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SYSTEMS_INSIDE_OUT
October 12, 2007
One more time, the "work inside the
system/work outside the system" debate:
"Defending the Earth (1991)
A Dialogue Between Murray RADICAL_FREEZE
Bookchin & Dave Foreman:
Linda Davidoff, p. 64
"But we live in an enormously stable
society, one that changes slowly and
reluctantly. I don't see a revolution
around the corner, eco-anarchist or
otherwise. So, I think we better get
good at old-fashioned reformism. That's
what makes a real difference in the here
and now."
She uses the example of opposing
Vietnam by supporting a less
destructive presidential candidate
that wasn't quite willing to
"bomb them back to the stone age".
A more recent example of hers (p. 65):
local activists opposing the "Westway"
proposal (Hudson landfill on the upper
west side).
"here is an example of people
intelligently using the institutional
apparatus of society to stop a bad
thing from happening -- the filling-in
of the Hudson River."
"... this is a stable society
that moves slowly and that
we can change it if we're very,
very careful to work out
effective, realistic strategies
that have some chance of success
rather than chasing after utopian
dreams."
To Foreman's credit the first thing he says
is that it's okay for people to work in multiple ways:
"Like everything else, I think that we
have to defend the Earth in a lot of Note phrase:
different ways. I am not telling 'defend the Earth':
people to do only one thing, to use he regards
only one tactic or approach. In one working toward
sense, I don't care how people choose human survival
to defend the Earth -- whether they as tacky, merely
write letters to the editor, recycle selfish behavior.
newspapers, canvass for an
environmental candidate, blockade Everyone needs
nuclear power plants with a few something bigger
thousand other people, or spike trees than themselves
and sabotage bulldozers alone in wild to believe in (?).
areas." p. 66
And I see Michael
McClure pushes
wholism, e.g. in
his "Scratching
the Beat Surface".
"The American political system is very
effective at co-opting and moderating
dissidents by giving them attention and
then encouraging them to be
"reasonable" so their ideas will be
taken "more seriously." Appearing on
the evening news, testifying before
congressional hearings, or getting a
job with some government agency are
just some of the methods used by the
establishment to entice one to share
key assumptions of the dominant
worldview and to enter the negotiating
room to compromise with madmen who are
destroying everything pure and
beautiful. Take a look at much of the
mainstream conservation movement today.
The political vision of most of these
reformers includes, at a minimum, a
global population of ten to twelve How many humans
billion human beings, nation-states, can dance on the
multinational corporations, the private head of a planet?
automobile, and people in business
suits on every continent. Such a Are nations and
limited vision is not going to spark or multi-nats both
lead a movement for the creation of a banned from Foreman's
wilderness-loving and egalitarian vision of the future?
society." p. 71
PRIME_DIRECTIVE
"Indeed such a limited vision has
little or no future. Modern society is
a driverless hot rod without brakes
going 90 miles an hour down a dead-end
alley with a brick wall at the end. We
do not live in a stable society. We're
in the most volatile society that has Yet, I agree that
ever existed on this planet." p. 71 private cars have
largely been an evil
force -- though my
reasoning tends to
be a little
different from the
usual environmental
line, and I hold out
no hopes of erasing
cars from the world
altogether.
"In many ways, Earth First! represents
a fundamentalist revival within the
wilderness/wildlife preservation
movement, a return to basics Another way of looking at it
and a reaction against reformist is that radicalism appeals
co-optation and compromise." p. 72 to the romantic desire of kids
to just kick-it all down and
start over.
Heavy metal environmentalism.
REBEL_YELL
I wonder if Dave Forman is still as fond
of the "outside the system" side of this
debate now.
Two decades hence, have the
"radicals" done any better
than the "moderates"?
The fact that moderation is too slow
for your taste does not prove that
extremism will work any faster.
Moderates are perhaps too easily co-opted,
but then radicals aren't hard to neutralize
either, are they? A couple of provocateurs
later, and they're all in court, if not in
jail.
And that was back
before the T word TERRORISM
could be trumped up
to slap anyone down.
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