As we have argued in a previous article (Transforming Culture), cultural transformation is essential to the realization of an ecologically sustainable civilization. Here we consider some of the major realms in which cultural transformation is needed. Visually, these might best be considered as sectors of a circle, each representing a spectrum of related ideas and practices, with links from each sector across to each of the other sectors, forming a web. Such is their inter-relatedness and their integrity as a unified system. The order in which they are considered here is arbitrary, as any re-ordering of them should reveal. In each case, at least until ecologically sustainable societies are securely established over most of the Earth, we must discuss each in the context of a necessary transitional struggle.   

The full expression of a green social democratic (ecosocialist) culture and its stability can only be achieved when all the elements of such a society, economic and cultural, are achieved. What follows, then, is the authors’ view of the content and nature of the cultural transformation needed, largely based on decades of our own participation in this struggle. 

Education and cultural change

The battle for cultural transformation takes place through education, broadly understood as all the means used to maintain, enrich or change an established culture.  

Education as a source of authority over others corresponds to a hierarchical society, such as capitalism. Education as a continuous commitment to learning and facilitating the learning of others corresponds to the achievement and then maintenance of a fully inclusive, democratic society, such as a green social democracy. Where the former is characteristic of authoritarian, hegemonic behavior, the latter is characteristic of inclusive, democratic behavior.  

In as much as learning is specific to the brain of each person, it is individual. In as much as knowledge is socially created and shared, learning is social. Education as both personal development and social development includes our engagement in transforming our social and natural world while we develop ourselves, and vice-versa.   

The extent to which knowledge is socially created is evident in every language. Languages are the supreme social creation, continually developed across millennia and without which our individual and shared knowledge would indeed by limited.

Preparation for democracy, including knowledge of the democratic institutions (and of the existence and limitations of insufficiently democratic practices) of the community and country they live in, is the right of all learners and part of the essential content and method of education. Every opportunity should be used by teachers (perhaps better designated as “learning guides”) to engage learners in democratic practice, including participation in informed decision making within their schools and other educational settings (such as class and school councils as well as mock legislative assemblies) and within their communities. Class and group projects that offer  learners opportunities to prepare letters, briefs and exhibitions for presentation in public arenas or to public bodies on issues of concern to them can be excellent motivators for learning and a means of gaining the habit of scientifically and ethically informed participation in democratic decision making.  

The relevant science and ethical standards applicable to the question learners are considering need to be part of the learning process, including feedback from the teachers and the students. Whereas scientific knowledge is established by consensus within the scientific community and can be taught and evaluated as such, there is in this transition period to an ecologically sustainable civilization inevitably a debate within society about the appropriate ethical standards to apply. Teachers whose aim is to prepare students for a more democratic society, in which human development has priority, will give students the opportunity to make up their own minds about which ethical standards to apply.  

The development of people with deep moral convictions and behavior requires that teachers not use evaluation to direct learners’ moral choices, but instead check to ensure that they are engaged in developing standards based on reason and respect for others, including their right to their own opinions. The focus of evaluation needs to be on the quality of the research and presentation and the knowledge of relevant science and applicable moral standards in evidence.  

As the process of transition to a green social democracy advances, a community consensus on ethical standards is likely to emerge. In the meantime, the moral standards associated with the market exchange of commodities for money, including the sale of a person’s labor time as a commodity and the resulting inequality of income and wealth, will continue to have rational defenders (even while the non-market exchange of services and goods becomes an increasingly larger part of economic life).  

Science and imagination are the two keystones of the educational system of a green social democratic culture. Science is both product and process. It is the knowledge base and at the same time the method for obtaining knowledge that a green social democratic society needs. The product of science is information, which in conjunction with the application of appropriate ethical standards, enables informed democratic choices to be made. The process of science is at the same time the method a democratic society uses to test whether its policies, laws, systems, and regulations have been appropriate and effective in achieving its ethical goals and meeting its ethical standards.  

Imagination is likewise both means and ends of an education for a green social democracy. With imagination, learners can identify alternatives, develop new technologies and find solutions to the challenging problems they face. With imagination learners can see the world through the eyes, ears, thoughts and experiences of others, see into the past and envision the future. Through imagination, they can escape the shackles of dogmatism and the rigidity of doctrine. 

Human solidarity is an equally important aim and outcome of a green social democratic educational policy and practice. This begins with the recognition that learning is a social process.  Cooperation and collaboration can be powerful methods as well as essential outcomes of learning.  

