Agenda for a Green Economy
David Korten's keynote presentation at Green Fest, August 5, 2011, is posted on his website at
http://livingeconomiesforum.org/agenda-for-a-green-economy
Greetings to those gathered at Alfred University and those watching via live streaming across the country. Special greetings to Michael Greenman and my friends in Columbus, Ohio. It is wonderful to join you by Skype for this important conversation.
As you all know, this timely event is an interesting combination of a local New York Green Fest conversation on Building a Green Economy and the annual conference of the Green Party US. My assignment for this session is to spell out an Agenda for creating a Green Economy based on living system principles that is rooted in and serves the needs of people and the human and natural communities in which we live. I want to begin, however, by setting a context and spelling out the connection between the New Green Economy and the work of New York Green Fest, Transition Towns, and the Green Party US.
Economic Failure
Our nation remains in the midst of a deep economic crisis. Official unemployment continues to hover around 9 percent. If you factor in both short-term and long-term discouraged workers and those forced to work part-time, because they can’t find full-time jobs, the total of unemployed and under employed in the United States runs near 23%. The worst hit are people of color, young people in general, and young to middle aged men.On top of that, over 11 million homes in America are vacant and one out of every 46 homes is in foreclosure.
There is no hope for a Main Street recovery on the horizon. And those in charge haven’t a clue what to do about it.
The only recovery since the 2008 crash has been on Wall Street. Thanks to massive bailout funding from the Federal Reserve and U.S. Treasury, the folks who brought down the economy are doing splendidly. They enjoy record share prices, corporate profits, and executive bonuses. The financial assets of America's billionaires and the idle cash reserves of the most profitable corporations are at historic highs. Their biggest challenge is figuring out where to park all their cash.
The glaring disconnect between Wall Street and Main Street creates an unprecedented moment of opportunity for a deep rethinking of the economy.
The reality that returning to pre-2008 business as usual is not an option seems totally to escape the awareness of those in power. It is, however, evident to an ever growing segment of a deeply frightened electorate increasingly susceptible to the siren call of political demagogues of the far right.
We in America have come to the end of the road for an economy that assumes America’s global economic role is to live beyond our own means by consuming the products and resources of the rest of the world, while running up an international credit card bill we have no plan ever to repay.
We have become masters of gaming the international system to live ever further beyond our own means, while running up ever more massive environmental, social, and financial deficits. We know in our hearts that the party is over.
The day of reckoning has arrived. We need a radical redirection of the economy. There is, however, no national political voice framing the real issues and articulating a compelling positive vision of the America that can be.
Why America Needs the Green Party
Both major parties are in the pocket of Wall Street interests. The Republicans push their standard agenda of tax cuts for the rich, a rollback of regulations on predatory corporations, andelimination of the social safety net—a well proven prescription for further job loss and devastation of the middle class.The Democrats put up a feeble, but ineffective and unconvincing show of resistance. Neither has a credible vision or program for America.
America’s political future belongs to the party or movement that can provide a credible positive vision and program for America’s future. Among America’s political parties, only the Green Party is positioned to frame and build support for the missing vision and agenda. We desperately need a strong Green Party voice to help define the upcoming 2012 cycle political debates.
Most of the essential elements of a New Economy based on living system principles are already included in the Green US party platform. It remains only to pull it all together into a coherent, credible, compelling, and easily understood vision for America’s future.
And we are fortunate to have within our ranks a number of strong, politically and emotionally mature leaders with the potential to function as a strong politically savvy and publicly credible leadership team. America needs the Green Party and it is time to step up to the challenge of building a broad political base and mobilizing the funding required to make this party a coherent and effective national political force.
One of our leaders, David Cobb, in his role as the 2004 Green Party presidential candidate, defined and demonstrated what I consider to be a sophisticated political strategy for the Green Party consistent with America’s political reality. We demonstrated in the 2000 election the potential of the Green Party to play the electoral spoiler role at the national level by helping to put George Bush in office. I know this is a controversial issue within the party, but I clearly recall how that experience led me, and many of my friends and colleagues, to back away from the Green Party.
