{ Excerpt from a piece I wrote for Swans Commentary, June 2007 }
But before the fires from the “shock and awe” military onslaught were even extinguished, Bremer unleashed his shock therapy, pushing through more wrenching changes in one sweltering summer than the International Monetary Fund has managed to enact over three decades in Latin America.
-Naomi Klein, Baghdad Year Zero
In a searing article in Harper’s Magazine in September 2004, Naomi Klein laid out a theory of the Iraq War that shreds even today’s conventional wisdom about the motivations for our invasion. Her theory was that the neocons saw Iraq as a potential test tube for their ideological utopia, and pursued a strategy of shock therapy, where the devastation of war would force Iraqis to rebuild their nation from scratch. Out of desperation (not to mention shock and awe), they would be receptive to U.S. economic policy unimaginable in any other country. The common refrain that Bush did not have a postwar plan is inaccurate. According to Klein, the neocons’ plan started to backfire once the companies they were counting on to privatize the country hesitated to jump on board, and not for the reason you think. Yes, the security situation wasn’t perfect. But more importantly, companies decided to wait for the creation of an Iraqi government because international law prohibited the United States as an occupying force from running the show.
Of course, there were other parts to the ideological impetus for this war, including but not limited to Iraq’s tremendous oil reserves, the extension of US hegemony through the establishment of military bases, and the ever-present profit motives of the military-industrial complex. While Naomi Klein exposes the neoconservative drumbeat for war that we all love to hate, these other reasons hone in on a rift in the antiwar movement that must be overcome. That rift, my friends, is between those of us who hold out hope that the Democratic Party can be moved to spurn these deeper-rooted motivations for war, and those of us who know they cannot and will not.
Klein’s take on the Iraq War also provides a starting point for moving forward. The post-9/11 peace and justice movement, along with millions of Americans who oppose the disastrous maneuverings of the Bush administration, have been shocked and awed into a desperate and debilitating position. This shock therapy has led millions of us to support policies and politics that were otherwise unimaginable. Furthermore, we are incapable of resisting tyrannical power grabs that we see before our eyes, along with the horrific actions that we know are happening in our name. All the while we continue to pay federal taxes, funding the whole enterprise, then laughing it off with a release of steam
by watching Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert sock it to Bush.
What makes things even worse is that amidst the mounting human devastation that we are all aware of, we are increasingly aware of the ecological devastation that is accompanying it. Often these are interwoven. Global warming and Katrina; oil depletion and Iraq; water depletion/privatization and drought/displacement. The common thread for these catastrophes and many others that we face seems to be that there is an economic driver and no political counterweight. Those that believe the right-wing rise to power is driven by religious fundamentalism are right, except that the religion is Capitalism, not Christianity. While most voters cling to the dominant two parties, which are owned and operated by corporate interests, an intricate dance takes place to provide just enough hope that the values the parties once stood for are still alive within. Both the Republicans and the Democrats, however, are wholly committed to that unsustainable religion of continued economic growth called Capitalism. Even Socialism is wedded to the same basic premise that is presently ravaging our planet — unabated industrial growth.
The right-left political spectrum needs to be turned on its head, and the Green Party does just that. As Jonathan Porritt wrote in his 1984 book Seeing Green:
The politics of the Industrial Age, left, right and centre, is like a three-lane motorway, with different vehicles in different lanes, but all heading in the same direction. Greens feel it is the very direction that is wrong… It is our perception that the motorway of industrialism inevitably leads to the abyss — hence our decision to get off it, and seek an entirely different direction.
Mounting evidence since 1984 has borne out the perception that this 3-lane highway is leading us off a cliff, perhaps at different speeds. But the highway of industrialism is the only thing we know, and we do not know how to get off. Our quick adoption of and increasing dependence on technological advances makes it even harder. But technology is slowly replacing knowledge, and we are increasingly disconnected from the earth, from each other, and from the sources of our food and everything that we use in our daily lives.
{ Read the full article here. }
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I’ve read Klein’s book. I’ve long been a huge fan, and I learned a LOT from DC as I do from everything else she writes. But I’m not sure I totally buy into her hypothesis. I agree that the neo-liberal types will exploit every disaster, but I don’t subscribe to the idea that the government-corporate cabal is so clever and efficient that they can arrange these things in advance. (Hence nmy eyeball rolling at the Truthers).
That said, what’s your alternative to industrialism? Do you really want to live without computers, bicycles, subways, etc?
I dunno that we’re all that disconnected from each other. I’m actually of the beief that recent tech developments have found me many, many new acquaintances–even friends. I’d be infinitely less connected to other people without this machine. Including my own family. And I’m WAY closer–quite literally–to the source of my food than I would ever have been–and you can thank the Net for that, too!
And I’m still, I think, a capitalist, though I’m leery of labels (calling myself a “Green” has been tough, as there’s a shitload in the Green platform and in historically Green thinking with which I disagree quite vehemently–same with calling myself an “Episcopalian” for that matter: I joined both because alone I am worth shit, and they’re the only game in town so far as I’m concerned if you wanna organize around SOMETHING). What’s the name for the misbegotten spawn of a menage between a capitalist, socialist, and anarchist?