Learning to see past superficial differences to the fundamental kinship of all the peoples of our communities, countries and planet, to our common experiences and interests, is necessary preparation for our common future on a single planet unified by a common atmosphere, shared oceans and connected lands. Solidarity with the people of the globe in common struggle against injustice and harm to our shared global home is central to learning as preparation for a sustainable future. International solidarity is the distinguishing characteristic, both as an aim and a method, of an education that is preparation for a just and sustainable global society.        

Connecting the classroom with the world outside the school is not only good pedagogy, in the case of the conservation of nature and related environmental justice issues it is essential preparation of students for meeting the most serious challenges that lie ahead. Teachers can overcome barriers to such learning, whether material or moral in character, by enlisting the support of the community in this task, and for young learners, the support of their parents. As experienced educators know, even when all the required resources are otherwise available, enlisting the help of school leaders, community organizations and parents of younger learners is always an effective educational strategy, one that by its nature is inherently characteristic of any community that would define itself as a green social democratic (ecosocialist) one.  

The transition to an ecologically sustainable civilization also features the separation of Church and state, thus establishing the right to belief while publicly supporting and advancing education in science. Although frequently mandated by the constitutions of capitalist democracies, the separation of Church and state is more evident by a lack of enforcement in the field of public education. Government endorsement and funding of Church run schools and the inclusion of religious services as a mandatory part of public education is practiced in much of the capitalist world.

Fundamental to an ecologically sustainable society would be the practice of upholding the right of all to freedom of religion and belief, including the right to voluntary, privately funded religious education, while providing publicly funded, non-religious education for all. An education in science would be the right of all children, a necessary condition for learning to live in harmony with nature.

Natural and social science education, of course, is not the only field of education at least partially stifled by authoritarian influence over education in capitalist democracies. Perhaps fearful of a citizenry capable of changing society, the political right wing in capitalist countries has had considerable success limiting education to the so-called “basics”, by which they mean emphasis on the skills needed to function within the workplace. They apparently believe – despite all the evidence to the contrary – that these skills can be learned effectively outside the contexts in which they have meaning for students and society.

An ecologically sustainable civilization will feature study in contexts that are meaningful and engaging to the learners, developing the ability to learn on one’s own, to think imaginatively and to creatively engage in problem solving using knowledge of the natural and social environment. A particularly prominent place in education belongs to civics, characterized by active engagement by the learner in the practice of democracy. Opportunities for all learners to engage in literature, the arts, crafts and design characterize a society committed to living in harmony with nature and other people. 

Imagination and science

It may go without saying that a transition to a form of society that does not already exist requires imagination. Saying so, however, is not an appeal to fantasize. What is needed is the ability to identify solutions that may not already find clear expression, but nonetheless represent alternatives that are logical, desirable and feasible. 

Evidently, scientific discovery, technological invention and democratic decision making all benefit from imagination. Those who recognize this and want these creative practices to flourish give pride of place to the development of imagination as a desired outcome of education.  

Likewise, expressions of human solidarity and actions to conserve nature require imagination, in the first case to be able to put oneself in the shoes of others, in the other, to imagine the consequences of failure to conserve nature.  

Suppose we were all able to imagine nature as one of the others, as many indigenous people do.  Putting the rights of nature (nature rights) on an equal footing with the rights of people (human rights) may well have been a factor in the survival of our species. Now that our actions are known to have a dramatic and potentially catastrophic impact on both nature and humans, would it not be wise for all of us to imagine the rest of nature as our equal partner on this journey into the future?     

Like imagination, science has a similarly compelling role to play in society, increasingly so as we proceed through the transition to an ecologically sustainable global civilization. Tolerated, but constrained in more authoritarian cultures, science is necessarily a defining element of a society that would aim to be both green and social democratic. The methods and results of science would be foundational in a society committed to informed democratic decision making.  The transition to such a society is facilitated when those working to achieve it provide a model of the practice of making scientifically informed decisions.   

The aim of a society in which science is no longer an optional component of education but an essential tool for solving social and environmental problems and making informed democratic decisions is supported by a fight for science for allas a characteristic of public education. The commitment of green social democrats to learn the science related to the issues they address and their fight for a prominent role for the teaching and learning of science in the public education system is part of the struggle for the kind of society we need. 

Dependent on imagination for its success, a greater role for science in society necessarily gives an impetus to a growing role for the arts and technology. In the transition to a green social democracy, these endeavors are likely to be increasingly viewed by their practitioners as inseparable. The “two cultures” phenomenon (where obscurantists endeavor to pit the arts and sciences against each other) will likely make no sense to those whose life experience is obtained in a green social democratic society, just as it makes no sense to the more thoughtful scientists, artists and technologists today. 

