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Title: Green Syndicalism
Author: Jeff Shantz
Date: July 4, 2017
Language: en
Topics: green syndicalism, anarcho-syndicalism, syndicalism
Source: Retrieved on June 13, 2017 from https://ecology.iww.org/texts/JeffShantz/Green%20Syndicalism%20%E2%80%93%20An%20Alternative%20Red-Green%20Vision

Jeff Shantz

Green Syndicalism

Most approaches to Red and Green (labour and environmentalist) alliances

have taken Marxian perspectives, to the exclusion of anarchism and

libertarian socialism. Recent developments, however, have given voice to

a “syndical ecology” or what some within the Industrial Workers of the

World (IWW) call “green syndicalism”. Green syndicalism highlights

certain points of similarity between anarcho-syndicalism (revolutionary

unionism) and radical ecology. These include, but are by no means

limited to, decentralisation, regionalism, direct action, autonomy,

pluralism and federation. The article discusses the theoretical and

practical implications of syndicalism made green.

Recently, interesting convergences of radical union movements with

ecology have been reported in Europe and North America. These

developments have given voice to a radical ‘syndical ecology’, or what

some within the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) call “green

syndicalism” [Kauffman and Ditz,. 1992]. The emergent greening of

syndicalist discourses is perhaps most significant in the theoretical

questions raised regarding anarcho-syndicalism and ecology, indeed

questions about the possibilities for a radical convergence of social

movements. While most attempts to form labour and environmentalist

alliances have pursued Marxian approaches, Adkin [1992a: 148] suggests

that more compelling solutions might be expected from anarchists and

libertarian socialists. Still others [Pepper, 1993; Heider, 1994;

Purchase, 1994: 1997a; Shantz and Adam, 1999] suggest that greens should

pay more attention to anarcho-syndicalist ideas.

In the early 1990s Roussopoulos [1991] noted the emergence of a green

syndicalist discourse in France within the Confédération Nationale du

Travail (CNT). Expressions of a green syndicalism were also observed in

Spain [Marshall, 1993]. There the Confederación General de Trabajadores

(CGT) adopted social ecology as part of its struggle for ‘a future in

which neither the person nor the planet is exploited’ [Marshall, 1993:

468].

Between 31 March and 1 April 2001, the CGT sponsored an international

meeting of more than one dozen syndicalist and libertarian organisations

including the CNT and the Swedish Workers Centralorganization (SAC).

Among the various outcomes of the meeting were the formation of a

Libertarian International Solidarity (LIS) network, commitments of

financial and political support to develop a recycling cooperative and

the adoption of a libertarian manifesto, ‘What Type of Anarchism for the

21st Century’, in which ecology takes a very crucial place [Hargis,

2001]. The real contribution of these decisions may not be known until

the next congress scheduled for 2003 in France.

Among the more interesting of recent attempts to articulate solidarity

across the ecology and workers’ movements were those involving Earth

First! activist Judi Bari and her efforts to build alliances with

workers in order to save old-growth forest in Northern California. Bari

sought to learn from the organising and practices of the IWW to see if a

radical ecology movement might be built along anarcho-syndicalist lines.

In so doing she tried to bring a radical working-class perspective to

the agitational practices of Earth First! as a way to overcome the

conflicts between environmentalists and timber workers which kept them

from fighting the corporate logging firms which were killing both

forests and jobs. The organisation which she helped form, IWW/Earth

First Local 1, eventually built a measure of solidarity between radical

environmentalists and loggers which resulted in the protection of the

Headwaters old-growth forest which had been slated for clearcutting

[Shantz, 1999].

In 1991 the Wobblies (IWW), following a union-wide vote, changed the

preamble to the IWW constitution for the first time since 1908. The

preamble now reads as follows:

These seven words present a significant shift in strategy regarding

industrial unionism and considerations of what is to be meant by work.

At the same time, their embeddedness within the constitution’s original

class struggle narrative draws a mythic connection with the history of

the IWW and the practices of revolutionary syndicalism.

The greening of the IWW was more explicitly expressed through a

statement issued by the General Assembly at the time of the preamble

change. It is worth quoting at length.

