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The "GPNJ Direction Seminar" on November 14 was a terrific event, a chance for members of GPNJ to hear each other out regarding deeply held values and personal interpretations of questions like "who we are?"  "where are we going?"  "how do we get there?"

The format was conducive to congenial discussion and respectful debate -- it was a day of good company, good food, and good vibes.

The seminar was organized by Earl Gray.  Earl had a vision for this event and persisted until he made it a reality -- it was a great idea! -- interest was expressed in doing a second seminar in three months -- the retreat would then be in May, three months later.

It was wonderful -- the dialogue was refreshing, the history was illuminating, and overall it was a wonderful Greening which we should continue.

Thanks to all who made the seminar an informative and fun, social event!   Steve Welzer, Earl Gray and Joe Fortunato gave well prepared informational talks followed by a dialogues, and Steve expertly moderated the discussion.  The food was wonderful, especially Paul's and Roger's veggie sandwiches.  Thanks again to Earl for putting it together and once again schlepping his materials.

This event consisted of three 2-hour sessions, each including a one-hour presentation followed by one hour of open, heated, spirited, informed discussion on the topic of the presentation.

The entire event was videotaped and copies will soon be available for viewing by the locals or by individuals.  Contact Steve Welzer or Nick Mellis for information about the tapes.

"From Red to Green"     Steve Welzer

The Four Pillars of the international Green movement -- Ecology, Grassroots Democracy, Social Justice, Nonviolence -- give a sense of a certain kind of worldview, one which is distinct from that of other movements, like Libertarianism or Communism.  But the pillars, and even the more extensive Ten Key Values of the American Green movement, leave a good deal of room for interpretation, even disagreement.  The Ten Key Values are by no means uniform from state to state.

The first Green Parties were established just 25 years ago and so we're all grappling with the definition of the Green worldview and with the kinds of questions Earl had on his flyer: "where are we going?" "what kind of society do we envision?" and questions like "what problems should the Green movement address, and what are the causes of these problems"?

Libertarians say that at the most fundamental level the problem is statism; socialists say the problem is capitalism.  There was an email posting
recently of a speech by John Rensenbrink delivered at a conference in Mexico where he said the problem is industrialism.

Rensenbrink is a Green theorist, so let's consider that first, the idea that industrialism is the core problem.  At the end of the 19th century
industrialism was generally viewed very positively.  In fact it was viewed by most people as the key to abundance and leisure.  Now at the end of the 20th century there is a widespread questioning about where industrialism is taking us.  It is often viewed as inherently anti-ecological.  But just focusing on industrialism would indicate that the fundamental problems needing to be addressed date back just a few hundred years.  I'm going to make the case that they date back much farther.

So let's take the idea that capitalism is the fundamental problem.  To be fair to the socialists, they talk about capitalism as the problem in *this
historical era,* pointing out that it is just the current manifestation of a more general problem, which is class-divided society, and which dates back to the beginning of recorded history -- back to the era of the ancient empires, extending through Greek- and Roman-type slave societies and feudal autocratic societies.

The primary goal of the socialist movement was to institute a classless society, but it's more than 150 years since the publication of the Communist Manifesto, and the disparities of wealth and income within and between nations have probably never been greater.   The failure of socialism is evident in a phrase attributed to Margaret Thatcher: "there is no alternative," meaning there is no longer felt to be any alternative to
capitalism.  This is an example of how so much of the discourse around us is very cynical these days.  Idealism is out of fashion and liberation, if
thought of at all, is conceived as a purely personal endeavor.

What I think is really going on, though, could provide a basis for hope.  Though we may seem to be stuck in a cul-de-sac because old paradigms are outmoded, the reality may be that we are in the middle of a very important transition, essentially from the first phase of the Enlightenment to the next.

The first phase of the Enlightenment was the period we associate with Locke and Voltaire, Paine and Jefferson, the American and French revolutions.  This was a period of enormous hope and inspiration, with talk of liberty, freedom, and equality -- down with monarchies, aristocracies, and artificial hierarchies!  The egalitarian animus applied to the political sphere gave us the movement for democracy.  Socialism, which dates from the French Revolution, was a movement to extend egalitarianism into the economic sphere.