As collaborative endeavors involving participants from every country and culture on earth, the arts and sciences benefit from human solidarity and contribute to it. Artistic expression is shared across the globe, uniting peoples and cultures. Not only do scientists from around the world contribute to a common, shared body of knowledge, that knowledge undermines unscientific beliefs that are frequently advanced to support racism, sexism and chauvinism, while identifying the social value and respective roles of society, history, natural environment and genetics in creating both human diversity and homogeneity.  

With respect to the most urgent problems confronting humanity, the degradation of the environment which supports us and the growing inequality that characterizes present economic and social life, science (natural and social) is the source of the knowledge we need in the fight for the conservation of nature and the achievement of a just, sustainable society. Lack of relevant scientific knowledge, however, is not the principal barrier to its application to protect humans and nature from impending climate change. The principal barrier is the continuing domination of a socio-economic system that legally prioritizes private profit over the welfare of people and nature.  

As we bring the most rapacious sections of monopolistic capitalism under greater public control, we will be able to use existing science and technology to make greater headway in the battle on behalf of a future for our species and all of living nature. We will permit science to play its role and imagination to inspire us to action, at the very least to prevent a worst case scenario, keeping a door to the future open while we make greater progress in transforming ourselves and our world, moving from a dominant capitalism to an ecologically sustainable civilization.   

The institutions of science and education

In transition to an ecologically sustainable civilization, all scientific research would be conducted in either the public or non-market sectors of the economy, its results made publicly available without cost. Likewise, new technological knowledge, whether developed in public institutions or in remaining private ones would be made publicly available without cost. Copyright and patent rights to knowledge would be abolished, thereby facilitating the free dissemination of scientific and technical knowledge and its rapid application to practice. 

All economic units, including those engaged in scientific research and technological development, would be chartered to serve the public interest, as democratically determined by the people’s legislative assemblies. These charters would specify the responsibilities of every economic unit, including those engaged in science and technology, for the conservation of nature and the quality of human life.   

Likewise, all education would be freely available to all who seek it, including access to libraries and learning resources. Cooperation within and between educational units would be the norm, including the sharing of experience.      

The conduct of education for students under the age of majority would be a joint activity of the teachers, parents and children. Accountability to the public could take the form of public presentations and demonstrations by the students of exemplars of their work and learned abilities and explanations by the teachers of their teaching methods. Multiple choice testing, sorting of children for the purpose of impeding their participation in further learning opportunities and similar practices would be abolished.  

In an ecologically sustainable civilization, there would be multiple independent local centers of research, education and information. This contrasts with class societies, where centralized governmental bodies exercise hierarchical control over publicly funded activity to impede initiatives that might undermine the existing systems of exploitation of people and nature. An ecologically sustainable society would have no such need. Instead, people’s democratically constituted legislative assemblies would articulate the broad aims and directions of the community, leaving multiple local work collectives to elaborate and implement these community aims and directions. The cultural transition to an ecologically sustainable society, therefore, features the replacement of hierarchical government practices with ecologically sustainable decentralized management practices. 

The media and entertainment

Let’s turn now from science and education to the media and entertainment as social enterprises.  Our cultural focus remains on “the set of shared attitudes, values, goals, and practices” which define the culture of an ecologically sustainable alternative to capitalism. These have profound implications for the media and entertainment industries.

Let’s first consider some of the ways neo-liberal capitalism distorts the putative functions of the media and entertainment industries, namely, to inform, enlighten and entertain. What can be said about the content of advertising by for-profit businesses? What influence do advertisers and corporate owners of the media and entertainment industries have on programs and content? Do consumers really get what they want? To what extent is the public manipulated to support practices that represent the narrow self-interest of powerful media and entertainment industry owners? To what extent is the public interest in achieving a more just, sustainable society undermined by private interests with a contrary agenda?

We are not here questioning the commitment to socially responsible professional behavior by the millions of journalists, artists and others employed by the private-for-profit media and entertainment industries. But isn’t there a better, more reliable way to organize the media and entertainment industries? Every major bookstore is full of works by responsible journalists and media personnel arguing for a better way.    

The essential questions are these: Can the media and entertainment industries perform their functions in the ways needed by society when they remain under the ownership and control of corporations that have interests contrary to those of the public? Are there ways to organize the media and entertainment industries that remove such conflicts of interest? 

The logical answer to the first question is no. The answer to the second question is yes. Worker cooperatively owned and managed media and entertainment businesses constitute one alternative when supported publicly, not by private-for-profit corporate advertising revenue. Given the highly collaborative nature of these enterprises, this might prove the best alternative within a transitional market economy. And, of course, there is precedent for this in many capitalist countries.  

When green social democratic business charters are applied to the media and entertainment industries, what will be the effects on the content of the information and entertainment they provide? These are likely to be as diverse as the needs of those who seek information and entertainment.      

