David,your point being Greens are not pink but Conservtives who are concerned where Consumererism is taking us in regard to the environment. To be frank i am concerned with the thought of a billion Asians driving around in Smog mobiles
I think we should all get down on our knees and pray for a technological miracle because they will want every thing we have.

Thanks John.
I am not saying that Greens are conservatives in any straightforward sense but rather that their philosophical roots are partly in conservatism and that sometimes there is some common ground with 'old style' conservatives such as religious figures. The real enemy of Greens and environmentalists are the neo-liberals who believe in the utopia of cost-free, endless economic growth and in scientific arrogance that humans can solve any problem that they create.

I thought the article was excellent, and have begun preparing some points to further the discussion.

One point which probably needs restating and amplifying (especially in view of some discussion on some blogs) is that David is arguing (correctly) that there is common ground between the underlying value basis of green politics and that of conservatism. This is a different proposition to saying that there is common political or policy ground between Greens (or greens) and official conservative parties and groups. Andrew Norton at Catallaxy seems not to have fully appreciated the distinction.

Another point which I would make briefly is that on a number of current issues, there is a lack of a genuinely conservative discourse (or a discourse which addresses aspects which genuine conservatives would be concerned about) as opposed to reactionary or ideologically right-wing discourses. Greens, and the intelligent left, should be thinking about ways to fill this void.

Thanks Paul, you make good points; the distinction between underlying values on the one hand, and ideologies on the other is well taken.

That's why I think the family -- as well as the environment - is such a crucial point of friction for neo-liberalism. So the progressives have to develop a discourse of 'family values' -- something that many would, of course, reject as utterly reactionary..

Paul and David. May be we should be getting the strong emotions out of the Green movement I spoke to a Green Peace member handing out pamphlets once. He did not know any thing about the major environmental issues facing man or woman kind. He was more concerned about gentic hybrids in crop seeds.He did not know about the salinity of Aus. soils. I tried to tell him we have a tiger by the tail and cannot let it go. In the short term we can only tackle select problems with out causeing mayhem in the economy.
Up in the Hunty Vally there is a farmer who has brought a run down property back to a healthy environment.It can be done else where with help from the government.We should be demanding all new technolgy is less polluting environmentaly for starters

We have to change peoples attitudes or the order of their values

It is just a matter of fact that the Greens find their antecedents in the New Left and subsequent social movements. They may wish to forget this now and will be happy to find affinity with conservatives if it facilitates a widening of their electoral base. However, it’s an exaggeration to claim that “Enlightenment theories of liberalism and socialism share a notion of unending progress based on the accumulation of material goods.” I think you would have to go to as peculiar a thinker as Frank Furedi to find a socialism that looked like this. Socialism is a diverse tradition and there is a strong tradition of critique of “unending progress” (anti-colonialism, Western Marxism, council communism, the New Left, cultural materialism etc). The Red-Green synthesis that was very much part of the founding moment of the Greens was part of this tradition.

Given the backward looking and defensive aspects of conservatism I wouldn't have thought it was a good bet long term, but no doubt Greens will take their votes where they can get them. Philosophically, I don't see it as a good basis for progressives to engage with the idea of “limit”. It is necessary to recognise the pitfalls of desiring endlessly and voraciously but it is also important to defend the Enlightenment legacy and recognise that the promises of modernity may actually be associated with limit, ethical choice, commitment and attachment.

Thanks for engaging with the article, Gary.

I think you assume that I am speaking for the Greens as well as advising them on electoral strategy. I am not a member of the Greens. My references to winning support were in the context of the purpose of the article which was to debate what 'big ideas' were at the foundation of the Greens as a party, and the conservation movement more generally.

Whatever the answer to that, it is certain that socialism is not the founding idea. Those who try to put socialism on life-support courtesy of the Greens are helping nobody. They are just extending the over-long period of mourning that the Left has engaged in since all the problems with socialism crystallised around 1989-91.

On a wider scale the article is part of a continuing attempt by me to stimulate debate on why the left/progressive movement has been so comprehensivly outgunned in terms of raising a popular inspiring vision for social change.
My shorthand answer to that question is that we need to thoroughly re-examine fundamental ideological assumptions - hence in my book 'Beyond Right and Left' I examine the success of the neo-liberal Right, the ideas of socialism, conservatism, and the ideas of the cultural left.
Anyway, my views on socialism are set out at greater length in a chapter headed 'What was socialism?'.

