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NEWS & LETTERS, April - May 2009
Are capitalism and ecology compatible?
The Green Collar Economy by Van Jones (Harper-Collins, 2008) is a bestseller on ecology, well-regarded in corporate circles and by some liberals. The editors of The Nation have all but anointed it as being The Next Big Thing.
The Green Collar Economy begins with a description of many of today's social and environmental ills. Then, at the section on "Investment Agenda: The Third Time's the Charm," the book changes course. After what seems to be the beginnings of a social critique, it reverses itself and becomes an avid defense of the present social order and its presumed ability to solve today's problems, as if all that is required is a change in technology, not in social relations. As such, it is internally inconsistent.
For all of the talk about democracy, the underlying message is one of advocating only the very wealthy and powerful as agents of change. Whatever democracy it contains could be described more as "trickle-down" participation for the rest of the people, following the orders from the elite: the right to serve as muscle-power or as force, but not as Reason.
The environmental crisis is presented as such a great emergency that it requires that the economy and government be placed on a war footing, comparable to World War II; that we no longer have time for such things as democracy and social equality—as if these were luxuries and not the heart of our social ideals. Van Jones calls for the extensive use of presidential decree to make changes. What is puzzling is that he quotes with approval Niccolo Machiavelli in support of his thesis, and in the same paragraph also describes the environmental movement as a "crusade."
In the section on "The Amistad Meets the Titanic," Van Jones insists that the slave and the slave-owner have common interests. This metaphor doesn't work, however, since on this "ship," planet Earth, it is the slave-owners who have pulled the plug. Here, Van Jones denies the reality of social class and racism.
The Green Collar Economy promotes the notion that capitalism, which created this mess, could be the instrument for cleaning it up. And then, the technical solutions proposed are speculation and not well researched. The very idea of "green" capitalism is absurd, a contradiction in terms. The Green Collar Economy is an example of what has been called "green-tops" thinking.
Capitalism is redefining its own interests as Necessity, using ecology as leverage, and Van Jones, perhaps unintentionally, is one of those at the forefront of that process. There is a divide in the ecological movement today between those who carry the illusion that saving the environment can be done through technological solutions determined by a wealthy elite, and on the other hand those who understand that saving our planet requires deep social change, a world free of social class and inequality. This latter is where we find hope for the future.
--D. Cheneville
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