In the moribund neo-liberal capitalist societies in which we currently live, substitutes abound for unfulfilled human needs. In a dehumanizing culture where human worth and opportunity is determined by income and wealth, unfulfilled needs frequently include companionship and intellectual stimulation, including opportunities to learn with the expectation of employment that provides opportunities to use the newly acquired knowledge. The impoverishing, unfulfilling substitutes steadily dished up by the neo-liberal capitalist media and entertainment industries are, in our view, more likely to disappear through the provision of meaningful alternatives than by prohibitions on media and entertainment options.   

In the absence of advertiser sponsorship of media and entertainment, where should the funding come from in the transition period to a non-market society? In a market economy, the public pays for its media and entertainment in any case. Presently the costs are included in the advertised products that consumers buy, in ticket prices, in subscriptions (for example to print media and cable and satellite networks), by donations to alternative media and through taxation. These could continue to be the sources of funding, but with the substitution of consumer reporting for advertising by private-for-profit businesses. The consequence could be media that more effectively meet public demand for information, enlightenment and entertainment. 

Democracy in transition to an ecologically sustainable civilization

Democracy has been treated in this argument as both a cultural value and a method of decision-making. As a cultural value, we mean that the opportunity to participate in decision-making is valued. As a method of decision-making, we mean that the opportunity to participate in decision-making exists. These broad definitions of democracy as a cultural value and as a form of government permit a wide range of practices. These correspond to the likelihood that actual practices will vary widely in the transition to an ecologically sustainable civilization, while insisting that radical democracy will necessarily characterize a non-market society, the only form of social relations compatible with sustainable human existence on Earth.    

Considerations in arriving at an appropriate democratic practice at any stage in the transition from capitalism and its severe deformation of nature include achieving a balance between

– maximizing the quality of the decisions made,

– increasing the likelihood that decisions once made will be carried out, and

– minimizing the time and material resources required to make decisions.

Factors that might influence the quality of decisions include 

– the number, experience and education of people whose talents are brought to bear on the decisions, 

– the level of knowledge available and considered when making the decisions, and 

– the care taken in the decision-making deliberation.

Factors related to the decision-making process that may increase the likelihood that decisions once made will be carried out include

– participation in the decision-making process, 

– confidence in the decision-making process, and

– for those who have not participated beyond voting for representatives, confidence in those who have been elected, including assurance that one’s own experience and interests have been fairly and ably represented.

Each of the factors that improve the quality of the decisions made and the likelihood that they will be acted upon favorably require time and resources, hence the need for finding a balance.  This determination is likely to be different for democratic decision-making within a work collective or a neighborhood and one made at the level of an international governing body. For example, the method of representative democracy is more likely to be used at the international level, whereas something closer to direct participation by all is more likely to occur in a work collective. This suggests that one way of strengthening democratic practice at all levels is to establish formal links between the levels, from bottom to top, paving the way to a radical democracy, one with ultimate sovereignty existing at the bottom level of community organization.  

Whatever forms of democracy are established at a given level, there is the related issue of the scope of each government, that is, what matters fall within its decision-making authority. With regard to scope, it seems reasonable to consider boundaries on the range of issues that a given level of governance might consider, particularly the international level. The United Nations, for example, needs to have the authority and means to protect the interest of all peoples in an environmentally healthy commons and a world without armed conflicts.  

Beyond matters that require global solutions, responsibility to govern should be left at the lowest level at which a problem can be effectively handled. This constraint would encourage more direct participation in the democratic process, particularly at the local level, likely strengthening democracy at all levels and producing better results.       

In practice, the process of strengthening democracy globally is likely to depend on actions taken at the national level. The final stage in a global democratic transformation could then coincide with the dismantling by the victorious peoples of the last military-industrial complex and the bringing under democratic control of the last transnational corporation. Imagine how that would impact the composition, nature and activity of international governing bodies such as the UN Security Council and General Assembly, the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund! This would end their role as instruments of a minority global capitalist ruling class. They – or their replacements – would then be able to function in the interests of an ecologically sustainable global civilization.

What we hope stands out in our argument for cultural change, including political change, is its multi-faceted character, that changes in any one aspect of culture would not be enough to bring into existence a stable alternative to capitalist culture. Needed is mutually supportive transformation of all aspects of culture, each as an attribute of a concurrent transformation to communal economic relationships. Only with these concurrent economic and cultural changes will humanity be freed at last from the environmentally and socially destructive consequences of class division. 

In our next essay we look to twentieth century experience in the struggle to move beyond capitalism for what it might teach us.  

