Editors’ Note: This article presents one view on a Green Party vision for the future, as part of a friendly debate. Please read Notice how different this paradigm is by Steve Welzer for a differing view. The Editors would love to hear your feedback on both!

Introduction

Several weeks ago, a debate emerged on the Green Party US National Committee discussion list on the topic of Marxism within the Green Party. It began when a self-identified libertarian socialist accused Marx (and Marxists more generally) of adhering to a totalitarian ideology inconsistent with Green values.

This discussion on Marxism and totalitarianism is significant to Greens, to ecosocialists, and to the future of the Green Party.

The current article is intended as a contribution to this discussion among Greens more broadly. It addresses issues relevant to an understanding of Green Marxism. I describe a simplified model for direct and representative democratic planning, spanning the local to global scales. Then I consider the role of producer and consumer coops under capitalism. Finally, I take a very brief excursion into a relevant writing of Friedrich Engels on socialism and democracy.

The Participatory and Representative Planning Model

Consider the following thought experiment. Imagine that we have successfully overcome and left behind the rotting corpse of capitalism and have succeeded in bringing to birth the new world of socialism. How might the economy of such a system be organized at the political level? To seek to answer this question in at least a minimally plausible way, let‘s consider what I call the Participatory and Representative Planning Model (or PRP model for short).

On scale, structure, and function of the PRP model

The goal here is to provide the bare bones outline for a democratic economic planning system under socialism. Reduced to a basic minimum, the model is motivated by an intent to maximize democratic decision making to the greatest feasible extent. Beginning with the workplace or community, it extends to a national or even global scale. Taken together, scale, structure, and function define the basis for an understanding of democratic self-determination within necessary societal constraints.

On scale

There are two measures of socio-economic scale that are relevant here. These are the number of people involved and their spatial distribution. Typically, these are correlated. Leaving aside the individual, the family as the unit of social reproduction anchors the scale dimension at the lower end. At the upper end, we find the planetary scale, where issues like war and climate change reside. Intermediate scales include the community (often a neighborhood or city), the workplace, the eco-social region, and the nation. Each of these scales poses differing and specific issues of social decision making.

On Structure and function

Structure in our current context entails both social relations within and between groups, especially in the context of production and reproduction. The traditional family, for example, is based around the generational units of parents, children, grandparents’, and so on.

Function in this context refers to the role each structure plays in the economic processes, including not only production of goods, but also biosocial reproduction, production of culture and other non-material creations.

On Participatory and Representative Democracy

Our goal as socialists should be to develop and sustain a just, equitable, and democratic society by replacing private ownership of the means of production with cooperative and democratic economics. We will go beyond the system of production for private profit with an economy based on democracy in both its political and economic institutions.

Democracy in the workplace and community

There are two ways that democratic decision making can find an organizational form. These are direct (or participatory) and indirect (or representative) decision making.

Participatory democracy entails direct participation of members of a socio-economic group. This group may be determined, for example, by all the workers at a particular site (a workers’ assembly) coming together to discuss and make decisions relevant to their workplace. It might also be found in a residential neighborhood or community, or a school, for example. This direct decision making is the cornerstone of a democratic society.

While direct democracy may be the essential foundation of a democratic society, it is a necessary but not sufficient condition. Democratic decision-making at larger or more dispersed social units, like the nation or the planet, require alternative methods of democratic rule.

A democratic socialist society will require democratic decision-making through representative bodies at various levels. For such bodies to be chosen democratically, they will need to follow several basic principles. Representatives should be chosen by direct popular vote of the appropriate social sub-division, like the city, eco-social region, or nation. They need to be selected by a truly representative method, like proportional representation. Campaigns need to be based principally on public financing (or their socialist equivalent). The right to organize into programmatically based political parties needs to be respected and defended, unlike in ostensibly socialist regimes like China, Cuba, and the former USSR.

Indicative and Operational Planning

Economic planning plays a special role in socialist decision making. Here I would like to touch briefly on one aspect of democratic economic planning.

Consider the distinction between indicative and operational planning. Indicative planning identifies the goals to be attained by the economic institutions at the relevant level (nation, region, etc.). Operational planning identifies the means to attain these goals, such as quantities, qualities and types of material and labor inputs. While both indicative and operational planning tasks may be found at all levels, their relative significance varies. That is, at the relatively high levels of nation or planet, the emphasis is best placed on indicative planning. Smaller units, like industrial or agricultural worksites, are generally best suited for the development of operational plans.

Climate change is a clear example of the need for indicative and operational planning at all levels. So too is the remediation of the legacy of imperialism and colonialism. In the case of climate change, for example, goals will need to be set for overcoming the destructive and self-destructive effects of unrestrained capitalism.

