Red-Green Future: a Finnish Left vision
The Finnish Left Alliance held its party congress during June 8-9 in Tampere, Finland, reports Ruurik Holm. The congress approved a visionary and programmatic paper Red-Green Future, which outlines the central features of a red-green society and describes what kind of measures need to be taken for achieving it.
For example, economic growth is not a value in itself in a red-green society. Environmentally and humanly sustainable society may in principle involve also economic growth, but whether this will or will not be the case, is left open.
The main thrust of the paper is the conviction that social justice can only be reached by meeting the ecological challenges of the present times, for example climate change and the increasing scarcity of natural resources.
The future red-green society in the developed countries will not be based on increased material production. Instead people will be liberated from all-encompassing need for competition against each other. Individually determined combinations of work and leisure, emphasis on important human relations and developing one’s own potentials in free co-operation with other people will be central characteristics of a red-green society. Such categories as “pensioner” or “unemployed” will gradually vanish.
Unconditional basic income is one of the most significant emancipatory tools in an ecologically sustainable and socially just society.
The transition period will require public investment in the ecological transformation of the infrastructure, possibly even by direct funding of the ECB. At the same time, the document holds that ecological economy is more labour-intensive than non-ecological economy, which means that there is no contradiction between employment and ecological demands.
Read more about the Finnish Left Alliance here
17 comments
17 responses to “Red-Green Future: a Finnish Left vision”
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hmmm. Trouble is the Finnish Left Alliance is in government with right wing parties and is implementing austerity.
They’ve reconciled themselves to austerity with bs about growth not being an end in itself.
well pointed out, Apfelbaum. There is obviously something very ideologically seductive for the Green Movement in adopting Austerity – not of course like those nasty old Right wing parties, who only want to impose austerity to redirect income and wealth to their superrich sponsors. The Greens in contrast are in favour of austerity to save the planet, and to save us from consumerism ! Very worthy, but of course , in a globalised capitalist society, the actual recipients of the cash “saved” by cutting welfare services, average wage rates, pensions, etc, still remains the same old profit-making supperrich. Their expenditure on luxuries, and speculation on the commodity markets, just goes on up !
No doubt the Brighton Council Greens currently involved in a vicious fight with their binmen over wage cuts also reassure themselves that they are simply encouraging these public sector workers to be more “planet friendly”. Funny how its never the supperrich 1% who own and control the bulk of the world’s resources who suffer reductions in their wealth and consumption patterns (quite the REVERSE) during the Austerity Offensive !
let us learn from the very bad examples of parties on the left entering governments with capitalist parties, and then those governments attacking the working class and poor…
die linke in berlin springs to mind, as well as the prc in italy with the prodi government.
this is a pit fall any new left party in britain must avoid. no to participation in government with any capitalist parties. i include in this being part of a ruling group on a council as well.
tim
btw, how ironic that this is posted here as a ‘good example’ from europe!
I can’t find the ‘visionary and programmatic paper Red-Green Future’, mentioned by Ruurik Holm, on the website of Vasemmisto (Finnish Left Alliance), so can’t really comment on its contents. However, even allowing for a poor translation, Ruurik’s report doesn’t tell us anything about what it stands for. His short report is full of words and phrases without any clear meaning.
On the party’s website there is a long document called ‘The Left Road to a Just World’. It is full of empty waffle. Hidden in it are a few good ideas. But nowhere does it say how its aspirations can be met. It calls for a continuation of the market economy but with more regulation. It doesn’t explain what regulation or how it will be implemented or enforced. It is a call for a return to the ‘Nordic model’ i.e. to Social Democracy, even as the Social Democrats are implementing cuts in the pro-austerity coalition government, along with – yes! – the Left Alliance!
This party offers no model for Left Unity.
Dear all,
I appreciate very much your effort to build a new left party in Britain. As regards the goals of the party, the document “Red-Green Future” might actually provide some background for its programmatic work, although at the same time one should not demand too much from one party paper. Unfortunately the paper itself does not exist in English, at least as far as I know. When it comes to my admittedly short and abstract description, the space available for this was very limited (the text is originally published elsewhere) and the language-checking has not been on my responsibility. Still I think that for example “Individually determined combinations of work and leisure” is clear enough considering the space limitations for such a piece of writing. The question about government participation is not an easy one. I myself do not work for the party, but instead for a party think tank Left Forum, which has a relatively independent profile. I have been against the participation in this government all along, but not because it has included also “capitalist parties”. The Finnish welfare model was built partly with the help of a “capitalist” party, namely the Centre Party. Many kinds of coalitions are possible, it all depends on the prevailing hegemony. By the way, the Left Alliance no longer sits in the government, nor do the Greens.