I guess part of what the article was trying to do was to be provocative -- trying to shake people up by challenging conventional notions of what is 'conservative'. Some people of course refuse to question their pre-existing fixed notions of 'conservative' and see the article as a plea for opportunism.

By the way, the antecedents of the Greens -- in the sense of a conservation movement--were not on the left at all. The earliest national parks were created by governments responding to nature lovers, scientists,even hunters. (The arch-conservative Sir Garfield BArwick was the first president of the Aust Conservation Foudnation, for example) The Left came into the act in the 1970s when trade unions like the Builders Laborers (for whom I worked briefly while at uni) developed 'green bans' as way of challenging ugly greedy developers.

Thanks David for taking the time to respond.

While I didn’t assume you were a member of the Greens I did take it that your article was proffering advice, at some level, on how the Greens might “consolidate their gains and expand”. They probably don’t require this advice because in Queensland at least they reached the point several years ago where they would even direct preferences to the Qld Nationals if it would advance their interests. Predictably, they presented this as “new politics”, beyond left and right etc. Defenders of old politics may be expected to quickly trot out the cry of opportunism but this doesn’t prevent real cases of opportunism arising for those engaged in the Party political system – an occupational hazard I would have thought. I’ll try not to belabor this because it probably won’t get us far.

In terms of founding ideas, I think you underestimate the extent to which the Greens as a political party did not actually emerge in an organic and continuous way out of the environment movement. I was present in the mid-80s when there was a first attempt to found the Green Party in Brisbane and it was made up of the folk from the broader social movements – feminists, civil libertarians, anti-nuclear campaigners, those from PND and the peace movement along with environmentalists –- trade unionists –- this was the time of the ETU strike -- and radicals of various kinds -- Drew Hutton came out of various Brisbane anarchist groupings.

I can tell you David that amongst all this socialism was a real presence, as was the discussion around a red-green syntheses. I think you have a stronger case when applied to the environment movement. But there was some tension between us activists within the Wilderness Society, ACF etc particularly over strategy. We may have tried to present ourselves and the political wing of the environment movement but I think many environmentalists remained to be convinced.

To make this plea for historical accuracy is not part of a mourning process: this was a long time ago now in a land far away and the Greens are very different now. Just who is it that would accuse the Greens of being watermelons these days? The world has moved on and some of the most pressing issues today concern the new imperialism and issues of globalization. I’m just not sure or confident where someone like the German Greens foreign minister, last seen signing off on NATO bombing runs, would stand on issues such as these.

In rethinking what it means to be conservative and progressive we might as well understand accurately where we have been. The bits of my post that you didn’t respond to were on what I took to be a caricature of socialism – and I guess I’m old fashioned and ‘conservative’ enough to think its ideas and experiences still provide us with a continuing resource – as well as the observation that limit, ethical choice, value and connection may not be as alien to the Enlightenment legacy as you seemed to suggest. Socialism has suffered a historical defeat and while I think we should pay attention and learn I don’t think we need be bowed by this. And I don't think … how shall I put it? … those on the side of ruling interests have it all their own way. The new dispensation seems particularly vulnerable where the neo-liberal agenda of universalizing capital rubs up against the more bellicose agendas of neo-conservatism, or where the need to keep economic processes free and open conflicts with the equally important need for political control and assertion.

David. Our adversarial system of government provides only for right OR left, win or lose, right or wrong, guilty or innocent, black oy white. There is no provision for between right and left, shades of grey or green. Does the system need to change?

That third last para without the typos:

I can tell you David that amongst all this socialism was a real presence, as was the discussion around a red-green syntheses. I think you have a stronger case when applied to the environment movement. But there was some tension between us Greens and the activists within the Wilderness Society, ACF etc particularly over strategy. We may have tried to present ourselves as the political wing of the environment movement but I think many environmentalists remained to be convinced.