In addition to the exploitation of labor, industrial society creates

wealth by exploiting the earth and non-human species. Just as the

capitalists value the working class only for their labor, so they value

the earth and non-human species only for their economic usefulness to

humans. This has created such an imbalance that the life support systems

of the earth are on the verge of collapse. The working class bears the

brunt of this degradation by being forced to produce, consume and live

in the toxic environment created by this abuse. Human society must

recognize that all beings have a right to exist for their own sake, and

that humans must learn to live in balance with the rest of nature.

Upon first reading it might appear curious to seek an ecological or

antiindustrialist theoretic within anarcho-syndicalism. Syndicalism is

supposedly just another version of narrow economism, still constrained

by workerist assumptions. Certainly, that is the criticism consistently

raised by social ecology guru Murray Bookchin [1980, 1987, 1993, 1997].

Bookchin’s work has served as a major focal point for much discussion,

at least in libertarian Left and anarchist environmental circles. Even,

Marxist ecologists, in journals such as Capitalism, Nature, Socialism,

have given much time to discussions of Bookchin’s writings.

His recent [1995] re-discovery of social anarchism aside, social

ecologist Bookchin has displayed a longstanding hostility to the

possibilities for positive working class contributions to social

movement struggles.

Bookchin’s critique rightly engages a direct confrontation with

productivist visions of ecological or socialist struggles which, still

captivated by illusions of progress, accept industrialism and capitalist

technique while rejecting the capitalist uses to which they are applied

[Rudig, 1985; Blackie, 1990; Pepper, 1993]. These productivist

discourses do not extend qualitatively different forms, but merely argue

for proletarian control of existing forms.

Bookchin’s critique of the workplace, by asserting the inseparability of

industry from its development and articulation through technology,

offers a tentative beginning for a post-Marxist discussion of productive

relations and the obstacles or possibilities they might pose for

ecology.

Severe limits to Bookchin’s social theorising are encountered, however,

within the conclusions he draws in his attempt to derive a theory of

workers’ (non)activism from his critique of production relations.

Bookchin [1987: 187] makes a grand, and perilous, leap from a critical

anti-productivism to an argument, couched within a larger broadside

against workers, that struggles engaged around the factory give ‘social

and psychological priority to the worker precisely where he or she is

most co-joined to capitalism and most debased as a human being – at the

job site’.

In his view, workers become radical despite the fact that they work

rather than through their work experiences.1 He concludes that the

efforts of socialists or anarcho-syndicalists who might organise and

agitate within the realm of the workplace are typically only

strengthening those very same aspects of workers’ identities which must

be overcome in the radical transformation of social relations. And,

moreover, this is correct in so far as workplace discourses are limited

to purely corporatist demands of a quantitative nature [Gramsci, 1971;

Telò, 1982]. However, within Bookchin’s schema the Marxist error is

repeated, only this time in reverse.

For Bookchin, workers’ relations to capital, rather than being

objectively antagonistic as in the Marxist rendering, are depicted as

being necessarily conciliatory. In each case workers’ positions are

drawn as one-sided, derived from a supposedly external and objective

realm, in abstraction from the diversity of their often contradictory

expressions and outside of any transformative articulation. Bookchin, as

with the Marxists, substitutes an abstraction ‘the proletariat’ for the

complex web of subject positions – including that of ecologist, feminist

and worker – constitutive of specific subjectivities.

Bookchin is correct in asserting that categories ‘worker’ and ‘jobs’ as

presently constituted are incompatible with ecological survival.

Likewise, industrial production has already been rendered ecologically

obsolete. But how can the authoritarian ‘realm of economic necessity’

[Bookchin, 1980] ever be overcome except through direct political action

at the very site of unfreedom? There is no disagreement with Bookchin as

regards the importance of overcoming the factory system; a difference

emerges over the position of workers’ self-directed activism in any

democratic articulation toward such an overcoming. It cannot be

expected, except where an authoritarian articulation is constituted,

that industrialism will be replaced by non-hierarchical, ecological

relations without workers’ confronting the factory system in which they

are enmeshed.

It is difficult to follow the logic of Bookchin’s leap from a critique

of industrialism as ‘social relations’ to his explicit rejection of any

and all working-class organisation. Bookchin insists upon a grass-roots

politics, including any of the new social movements, but he is unclear

how a movement might be grassroots and communitarian while at the same

time excluding an articulation with people in their subject-positions as

workers.