Charles Posa McFadden and Karen Howell McFadden

Fredericton, New Brunswick, Canada

www.greensocialdemocracy.org

apcamcfadden@aol.org

 “The Master’s Tools Will Never Dismantle the Master’s House” – Audre Lorde

So long as capitalism dominates, there is no escaping its unrelenting assault on rational and humane cultural values and practices, most prominently today in the form of the consumerism purveyed in every media by commercial advertising. 

Even worse is the pervasive example of many of capitalism’s leading representatives, teaching through their demeanour and authoritarian delusions their commitment to hierarchical and exploitative order.   

And when all else fails, the ruling class casts up from its midst prominent reminders of the tendency of a cornered capitalist order towards fascism. History may not repeat itself, but it most certainly rhymes. Once again, humanity faces the challenge of defeating fascism in its contemporary form (neofascism), lest it take humanity past the threshold between civilization and barbarism.  

An even greater challenge may be recognizing the more subtle purveyance of capitalist values through commercial dominance of popular culture, a dumbing down of more complex reality, a  fascination with technology divorced from its use (currently exemplified by an obsession with trivial use of texting and twittering), a loss of time for reflection (a panacea for rapid thinking and speaking as an alternative to more careful reflection), a continuing emphasis on possessive individualism (exemplified by a preoccupation with the projection of everybody as a star, creating a culture of selective humanity), self-absorption, and the misrepresentation of modest concessions of capitalism to essential humanism as a serious progressive accomplishment.

All the while, capitalism remains the culture of the isms – racism, sexism, chauvinism, nativism, militarism – reproducing the exploitative, alienating, private property essence of the system by thriving on paranoia of the other (“the enemy”).

In our view:

If capitalist culture is overtly hyper-masculine with more than a tinge of misogyny, the emergent culture of an ecologically sustainable society is feminist, with an emphasis on caring.

If the emphasis within capitalist culture is on competition, with selfishness as a core value, the emphasis within the emergent culture is on cooperation, with altruism as an honored behavior.

If money is the measure of everything within capitalist culture, the utility and beauty of human artefacts, the generosity and friendship of people and the diversity and health of nature are among the more prominent measures of value within the emergent culture. 

If capitalism extols nationalism and individualism, the ecologically sustainable alternative values generosity and human solidarity.

Culture as experienced

For the purposes of this introduction to the cultural changes that might be expected to accompany and therefore signal the transition from a predominantly capitalist society to an ecologically sustainable one, authoritarian beliefs and behavior can serve as a marker.  Authoritarian beliefs and behavior are clearly not the only cultural baggage of a hierarchical class society but the shedding of such beliefs and behavior would self-evidently be a marker of the transition to an ecologically sustainable society.   

Authoritarian beliefs and behavior can begin quite innocently enough. As children we were often simply expected to behave. “Don’t play with the matches!” “Stay away from the burner!” “Don’t talk with strangers!”  If we acted accordingly, we probably survived to reach adulthood.   

In school, we were likely successful if we accepted as truth whatever our teachers told us was true, particularly when the information was tagged with the warning that it would be on the test.  If our physics teacher told us that F = ma and if we were able to replace two of the letters in this algebraic equation with the numerical values given us, it is probable that we got the right result often enough to pass the course.  

At our first job, if we did as we were told, we probably stayed on for a while, and may have received our employer’s recommendation for our next job. In most cases, we accepted the authority of our parents, teachers and employers. As parents, teachers and employees ourselves, we have likely compared our actions to those of people we admire or at least accept as authorities and probably, more often than not – if we are honest with ourselves about this – we have imitated them, probably without much thought.    

Knowing that we are professional researchers and teachers and supposing that we might prefer to apply research habits and standards to medical practice, our family doctor advised one of us that in treating a large number of patients within rationed amounts of time, he had to rely on his ability to memorize and recall solutions. There was simply insufficient time for careful, methodical research into each patient’s situation.

There are occasions when safe, positive outcomes depend on such respect for authority. But when confronted with new, complex situations, exclusive reliance on our memory of the behavior and words of those we have come to accept as authorities may not take us out of peril.  In such situations – and in real life these situations occur frequently enough – we need those human capacities that are sacrificed in a social environment that has stressed authority and obedience. We need the ability to consider the objective facts of the situation, to apply scientific theory and appropriate ethical standards to fashion a solution or a course of action.  

Application of scientific theory and appropriate ethical standards requires conceptual understanding and deep personal conviction, respectively. These are not acquired by memorization and imitation or in response to commands. Only when we understand a scientific theory and have reasoned conviction in an ethical standard are we likely to apply them in novel situations. Otherwise, more conventional concepts and standards – however necessary and helpful these have been in other circumstances – might in the new circumstance act as a barrier to successful problem-solving.   