I was later drawn back to the Green Party by David Cobb and his nuanced strategy of being a Presidential candidate who used his national platform to outline the Green Party's principles and values and to focus attention and resources on local Green Party candidates. I hope and trust that the Green Party will present a similarly strong candidate with a similarly sophisticated strategy for 2012.
Beyond Traditional Left Right Politics
We can and must work for rule changes that open real space for third parties at the national level. In the meantime, we should build on the party’s past success electing hundreds of Greens to local offices in which they have played an important role in building green communities and economies. I believe we only do harm to both ourselves and the country if we take the Tea Party path of “My way or the highway.”
Much of the appeal of the Green Party resides in the fact that it offers solutions beyond conventional left-right political ideologies that present voters with a presumed choice between rule by big business or rule by big government.Greens know that this is a false frame that fails to address the reality that America is ruled by an oligarchy that that has achieved a seamless consolidation of economic and political power through its control of a Wall Street-Washington axis. This oligarchy will continue to rule the country in its own interests at the expense of the wishes and interests of the majority so long as we the people remain divided by a false debate about whether big business or big government is the problem.
We the people are not supposed to notice the real story that the obvious alternative to rule by an unaccountable oligarchy is what capitalism promises, but fails to deliver: real democracy and real market economies responsive to the needs and values of ordinary people.
The Green Party presents a real alternative of locally rooted, rule-based markets and democracy within a framework of community values and mutual caring. This is the economy envisioned by the Green Party values statement and policy platform. We seek the real, locally rooted markets of Adam Smith and the real locally rooted democracy of Thomas Jefferson.
We start from a set of values that define America at its best, align with the needs of our time, and frame a vision of the world of peace, justice, and environmental vibrancy for which most psychologically healthy humans have longed for millennia. We offer real solutions grounded in local control and popular sovereignty.
Which brings us to the theme of local green economies.
Living with the Biosphere
The significance of the national and global drive to rebuild local economies comprised of local businesses owned and managed by local people to serve local needs in harmonious partnership with natural systems goes well beyond what some may dismiss as merely a nostalgic longing for a return to the small and local.
We humans are confronting the reality of our nature as living beings—the reality that living beings, because of the way life manages energy, exist only in active relationships to other living beings—life exists only in community.
In a fit of adolescent hubris, we humans have been engaged for the past 5,000 years in an effort to liberate ourselves from the responsibilities of life in community. During the time of this misadventure, we have so confused individual autonomy with personal liberty that we have created economies that reduce caring human relationships to soulless financial exchange. We have structured our physical space around buildings and auto-dependent transportation systems that wall us off from one another and nature. In isolation from nature we rely on a nonrenewable and fast depleting fossil fuel subsidy to dominate and control rather than to work with nature’s life serving generative processes.
Blinded to the realities of a living planet by a seemingly unquenchable thirst for corporate profits, we have created a global economy that uses Earth’s finite store of fossil fuels to isolate people and communities from the sources of their food, energy, water, materials, manufactured goods and leave them dependent on corporate controlled global supply chains that are wasteful, unstable, unaccountable, and environmentally and social destructive. Working in opposition to nature, the global economy is maintained only by unsustainable dependence on a non-renewable fossil fuels subsidy.
The institutions of the old economy are by design, extremely efficient, but only at converting the real wealth of people and nature into the financial assets of the already richest members of the society. The result is an economic system that in an act of collective suicide self-organizes toward environmental collapse, social disintegration, and political corruption. So let’s call it what it is: a suicide economy supported by the theories of a suicide economics propagated by legions of suicide economists.
The future of humanity depends on navigating a transition to the culture and institutions of a planetary system of local living economies, green economies that work in cooperative integral partnership with nature. Properly designed, they will self-organize toward:
Ecological Balance between aggregate human consumption and the regenerative capacity of Earth’s biosphere.
Equitable Distribution of real wealth to meet the needs of all.
Living Democracy to secure the accountability of our governing economic and political institutions to people and community through active citizen participation.These outcomes align well with the 10 Green Party values.
Basics of a Green Economy
Realization of the Green Party values depends on restructuring our economic institutions to align and partner with the structure and dynamics of Earth’s biosphere. This requires segmenting the borderless global economy into a planetary system of interlinked self-reliant bio-regional living-economies, each rooted in a community of place and organized to optimize the lives of all who live within the community’s borders.