‘No contradiction between employment and ecological demands’ Labour intensive employment. Hitler knew something about that. Today Brazilian prisoners pedal stationary bikes to produce power. Mass production of our teeshirts in some Asian countries takes place in an admirably ecological non technological structure. Why use a crane to pick up heavy stuff and transfer it when you could put to work hundreds of men carrying rocks or bricks! A true model for LU would be one that progressively liberates us from wage slave labour to be free to develop humankind’s real potential.
Come on guys…stop gazing up your own arseholes and give some proper consideration to some different thinking….take a look at the works of Herman E Daley and Tim Jackson who have written about the notion of “Prosperity Without Growth” where the emphasis in the economics is on resource efficiency/productivity instead of labour productivity. This is the essence of the “red/green” future so judge it on its merits not by the political compromises made by a group which happens to have recognised the idea might have some mileage in it. Dogmatism is the recipe for failure and total political irrelevance, which from what I have seen so far is the fate awaiting Left Unity.
“Come on guys…stop gazing up your own arseholes and give some proper consideration to some different thinking …”
Completely agree with you. Have been looking almost in vain for even glimmers of ecological understanding amongst writers and commentators on this website and am frankly getting bored of the effort and sick of the ignorant insults one gets if one deviates from 19th/20th C mainstream scientific socialism.
I’m seriously thinking of going off to join the Green Party and think of myself as a green-anarchist. I feel I share very little with most of the self-professed ‘socialists’ on this site who I think have far more in common with the mainstream parties and culture than I do and they like to admit.
Talk about being stuck in the past and incapable of critical thinking!!!
I agree with Jim that if LU is to fulfil its potential it has to develop a genuine ‘red-green’ agenda. One way LU is seeking to be different from traditional left groups is that we wish to move away from top-down policy making by General secretaries, central committees and charismatic individuals. LU recently decided to launch a wide-ranging, open debate, on-line and in face-to-face meetings, covering all the issues that matter to the left. Policy commissions will be created and the aim is to identify principles and concrete policies that the left can unite around.
Jim can I urge you to get involved in the Policy Commissions, either as one of the convenors on the group looking at the environment or just a participant? Be assured that there are plenty of people in LU out there who are open to new ideas and understand that the crisis of sustainability, climate and environment that is rapidly unfolding is of paramount concern and requires fresh thinking.
The assumption that all we have to do to deal with the current environmental crisis is adapt the current system of mass industrial production and consumption through redistribution of wealth, extending public ownership and economic planning (ie traditional model of socialism)isn’t enough. However necessary all these things are as a first step.
Climate change and global warming alone will lead to species extinction, food and water shortages, mass movements of people, wars and conflicts over resources. It’s already happening. Worse for any industrial system of mass production and consumption, peak oil and resource depletion will call into question almost every aspect of an industrial economy over coming decades. Fossil fuels are either running our or too dangerous to the wider climate to burn. Yet cheap abundant energy is the most important single material basis of this stage of industrialism.
Assuming that capitalism fails to create some miraculous technological ‘fixes’ to solve these environmental problems we may come to see the ecological crisis as the key driver of poverty and conflicts over resources. More important than the credit crunch, the crisis of profitability, and ideological government inspired austerity. If the unfolding environmental crisis isn’t to lead to mass poverty, ethnic conflict, war and ‘beggar-my-neighbour’ politics that will push the left further to the margins, we have to come up with some realistic alternative policies that can create a low-growth, sustainable and democratic economic system. This is a ‘class issue’ comrades!?!
So finally I agree with Jim’s point that the (in my opinion mistaken) decision of the Finnish Left Alliance to participating in a coalition government shouldn’t obscure the need for us to seriously and urgently consider these great questions of our time.
“Be assured that there are plenty of people in LU out there who are open to new ideas and understand that the crisis of sustainability, climate and environment that is rapidly unfolding is of paramount concern and requires fresh thinking.”
Where are they then? Almost all I see are dinosaurs wanting to go the same way as their neoliberal cousins.
You’re talking my language Richard…..anyone else out there agree?
“You’re talking my language Richard…..anyone else out there agree?”
Yes but I’m not willing to be one of a minority that one can count on two hands.