I agree that socialism was a real presence among the political environment movements -- and also that the Greens did not develop organically from the environment movement. Perhasp I blurred the latter. But this does not get us far. The issue, in my view, is about defining the basic logic of the position of people who are strongly concerned about green issues. To me it means acknowleding that it appeals to peoples' conservative instincts and that there are intersections at a deeper level with some classcial conseravtoive philosophers.
None of this ignores or displaces the very real power wielded by the corporate world. Nor does it mean I advocate what is generally meant by 'conservatism'.
On socialism. When I talk about socialism I don't mean a fuzzy idealism which values equality and is critical of capitalism. I mean socialism conceived of as a wholly different, non-capitalist society. And for various reasons explained in my book, I now don't believe that a society and economy which has zero private ownership and no market is desirable, even if it were possible.
That means that parties like the Greens should, like the German Greens, be ready to form coalition governments. Being a permanent opposition means that fairly quickly you revert to a tiny faithful band -- and you allow others to set an agenda for change.

Yes I have now read your book and I think I understand more of what you are saying.

I’m sympathetic to your wider project of challenging the complacency of the Left (no doubt you regard yourself as doing that right now!).

I think that the abstractions involved in notions of social construction and the ceding of whole areas concerning value, experience and so on to the Right is a disaster.

I’m also sympathetic to the idea of forging a wide-ranging cultural, political and social response to neo-liberalism that people are able to connect with and use to engage the current world.

I think you are right to notice how neo-liberalism and its near universalisation of capitalism has proven to be more radical than any socialist or feminist movement has hitherto managed to be, and that this might give us pause to think about previous assumptions.

(As you point out in your book, the journey of someone like Robert Manne is interesting in this respect. Manne on global warming in the latest Monthly says this: “Both Bush and Howard think they are conservatives. Their behaviour over global warming belies the claim. At the heart of any decent conservatism is the understanding that the most important responsibility of each new generation is to act as the trustee of the spiritual and material world it has inherited, and to ensure that this world is passed on in good order to the next.”)

I’m also suspicious of a socialist utopia that would stop history dead, giving us a world without conflict and contradiction – as if that were possible or even desireable.

But these kinds of points were made as part of the conversation within the Left itself over a long time. I remember, for example, the discussion and debate on socialism and markets as a mechanism of communicating needs, demand etc in the pages of New Left Review quite a few years ago now. I remember Norman Geras raising issues of value and human nature. Raymond Williams wrote on community and rural life. As I’ve already said, socialism is a diverse tradition and movement.

I would suggest that because we open ourselves to qualitatively distinct forms of futurity (socialism – although with its own limits and pressures and contradictions), we able to engage exactly this kind wide-ranging debate and maintain a critical perspective on a world whose ruling mantra has been throughout this whole period “there is no alternative”.

Staying with socialism is not as catchy as saying we are moving beyond Left and Right now to something new – but remember that this demand for constant newness is itself part of what we might be critical of.

With regards to conservatism, we’ve seen quite a bit of appealing to “peoples’ conservative instincts” from our politicians and I’ve already spoken about the QLD example. There is a world of difference between this and the “intersections at a deeper level” that you move onto in the space of a sentence.

Those intersections for me would involve the radical reworking of conservatism, expressing the importance of limit, value, connection etc as part of an agenda of wide ranging social and economic development. I prefer the idea of moral economies here (EP Thompson) as expressing not a defensive position but an alternative mode of modernity, one that prises and exposes the gap between human values and capitalist economics.

Here’s the rub I guess: appealing to people’s conservative instincts is at this level to orient yourself to an “electorate” rather than to forge these other connections. The agenda seems at these moments something less wide-ranging, ambitious and imaginative than is currently needed and more suited to the Joschka Fischers of this world. The most interesting parts of your discussion are those focused on a wider civic society rather than how political parties might address the voting public.

Yes, Gary I think we do agree on a lot.
And your are right, the left has already discussed quite a few of the issues I have raised (like needing markets).
I guess the challenge is now, in the light of post cold war experience and new challenges, to try and fit together an outlook (though not an ideology) that inspires both the progresive movement and a wider social movement

Just a side note.

You say that part of Green politics comes from the right. I believe that this is true because Green politics are a reaction to the Enlightenment idea of progress through industrialisation and technology.

I have been thinkng about this, and would it be fair to say that Green politics are simular to the ideas of Thomas Malfroid? Therefore reactionary rather than conservative?