(THIS ARTICLE IS MACHINE TRANSLATED by Google from Norwegian)
Economic growth or ecological restriction? Svein Hammer's new book From everlasting growth to green politics (2016, Vidarforlaget) grabs organic both broadly and deeply. He is currently a researcher, but was previously a right-wing politician and later a politician in the Green Party (MDG).
The book moves between liberalism and socialism. Now Vidarforlaget could have cut down on some of the 300 pages with too many repetitions and academic teaching set-ups. Still – the book is full of knowledge, political experience and diversity: deforestation, soil erosion, food, pollution, climate, phosphorus overuse, environmental toxins, plastics in nature and threatening ocean acidification. Overall, problems that are "tilting life on Earth out of nearly twelve thousand years of stable environmental condition".
To explain Hammer uses the term discourse from the French philosopher Michel Foucault – that is, different practices or ways of thinking that "characterize what we perceive as true, important, necessary, smart". Or different understanding as the background to how we act. The dominant discourse is that «growth, progress and increasing prosperity appears as a universal key across ideological divides otherwise ». Eternal growth with consumption and welfare schemes therefore appears as "both necessity and indisputable truth". Today's established growth discourse is about ecological modernization, as in most political party programs. They promise prosperity to the electorate. Hammer votes for such a modernization (Chapter 9) to implement practical policy. This includes the Sustainability of the Labor Party (Brundtland), technology optimism and often a tripartite cooperation between the state, business and workers. Or Stoltenberg's Perspective Report (2013) on investment in the oil industry with assurances that technological advances will solve environmental problems.
Men. Hammer also mentions Naomi Klein's point that "international trade has taken the necessary environmental measures" since the end of the 1980 century. Because with this growth, we have witnessed global unrestrained production and consumption. Like at the Rio Climate Summit in 1992, they stated that “measures implemented for should restrict trade in the world. " The dilemma, then, is that the discourse or behavior that promotes growth and prosperity, at the same time, destroys the planet's resources. Can you really
longer faith in politicians when environmental measures are not actually implemented – as with climate summits in Copenhagen and Paris?
Therefore, the most interesting thing about the book, seen through the eyes of New Age, is the other more idealistic and radical discourse that Hammer calls ecological transformation. Especially the anarchist elements are interesting. Like liberalism and socialism, anarchism is also grounded in the age of enlightenment, the belief in man's ability to think reasonably. Well, not everyone in a society may want to "make rational judgments and make good, well-founded choices." But it must be possible to think that a part of society prefers to live that way and be "genuinely free people who interact with other free people". In such an interaction a spontaneous social order often arises. For voluntary cooperation and mutual support there are still some people – unlike the growth discourse that is about competition, money thinking and the desire for power. From its inception, anarchism promoted decentralized structures, non-hierarchical urban communities and equality-oriented peasant societies. Although revolutionary with terrorism for a time, the nonviolence line gradually took over. Today's neo-anarchism does not envisage a completely stateless society, but wants a larger part of this State Board transferred to civil society, to organizations and institutions where the central government directive is reduced. Anarchism also stands for alternative small communities, direct democracy, equal communities and a critical attitude towards ownership. This is where today's sharing economy comes from – which is far more than just Airbnb. As Liberal Liberal Ola Elvestuen pointed out when the book was presented, one must be able to imagine that access the good is the future, not the future hey them. Whether it's a boat, a car, a resort – or culture and knowledge on the internet, I might add.
We both have one red anarchism for total solidarity and mutual interaction under fair trade conditions – and often as a politically targeted countermeasure. And a blue anarchism more concerned with one negative freedom, where the absence of external restrictions applies – including restrictions on representative democracy. What is called Eco anarchism is positive in the belief that free people take responsibility. Anarchists – like others with a certain contempt for politicians – have good reason to be skeptical of being governed by formalized bodies of power. Many of us experience it as abuse to become, as Hammer describes, "monitored, controlled, guided, framed, assessed, shaped – these basic techniques that we find in all modern societies." With the neo-anarchists' positive view of human beings, freedom from state power is desired, "but also from entrenched ownership structures and systematic inequality".
Hammer was instrumental in shaping MDG's environmental program, and the party devotes considerable space to the book. Interestingly, anarchist idealism is evident in MDG's program: They do not have leaders, but "spokesmen." Decentralization and bottom-up grassroots policy. Smått-is-good. Communitarian anarchism. Hammer mentions that anarchism lives on as an impetus in the green discourse – flat structures and decentralized participatory decision-making. Anarchism challenges, and it is heretical. Despite his criticism that it politically cannot reshape the entire large community, we are many who can be thankful to travel in certain networks, communities or outside groups.
Finally. As I asked Hammer (since with his many references to Foucault he should know how discourses arise), rather, is the power of political change where a prevailing discourse or attitude changes radically – rather than in new, patchy political programs in an endless modernization within the mentioned growth paradigm and with constant compromises that actually lead to delayed regulations? Is it possible to conclude that the established growth discourse is not the only way of life? The long-term ethical attitude is often found in the international solidarity of eco-anarchism. Something that can also be recognized in points from the MDG program: the oil fund prioritized for global sustainable development; social wage; anarchist attempts at alternative currencies; decentralized alternatives; free space for informal efforts. Or as Hammer writes: "The liberal, at times anarchist dimension of party discourse is made visible by informal economy being attributed to 'an important place in the green social vision'."
Interestingly, it was Vesntre and MDG who arrived at the launch.