In the face of the scientific evidence of climate change and the environmental harm this is causing, to what do we ascribe the delay in taking essential, scientifically, technologically and economically feasible action to slow down, if not reverse, this potentially species-ending phenomenon?  Has it been a lack of availability of scientific knowledge and technological know-how?  Lack of appropriate ethical standards?  

In addition to the inertia of for-profit industries wedded to the production of greenhouse gases, our contention is that a cultural wall exists between appropriate science and ethics on the one side and our operative understanding and convictions on the other. This wall is the cultural barrier constructed to rationalize conservative behavior even in the face of catastrophic levels of environmental degradation. Who has constructed this barrier? Certainly. the self-interest of those profiting from the fossil fuel industry has played a part. But it is likely that responsibility for denial and delay is more widely shared. In any event, only the collective global “we” can take this cultural barrier down, in the process constructing a new culture, one that is more environmentally conservative.    

Similar questions and responses could be advanced in relation to the aggressive expansion of income and wealth inequality in recent decades and the evidence of the resulting individual and societal harm this has caused. In this case, needed is a culture that is more socially communal.

Definitions of culture

Culture, as used in this article, means “the set of shared attitudes, values, goals, and practices that characterizes an institution, organization or group.” It is used here exclusively in this sense and not in the hierarchical sense (as in the supposedly “high” culture claimed by the ruling elite versus the “low” culture of their subordinates nor the supposedly “civilized” culture of the predatory colonial powers versus the “uncivilized” culture of the resisting oppressed indigenous peoples and subordinate classes among the colonizers) nor in the anthropological sense (of the varied symbolic systems for representing experience of different human societies). For more complete definitions of the three basic senses in which the term culture is commonly used, see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/culture.

Among the principal elements of a cultural alternative to that of contemporary capitalism are cultural affinity for and corresponding insistence on inclusive democratic decision-making at work and in the community, human solidarity, imagination, science, conservation of nature and education. Leadership in the struggle for an ecologically sustainable society necessarily comes from those who include these among their cultural norms and practices. The neoliberals with their moribund ideology have become the antagonists of each of these vital elements of a healthy human culture, practices we need if we are going to overcome the socioeconomic crises that the neoliberals have led us into.

Motivation for success in achieving each of these elements of a green social democratic culture is our need to express our diversity, to have our experience included in the discussion and activity which shapes the future. The systems of the 20^thcentury did not accommodate this need.  Those of the 21^st century must.   

A brief elaboration of these principal elements of a green social democratic (ecosocialist) culture is the objective of this argument.  

Generalizing from Eric Hobsbawm’s work, we can gain an historical perspective on culture:

– Feudal pre-capitalist society was characterized by a more authoritarian culture (hereditary authority including Church and feudal lord), primacy of husbands over wives, parents over children and associated culture.   

– Capitalist society is characterized by a transitional culture between authoritarian and democratic. Political systems can include limited electoral democracy. The nuclear family of pre-capitalist society is in capitalist society in transition to a family with greater gender equality and associated culture. This corresponds to a transition from a predominantly agricultural economy to a predominantly non-agricultural one, with associated cultural changes. 

Readers interested in a detailed account of the parallel development of culture and capitalism will find this in Eric Hobsbawm (Abacus Press/Little, Brown, 1962) The Age of Revolution: 1789-1848, (Abacus Press, 1975) The Age of Capital: 1848-1875, (Abacus Press, 1987) The Age of Empire: 1875-1914, and (Abacus Press, 1994) The Age of Extremes: 1914-1991.

In our article, Gaining Revolutionary Perspective, we identified a series of dichotomous social policy variables that were most frequently represented in the twentieth century as choices. In that essay we argued, instead, that social policy determination on these issues can achieve optimal solutions in the form of temporal reconciliation of the opposing human needs through democratic decision making, that in these cases, either/or choices do not present optimal solutions. Included were competition versus cooperation, centralization versus decentralization, globalization versus localization, homogenization versus diversity, exploitation versus conservation of nature and validity versus reliability in measuring outcomes. This theoretical perspective can be applied to the development of transition policy in moving from the dominance of capitalist economic relationships to the dominance of ecologically sustainable relationships between people and with the rest of nature. 

With respect to culture, matters stand differently. The choices are moral ones and should be contested in that sphere. One pole in each of several opposites represents green social democratic (ecosocialist) choices for culture. Our argument here is that we cannot achieve too much of one pole, nor too little of the other. Of the many dichotomous variables that might apply to culture, we single out for discussion here: nonviolence versus violence, science versus irrationality, imaginationversus dogmatism, and education versus ignorance.     