Each bioregional economy will meet most of its needs with local production using local resources in the manner of local ecosystems. Rather than gearing their economies to export, they will benefit from trading their surplus with their neighbors in return for that which they cannot reasonably produce for themselves.
Millions of people around the world are already engaged in living this new reality into being through an emergent local living economies movement. Transitions towns and the Business Alliance for Local Living Economies are at the forefront of this movement.
There is an emerging parallel living buildings movement that is dealing with the physical/spatial dimension of this transformation. It is designing buildings to eliminate waste, feature natural lighting, and provide for onsite capture of rainwater, energy (wind, solar, and thermal) and organic matter (food scraps and human waste) for recycling and reuse, including for urban gardens (edible roofs and walls and built-in greenhouses). It requires a capacity to adapt to local micro-environments in the manner of healthy ecosystems.
Water is used in the first cycle for drinking, dish washing, and showering; recycled for laundry and micro-flush composting toilets, and directed from there to onsite gardens from which it filters into the local aquifer. Hot water, cooking, and space heating are integrated to optimize overall energy efficiency.
Integrating multi-purpose buildings into larger multi-building neighborhood and district systems adds opportunities to develop public green spaces, community gardens, edible landscaping, small-scale poultry and livestock production, natural wetlands and living machine water purification to continuously recycle nutrients, water and energy at a micro-local level.
Integrative projects also create opportunities to balance the utility loads of businesses, which generally have greater energy needs during the day, and residences, which have greater needs during evening and early morning. Bringing residences, employment, shopping, and recreation together in close proximity minimizes transportation requirements and facilitates the sharing of autos, bicycles, appliances, and tools, and community connections to mass transit, bike trails, and other transportation alternatives.
These are very practical dimensions of the human transformation now underway. Every aspect rebuilds active relationships of community between people and between people & nature. The only political party in a position to translate this into a coherent political agenda is the Green Party.
For the remainder of the presentation, visit http://livingeconomiesforum.org/agenda-for-a-green-economy
Friday, August 12, 2011
Video of Protest Songs Concert by Helene Williams and Leonard Lehrman
Nine selections from the concert by Helene Williams, soprano and Leonard Lehrman, composer/pianist of Songs of Protest, Naturism and Broadway at Green Fest on Sat., Aug. 6, 2011, are posted on YouTube. Check out the links at http://ljlehrman.artists-in-residence.com/ljlehrmanvideos.html
Thursday, August 11, 2011
Darin Robbins' Presentation on Courting the Anarchist Vote
COURTING THE ANARCHIST VOTE: FINDING THE COMMON DENOMINATOR OF AUTONOMY
Summary of presentation by Darin Robbins, Aug. 6, 2011 at NY Green Fest in Alfred, NY.
This presentation has two goals: proposing that if placed on a chart of political ideology the Green Party would be closest to anarchism, and through a generalized analysis of anarchism demonstrating that those who identify as anarchist should be approached by the Green Party for coalitions or direct support. These two goals will be achieved by concentrating on such issues as the resistance to hierarchy, the distinction between liberty and autonomy, and the role of power in an anarchist or Green vision.
1. All forms of anarchism, despite particular differences, are a general opposition to hierarchy in political, cultural, and economic terms. This arises in the distinction between centralization and decentralization, transcendence and immanence, as well as vertical and horizontal systems.
anarchism as opposition to authority rather than the state
anarchism as premodern, modern, and postmodern
anarchism as convergence of theory and practice through ethics
2. Anarchism brings into the foreground basic conflicts that have been continuous in human social history, and supplies an overall structural critique that is always coupled to direct action.
original political conflict between centralization and decentralization
original cultural conflict between the past and the future
original economic conflict between freedom and equality
3. Anarchism is separate from libertarianism through the proposition of a fuller sensibility of freedom that does not foreclose the relationship between individual desire and collective action.
liberty, autonomy, and authority
liberty as power from
autonomy as power to
authority as power over
freedom as resistance and creation
freedom as ownership through participation
freedom as equality of power
4. An anarchist critique is a direct opposition to the state and the market. The state and the market are separate but primary forms of power through hierarchy within society. The anarchist critique is accompanied by an alternative social form.