What he actually recommends sounds more like the radical elitism so

often attributed to ecology [Adkin, 1992a; 1992b]. Bookchin’s rigid

dualism of community/workplace further interferes with his critique of

syndicalism. The idea, which Bookchin attributes to syndicalism, that

social life could be organised from the factory floor is but a

simplistic caricature. ‘This caveat is, of course, pertinent to all

institutions comprising civil society. It would be impossible to nurture

and sustain democratic impulses if schools, families, churches, and the

like, promoted an antithetical ethos’ [Guarasci and Peck, 1987: 71].

While he rightly criticises those, such as Earth First! co-founder Dave

Foreman, who permit a wilderness/culture duality he falls into a similar

trap himself in his vulgar separation of workplace and community.2

Finally, Bookchin’s biases are especially curious in light of his own

ecological conclusion regarding the resolution of ecological problems:

‘[t]he bases for conflicting interests in society must themselves be

confronted and resolved in a revolutionary manner. The earth can no

longer be owned; it must be shared’ [1987: 172]. This provides a crucial

beginning for a radical convergence of ecological social relations

articulated beyond a ‘jobs versus environment’ construction. In turn it

must be recognised, even if Bookchin himself fails to do so, that

questions of ownership and control of the earth are nothing if not

questions of class.

For his part, R.J. Holton [1980] explicitly rejects the characterisation

of syndicalism as economistic. He suggests that such perspectives result

from the gross misreading of historic syndicalist struggles. In the

works of Melvyn Dubofsky [1969], Jeremy Brecher [1972], David Montgomery

[1974], and Kenneth Tucker [1991] one finds substantial evidence against

the positions taken by radical ecologists such as Bookchin, Dave Foreman

[1991] and Paul Watson [1994]. Guarasci and Peck [1987] stress the

significance of this class struggle historiography as a corrective to

theorising which objectifies labour. Tucker [1991] argues that much of

the theoretical distance separating new movements from workers might be

attributed to a refusal to explore syndicalist strategies.

Historic anarcho-syndicalist campaigns have provided significant

evidence that class struggles entail more than battles over corporatist

concerns carried out at the level of the factory [Kornblugh, 1964;

Brecher, 1972; Thompson and Murfin, 1976; DeCaux, 1978; Tucker, 1991].

In an earlier article, Hobsbawm [1979] identifies syndicalist movements

as displaying attitudes of hostility towards the bureaucratic control of

work, concerns over local specificity and techniques of spontaneous

militancy and direct action. Similar expressions of radicalism have also

characterised the practices of ecology. Class struggles have, in

different instances and over varied terrain, been articulated to engage

the broader manifestations of domination and control constituted

alongside of the enclosure and ruthlessly private ownership of vast

ecosystems and the potentialities for freedom contained therein [Adkin,

1992a: 140–41].

From a theoretical standpoint Tucker’s [1991] work is instructive. His

work provides a detailed discussion of possible affinity between French

revolutionary syndicalism and contemporary radical democracy. Tucker

suggests that within French syndicalism one can discern such ‘new’

themes as: consensus formation; participation of equals; dialogue;

decentralisation; and autonomy.

French syndicalist theories of capitalist power place emphasis upon an

alternative revolutionary worldview emerging out of working-class

experiences and offering a challenge to bourgeois morality [Holton.

1980]. Fernand Pelloutier, an important syndicalist theorist whose works

influenced Sorel, argues that ideas rather than economic processes are

the motive force in bringing about revolutionary transformation.

Pelloutier vigorously attempted to come to terms with ‘the problem of

ideological and cultural domination as a basis for capitalist power’

[Holton. 1980: 19].