Historically, in relation to feudalism, capitalism paved the way for science, imagination and education to develop, but limits their development. The formal achievement of an ecologically sustainable (ecosocialist) society corresponds to the removal of legal impediments to their unlimited development, including removal of the legal right to use economic power to influence decision-making, removal of the right of unrestricted use of property, removal of the legal right to substitute religious education for scientific education, removal of laws restricting freedom of thought and expression, removal of laws that create barriers to cooperation, and removal of legal obstacles to educational access at any level.

Achieving a society in which these elements are characteristic will necessarily be a process, not an event. It includes making these the distinguishing characteristics of those working towards an ecologically sustainable society. That is, as Tolstoy claimed to be true of all desired changes in human behavior, this change begins with ourselves. Such self-development occurs in the process of our engagement in making these the cultural practices of the society we participate in constructing. Cultural changes take place in the process of the struggle.

Perpetual war and the culture of war or an alternative course?

The main obstacle to achieving an ecologically sustainable global community is war and the culture associated with war, a reality understood by autocrats world-wide. War and preparation for war means military organization and psychology (hierarchy, autocracy, dictatorship, authoritarianism). It favors obedience, conformity, secrecy, and blind loyalty. It provides cover for chauvinism, racism, jingoism, xenophobia, and sociopathic behavior, particularly, but not exclusively, in relation to the “enemy”. It also means wastefulness in the extreme. In other words, it means destruction of people and nature and puts up barriers to science, education, imagination, solidarity, and democracy.

A culture exemplified by fear of the “enemy” greases the wheels of war-profiteering, enhancing the super-profits to be made by the defense and security industries when the public can be persuaded to squander natural and human resources on preparations for war, making war and addressing the consequences of prior wars. War and war preparations beget more war and more war preparations, displacing the attention needed to address poverty, hunger, disease, inequality and environmental destruction and for a just, sustainable future, built on investments in education, healthy people, a healthy environment and global human solidarity.  

A peaceful alternative culture is enabled by a peace movement built upon a foundation of education, science, imagination, human solidarity and democracy. Such an alternative is enhanced as it becomes clear to the decisive majority in all regions of the world that further war-making carries a growing potential for the mutual destruction of the contending parties and an environmental certainty of reduced possibilities for our common future. 

Commercial advertising and consumerism as culture

Surplus value created in the process of capitalist production is only realized upon the sale of the goods and services produced. The profit motive, therefore, is the primary cause of consumerism as a disease, that is, consumption for the primary purpose of satisfying the capitalists’ need for realizing the profit it makes off labor, not for the primary purpose of satisfying the consumption needs of people. 

The monopoly capitalist practice of planned obsolescence of the products that must be sold for capitalist profits to be realized translates into the simultaneous production of an ever-expanding consumer culture and environmental devastation.

The primary weapon at the disposal of for-profit production and sales is the misapplication of the science of psychology. Instead of putting this science to the service of human health and well-being, it is employed through commercial advertising to divert people from satisfying their real needs. Contrary to the neo-liberal claim that the capitalist market serves to meet human needs, the domination within most sectors of that market by small numbers of supersized corporations has another result.  

Commercial advertising is used by them to falsely associate the satisfaction of real human needs with the purchase of the goods and services they need to sell. The disease of consumerism is the result. The cultural fight against consumerism, when directed against its lethal source in monopolistic capitalism, is an integral part the struggle for an ecologically sustainable society in a natural environment not only far less burdened by waste, but unburdened by the further production of waste that cannot be recycled, reused, repaired or stored without irreparable harm to the environment and human health.

Whereas today the power over our lives of for-profit corporations is everywhere evident by their virtually unfettered right to dominate and pollute our cultural landscape with their omnipresent, misleading for-profit advertising, the achievement of an ecological civilization will be most evident by the replacement of in-your-face advertising by scientifically validated information accessible, if people insist on this, only on request by the consumer, not by imposition of the advertiser. This will occur as consumer advocates bring for-profit advertising under stringent regulation, including the requirements that:

– an advertiser’s claims – explicit or implicit – be based on and include the best, relevant, available science needed by the consumer to make a rational decision in their own interest,

– the advertiser is fully liable for damage to the consumer that results from any message contained in the advertisement – explicit or implicit – that is misleading, incomplete or false, and 

– the producers of commercially available products are required by law to provide the information consumers need for a rational choice at point of sale.

Make science, art and information technology public!

Nothing better defines the boundary between the rule of capital and people power in an ecologically sustainable society than the ownership of ideas. On the one side, authoritarianism, secrecy, copyrights, patents, that is, private ownership of the products of science and imagination are the rule.  On the other, democracy and the free flow of ideas, including free access to information, knowledge, and education are the alternative.   