from the state and the market to community and the commons
autonomy as internal control and equality of power
autonomy through community and the commons
community as use of the commons
5. Libertarianism is a limited critique of the state without a critique of the market, and therefore fails at offering alternatives to hierarchy.
appearance of self ownership that obscures autonomy
self ownership as divergence of subjective mind and objective body
subjective mind as desire and objective body as expression of desire
autonomy as convergence of subjective unconscious and objective reality
participation in public power through political decentralization
participation in private power through economic decentralization
democracy as political and economic decentralization of public and private power
6. The opposition to representative democracy, and the electoral politics that occur within it, by anarchists must be analyzed not as a rejection of democracy but a rejection of political hierarchy.
representation as abstraction of choice
representation as alienation of participation
representation as alienation of power through abstraction
representation as formation of majority and minority
representation as use of the public
democracy as vanishing mediator between individuals and collectives
democracy as experience of ownership through participation
democracy as equality of power through autonomy
democracy as the voice option and the refusal option
democracy as participation and ownership of the commons
7. The importance of democracy lies in the vital distinction between constituent power and constituted power. This distinction is a correlation to the critique of the hierarchy in political representation.
from constituent power to constituted power
from the multitude to the people
change in the state as change in identity
change in identity as alienation of power
appearance of social contract that obscures the event
social contract as retroactive causality of transcendent structures
the event as space for creation of immanent structures
appearance of constituted power that obscures class formation
constituted power as universal identity of the people
class formation as the multitude and sovereign position of authority
constituent power and constituted power as simultaneous
constituent power as surplus of constituted power
subsumption of constituent power by constituted power
constituent power as disruption of constituted power
8. The critique of power through hierarchy must exist side-by-side with the advocacy for power through desire.
power as relationship between forces
power as many and unique
power as expression of desire
power as equality through deterritorialization
authority as hierarchy of power
authority as one and uniform
authority as mediation of desire
authority as inequality through reterritorialization
9. Political action, as an expression of desire, must be willing to enact change that takes apart previous political, cultural, and economic structures without reproducing those previous structures.
the event as structural rupture
structural rupture as expression of desire
expression of desire as collective action
collective action as immanent structures
10. If choice is intrinsic to a conception of freedom as well as political power, then it must be more than a precluded economic choice and be more of an original democratic choice.
choice as internal to structural formation
choice as parts in differential relationships
choice as scarcity in constituted power
choice as external to structural rupture
choice as creation of immanent structures
choice as abundance in constituent power
11. The basic method of anarchism, in all its manifestations, is the creation of horizontal systems as both a disruption and alternative to vertical systems through the practice of prefiguration.
collectives in horizontal systems
individuals in vertical systems
from horizontal systems to vertical systems as alienation of participation
from vertical systems to horizontal systems as distribution of participation
from experience of content to experience of form
from experience of form to control of form
countercultures as prefiguration rather than revolution or reform
countercultures as both libertarian and communitarian
12. The ultimate goal of anarchism and other movements for decentralization is the development of mutuality within the entire social sphere, the eradication of hierarchy in all its forms.
from reciprocity to mutuality through the commons
from reciprocity to finite debt through the market
from reciprocity to infinite debt through the state
13. Anarchism in its generalized state not only reflects the more specific Green Party values of decentralization, grassroots democracy, and community economics but points to an underground spirit of America that has been continually suppressed for the sake of hierarchy in the political, the cultural, and the economic.
convergence of anarchism and small businesses (G8 summit at Pittsburgh in 2009)
finite collective as experience of community
from individual creation of natural rights to collective use through law
appearance of collective use through law as transcendent source
1. opposition to hierarchy
2. critique of the state and capitalism
3. autonomy versus liberty
4. alternative of the commons and community
5. anarchism more comprehensive than libertarianism
6. democracy versus republic
7. constituent power versus constituted power
8. power and freedom through desire
9. avoidance of structural reproduction
10. original choice versus precluded choice
11. horizontal systems versus vertical systems
12. mutuality as goal
13. decentralization, grassroots democracy, and community economics
Change The World Without Taking Power by John Holloway
Escape From Freedom by Erich Fromm
For All The People by John Curl
Gramsci Is Dead by Richard J.F. Day
Insurgencies by Antonio Negri
Summary of presentation by Darin Robbins, Aug. 6, 2011 at NY Green Fest in Alfred, NY.