Reconstituting social relations, in Pelloutier’s view, becomes possible

when workers begin developing revolutionary identities, through

self-preparation and self-education, as the means for combatting

capitalist culture [Spitzer, 1963]. Thus, syndicalists have

characteristically looked to labour unrest as an agency of social

regeneration whereby workers desecrate the ideological surround of class

domination, for example, deference to authority, acceptance of

capitalist superiority and dependence upon elites. According to Jennings

[1991: 82], syndicalism ‘conceived the transmission of power not in

terms of the replacement of one intellectual elite by another but as a

process of displacement spreading power out into the workers’ own

organizations’. This displacement of power would originate in industry,

as an egalitarian problematic, when workers came to question the status

of their bosses. ‘This was not intended as a form of left “economism”

but rather as a means of developing the confidence and aggression of a

working class threatened with the spectre of a “sober, efficient and

docile” work discipline’ [Holton, 1980: 14]. Towards that end

syndicalist movements have emphasised ‘life’ and ‘action’ against the

severity of capitalist labour processes and corresponding cultural

manifestations.

It might be argued that, far from being economistic, syndicalist

movements are best understood as counter-cultural in character, more

similar to contemporary new social movements than to movements of the

traditional left. Syndicalist themes such as autonomy, anti-hierarchy,

and diffusion of power have echoes in sentiments of the new movements.

This similarity is reflected not only in the syndicalist emphasis upon

novel tactics such as direct action, consumer boycotts, or slowdowns.

It also finds expression in the extreme contempt shown by syndicalists

for the dominant radical traditions of its day, exemplified by Marxism

and state socialism, and in syndicalist efforts to divorce activists

from those traditions [Jennings, 1991]. Judi Bari [1994: 2001]

emphasised the similarities in the styles and tactics of labour and

ecology against common depictions within radical ecology, as exemplified

in the positions held by Bookchin. Towards developing this mutual

understanding green syndicalists have tried to engender an appreciation

of radical labour histories, especially where workers have exerted

themselves through inspiring acts which seem to have surprisingly much

in common with present-day eco-activism. Attempts have been made within

green syndicalism to articulate labour as part of the ecological ‘we’

through inclusion of radical labour within an ecological genealogy.

Within green syndicalist discourses, this assumption of connectedness

between historic radical movements, especially those of labour,

anarchism and ecology has much significance. In this the place of the

IWW is especially suggestive.

The IWW, as opposed to bureaucratic unions, sought the organisation of

workers from the bottom up. As Montgomery [1974] notes, IWW strategies

rejected large strike funds, negotiations, written contracts and the

supposed autonomy of trades. Actions took the form of ‘guerilla tactics’

including sabotage, slowdown, planned inefficiency and passive

resistance.

Furthermore, and of special significance for contemporary activists, the

Wobblies placed great emphasis upon the nurturing of unity-in-diversity

among workers. As Green [1974] notes, the IWW frequently organised in

industrial towns marked by deep divisions, especially racial divisions,

among the proletariat.

Interestingly, Montgomery [1974] notes that concerns over ‘success’ or

‘failure’ of strikes were not of the utmost importance to strikers.

Strikes spoke more to ‘the audacity of the strikers’ pretensions and to

their willingness to act in defiance of warnings from experienced union

leaders that chance of victory were slim’ [Montgomery, 1974: 512]. This

approach to protest could well refer to recent ecological actions. Such

rebellious expressions reflect the mythic aspects of resistance, beyond

mere pragmatic considerations or strict pursuance of ‘interests’.

As the ones most often situated at the nexus of ecological damage

[Bullard, 1990; Kaufmann and Ditz, 1992] workers in industrial

workplaces may be expected to have some insights into immediate and

future threats to local and surrounding ecosystems. Such awareness

derived from the location of workers at the point of

production/destruction may allow workers to provide important, although

not central, contributions to ecological resistance.

However, this possibly strategic placement does not mean that any such

contributions are inevitable. Those people who suffer most from

ecological predations, both at workplaces and in home communities, are

also those with the least control over production as presently

constituted through ownership entitlements and as sanctioned by the

capitalist state [Ecologist, 1993; Faber and O’Connor, 1993; Peet and

Watts, 1996]. These relations of power become significant mechanisms in

the oppression of not only workers but of non-human nature as well.

Without being attentive to this web of power one cannot adequately

answer Eckersley’s [1989] pertinent questions concerning why those who

are affected most directly and materially by assaults upon local

ecosystems are often least active in resistance, both in defending

nature and in defending themselves. Thus the questions of workplace

democracy and workers’ control have become crucial to green syndicalist

theoretics.

