Getting closer: discovering Alan Carter

Another glowing book review, I'm afraid. Or rather, the preview review. I found The Politics of Nature -- Explorations in Green Political Theory, edited by Andrew Dobson and Paul Lucardie in a secondhand bookshop in Brighton. The book is still in print for £29 but Amazon has several secondhand copies. I would have bought the book anyway, simply on the strength of the editors and the blurb on the back, but what caught my eye was an essay by Alan Carter, then lecturer in philosophy at Heythrop College in London.

I say "then" because he is now the Professor of Moral Philosophy at the University of Glasgow. The Politics of Nature was published in 1993 and Carter has subsequently expanded his ideas on green politics into A Radical Green Political Theory, which I will read, whether I buy it for £80 or borrow it from the library. I will read it because I think his model of how damaging governmental, economic and security structures embed themselves is close to the critique I've been trying to build, and because I think his counter argument that localised action to de-power damaging institutions matches my instinct for a green anarchist ideology.

Before I try to explain Carter's model, it's worth mentioning other essays in The Politics of Nature. They are all worth reading and include contributions by some of the biggest names in green political thinking such as Ted Benton and Wouter Achterberg, but one other stands out--that by Andrew Dobson. Dobson's primary role in green politics has been to chart the development of green ideas, which he did Green Political Thought in 1990. His essay in The Politics of Nature, brings the tools of critical theory to green politics, particularly those of Adorno, Horkheimer and Marcuse, to bear on green ideology.

Part of the problem with such an exercise is that much of the literature on green politics is written in terms of what a green society should look like, rather than how such a society might be achieved. Critical theory was built on a mainly Marxian foundation, which is anti-Utopian. Dobson finds enough common ground to make the analysis useful, but it highlights a weakness in much of how green politics is sold. Which is also a weakness in the coherence of green ideology. A common-sense response to green politicians is that what they propose is impractical--based on wishful thinking.

I would add that the dominant method for building a green manifesto--starting with a list of principles--does not necessarily help. It declares that one must buy into a our list of priorities or sod off. If a green ideology is to be practicable, if it is to effect substantial change, then it must give a message that chimes with most people. Our list of principles might be very logical, but it won't necessarily chime with everyone else's.

Which is where Carter's analysis and proposal for action is strongest. One does not have to declare allegiance to four, five or ten principles. One does not even have to accept the criticism of the status quo. One simply has to see the benefits or the right of a community to take control of its own resources.

In explaining the model of how politics, economics and security currently reinforce each other, Carter uses the following diagram. I like diagrams. What it shows is that growth economics is embodied in the system as a whole by funding the security system (forces of defence) that protect the nation state, political elite and institutional bodies. The cycle is completed by the bodies politic and elements of the security system protecting and enhancing economic control systems that nourish economic growth. I like that it avoids too much specificity, and as such I think it captures the ecological relationship between its element. That is to say, if one particular body within one element (for example, the financial regulator) is changed due to popular pressure, then its role in the cycle may be taken up by others parliamentary committee, the police, or voluntary self-regulation).
This model also encapsulates the way in which scale is so corrosive to democracy and sustainability, which Carter illustrates with a second version of the same diagram. And it is by taking the reversed cycle below as a necessary part of achieving sustainability (or as Carter puts it, an environmentally benign dynamic) that he produces a second model, this time with a loop of decentralisation, self-sufficiency, egalitarianism, appropriate use of technology, and non-violent means of achieving security.
Again, this is an ecological relationship. And unlike most other green political theories, this doesn't have to be implemented by government or by blocks of legislation. Instead, we can work towards it by piecemeal commitment to local communities, refusing to accept the demands of outside business and government, and by eschewing violence. If these strategies work, we don't have to sell them on principled grounds--they should sell themselves.