I have felt for some time now that for all its many faults – and there were many – the UK’s traditional Labour movement, with its desire to see prosperity for all, was likely to be deeply at odds with the Greens. Yes, the former, with its foolish confidence in central planning, redistributive taxes and the rest, had some shockingly silly ideas, but at least it wanted people to be better off, to be materially richer, for there to be more stuff about to enjoy. Indeed, having a good time was part of the idea.
As for the Greens, or at least those taking a more ‘Deep Green’ approach in ideological terms, their agenda was and is very different. It cannot be stressed too often that parts of the Green movement are profoundly reactionary. Well, it seems that some leftist commentators have joined in the voices of environmental skepticism about things such as man-made climate change. In this case, the commentator is justifiably irritated that Greens such as George “Moonbat” Monbiot have welcomed the onset of a recession, a fact that is hardly likely to go down well with traditional Labour voters scrabbling to pay a mortgage.
I think that libertarian free marketeers such as ourselves should see this as an opportunity for a spot of intellectual, friendly outreach to the more moderate, still-post Enlightenment bits of the left. There are surely fissures to be exploited. For as Paul Marks has noted below, part of the far-left has hooked up with radical Islam much in the same way as it has hooked up with the radical Greens, and for a similar purpose: a hatred of science, rationality, individualism, progress, enjoyment of this life and Man’s ability to reshape it. Islam means submission; the Greens want Man to submit to their static view of the Earth.
So, is it really very surprising that those parts of the Left that still cling to a tradition that goes back to the Enlightenment are getting irritated by all this? Or, to pick up on a theme occasionally mentioned by Samizdata commenter Ian B, this can be framed as a class issue: the deep Greens and their far-left/far-right friends are part of the ‘posh establishment’ that want to keep the nice views to themselves and bugger the unwashed.
In fact, if there is an upside to this period of economic turmoil, is that it might, just might do serious damage to part of the Green cause. Well, it’s Monday and one might as well kick off the week on an optimistic note.
Environmentalism in the UK goes back centuries, and as Ricardo pointed out, it was the landed classes who promoted it, at the expense of the entrepreneurs and workers. It’s not much different today. Are the Heathrow Third Terminal opponents Greenies or NIMBYs? Or are these perhaps the same thing underneath?
The fact that there are fools and statists in the green movement is nothing to do with being green. There are of fools everywhere and statists in most places.
Significant parts of the green movement however are decidedly anti-statist. By for example promoting decentralised power generation you not only distance yourself as far as possible from state interference in the energy market, you also begin to free yourself from the inevitable bureaucracy inherent in all large organisations. On this latter I speak from recent bitter experience of dealing with a major insurance company.
There’s a soft kind of NIMBY green bullshit: “aren’t meadows and dolphins just lovely; keep the evil dark satanic mills out of my manor’s gardens”. I can argue the toss with that lot of romantic useful idiots.
But, but, but The Club of Rome, Earth First, a zillion other networked little think-tanks and of couse … the UN (oh yeah, better believe in agenda 21, baby) are trying to bring about something else entirely.
That’s goes beyond the counter-enlightenment. These fuckers want to put the lights out literally. In fact they want to kill us. Here are a couple of quite “respectable” figures from the green movement on the matter:
Scares the shit out of me.
All these quote are from the great web site The Green Agenda.
[can’t work out why the layout is a bit fuxored]
There should never be an alliance with any of the Left, no matter how “moderate” they appear to be.
They’re still socialists, albeit of the “lite” variety.
Hey, it’s not often I get a chance to say that I think Kim’s wrong (in a broad sense) – it’s not that we should never make an alliance with the left; I think we should never make an alliance with unapologetic statists, of whatever color (be it blue, red OR green [or even baby-poop yellow if you’re in the UK])
When government is small enough, it really doesn’t matter what their policies are, or for that matter, where they lie on the left-right axis. I don’t see this as an issue of ‘remaining pure’, it’s that any alliance with some effin’ huge statist group that claims to ‘love the freedom so loved by the libertarians’, will end in tears (for us).
So you’re gonna sacrifice 6 billion people to your bitch goddess Gaia, are you Ted? Well I’ve got news for you. We ain’t going quietly.
And here’s another little snippet. Your bitch doesn’t give a shit! There is no Gaia! The only ones who care about the planet are humans, and I’m buggered if I’m popping off just because you don’t like the view.
Speaking of which, take a look out the window of one of your many houses and observe the pretty flowers. They got that way by grabbing all the sunlight, water, nutrients and CO2 at the expense of everything else that was trying to grow. Or contemplate the giant redwoods. The reason they’re so tall and majestic is that they won the race to grab all the goodies, and now that they’ve got theirs. they make bloody sure that they don’t let anything else get any. They’ll keep absorbing all the sunshine and sucking up the water, CO2 and nutrients so that nothing else can live in their space, not even their own children. At least till Washington slides into the sea or gets lifted up into the mountains the next time your beloved goddess shrugs her shoulders.
The only reason to look after the planet is to suit the human race. Yes it’s nice to keep the place clean and it’s good to have a few ‘unspoiled’ places to visit but if Ted wants to start commiting mass genocide just to suit his poxy religion, then let’s string him up now, before he gets started.