Only by the green social democratic (ecosocialist) route can the promise of the revolution in digital storage and communication technology be fully realized. Capitalism is incompatible with the revolution in information technology. Only an ecologically sustainable civilization can liberate humankind from the barriers placed by for-profit economic activity to the realization of the full promise of information technology. 

The need for an expanding role for creative cultural activity, including work in the arts, sciences and technology, can best be met on the scale required when the creators of intellectual products and services no longer need the protection of intellectual property rights in order to live and work as intellectuals. Only in this changed circumstance can all intellectual products and services be freely shared.  

The expansion of non-market activity in the transition to an ecologically sustainable civilization would open the door to unprecedented opportunities for intellectual activity, including creative work in the arts, sciences and technologies. With increasing free time and public support, the door would be open to every person to contribute and participate actively in the cultural and intellectual life of the community.  

In the transition to an ecologically sustainable civilization, the enormous amount of human intellectual talent and associated material resources wasted in the capitalist market place on false advertising and other intellectual means of propping up a private-for-profit system becomes available for intellectual activity in the service of a culturally rich and environmentally sustainable society. Governments from the local community level to the national one would have the political and economic power to re-allocate these resources to support for voluntary cultural activity in the expanding non-market sector and paid activity in the market sector. Cultural activity could then be as diverse and rich as the decision-making process is democratic and healthy.     

A green social democratic society could thus give to everyone with sufficiently strong motivation and ability what a class divided society provides primarily to its wealthier members:  the opportunity to work as creative scientists, artists, writers, technologists and inventors.   

Parenthetically, a further comment on so-called “intellectual property rights”, corresponding to capitalism, may be in order here. Contrary to a popular misconception, the main beneficiaries of such “rights” are usually not the average intellectual engaged in creating intellectual products.  Like other workers, most intellectual workers are obliged to give their work to their employer as a condition of employment. But not all intellectuals, of course. Some work at least for part of their time as free-lance creators of intellectual products, often supported by other forms of employment, frequently teaching. In the same way that many small businesses work as suppliers of services and physical goods to larger corporations, many free-lance intellectuals supply intellectual products to these corporations. 

The principal financial beneficiaries are usually those with the capital to employ the intellectual products, and not the independent intellectuals who create and may nominally hold or share the copyrighted and patented intellectual work. The supplying intellectuals, just like many small businesses, generally provide their products at a cost that is cheaper than the cost of their direct employment by the corporations that capitalize on the products of their intellectual labor. In essence, free-lance intellectuals, like many small businesses, function as employees, not as capitalists, intellectual property rights notwithstanding.  

Concurrent economic and cultural revolutions

The defining economic and cultural characteristics of an ecologically sustainable civilization are essential to each other, that is, together they define a qualitatively distinct form of society. As such, each becomes a reasonably full and stable characteristic of the society when the others are also achieved. A corollary is that none of the essential economic or cultural characteristics of an ecologically sustainable civilization can be fully and securely achieved in isolation from each other and so long as a capitalist market economy remains dominant.   

An ecologically sustainable society, as we have argued in prior articles, would necessarily be characterized by a non-market economy. Its achievement, however, is likely to take the time needed for a mutually supporting economic and cultural revolution. 

In the process of transition, all economic units would be obliged to report and carry out the will of the people’s popular assemblies. The achievement of rule by these assemblies would mark the transition from dominance by a capitalist market economy to dominance by an ecologically sustainable non-market economy. During this transition period all economic units, whether participating in the remaining market economy or in the non-market economy based on reciprocity and sharing, would be responsible to the people’s assemblies for carrying out their policy decisions, right up to the complete replacement of market activity by non-market activity if that is what the people decide. 

The characteristics of this revolutionary transition period would thus necessarily include:    

• economic and social policy established by democratically formed governing bodies, in a bottom-up form of democracy in which the highest authority would be the community in which a given economic unit is located or is licensed to operate; 
• conflict of interest legislation that would prohibit privately owned economic units, including their owners and managers, from participation and influence over democratic decision-making, reserving that right to the individuals who comprise the community, one-person-one-voice-and-vote, with violations punishable by loss of the continuing right to own or manage capital and with financial liability for any resulting harm; and 
• the limitation of stewardship of resources – private or public – to optimal scale through the right of communal government to require the break-up of privately or publicly owned economic units or the merger of two or more such units in order to achieve an optimum combination of maximum social benefit and minimum waste of human and natural resources.    

In our next article we will consider further several of the major elements of a green social democratic (ecosocialist) culture and their relationships to one another.

Charles Posa McFadden and Karen Howell McFadden

Fredericton, New Brunswick, Canada

www.greensocialdemocracy.org

apcamcfadden@aol.com