Class divided society is by definition unequal, and in the modern era it is grossly unequal.  In our society, the combined net worth of the top 2% of the population is almost equal to that of the half of the population that earns below the median income.   The top 1% owns 40% of all productive assets.  Such concentrated ownership and control really sabotages formal political democracy.  Casino mogul Steve Wynn and you and I may all have one equal vote, but somehow he can get a tunnel built in Atlantic City when he needs one while you and I can't.  So we have to wonder how much has really changed.

It would be wrong to say that *no* progress has been made toward the Enlightenment goals of equality and democracy, but there is a growing
sensibility at this point in history that new approaches are needed in terms of both theory and praxis in order to move forward.  The optimism that
originally characterized the movements for democracy and socialism has faded as the social problems they sought to address have remained persistent.

But that's only half the story.  Something else has happened during the 20th century which has made apparent a whole other set of problems.  We've witnessed a dramatic acceleration of certain problematic trendlines of our civilization that had been little acknowledged before the initiation of what has become known as the environmental movement.

Some people view the Green movement as just the political expression of environmentalism, but I'm going to make the case that it is far more -- that, in fact, it holds the potential to move the Enlightenment project forward, because it has the potential to address both social and ecological problems -- and not from the perspective of having dual concerns or of tacking on new issues to the existing list of old issues, but rather by providing a comprehensive and holistic new analysis of the fundamental problems.

The insights of ecology are key toward pointing up commonalities in analyzing the social problems and ecological problems.  Using the discourse of socialism we can talk about the idea of exploitation.  Exploitation of labor and exploitation of nature are both major problems.  Can we show that they have common roots?

Using the discourse of environmentalism, we can talk about "destruction of habitat."  The destruction of habitats in nature is obvious, but if we posit that the natural and sane habitat of human beings is community, then that, too, has been destroyed, and likewise at an ever accelerating rate, over the centuries.

The ecological worldview is a product of the 20th century because it has become clear during this century that the accelerating trajectories of growth of population, production, consumption, pollution, and things like deforestation, carbonization of the atmosphere, resource depletion, etc. are unsustainable and ultimately catastrophic.   This has characterized modern capitalist and socialist societies alike.  But the truth is that these
trendlines have characterized most human societies since the time of the Neolithic Revolution.  There was an acceleration point with the onset of
industrialism and that's why some people view industrialism as the problem.  But a deeper analysis shows that the really significant turning point
occurred long ago, at the time of the transition from living in what's called the state of nature, toward a whole new way of life based on self-production of food and materials.

We know that human culture changed profoundly at that point.  A movement to build an ecological society has to understand the implications of that profound change, what it meant regarding our relationship to the land, and how certain problematic issues arose that have never yet been resolved.

We usually talk about many, many cultures around the world, over the expanse of history, but I'm going use the word culture to refer to the overriding grand culture of our civilization which exhibits the characteristics of class-division, power elitism, exploitation of labor, and a toiling existence for the great majority of the population.   The fact that these characteristics seem to be ubiquitous, found in medieval times,   in the
ancient empires, on all continents, leads many people to conclude that this is just the result human nature and so is immutable.  But the truth is that the culture exhibiting these characteristics dates back just 10,000 years and this is a relatively short time from the standpoint of natural history.  During ninety-nine percent of our species existence, human society exhibited very different characteristics.  It was when our relationship to the land changed that what we call the ecological problems and the social problems began.

Ecology gives us the following insights:  In any given area or on any given piece of land, natural processes result in what's called the climax
ecosystem.  This is a constantly shifting, adjusting phenomenon, it's not static, but over time it maintains sustainable balances between the flora and fauna of a given area.   If an interrupting event occurs, like a flood or fire, the natural processes work to re-create the climax ecosystem.

People of our culture don't live within the climax ecosystem.  We clear it and we substitute for it an artificial ecosystem that we consider to be more beneficial for ourselves.  We call this process development of the land.

A vacant lot in a city would, over time, revert to something approximating the climax ecosystem appropriate to that area.    But, of course, this almost never happens because our culture doesn't value that state of the land, our culture values development of the land.  When the Europeans first crossed the Atlantic their eyes saw two continents with vast potential for -- development.  And, interestingly, the social corollary of the
developmentalist outlook was also evident immediately -- the Europeans visualized how the natives would make good slaves.

The old misconception about life in the state of nature being "nasty, brutish, and short" was debunked by anthropologists decades ago.  Primal
peoples achieved their subsistence goals in just a few hours of foraging a day.  It takes much more work to clear the land and maintain an artificial environment, because it involves a constant fight against the natural processes seeking to restore the climax ecosystem.  The benefits of maintaining our human-made, developed environment have been clear since the Neolithic revolution, but the issues of who would do the hard work and how the augmented produce would be allocated have been central points of contention ever since.

