A Green State of Mind

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.

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With the rise of neoliberalism, there is not only an intensive growth of market rationality in societies but an increasing control of humans within social space.

Neoliberalism is the form of late capitalism that has emerged, beginning in the 1970’s, and is the predominant economic mode in the world. It proposes that all social and political actions can best be accomplished through the market, and with this attitude is also the implied demand that more and more people take on market discipline in their daily lives. Instead of a situation where “the personal is political” one will find that with neoliberalism “the personal is economic”. The market rationality becomes the major method of social interaction by way of capitalism’s extensive and intensive growth. Extensive growth is the spatial growth of the market, such as what would cross national borders to eventually encompass the entire globe. Intensive growth accompanies extensive growth and is the increasing commodification of culture that will occur in areas that have an established market system. Extensive growth crosses geographical borders quantitatively, while intensive growth crosses social boundaries qualitatively. As extensive growth determines the economic practices of areas such as nation-states, intensive growth redefines the social practices in areas where capitalism is already based. These two types of growth not only portray capitalism as the only way to engage in economics, but also the only way to engage in any type of social relationship. Neoliberalism imposes itself as the only reality as it grows, and from this position it engages in a deliberate regime of social control starting from the premise that society can not exist independent of capitalism and the market. Some, like former British prime minister Margaret Thatcher, would claim that “there is no such thing as society” and that all relationships outside of the family are market relationships.

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The importance of democracy does not lie in its functions within the modern state, but rather in its ability to organize collective action in a decentralized way and thus be in competition with the market.

By the time the 21st century arose, it seemed that the only important debate in public life was between the model of the state and the model of the market, one total yet centralized while the other was partial and decentralized. The state offered the chance for equality, and the market offered the chance for freedom. This debate was strongest in regards to the economy and the allocation of scarce and abundant goods. In fact, the nature of scarcity was redefined by this debate, appearing as artificial yet necessary in the market and seen as a vital factor in the state only in regards to propaganda that would marginalize the other as an enemy of the people. The limits of the state were in fact revealed, through a market-based critique, by the constant surfacing of scarcity whenever centralized or total planning of the economy was put forth. However, because the scarcity in question was artificial, the market model offered a decentralized alternative that failed to satisfy all parties involved. In other words, someone had to go without in the market, while the state offered universal access but in predetermined amounts for all involved. Both models, when set up against each other in comparison, failed to be adequate to the social body in providing both freedom and equality at the same time. The contrast of the failings reveal that democracy, as a primal form of collective action, can exist outside of both the market and the state while fulfilling the needs of those in the social sphere.

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