This presentation has two goals: proposing that if placed on a chart of political ideology the Green Party would be closest to anarchism, and through a generalized analysis of anarchism demonstrating that those who identify as anarchist should be approached by the Green Party for coalitions or direct support. These two goals will be achieved by concentrating on such issues as the resistance to hierarchy, the distinction between liberty and autonomy, and the role of power in an anarchist or Green vision.
1. All forms of anarchism, despite particular differences, are a general opposition to hierarchy in political, cultural, and economic terms. This arises in the distinction between centralization and decentralization, transcendence and immanence, as well as vertical and horizontal systems.
anarchism as opposition to authority rather than the state
anarchism as premodern, modern, and postmodern
anarchism as convergence of theory and practice through ethics
2. Anarchism brings into the foreground basic conflicts that have been continuous in human social history, and supplies an overall structural critique that is always coupled to direct action.
original political conflict between centralization and decentralization
original cultural conflict between the past and the future
original economic conflict between freedom and equality
3. Anarchism is separate from libertarianism through the proposition of a fuller sensibility of freedom that does not foreclose the relationship between individual desire and collective action.
liberty, autonomy, and authority
liberty as power from
autonomy as power to
authority as power over
freedom as resistance and creation
freedom as ownership through participation
freedom as equality of power
4. An anarchist critique is a direct opposition to the state and the market. The state and the market are separate but primary forms of power through hierarchy within society. The anarchist critique is accompanied by an alternative social form.
from the state and the market to community and the commons
autonomy as internal control and equality of power
autonomy through community and the commons
community as use of the commons
5. Libertarianism is a limited critique of the state without a critique of the market, and therefore fails at offering alternatives to hierarchy.
appearance of self ownership that obscures autonomy
self ownership as divergence of subjective mind and objective body
subjective mind as desire and objective body as expression of desire
autonomy as convergence of subjective unconscious and objective reality
participation in public power through political decentralization
participation in private power through economic decentralization
democracy as political and economic decentralization of public and private power
6. The opposition to representative democracy, and the electoral politics that occur within it, by anarchists must be analyzed not as a rejection of democracy but a rejection of political hierarchy.
representation as abstraction of choice
representation as alienation of participation
representation as alienation of power through abstraction
representation as formation of majority and minority
representation as use of the public
democracy as vanishing mediator between individuals and collectives
democracy as experience of ownership through participation
democracy as equality of power through autonomy
democracy as the voice option and the refusal option
democracy as participation and ownership of the commons
7. The importance of democracy lies in the vital distinction between constituent power and constituted power. This distinction is a correlation to the critique of the hierarchy in political representation.
from constituent power to constituted power
from the multitude to the people
change in the state as change in identity
change in identity as alienation of power
appearance of social contract that obscures the event
social contract as retroactive causality of transcendent structures
the event as space for creation of immanent structures
appearance of constituted power that obscures class formation
constituted power as universal identity of the people
class formation as the multitude and sovereign position of authority
constituent power and constituted power as simultaneous
constituent power as surplus of constituted power
subsumption of constituent power by constituted power
constituent power as disruption of constituted power
8. The critique of power through hierarchy must exist side-by-side with the advocacy for power through desire.
power as relationship between forces
power as many and unique
power as expression of desire
power as equality through deterritorialization
authority as hierarchy of power
authority as one and uniform
authority as mediation of desire
authority as inequality through reterritorialization
9. Political action, as an expression of desire, must be willing to enact change that takes apart previous political, cultural, and economic structures without reproducing those previous structures.
the event as structural rupture
structural rupture as expression of desire
expression of desire as collective action
collective action as immanent structures
10. If choice is intrinsic to a conception of freedom as well as political power, then it must be more than a precluded economic choice and be more of an original democratic choice.
choice as internal to structural formation
choice as parts in differential relationships
choice as scarcity in constituted power
choice as external to structural rupture
choice as creation of immanent structures
choice as abundance in constituent power
11. The basic method of anarchism, in all its manifestations, is the creation of horizontal systems as both a disruption and alternative to vertical systems through the practice of prefiguration.
