Last Saturday, Paul Magnette and Jean-Marc Nollet complained in the columns of this newspaper that “there is no right-wing ecology”. Although the dominant ecological paradigm today is leftist, there has been, running for more than two centuries, from Henri David Thoreau to Michaël Shellenberger, a minority but very much alive tradition of liberal ecology. Faced with the dead end to which the dominant paradigm has led, liberal ecology today offers a truly credible, pragmatic and respectful of rights and freedoms alternative for tackling the ecological challenge. In Belgium it has been defended for several years by the RM and soon a manifesto will be published – forged in seminars (Liberal Ecological Forum) which brings together, several times a month and for a year now, deputies of the RM, associations and various experts, as well as a catalog of proposals concrete.
A few months ago Paul Magnette published “La vie large. Ecosocialist Manifesto”. Anything that increases pluralism and promotes political debate is welcome and we can only salute this intellectual approach which is also part of an ancient intellectual tradition which includes important authors such as Ivan Illich and André Gorz. Unfortunately, this manifesto turns out to be naïve, confiscatory, inconsistent, wrong and dangerous at the same time. How come ?
First, Paul Magnette’s ecosocialism is naïve. As incredible as it may seem, his work does not deal with what, on the other hand, constitutes the backbone of every ecological transition, namely the energy issue. Looking closely, we find here and there a reference to “small renewable energy cooperatives” and the need to “create an entirely renewable energy system” (p.253). How ? At what cost? With what mixture? No details. At the time of publication of the book, the interested party declared that the nuclear dossier was definitively “closed”. Today we know that he has changed his mind. It was before the war in Ukraine… Another frightening statement: the author believes that agriculture can do without synthetic fertilizers, pesticides, herbicides, insecticides, etc. if it uses agroecology, agroforestry, crop rotation, late mowing, planting hedges full of life-saving predators, which will obviously involve “changing our eating habits” (p.28) . Again, no details on yields, agricultural areas, labor increases, etc. Given the concerns expressed in the last two years about the potential food shortage in Europe following the war in Ukraine, one wonders if, in the end, intensive agriculture – so denigrated – is such a bad thing…
Secondly, this approach is economically confiscatory. Respect for property rights is apparently the least of the author’s concerns: it is a matter of nationalizing (or, more precisely, “socialising”) the “essential industrial goods” (p.165) and, in general, the industries fossils. Furthermore, all that is considered part of the “common goods” (water, fish resources, forests, soils, agricultural land, essential mineral resources, etc.) will be removed from the private property regime to be subjected to collective or state management ( p.164). To follow this program, it must therefore be deduced that the state will seize their lands from all the peasants in the country to be “managed according to democratic methods” (p.253). We recall that even the countries of the former Soviet bloc defined themselves as popular “democracies”. All companies with more than 12 employees (p.254) will also be “democratised”, i.e. their decision-making power will be vested in two chambers, one made up of employees voting in one “house” and the other for shareholders they will still have voting rights in another “house” as the company will ostensibly be a political entity with a “bicameral system”. But for how long? This house of shareholders may even, like the Senate, lose influence as we “socialize capital” (p.162). In order not to stop on such a good road, the author still provides for a series of taxes (carbon tax, business transaction tax and wealth tax) and household income limits (no more than 10 times the average income). New tax revenues are needed to maintain the socialist myth of free access: the State finances access for all “to goods essential to human development” (p. 178 et seq.): transport, libraries, public canteens, sports, banks, basic communication, etc. This pooling will actually reduce CO2 emissions.
An incoherent project
Third, this ecosocialism is inconsistent. It aims to collectivize the economy to meet the climate and environmental challenge. This is inconsistent because the twentieth century has amply demonstrated that economic planning has failed but above all that it has generated worse pollution than in liberal democracies (in 1987 the emission of pollutants into the air was five times higher in the USSR than in the United States, despite a GDP twice as low) and has led to environmental disasters of unprecedented magnitude (Lake Aral, Lake Baikal, Lake Ladoga, 3 Gorges Dam, etc.) because, in a planned economy, there are no more owners and therefore there are no more local residents able to come together to defend their property rights, or even their rights at all. Another inconsistency: André Gorz’s ecosocialism supports universal indemnity and this fits quite rationally into a civilization of the liberated time which is assumed to be in decline. Paul Magnette defends a “basic income” or “universal wage” but, he endeavors to add, that in no way eliminates existing allowances (p.203), i.e. that it overlaps the immense bureaucratic control apparatus that the partisans of the universal allowance intend precisely to abolish it. Inconsistency that probably arises from the concern to spare his trade union base and from the fact that a few years ago the members of his party rejected the universal check with an internal vote. It is also inconsistent to believe that nationalizing the economy alone would decarbonise it. Some economies of scale can certainly be imagined, but the author acknowledges that vehicles will still be needed, some steel, concrete and glass (p.172). A “growth” or “alternative growth” model cannot achieve carbon neutrality. Without a strong industrial plan to radically decarbonise the economy, it will be impossible for ecosocialism to achieve the 2050 climate goals.
A dangerous project
Fourthly, this book is based on a fundamental error: the environmental fight is a fight against inequality and therefore against capitalism and therefore ultimately against the rich. It is true that the most disadvantaged nations and social groups are most exposed to environmental degradation. While the Third World and countries like India and China are among the biggest polluters today, it is also true that the West has historically polluted the earth far more than other countries. But, if we take into account the negative externalities of the fossil industrial development of the last two centuries, we must also take into account the positive externalities from which all the inhabitants of the planet benefit today: life expectancy has been multiplied by two, the population by ten and world wealth per cent. Wealth that made it possible to build the welfare state and that finances social security. After all, our society has never had so much knowledge and new techniques…
Fifth, this ecosocialism is dangerous precisely because it expressly seeks to cultivate anger. Ecologists, says Paul Magnette, are wrong because they mobilize the passion of fear. However, when people are afraid, they no longer act because they are paralysed. On the contrary, anger – an unjustly denigrated virtue that structured all socialist struggles of the past – allows us to “link struggles” against a “common enemy”, i.e. capitalism. Ultimately, this is tantamount to designating “the rich” – hence the middle class, as a scapegoat, to be taxed until it flees or disappears.
The leading French-speaking party, the PS is democratic, but it is one thing to claim to be attached to democracy, and quite another to preserve its conditions of existence in a country which is already the most fiscally taxed in the world. This work – whose radical economic theses have not been denounced by the press – apparently aims to simultaneously attract the voters of Ecolo and the PTB. But it is not openly communist. Paul Magnette says the communists were wrong: fascinated by progress and technology, they pursued growth to generate abundance (although they never succeeded). Because of its productivism, Marxism is actually the enemy but twin brother of capitalism. Paul Magnette’s ecosocialism aims at sobriety and “alternative growth”. Marrying the worst of environmentalism (restrictions, bans and austerity) and the worst of communism (planning), doesn’t this manifesto base its hypothetical “large life” on the simultaneous deprivation of prosperity and freedom?