Whenever a technologically more advanced people has encountered a less advanced people, they've made it a point to put the latter to work. 
Exploitation and class stratification result as soon as humans find themselves in social conditions characterized by enormous yields alongside
enormous demands.  Exploitation and class stratification are held in check somewhat when life is local and relationships are communitarian.  In the modern era, as we've lost community, moving toward urbanism and mass society, all the problematic aspects of developmentalist civilization -- exploitation, power elitism, social and ecological irresponsibility, disparities of wealth and income -- have intensified, regardless of property relations and despite the best of intentions for transforming the political/institutional framework, in other words, despite the movements for democracy and socialism.

The impact of socialism was such over the last 150 years that the word remains synonymous with advancement for many, even if the core ideas have been all but abandoned.  So the movement for progressive social change is likely to manifest itself in Red-Green coalitions for decades to come.  But if our theory and praxis shows itself to be more sophisticated, I think the Green movement will gradually become the home of those motivated to work for human liberation, especially if we can provide a coherent analysis of the experience of 20th century socialism.

Is collective ownership of the means of production inherently unworkable?  Is economic planning necessarily bureaucratic?  I don't think so and I don't think the problem with socialism was that it adhered to a different value system from that of the "Free West."  In fact, to the contrary, I think the problem was that socialism fetishized development as much as did any other ideological perspective of our culture.  Socialism adhered to the common materialist values and suffered under the common delusions -- especially the delusion that social progress requires higher standards of living.  Marx was so much the modernist as to say that the highest level of development of the productive forces was necessary to create the "material basis" (i.e., economic conditions of abundance) upon which to base a classless society.  And so the Soviets said to the masses: "work hard -- development first, equality later."

Mohandas Gandhi, for one, said exactly the opposite.  Start with the village and with subsistence, he said, making sure everyone has enough, everyone has a role, everyone has a voice.  He valued a healthy balance between leisure and work, acceptance of limits, a humanly-scaled technology.  Expanded production and consumption were not high on his list of value priorities.  It should come as no surprise that this was a minority viewpoint and that India, under the rubric of socialism, against Gandhi's advice, chose the misguided path of developmentalism and industrialism, the Western Way.

It's the refrain of our culture:  Work hard, advance further, liberation is just over the horizon.  But we're engaged in a labor of Sisyphus.  We keep
developing the land, producing more food, enabling higher population levels, and struggling to maintain this whole edifice that is quite a technological wonder but quite a social and ecological disaster.

Nobody is talking about undoing the Neolithic Revolution, of course, but what Barry Commoner has called the human-made technosphere has gotten way, way out of balance with the natural ecosphere.  And our relationship to the land at this point, as we cross all kinds of thresholds we're hardly even aware of regarding soil and aquifer depletion, toxic contamination, climate change, etc. etc. can only be described as tragic.

It's not a question of going backward.  Greens will never get anywhere if they present themselves as atavistic.  We've got to go forward, but in a
wholly different direction, in a wholly different way.  Forward toward re-balancing and remediation, forward toward restoration of our sane, natural
social habitat, which is real community.  This is the only context within which the goals of more equality and expanded democracy can be realized.

The question of property relations is secondary.  Diverse communities can thrive under diverse forms of economic relations, different mixtures of
public and private enterprise.  It's not some superior, universally applicable economic system we need, but rather a different way of living on
the earth.

GPUSA vs ASGP    Earl Gray

Summary:  The presentation contrasted the social visions of GPUSA, as shown in its ownpublished documents, with that of ASGP. 

Characterizing the difference as being that between a Socialist vision (GPUSA) and a Progressive vision (ASGP), the following
two "vision statements" were included (both prepared by the presenter:

1.  Vision (GPUSA)
(summary vision collated from various GPUSA articles; E. Gray, 6/1/98):

Various social, scientific, and technological movements from the 14th to the 19th century in Europe led to the entrenchment of an exploitative, laissez-faire type of capitalism.   In the 19th century, a democratic critique of monarchical absolutism and aristocratic privilege, a socialist critique of class divisions, and an anarchist critique of all concentrations of power, oth political (nation state) and economic (corporations) contributed to a variety of socialist solutions being proposed to solve existing inequities.  In 1984, one of those responses, the Green Movement, was extended to the U.S.  At that time, the Greens primarily emphasized their development of an ecological consciousness.  It also emphasized its roots in the 19th century Bioregional movement, which rejected political boundaries in favor of boundaries indicated by natural phenomena such as watersheds, flora, and fauna; and in the Municipal confederalism of the social ecologists, who viewed existing governments, above the municipal level (i.e., state and national) as illegitimate.  All of these influences have converged to create a vision of a "non-hierarchical society of self-regulating communities that are humanly-scaled, bioregionally-integrated, and cooperatively confederated...those communities will replace the centralized state...  Global corporations and centralized state enterprises will be eliminated and be replaced by decentralized, publicly-owned enterprises and individual/family enterprises; basic industries and services will be municipalized (not nationalized) and confederations of communities will own larger facilities regionally.  This Green Municipalism will replace the centralized state with a local, immediate, institutional framework through which millions of people can participate in shaping social policy; it will secure home rule from State Constitutions.  This type of society is often referred to as Libertarian Municipalism, or democratic socialism.  As tactical movements toward
building such a society within municipalities, the Left Green Network members of GPUSA participated in founding the Independent Progressive Political Network (IPPN) in 1996, and seeing it adopt a Common Platform which is intended as a Transitional Program
designed to provoke a crisis in the capitalist system and open the door to revolutionary change.

2.  Vision (ASGP)
(summary prepared from various sources, E. Gray, 11/20/99):

We envision an American society which supports and sustains the Culture of Justice idealized in the rhetoric of our public documents and educational systems.  It is a culture which equates Justice with Liberty within Limits, Equality of Opportunity, and Fairness within Community (Liberty, Equality, Humanity).  It uses the concept of Constitutional Liberalism to set both goals for and limits to governmental power, and the common law to set responsibilities for and limits to individual action.  It is a culture which promotes the following values of the international Green movement:

We recognize that that culture does not currently exist in the "real world;" that a Corporate Culture which puts greed ahead of need has bought its way into control; that that corporate culture desires to act with no social goals or responsibilities and with no social limits.  That is a culture which
believes that bottom-line cash profits should be the controlling motivation for all of our institutions; that society should be so grateful to the "entrepreneur" that all of our laws should implement a preferential option for the rich; that it can pursue unhindered a conscienceless laissez-faire type of capitalism designed to make the rich richer and the poor poorer throughout the world.  It is a culture in which money has completely subverted our political institutions, in which the rich have abusively expropriated the produce of our economic productivity, and in which leaders have allied themselves with extremely mean-spirited fundamentalist social positions.

The Green Party of New Jersey exists to encourage and support local actions and electoral campaigns to tap the proposals of progressive grass-roots organizations which call for the elimination of the abusive dominance of the Corporate Culture in our American society.  We are a
political party which recognizes that both our physical and institutional environments have been contaminated and polluted by that culture.  Because the existing Democratic and Republican political parties have fallen completely under the control of the Corporate Culture, one of our goals is to supplant those parties by electing Green Party candidates, and supporting other independent, progressive candidates, sufficient
to control legislatures in our State of New Jersey, and in the U.S., and thereby be in a position to pass legislation implementing the Culture of Justice.  That legislation will promote Democracy within a non-predatory capitalism regulated to benefit all economic classes,  with a preferential
option for the poor and the middle classes.  To correct many environmental, labor, health, and safety abuses, that legislation will impose responsibilities on and set limits to Corporate behavior. 

Such actions represent a Progressive use of the power of government to harness business so as to provide for the general welfare of the whole community.  We are not against business; we are against bad business.  We are not against government; we are against bad government.  And we are not against appropriately and progressively taxing the incomes of individuals and corporations to the degree necessary to
accomplish our legislative goals.

In the course of presenting the contrast, the following questions were also addressed:
1. Should a Party be Inclusive of Exclusive?
2. Where does the "left" begin in a political spectrum?
3. Where does GPNJ stand; is it capitalist or non-capitalist? Does non-capitalism mean socialism? Are there different kinds of capitalism?
4. Where does GPNJ stand as far as retaining State and National governments and constitutions?
5. Is government size the real issue? or, is government for whom the real issue?
6. If you are talking to a potential new member, what exactly are you telling them about the Green Party of New Jersey?
7. If we have a speakers bureau, what message will those speakers give to "Progressive" groups?

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