collectives in horizontal systems
individuals in vertical systems
from horizontal systems to vertical systems as alienation of participation
from vertical systems to horizontal systems as distribution of participation
from experience of content to experience of form
from experience of form to control of form
countercultures as prefiguration rather than revolution or reform
countercultures as both libertarian and communitarian
12. The ultimate goal of anarchism and other movements for decentralization is the development of mutuality within the entire social sphere, the eradication of hierarchy in all its forms.
from reciprocity to mutuality through the commons
from reciprocity to finite debt through the market
from reciprocity to infinite debt through the state
13. Anarchism in its generalized state not only reflects the more specific Green Party values of decentralization, grassroots democracy, and community economics but points to an underground spirit of America that has been continually suppressed for the sake of hierarchy in the political, the cultural, and the economic.
convergence of anarchism and small businesses (G8 summit at Pittsburgh in 2009)
finite collective as experience of community
from individual creation of natural rights to collective use through law
appearance of collective use through law as transcendent source
1. opposition to hierarchy
2. critique of the state and capitalism
3. autonomy versus liberty
4. alternative of the commons and community
5. anarchism more comprehensive than libertarianism
6. democracy versus republic
7. constituent power versus constituted power
8. power and freedom through desire
9. avoidance of structural reproduction
10. original choice versus precluded choice
11. horizontal systems versus vertical systems
12. mutuality as goal
13. decentralization, grassroots democracy, and community economics
Change The World Without Taking Power by John Holloway
Escape From Freedom by Erich Fromm
For All The People by John Curl
Gramsci Is Dead by Richard J.F. Day
Insurgencies by Antonio Negri
Wednesday, August 10, 2011
Videos of the Presentations
Many thanks to our presenters for the great panels and workshops and to those who video-taped many of the presentations so that the presentations are available to a wider audience: Wilton Vought, Sanda Everette, Lou Novak, Michael O'Neill, Barry Miller, Claudia Flanagan and Sonya Cady. We will be posting these videos shortly, so please check back. Lou Novak has posted videos he took of the weekend on his YouTube channel, http://www.youtube.com/user/lounovak
We also thank the livestreaming team of Craig Seeman, Starlene Rankin, Sanda Everette and Michael O'Neill who livestreamed events through the weekend at http://www.livestream.com/greenpartyus . The videos that were livestreamed during the weekend may be downloaded from the site's ON-DEMAND archive.
Finally, we thank Wilton Vought for editing some of the videos from Green Fest 2009, including Cyril Michalejko on the Rights of Nature, Tony Gronowicz on the History of Rights for Nature in the US , Viginia Rasmussen on Who Has the Power to Implement Sustainability, and Joel Kovel on Revitalizing the Relationship Between Humans and Nature, which can be viewed at http://blip.tv/nygreenfest/
Green Party members debate political strategy at Green Fest in Alfred, Angela Sutfin, Hornell Evening Tribune, August 7, 2011
Green Fest this weekend at Alfred University campus, Angela Sutfin, Hornell Evening Tribune, August 3, 2011
We also thank the livestreaming team of Craig Seeman, Starlene Rankin, Sanda Everette and Michael O'Neill who livestreamed events through the weekend at http://www.livestream.com/greenpartyus . The videos that were livestreamed during the weekend may be downloaded from the site's ON-DEMAND archive.
Finally, we thank Wilton Vought for editing some of the videos from Green Fest 2009, including Cyril Michalejko on the Rights of Nature, Tony Gronowicz on the History of Rights for Nature in the US , Viginia Rasmussen on Who Has the Power to Implement Sustainability, and Joel Kovel on Revitalizing the Relationship Between Humans and Nature, which can be viewed at http://blip.tv/nygreenfest/
Media Coverage
Two presidential candidates visit Steuben County on Monday, Andrew Poole, Hornell Evening Tribune, August 9, 2011Green Party members debate political strategy at Green Fest in Alfred, Angela Sutfin, Hornell Evening Tribune, August 7, 2011
Green Fest this weekend at Alfred University campus, Angela Sutfin, Hornell Evening Tribune, August 3, 2011
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