‘The IWW stands for worker self-management, direct action and rank and

file control’ [Miller, 1993: 56]. For green syndicalism workers’ control

becomes an attempt by workers to formulate their own responses to the

question ‘what of work?’ Within the IWW, decisions over tactics are left

to groups of workers or even individual workers themselves. Worker

selfdetermination ‘on the job’ becomes a mechanism by which to contest

the power/knowledge nexus of the workplace.

Labour insurgency typically articulates shifting relations within

transformations of production and the emergence of new hegemonic

practices. Times of economic reorganisation offer wide-ranging

opportunities for creating novel or unprecedented forms of confrontation

on the parts of workers. The offensives of capital can provide a

stimulus to varied articulations of renewed militancy. Such might be the

case within the present context of capital strike, de-unionisation, and

joblessness characterising cybernetised globalism. Of course the

emphasis must always remain on possibility as there is always room for

more than one response to emerge. Green syndicalists recognise that

ecological crises have only become possible within social relations

whose articulation has engendered a weakening of people’s capacities to

fight a co-ordinated defence of the planet’s ecological communities.

Bari [1994: 2001] argued that the restriction of participation in

decision-making processes within ordered hierarchies, prerequisite to

accumulation, has been a crucial impediment to ecological organising And

it seems to me that people’s complicity should be measured more by the

amount of control they have over the conditions of their lives than by

how dirty they get at work. One compromise made by a whitecollar Sierra

Club professional can destroy more trees than a logger can cut in a

lifetime [Bari, 1994: 105].

The persistent lack of workers’ control allows coercion of workers into

the performance of tasks which they might otherwise disdain, or which

have consequences of which they are left unaware. Additionally the

absence of self-determination results in workers competing with one

another over jobs or even the possibility of jobs. Workers are left more

susceptible to threats of capital strike or environmental blackmail

[Bullard, 1990]. This susceptibility is perhaps the greatest deterrent

to labour/ecology alliances. Without job security and workplace power

workers cannot provide an effective counterbalance to the power of

capital.

Radical ecology, outside of green syndicalism, has failed to appreciate

these negative consequences of diminished workers’ control for

participation in more explicitly political realms. Only through a

development of political confidence can such activism be engaged.

Furthermore, the degree of workplace democracy can depend largely upon

the influence of supposedly exterior concerns such as impacts upon

nature. In recognising the relationship between workplace articulation

and political participation green syndicalism poses a challenge to

received notions within ecology.

Participation as conceived by green syndicalism cannot come from

management. ‘Such awareness has to question unflinching deference to

experts, as part of a more general attack on centralized power and

managerial prerogatives’ [Guarasci and Peck, 1987: 70]. Direct

participation is understood as contributing to worker

self-determination, constituted by workers against the veiled offerings

of management which form part of ecocapitalism.

Eco-capitalist visions leave the megamachine and its power hierarchies

intact and thus offers no alternative. Production remains undemocratic

and profitability is the final word on whether or not resources should

be used. Thus, eco-capitalism introduces to us the wonders of

biodegradable take-out containers and starch-based golf teas [Purchase,

1994].

Green syndicalism emerges, then, as an experiment in more creative

conceptions of workplace participation. For Purchase [1994, 1997a,

1997b], productive control organised around face-to-face, voluntary

interaction and encouraging self-determination might be employed towards

the freeing up of vast quantities of labour from useless, though

profitable production, to be used in the playful development of

life-affirming activities. Thus a common theme of working-class

radicalism becomes an important element of an ecological theoretic.

Leftists have long argued that eventually human needs must become the

primary consideration of production, replacing profitability and

accumulation. Such critiques of production must now go even further,

raising questions about the ‘needs’ of ecosystems and non-humans.

The decreased demand for labour, within cybernetised capital relations,

means that corporations are less compelled to deal with mainstream trade

unions as under the Keynesian arrangement.3 If unions are to have any

influence it can only come through active efforts to disrupt the labour

process. These disruptive efforts may include increased militancy within

workplace relations. Evidence for a rebellion among workers has been

reflected typically in such activities as sabotage, slowdowns and

absences.