An indicative plan might set targets as a function of time. These targets can then become the basis for operational planning at other levels to realize the intentional goals. For example, we might need to identify targets (like the number and type of alternative energy sources) and use this to develop targets for the material and labor resources needed, along with the downstream consequences of these targets on both the economy and the society more generally. In the case of such an essential and essentially global project, it will almost certainly take several iterations involving all social levels to attain a feasible plan. And then, of course, the plan will need to be monitored, and probably be modified, as reality fails to meet specified targets.

The Solidarity Economy Within Capitalism

The solidarity economy refers to a collection of intentionally non-capitalist economic organizations, including producer and consumer cooperatives and mutual aid. [1] These ideas have gained support within the ecosocialist movement. As a social movement, it seeks to create an alternative to capitalist production and exchange within the existing economy, building a non-capitalist alternative. Since the solidarity economy seeks to embed future socialist relations of cooperation within the predominant capitalist economy, it is sometimes referred to as prefigurationist.

There are many features of the solidarity economy that appeal to socialists. It has one major constitutive weakness, however. Cooperative enterprises already exist within the much larger and vastly more powerful capitalist economy that surrounds them and always threatens to engulf them. This does not mean that like-minded people should avoid solidarity. Rather it means that the inherent difficulties need to be understood and prepared for.

The history of the Mondragon Corporation [2] bears out this cautionary perspective. In my knowledge, Mondragon is the largest and most successful producer cooperative-based organization in the world. It has been the subject of considerable interest and analysis among many who support the solidarity economy. [3] Mondragon has frequently been seen as an example, to be emulated worldwide.

Mondragon was founded in 1956 in Spain’s Basque region. By 2024, it had grown to employ over 70,000 workers, of whom about 31,000 are in the Basque country, about 30,000 elsewhere in Spain, and about 10,000 abroad. [4]

While continuing to operate largely through cooperative principles, especially in its native Basque region, Mondragon has been forced by the market to change the ways it does business, especially outside the Basque heartland.

According to Sharryn Kasmir, [5] Mondragon went global in 1990, with about 100 subsidiaries and joint ventures, typically in low-wage countries. These firms are not worker-owned, are not unionized, and do not have the same benefits as those in the Basque region. Even in the Basque country, Mondragon firms employ non-member, non-union temporary workers. Currently only about one third of its employees are Mondragon members, according to Kasmir.

Contradictions like these are inevitable as coops expand into a hegemonic global capitalist economy. This does not mean, of course, that cooperatives are destined to be dead-ends. Rather, it means that we should have a clear-eyed view of both the strengths and weaknesses of cooperatives within the capitalist market. The promise of cooperative economics can and will only be realized when capitalism itself is relegated to the historical dumpster. A strategy based exclusively or largely on the solidarity economy is historically limited by the nature of capitalism itself.

Conclusion

As physicist Niels Bohr and baseball player Yogi Berra are reported to have observed, the future is especially difficult to predict. This is perhaps nowhere more true than when thinking about the domain of post-revolutionary political economy and the nature of the state.

In spite of this, it may be instructive to consider future paths in social development, both to present a coherent political program and to prepare for potential obstacles.

Writing in 1880,Friedrich Engels, Marx’s closest collaborator, made this clear in a well-known (at least to Marxists) passage in Socialism: Utopian and Scientific [6]. Engels writes:

“When, at last, [the state] becomes the real representative of the whole of society, it renders itself unnecessary. As soon as there is no longer any social class to be held in subjection; as soon as class rule, and the individual struggle for existence based upon our present anarchy in production, with the collisions and excesses arising from these, are removed, nothing more remains to be repressed, and a special repressive force, a State, is no longer necessary. The first act by virtue of which the State really constitutes itself the representative of the whole of society — the taking possession of the means of production in the name of society — this is, at the same time, its last independent act as a State. State interference in social relations becomes, in one domain after another, superfluous, and then dies out of itself; the government of persons is replaced by the administration of things,”

I would hope that anti-Marxists who identify Marxism as inherently totalitarian might make special note of Engels’ views.

In the current essay, I have tried to consider some potential paths that a post-revolutionary economy might follow, as well as some limitations and difficulties that might be encountered.

It is my hope (based perhaps on unjustified historical optimism) that we will see these theoretical problems become practical ones. Time is running short. Capitalism is consuming our planet at an accelerating pace. We need to overcome the specters of global heating and war before they overcome us. To do this, we should be able to present a plausible account of economic life under a democratic, non-exploitative, egalitarian, and sustainable system. That system has a name. It is ecosocialism.

Works Cited

Author

Rick Greenblatt

Rick Greenblatt is an ecosocialist, a Green Party activist and organizer, and a retired tech worker.

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