I’d make common cause with anyone, the Devil himself if he offered, to get rid of these arrogant bastards, ‘cos you know one of them is eventually going to release a virus to try and ‘cleanse’ the earth of us peasants.
The ‘old’ roots of the left, the unions and the like, have lost their position at the leftist table to the nutroots. So offer them anything to make common cause against the Obamas of this world who pander to the ‘deep green’ tossers.
How can anyone who claims to be in favor of prosperity for all ever be associated with the Left after the experience of the last hundred years? Only through sheer brutal malignant ignorance. And there’s no one more statist than a Leftist. Our new President never-run-anything-but-his-mouth is a perfect example.
The best description I’ve ever read of the Democratic party in the USA was”
“A group of warring tribes united for the common purpose of plunder.”
It will get increasingly expensive for the left to continue to buy off the statist left, the labor unions, the greens, the race-baiters, etc.
How do you keep construction unions and deep greens happy? Pay to have existing hydro-electric dams torn down (to use an example being suggested here in Washington state). But where do we then get electricity? Build solar and windmill farms. And so, at the cost of billions (or tens of billions), we almost get back to where we were before tearing down the dams. But, hey, unions happy, greens happy, government employees happy, who isn’t happy?
Well, given how the “alliance” with the republicans in the USA worked, I would not be too willing to embrace anyone who dismiss classical liberalism. On a funny note, if they can’t read Liberalism by Mises without foaming, they are not to be considered as allies.
Why does everyone seem to think that an “alliance” involves some sort of midnight pact signed in heart’s blood?
You can work on an issue-by-issue basis. The key is to frame the issue in a way that makes the broad anti-statist point, but does so in a way that invites those of other persuasions in as well. This can be done without compromising your principles at all.
Case in point: it is a fact that much government intrusion happens to benefit a particular class of corporatist parasites, who depend on government to insulate them from market competition. Here, there can be a confluence between free-market principles and eat-the-rich populism.
It’s all about framing. One issue at a time.
After all, it’s not like the cause of liberty has been so successful, that we can afford to be picky.
I think that is a very good point Jonathan. Criticism of the ‘deep greens’ ought to be made by reference to goals familiar to large parts of the left. Let’s not support silly things that will definitely increase unemployment. Let’s not bail out the fat greedy banks and (in the U.S.) car manufacturers. Let’s make it easier for the poor man to start his own business without stealing it from him in taxes. I actually remember one or two elder chaps from the ‘traditional’ left in Britain complaining about taxes being too high – this was in about 2004.
I would only add that it seems to me the old left of which you speak is fading and that among my generation (20 – 30 yr olds), the radical wings of the left have been growing for at least ten or fifteen years now. Or is it even longer?
“That goes beyond the counter-enlightenment. These fuckers want to put the lights out literally. In fact they want to kill us.”
No, that is ultimately where the counter-enlightenment runs to. The deep greens do want to see us dead, they just don’t want to personally see to it themselves for the most part.
Libertarians should not forget that we are sometimes on the same side as the Greens – for example against looting the taxpayers to build for new roads and so on (oddly enough big business is not keen on building new housing estates and so on without this and other taxpayer subsidies).
As for David Ricardo he was as wrong about landowners as he was wrong about the labour theory of value (and so many other things).
Why should landowners have their land stolen (in forced sales and so on) to allow a railway (or whatever) – when the landowners of the Stamford area blocked the railway the east coast main line moved to another route where the local landowerns liked the idea. And the ancient and beautiful town of Stamford was saved.
I know which side libertarians should be on – and it is not the side of David Ricardo and John Stuart Mill (people who talked of liberty endlessly, but did not support it on key things).
As for factories.
Again polluting air and water is a tort – the landowers (and others) were quite right to say it was a tort. And (as M.J. Oakeshott was fond of pointing out) courts who said it was not a tort (due to the “public interest” or “general welfare”) were ripping up the principles of law.
Factories may be lovely things – but their owners have no right to pollute the air and water supply of other people, and nor was it ever true that factories had to be run in a way that did.
Money making at the expense of other people’s wallets (via taxes) or property (via pollution) is not libertarian.
Roger Scruton’s father was a traditional Labour party man – have a read of “England: A Eulogy” for his attitude to the “redevelopment” of the towns and cities of this country after World War II.
The whole thing was corrupt subsidized mess – I do not need books like the American “The Federal Bulldozer” (Anderson 1965) because I lived it.
I watched how my native town was runied – and how the shop my father owned was ruined by the local property taxes (the “Rates”) used to subsidize the developments.
The nearest town to Kettering is not Stamford (which one could argue is exceptional) it is Market Harbourgh (although from the south of Kettering, where I now live, Wellingbough is closer).
Market Harbourgh is not not exceptional, it is just an ordinary English town – but one that did not go in for the “progress” of redevelopment.
Harbourgh is smaller than Kettering – yet guess which way the shopping customers go.
Yes they go from “modern progress” Kettering to “stuck in the past” Market Harbourgh.
Quick indicator.
If govenment money (or the violation of private property) are involved in a bit of “progress” then scheme will be a bad thing.