IWW activists explicitly agitate for ‘deliberate inefficiency’ as a

means to encourage the desecration of work relations. For green

syndicalists the desired tactics against corporate-sponsored destruction

of the environment include such direct, non-bureaucratic forms of action

as shop-floor sabotage, boycotts, green bans and the formation of

extra-union solidarity outside of the workplace, within workers’ home

communities. Of course, strikes, the power to halt production, is

unmatched in its capacity to confront corporate greed.

Environmentalists can stop production for a few hours or a few days.

There is no more effective counter-force to capital accumulation and the

pursuit of profit than the power of workers to stop work to achieve

their demands. Ecological protection, as with work conditions, benefits

or wages, must be fought for. Where workers are involved this means they

must be struck for. This, however, requires that workers develop a

position of strength. This, in turn, means organising workers so that

they no longer face the prospects of ‘jobs versus environment’

blackmail. In order for this to occur, non-unionised workers must be

mobilised. (Otherwise they are mobilised by capital – as scabs.)

Recognising this the IWW gives a great deal of attention to organising

the traditionally unorganised.

A green syndicalist conception of workers’ organisation rejects the

hierarchical, centralised, bureaucratic structures of mainstream

unionism. Economistic union organisations and bureaucrats who have

worked to convince workers that environmentalists are responsible for

job loss point up the need for syndicalist unions organised around

ecologically sensitive practices.

This is not to say that green syndicalists refuse to act in solidarity

with workers in mainstream unions. Indeed, Local 1 worked in support of

workers in Pulp and Paper Workers Local 49 and Judi Bari points out that

many actions would have been impossible without inside information

provided by workers in that local. Green syndicalists do work with rank

and file members of mainstream unions and many are themselves

‘two-carders’, simultaneously members of mainstream and syndicalist

unions.

Neither is it true to say that strong environmental policies cannot come

from mainstream unions. Mainstream unions can and do at times take up

specific policies and practices of syndicalism but the lack overall

vision and participatory structures means that such policies and

practices are not part of overall strategy and are often vulnerable to

leadership control or the limitations of bargaining with employers.

The green syndicalist responses might be understood, most interestingly,

as characterising a broader revolt against work. ‘The one goal that

unites all IWW members is to abolish the wage system’ [Meyers, 1995:

73]. Ecological crises make clear that the capitalist construction of

‘jobs’ and ‘workers’ are incompatible with the preservation of nature.

It is, perhaps, then, not entirely paradoxical that green syndicalism

should hint at an overcoming of workerness as one possible outcome.

Radical ecology activists have increasingly come to understand jobs,

under the guise of work, as perhaps the most basic moment of unfreedom,

one which must be overcome in any quest towards liberty. Too often,

previously, the common response has been one of turning away from

workers and from questions relating to the organisation of working

relations. Green syndicalism hints that radical theory can no longer

ignore these questions which are posed by the presence of jobs. Indeed

it might be said that a return to the problematic of jobs becomes the

starting point for a reformulation of radicalism, at least along green

lines.

Green syndicalism conceives of the transformation of work as an

ecological imperative. What is proposed is a radical alteration of work,

both in structure and meaning. Solutions to the problems of work cannot

be found merely in the control of existing forms. Rather, current

practices of production along with the hierarchy of labour must be

overcome.

Production, within a green syndicalist vision [Purchase, 1994, 1997a,

1997b], may include the provision of ecologically sensitive foods,

transportation or energy. Work, newly organised along decentralised,

local, democratic lines might allow for the introduction of materials

and practices with diminished impact upon the bioregion in which each is

employed.

Green syndicalist discourses are raised against the undermining

influences of work in contemporary conditions of globalism. Far from

being irrational responses to serious social transformations, workplace

democratisation and workers’ self-determination become ever more

reasonable responses to the uncertainty and contingency of emerging

conditions of (un)employment.

Green syndicalists emphasise workers’ empowerment and selfemancipation –

against pessimistic or cynical responses such as mass retraining which

simply reinforce dependence upon elites. They offer but one initiative

towards the overcoming of work and a movement towards community-based

economics and productive decision-making.

