Syndicalism is supposedly just another version of narrow economism, still constrained by workerist assumptions. Certainly, that is the criticism consistently raised by social ecology guru Murray Bookchin (1980, 1987, 1993, 1997). Bookchin’s work has served as a major focal point for much discussion, at least in libertarian-left and anarchist environmental circles. Even, Marxist ecologists, in journals such as Capitalism Nature Socialism, have given much time to discussions of Bookchin’s writings. His recent (1995) rediscovery of social anarchism aside, social ecologist Bookchin has displayed a long-standing hostility to the possibilities for positive working-class contributions to social movement 104 • Green Syndicalism struggles. Bookchin’s critique rightly engages a direct confrontation with productivist visions of ecological or socialist struggles that, still captivated by illusions of progress, accept industrialism and capitalist technique while rejecting the capitalist uses to which they are applied (see Rudig 1985–86; Blackie 1990; Pepper 1993). These productivist discourses do not extend qualitatively different forms, but merely argue for proletarian control of existing forms. Bookchin’s critique of the workplace, by asserting the inseparability of industry from its development and articulation through technology, offers a tentative beginning for a post-Marxist discussion of productive relations and the obstacles or possibilities they might pose for ecology. Severe limits to Bookchin’s social theorizing are encountered, however, within the conclusions he draws in his attempt to derive a theory of workers’ (non)activism from his critique of production relations . Bookchin (1987, 187) makes a grand, and perilous, leap from a critical antiproductivism to an argument, couched within a larger broadside against workers, that struggles engaged around the factory give “social and psychological priority to the worker precisely where he or she is most co-joined to capitalism and most debased as a human...