Yes
Hi Richard & Jim, I certainly do not underestimate the importance of environmental issues for building a serious party.
I don’t see anyone above making the “assumption that all we have to do to deal with the current environmental crisis is adapt the current system of mass industrial production and consumption through redistribution of wealth, extending public ownership and economic planning (ie traditional model of socialism)…”
My point is that ‘fine words butter no parsnips’ to use an old saying. There is no point using empty rhetoric and pious platitudes about impending environmental disaster, if the answer is to leave unresolved the central issue of ownership, i.e. who owns the earth’s natural resources; who owns the factories and other causes of pollution and environmental destruction? In whose interests are decisions about production made?
Anyone who wants to address these issues has to address this issue of ownership – private or collective. As Richard says, this is a ‘class issue’. Or put it another way: Capitalism or Socialism?
And anyone or any party that thinks that the problems can be effectively resolved without ending capitalism is deluding themselves and deceiving those who follow them.
The reason I posted my comment is that it appeared from the act of posting this article that some in Left Unity believe that we can learn something from parties that haven’t even begun to learn these lessons, even though they claim to have solutions to the environmental issues they talk about.
Supporting capitalist parties to implement austerity by imposing cuts and other anti-working class measures, as the Finnish Left Alliance is doing, is a disgrace. It is acting in the interests of the very class that is responsible for the environmental problems we face.
We certainly do need to address ‘these great questions of our time’, but we can’t expect answers from those who prop up the profit system and help those who benefit from it.
Rather than vague aspirations I want to know what concrete steps those who say they can tackle the environmental problems are going to take.
If it doesn’t include a fundamental challenge to the profit system and beginning to elaborate what system might replace it, then it’s whistling in the dark. It might make people feel better, but it won’t make it light.
Yes totally agree with Nick that capitalism as a system is uniquely damaging to the environment because it gives no value to the natural material world and sees it as simply another commodity to be exploited for profit. Production for profit in the modern age is all about creating on a mind-boggling scale ‘stuff’ that is designed to be thrown away, indeed has to be thrown away, so the consumers will buy more. Without democratic control, public ownership and economic planning of at the very least what old labour used to call the ‘commanding heights’ of the economy (utilities, energy, transport, banking, key ‘green’ technological industries) it is indeed ‘whistling in the dark’.
So assuming that LU is not going to be an insurrectionary party calling for the immediate overthrow of capitalism the question for me at least is where do we then go to promote:
a) local production and distribution through cooperation and community ownership
b) an economy weaned off oil and other fossil fuels
c) sustainable production techniques, buildng and use of natural resources and protection of species
d) some form of planning so that the goods we produce last and the age of instant consumerism ends. That means difficult debates about what to produce and who gets it – put brutally, some form of restrictions on consumption
e) a shift in the balance of resource distribution and trade from the richer countries and regions of the planet to the poorest, who are and will be most effected by climate change
f) debate about the idea of a ‘citizen’s income’
g) etc
These are the kind of issues I hope our soon-to-be-formed Policy Commissions will tackle. The devil will be the detail but as Jim has said above and elsewhere, we are not starting from scratch. There are loads of sound eco-socialist ideas and policies we could consider
But first we have to hear about them! So yes, I agree with Nick that the strategy of Finnish Left Alliance in entering coalition is wrong in principle and practice, BUT I would certainly like to hear what they have to say about the above issues.
So is there any chance of a proper link to their policy document ‘Red-Green’ future referred to in the article – sounds like something that could be worth looking at.
Nick, Richard and anyone else of like mind, I would like to share with you a “manifesto” (“Building a New Scotland”) which I started to write during 7 weeks in hospital after a climbing accident in March…and which I have been working on since I got home. I think it will help to illustrate the practical possibilities that could be developed….it is aimed at the debate about what an independent Scotland could look like but the ideas in it are of broader relevance. Its too big to post here….it currently runs to 15000 words but judge it by its qualities not its quantity. Essential themes include…community led economy and political system with supportung written constitution, massive asset transfers to communities (a variety of assets to a variety of types of community), shut down of north sea oil and gas over 8 years in parallel with massive scaling up of renewables, self sufficiency in food and energy production, restructuring of finance and the governance of financial institutions, a new tax system taxing wealth, property, land, carbon, financial speculation, formation of new international alliances.
I dont claim to have all the answers but this is an attempt to draw up a framework around which a new people focussed economy, society and political system, which is environmentally sustainable, can be built. If you want to read it email me at jim.osborne@talk21.com