The mass production techniques of industrialism cannot be reconciled

with ecological sustenance, regardless of whether bosses or sturdy

proletarians control them. To be anti-capitalist does not have to imply

being pro-ecology. In this regard the utopians have surely been more

insightful. Ending capitalist relations of production, however, remains

necessary for a radical transformation of the social since these

relations encompass many positions of subordination. However, this is

only one aspect of radical politics.

Thus, green syndicalists reject the workerist premises of ‘old-style’

leftists who argue that issues such as ecology are external to questions

of production and only serve to distract from the essential task of

organising workers, at the point of production, towards emancipation.

Within green syndicalist discourses ecological concerns cannot, with any

reason, be divorced from questions of production or economics. Rather

than being represented as strictly separate discursive universes,

nature, production, economics or workplace become understood as

endlessly contested topographical features in an always shifting

terrain.

The workplace is but one of the sites for extension of social

resistance. Given the prominent position of the workplace under

capitalism, as a realm of capitalist discipline and hegemony, activists

must come to appreciate the significance of locating struggles within

everyday workplace relations. Within a green syndicalist perspective

workplaces are understood as sites of solidarity, innovation, cultural

diversity, and personal interactions expressed in informal networks and

through multiple antagonisms. In turn, those social realms which are

typically counterpoised to the factory within radical ecology discourses

– Bookchin’s ‘community’ – should be recognised as influenced by matters

of accumulation, profit and class. The character of either realm is not

unaffected by workplace antagonisms.

This ‘steel cage’ appears inescapable only because it remains isolated,

practically and conceptually, from a host of important social, cultural,

and political-economic dynamics operating inside and out of workplaces

proper. Critical to any discussion, work organizations must be seen as

series of settings and situations providing choices that are

constrained, but not immutably, by the broader fabric of the society

into which they are woven [Guarasci and Peck, 1987: 72].

In addition, the re-integration of production with consumption,

organised in an egalitarian and democratic fashion – such that members

of a community contribute what they can to social production – may allow

for a break with consumerism. People might consume only that which

they’ve had a hand in producing; people might use free time for creative

activities rather than tedious, unnecessary production of luxuries; and

individual consumption might be regulated by the capacities of

individual production, (for example, personal creativity), not from the

hysterics of mass advertising.

Syndicalism might be freed thusly from requirements of growth or mass

consumption characterising industrialism as ‘social relations’

[Purchase, 1994, 1997a, 1997b; Bari, 2001]. Green syndicalism, as

opposed to Marxism or even revolutionary syndicalism, opposes

large-scale, centralised, mass-production. Green syndicalism does not

hold to a socialist optimism of the liberatory potential of

industrialism. Ecological calls for a complete, immediate break with

industrialism, however, contradict radical eco-philosophical emphases

upon interconnectedness, mutualism and continuity. Simple calls for a

return to nature reveal the lingering fundamentalisms afflicting much

ecological discourse. The idea of an immediate return to small,

village-centred living as espoused by some deep ecologists and

anarchists is not only utopian, it ignores questions concerning the

impacts which the toxic remains of industry would continue to inflict

upon their surroundings. The spectre of industrialism will still – and

must inevitably – haunt efforts at transformation, especially in

decisions concerning the mess that industry has left behind [Purchase,

1994]. How can we disconnect society from nature given the mass

interpenetrations of social encroachments upon nature, for example,

global warming, or depletion of the ozone layer? Where do you put toxic

wastes? What of the abandoned factories? How will decommissioning occur?

One cannot just walk away from all of that.

Without romanticising the role played by workers, green syndicalists are

aware that workers may offer certain insights into these problems. In

responding to this dilemma, green syndicalists [Kaufmann and Ditz, 1992;

Purchase, 1994, 1997a, 1997b; Bari, 2001] have tried to ask the crucial

question of where those who are currently producers might belong in the

multiple tasks of transformation – both cultural as well as ecological.

They have argued that radical ecology can no longer leave out producers,

they will either be allies or enemies. Green syndicalism, almost alone

among radical ecology, suggest that peoples’ identities as producers,

rather than representing fixed entities, may actually be articulated

against industrialism. The processes of engaging this articulation,

wherein workers understand an interest in changing rather than upholding

current conditions, present the perplexing task which has as yet foiled

ecology.

