Green Syndicalism: An Alternative Red/Green Vision

Conclusion

164 Conclusion Beyond Leftism: A Nonproductivist Radicalism Through an engagement with green syndicalism there emerge certain points of similarity between anarcho-syndicalism and ecology. These include, but are by no means limited to: decentralization; regionalism ; direct action/sabotage; autonomy; and pluralism and diversity. Syndicalists, however, can no longer disregard—as some Marxists (see Raskin and Bernow 1991; Blackie 1990; Burkett 2006) are wont to do—the linkages between industrialism, hierarchy, and ecological destruction. The mass-production techniques of industrialism cannot be reconciled with ecological sustenance, regardless of whether bosses or sturdy proletarians control them; that is a lingering illusion from a more innocent, progressive time. In this regard the utopians have surely been more insightful. Ending capitalist relations of production remains necessary for a radical transformation of the social world because these relations encompass many positions of subordination. However, this is only one aspect of a neoradical project. As Laclau and Mouffe (1985) and Aronowitz (1990) argue, to be anticapitalist does not have to imply being pro-ecology. The often ugly histories of socialist movements with respect to nature provide us with ample evidence of that. Again, neither does it suggest that a unity between the discourses is impossible. It just means that any connection will only result from an articulation. For this very reason, when one speaks of socialization of the means of production as one element in the strategy for a radical and plural Conclusion • 165 democracy, one must insist that this cannot mean only workers’ selfmanagement , as what is at stake is true participation by all subjects in decisions about what is to be produced, how it is to be produced, and the forms in which the product is to be distributed. Only in such conditions can there be social appropriation of production. To reduce the issue to a problem of workers’ self-management is to ignore the fact that the workers’ “interests” can be constructed in such a way that they do not take account of ecological demands or demands of other groups which, without being producers, are affected by decisions taken in the field of production. (Laclau and Mouffe 1985, 178) This is especially important when one remembers the positions occupied by déclassé elements within radical ecology and their exclusion from the production process. Furthermore, green syndicalists reject the workerist premises of “old-style” leftists who argue that issues such as ecology are external to questions of production and only serve to distract from the essential task of organizing workers, at the point of production, toward emancipation. Within green syndicalist discourses ecological concerns cannot, with any reason, be divorced from questions of production or economics. Rather than being represented as strictly separate discursive universes, nature, production, economics, or workplace become understood as endlessly contested topographical features in an always shifting terrain. The workplace is but one of the sites for extension of a democratic imaginary. Given the prominent position of the workplace under capitalism, as a realm of capitalist discipline and hegemony, activists must come to appreciate the significance of locating struggles within everyday workplace relations. Within a green syndicalist perspective workplaces are understood as sites of solidarity, innovation, cultural diversity, and personal interactions expressed in informal networks and through multiple antagonisms. In turn, those social realms that are typically counterposed to the factory within radical ecology discourses —Bookchin’s “community”—should be recognized as influenced by matters of accumulation, profit, and class. The character of either realm is not unaffected by workplace antagonisms. 166 • Green Syndicalism This “steel cage” appears inescapable only because it remains isolated , practically and conceptually, from a host of important social, cultural, and political-economic dynamics operating inside and out of workplaces proper. Critical to any discussion, work organizations must be seen as series of settings and situations providing choices that are constrained, but not immutably, by the broader fabric of the society into which they are woven. (Guarasci and Peck 1987, 72) Radical ecology must now come to recognize that expressions of working-class radicalism are conditioned by multiple engagements, of capital, labor, ecology, and so forth, across various social spheres. Emergent conditions for an end to nature, the outcome of a multiplicity of battles over economics and production, have simultaneously made possible the “end of work”—a state of affairs once desired by radical working-class activists. If organizing is to occur at all, at least in the counterexploitative sense of organizing toward emancipation, it...