Phil Fox Rose

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September 01, 1991

The Radical Middle #2

Greens, at the level of national structure (just try to get most locals interested in any of this) are at somewhat of a crossroads. While there was a lot of forward momentum at the national conference in Elkins in August, much of that momentum leaned to the Left. Detroit Summer, 500 Years of Resistance and the Ron Daniels presidential campaign may be worthy projects, but I fear that the national Green body is on a track towards defining itself by those projects and others like them. As I have said before, a strategy of defining the Greens as a coalition of special interests is not only against the key values of the movement, it is also foolish politically.

The Greens as conceived in early works like Charlene Spretnak's book "Green Politics" were a break from the old Left. Slogans like "Neither Left nor Right, but in front" and "Unity through diversity," and the ideas behind them, were refreshing reading to those disenchanted by the failures of both Right and Left to solve our nation's woes.

When the early U.S. Green group modified the German Greens' "pillar" Social Justice to say, instead, "Personal and Social Responsibility", they weren't softening it — making it more palatable — as social justice advocates and anti-New Agers think. Rather, they were making a much stronger statement: that life is not just a matter of getting government to enforce your claims against others — that individuals need to take responsibility for their own actions and the world around them before we can solve the problems in our society. This applies at both the personal level and at the social level, which includes community organizations and, yes, the government.

This distinction was, of course, lost on most Leftists who don't even try to understand such concepts, which they condescendingly refer to as New Agey. As far as they were concerned, changing "Personal and Social Responsibility" to "Social Justice" was nothing more than correcting an oversight that had become a nuisance - an annoying obstacle when talking with social justice groups who wondered whether we shared their ideology. Well, maybe we don't! Maybe we want to help them and work with them, but that doesn't mean that we have to think exactly as they do. I am not willing to submit myself to an ideological litmus test before someone will allow me to help them.

While I supported the addition of the social justice concept to our Ten Key Values, I was baffled and depressed by the failure of my attempt to get the personal and social responsibility language reinstated under the Key Value "Global Responsibility". Even this was shot down by, as best I could tell, a combination of confusion over the voting rules and the hostile indifference of the Leftists present. [Note: This was eventually fixed, partly. It became "Personal and Global Responsibility", losing the communitarian aspect but at least maintaining some balance. BTW, the "Green Party of the United States" has further modified Social Justice remarkably to read "Social Justice And Equal Opportunity", and enumerated in the description class oppression and ageism, among other things. So the shift is complete from a value of empowerment to one of standard Left identity politics.]

This, along with many other events at Elkins and much of the Green Program, troubles me. If you are a Green who, like me, hoped that it would offer a new, more enlightened (dare I say) form of politics, please stand up for your concerns. It is up to us to not let this wonderful movement, which is finally gaining some momentum, veer off into the no-person's-land of old-Left slogans and finger pointing.

There are a few Republicans and Democrats that are sounding more Green than the U.S. Greens these days. Let's remember the first four Key Values as they were originally written: ecological wisdom, grassroots democracy, personal and social responsibility, and non-violence. These are what make us different from other political movements.

Spirituality and ecology, two of the cornerstones of early U.S. Green activity, have been entirely ignored lately — by both the Leftists who have always been hostile towards them and by those who have set their sights on the electoral arena and lost sight of all the rest. Personal responsibility has been chucked in the wastebasket in favor of government programs to impose "justice." And grassroots democracy is interpreted only to apply to members of the U.S. Greens, not the entire population. Let's bring it back home before it gets away from us for good.

© 2004 Philip F. Rose