Dismantling industrial capital, the radical approach to industrialism,

would still require the participation of industrial workers provided it

is not to be carried out as part of an authoritarian articulation. Any

radical articulation, assuming it be democratic, implies the

participation of industrial workers in decision-making processes. Of

course, the democratic character of any articulation cannot be assumed;

the possibility for reaction, to the exclusion of workers [Foreman,

1991; Watson, 1994], is ever-present.

One sees this within ecological fundamentalism or in strengthened

corporatist alliances pitting labour/capital against environmentalists,

each calling for centralised and bureacratic enforcement of regulations.

In the absence of a grass-roots articulation with workers any manner of

authoritarian, elite articulation, even ones which include radical

ecology [Foreman, 1991; Watson, 1994], might be envisioned.

For their part theorists of green syndicalism envision the association

of workers towards the dismantling of the factory system, its work,

hierarchies, regimentation [Kaufmann and Ditz, 1992; Purchase, 1994,

1997a, 1997b]. This may involve a literal destruction as factories may

be dismantled; or perhaps converted towards ‘soft’ forms of localised

production. Likewise, productive activity can be conceived in terms of

restoration, including research into a region’s natural history.

Reconstruction might be understood in terms of food and energy provision

or recovery monitoring. These are acts in which all members might be

active, indeed will need to be active in some regard. These shifting

priorities – towards non-industrial relations generally – express the

novelty of green syndicalism as both green and as syndicalist.

For green syndicalism it is important that ecology engage with workers

in raising the possibilities for resisting, challenging and even

abandoning the capitalist megamachine. However, certain industrial

workshops and processes may be necessary [Purchase, 1994]. (How would

bikes, or windmills be produced, for example?) The failure to develop

democratic workers’ associations would then seem to render even the most

wellconsidered ecology scenarios untenable. Not engaging such

possibilities restricts radicalism to mere utopia building [Purchase,

1994].

Green syndicalists argue for the construction of ‘place’ around the

contours of geographical regions, in opposition to the boundaries of

nationstates which show only contempt for ecological boundaries as

marked by topography, climate, species distribution or drainage.

Affinity with bioregionalist themes is recognised in green syndicalist

appeals for a replacement of nation-states with decentralised

federations of bioregional communities [Purchase, 1994, 1997a]. For

green syndicalism such communities might constitute social relations in

an articulation with local ecological requirements to the exclusion the

bureaucratic, hierarchical interference of distant corporatist bodies.

Local community becomes the context of social/ecological identification.

Eco-defence, then, should begin at local levels: in the homes,

workplaces, and neighbourhoods. Green syndicalist discourses urge that

people identify with the ecosystems of their locality and region and

work to defend those areas through industrial and agricultural practices

which are developed and adapted to specific ecological characteristics.

One aspect of a green syndicalist theoretic, thus, involves ecology

activists helping workers to educate themselves about regional,

community-based ways of living [Bari, 1994; Purchase, 1994, 1997b]. A

green syndicalist perspective encourages people to broaden and unite the

individual actions, such as saving a park or cleaning up a river, in

which they are already involved towards regional efforts of

self-determination protecting local ecosystems [Purchase, 1994].

The point here, however, has not been (nor is it for theorists of green

syndicalism generally) to draw plans for the green syndicalist future.

Specific questions about the status of cities, organisation of labour,

means of production, or methods of distribution cannot here be answered.

They will be addressed by those involved as the outcome of active

practice. Most likely there will be many varieties of experimental

living — some are already here, e.g. autonomous zones, squats, co-ops

and revolutionary unions. These are perhaps the renewed politics of

organising.

Human relations with nature pose crucial and difficult questions for

radicalism. Those relations, under capitalism, have taken the form of

‘jobs’ where nature and labour both become commodified. Indeed nature as

‘resources’ and work as ‘jobs’ provide the twin commodity forms which

have always been necessary for the expansion of the market [Polanyi,

1944].

Thus capitalist regimes of accumulation, growth and commodification

remain crucial concerns for ecological politics. Questions concerning

the organising of life are still radical questions, though what might

constitute acceptable answers has changed. One might ask: ‘What does

work – intervention in nature – mean for ecology?’ Taking ecology

seriously means that the realms of work, leisure (work’s accomplice),

sustenance, need etc. – what might be called production – must be

confronted.