Ecological Uprisings

For Lisa B

            End of the semester and it was time to wrap things up. In Political Theory and the Ecological Crisis we spent the last two classes considering the following analogy: Dictatorship is to democracy as ___________ is to sustainable community. The list of entrees was long. “Car culture,” said one student. “Corporations,” said a recent transfer, who had spent most of his weekends at Occupy Wall Street. When I pointed out that Marlboro College was a corporation, he amended it to for-profit corporations. “Marlboro’s not-for-profit, right?” asked a freshman, who was also an occupier. Other contenders for the blank spot in the analogy were ‘consumerism,’ ‘oil dependency,’ and ‘the suburbs.’ “I suppose we couldn’t say ‘unsustainable community’?“ asked a freshman. “No,” explained a junior. “We have to stay with the first relationship. Dictatorship and democracy aren’t just opposites, their relationship is more dynamic.”

            We had just finished reading Gene Sharp’s From Dictatorship to Democracy, a little book that has had a big influence on popular uprisings, especially during this past year. His “conceptual framework for liberation” was drafted in 1993 for the resistance movement in Burma and was most recently used by strategic planners during the Arab Spring. Sharp’s takeaway point is that dictatorships can be destabilized if the democrats are organized. Even the most brutal regimes will eventually topple, he suggests, if the people have a clear plan.

            Much of political theory is what Sharp would call a Grand Strategy for liberation. As far back as Plato, philosophers offered us Big Pictures that undermine tyranny and enhance human flourishing. The goal of most modern political theorists (notably John Locke and Karl Marx) is to increase the freedom of the participants, to liberate each person’s energy from the domination of the state (Locke) or the market (Marx). But all these Grand Strategies for liberating human energies assume a world where natural resources are abundant. Even Marx, whose young family suffered in the poisoned shadows of London’s coal-spewing factories, did not factor environmental conditions into his Plan for a Better World.

            “There’s a reason we are having a hard time finding a word to fill in the blank,” I told the class. “Political theorists have been talking about dictatorships and democracies for hundreds of years. Thanks to all that philosophy, we have a rich understanding of those concepts. ‘Sustainable communities’ doesn’t have that rich tradition. We’re still trying to figure out how to describe the antagonistic relationship between sustainability and its vaguely-defined partner. That’s the future work of political theory: to create a Grand Strategy for a Sustainable World.”

            A fine flourish for the final class, but as I left the students to complete their course evaluations, I wondered about the truth of those words. Maybe the original analogy was incorrect. Maybe there is no resonance between the path to liberation and the path to a sustainable world.

            (Long pause)

            Each time I have that thought my brain freezes. Others have reached this impasse and then opted for preserving the planet over human liberation. Garret Hardin, who came up with the concept, “tragedy of the commons,” also came up with the concept of “the lifeboat,” in which a portion of the population is saved while the bulk of humanity starves. He was charged with promoting eco-fascism, of putting
sustainable community in the analogous slot to dictatorship, not democracy.

            (Longer pause)

            The nice thing about a semester is that besides having endings, with their flourishes, there are also beginnings with their freshness. Plato, I remembered, did not speak of Grand Strategies but of discovering natural patterns. In order to build a strong republic, he wrote, we needed to discover “the patterns” of nature, the just relationships between things. He described the just state as one where consumption was regulated, and where each member did the job appropriate to his or her natural talents. The job of the political scientist, then, was one of discernment, not implementation. Look to the patterns of the world, said Plato, and then act in accordance with those natural laws. Don’t exceed natural speed limits; don’t live beyond your means.

Plato had a ready-made concept for the class analogy. In the blank spot paired with “sustainable communities,” he would have inserted “City of Pigs.” In the City of Pigs, the people ate more than they should. Having wasted their resources, they had to go to war to get more. Being creatures of excess, they weren’t particularly good at soldiering and so were quickly brought down. Thus ended the City of Pigs; a state that always ends.

What was true in Ancient Greece continues to be true today. The only difference is that we have strayed so far from the natural pattern we don’t recognize our excesses. But the pattern is there to be discerned, says Plato, it has always been there. It’s only our unhealthy habits that keep us from following its laws.

Unfortunately, the United States, the country that promised to show the world what democracy looks like, behaves evermore like the City of Pigs. We confuse liberation, the freeing of creativity, with consumption, the unleashing of indulgence. When the City of Pigs extolls the glory of democracy, it is actually demanding more food for itself. No wonder the class was stymied by this simple analogy. Only Plato’s theory exposed this contradiction. After all these modern thinkers, we were primed to locate the problem outside of ourselves.

Dictatorship is to democracy, says Plato, as the City of Pigs is to a sustainable community. We don’t need lifeboats to save a master race, we just need to stop being excessive. We are the dictators who must be toppled by our better selves. By following the patterns of nature, the just relationship between all things of this world, we can moderate our demands on the planet. Otherwise, this Global City of Pigs will end.