I think that while every generation embraces techno advances TOO uncritically, some folks have always objected–sometimes for good (would we had never split the atom), sometimes for the worse (the anti-vaccination crowd). Tech is neutral, but humanity has ALWAYS depended on technological advances, since the day the first hunter gathered attached a piace of sharpened flint to a stick.
It doesn’t pay to be either uncritical or overly critical. There are, for example, a lot of people opposed to GMOs on what strike me as almost religious grounds–they really haven’t studied the whole issue, and are all too willing to throw the baby out with the bathwater. (The trouble isn’t that GMOs are “bad”–many are terrific–the trouble is the lack of oversight and political power wielded by those who employ them to clearly destructive ends–e.g., terminator genes, “Round-up ready” modified seed, etc).
Our problem–because I essentially agree with you–is that the idea that we CAN’T go on at this rate is a strikingly novel one. It’s 100% accurate, but it flies in the face of what people believed–with reason–for five thousand years. We have a VERY hard row to hoe. Our problem is that we haven’t yet figured out how to communicate these extremely unpleasant truths in a palatable fashion.
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While I think I teased out some distinctions between myself and Michael clearly enough in the other “Greening” post, I can see some other analyses where I differ from you Eli or at least would like to explore the differences.
And pointing out disagreement or differing perspectives is not an exercise in opposition but one of clarifying thought and learning from one another. I am a fan of the idea of overlapping consensus. In other words, people have differing values and perspectives on the world. What sustains community and creates the swell for common action is where values, plans, and visions overlap, as well as an ability to respect and understand differences.
I’ll focus on the distinction between left and right. Its a heuristic device to simplify political ideologies. When it first arose in France the demarcation was between people who supported the monarchy, nobles, and clergy (the right) and those who did not (the left). So classical liberals, secularists, social liberals, proto-socialists, agrarians, and so forth all sat on the left. Nowadays the political spectrum is usually defined in economic terms, so the liberals of yesteryear are on the right and everyone else center and left.
Greens criticize this framework and rightfully so. Its too economistic, too materialistic, and lacks complexity. And our modern mass media have defined it in such a way as to make a desert of political language and discussion.
I would agree that Marxian Socialism would be on the industrialism side of the equation and with a few exceptions, ( like if you pick and choose your Marx or take up eco-socialist critiques from the likes of Joel Kovel and John Bellamy Foster) the thrust of the Marxist worker’s movement is to make capitalism humanistic but not of necessity ecological.
However, when you get beyond orthodox Marxism (and especially Marxist-Leninism) there are plenty of examples, from utopian socialisms, to anarcho-communism and the anarcho-collectivism of Krotpotkin, to quasi socialistic stuff of Chartists, Diggers, and the historical Luddites, to religious socialisms from Tolstoy, Buber, and Bloch, to the variety found in left and council communisms, autonomism, and thinkers like Castoriadis, Fromm, Marcuse, Gorz, etc.
So given this history and these lines of thought, its hard to call all socialists fans of Industrialism. But we like to call them leftists and many would self-identify that way. What they agree on is some notion of human rationality, of Enlightenment, of human equality, and the potential for democratic decision-making to govern society.
The German Greens, where this idea of “neither left nor right but Forward!” came from, were attempting to bridge the gap between conservative agrarians, religious ecologists, a few “eco-fascists”, (the right) then eco-centrists, eco-libertarians, Realos, (the center) and eco-anarchists, eco-socialists (the left). Deep ecologists with a heavy critique of humanity per se, well they’re all over the place.
The ecological right has much less faith in human rationality or its possibility. And when I say rationality I do include a holistic emotive and reflective capacity, not just some cold heartened logic or anthropo-centrism. Individuals might be rational but society isn’t, so its best to stick to traditions, ritual, authority, and leaps of faith to keep humans restrained.
Having said all that I think the concept of Industrialism focuses too much on technology to explain the rift between humanity and nature. According to this view (correct me if I am horribly off), technology has a strong level of independence from humanity, so history could in fact be reduced to the march of new technologies, their greater energy consumption, and the growing materialism they tie humanity to.
I would say yes we are tied to technology rather closely, but there are processes and social systems that precede Industrialism enough to make it a symptom rather than a cause. The ethics of domination, the development of hierarchy, the creation of instrumental rationality (humans as objects, nature as object) in bureaucratic and economic relations, I think underlie why our technologies can be so anti-ecological and destructive. And it can be argued that capitalism or at least its fundamentals were in place before Industrialism proper.
So I hesitate with Industrialism as the correct category to combat because you could replace the technology with new kinds of instrumental rationality divorced from high technology or simply with mysticism and authoritarianism. So I end up agreeing with Michael at least on the point as concerns Tech neutrality and the problem lying in social and power relations.
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that after reading a piece you wrote a few months ago about the difference between being green and being progressive – after a bit of a shift in my thinking had already taken place – I read “Seeing Green” and “Green Politics” at your suggestion. Because of that I’ve gone from being an independent progressive to a strongly Green political ecologist. Thank you.
And as for the Iraq war and industrialism…well, have you posted this anywhere else? Because you’re one of the better voices out there pointing out the difference between the industrialism of progressive Democrats and the Green ecological point of view.