Matthew Humphrey Routledge, London, 2006, 169pp. ISBN: 100415314313

Mathew Humphrey has written an extremely interesting book offering a distinctly novel take on the relationship between green politics and environmental issues and democratic theory. In the prelims one of the questions asked is ‘Can democracy deliver the policies greens want to see?’ and the answer provided in this book range from the negative, ‘No, but…’ and ‘not necessarily, but…’ to the more equivocally positive ‘Yes, maybe…’ to ‘Yes, but…’. It is interesting to note that this book is part of a book series ‘Studies in Extremism and Democracy’ and is as far as I can make out – the only ‘progressive’ topic of the series which have titles such as Political Parties and Terrorist Groups and Confronting Right Wing Extremism and Terrorism in the USA. The author too notes the company his book is keeping with in the preface, confessing that like others he does not tend to think of green politics in ‘extremist’ terms and also correctly notes that one person's ‘extremist’ is another person's ‘radical’ (p. xiii). Living and working in Northern Ireland, I am particularly sensitive to the ideological and value assumptions deployed in attaching the label ‘extremist’ or ‘terrorist’ to groups, strategies or practices.

The book is divided into two parts – the first looking at those anarcho-primitivist strains of ecological thinking and action that reject democracy and the second examining the normative strategies and arguments that can be used to unite green politics and (liberal) democratic theory. From my point of view, any self-proclaimed ‘green’ politics that rejects democracy is automatically not ‘green’, but rather more narrowly ecological or environmental. Thus, while Humphrey uses the terms ecological and environmental in discussing these anti-democratic strains of environmentally related political action (often involving direct action and violence against property), I would have liked a sharper distinction between ‘green’ and ‘ecological’. Therefore, my suspicions were alerted from the outset when we read on p. 2 that ‘Ecological politics’ is here, then, merely shorthand for political ideas and practices which seek to achieve environmental outcomes of one sort or another’ (emphasis added). But of course, ‘green’ politics goes beyond to include non-environmental outcomes, ideas, institutions and practices. Green politics, as I and others understand it (Dobson, Eckersley, Dryzek, Hayward, Stephens, Wissenburg), is that family of political thinking which promotes, inter alia, ecological sustainability, social, global and intergenerational justice; adopts an egalitarian stance to social and environmental justice; is concerned about the ethical status of the non-human world; and generally seeks the transformation of societies towards more sustainable, well-being-based views of the economy coupled with a stress on democratizing and decentralizing the political system while at the same time enhancing international cooperation. It is clear that ‘anarcho-primitivism’ is largely motivated by deep ecological concerns to do repairing human–nature relations and has little to say about intra-human affairs. Violence or anything else that is associated with such groups according to the rough and incomplete definition above is not a critique of green politics or green political theory. In short, the Unabomber (who oddly did not feature in the book) was not a ‘green’, either in his violent actions (planting bombs) or in his manifesto aims and objectives. The question from a genuinely green political position is not simply ‘how can our society become environmentally sustainable’ or ‘how can our society survival ecological shocks’ but to ask a different and more normatively fundamental question, namely, ‘what sort of society and polity do we want to sustain?’. Thus, the ideas of anarcho-primitivists or other anti-democratic environmentally motivated thinkers such as Laura Westra (who Humphrey singles out for close analysis given her anti-democratic stance) cannot be held to represent ‘green’ political thinking. Like more recent ‘survivalists’ such as John Grey's pessimistic, survivalist view of the prognosis for humanity in relation to our current ecological crisis, these groups and thinkers are ‘environmental’ or ‘ecological’ but most definitely not ‘green’ (Barry, 2006). However, the ubiquitous use of ‘ecological’ and ‘green’ as synonymous throughout the book is a serious weakness of an otherwise admirably provocative, original and cogent analysis. An example, among many, is the argument about forging ‘a non-contingent link between green values and liberal democracy’ (p. 83), in which the non-ecological ‘green values’ of, inter alia, global, social and environmental justice, pluralism, egalitarianism, decentralization and democratization are not discussed. Rather ‘green values’ seem to be basically (a) preservation of the natural world or species and (b) deep ecological-type intrinsic value of the non-human ethical justifications (cf. p. 122).

It is a real pity that anarcho-primitivism – discussed in Chapter 2 – was not discussed alongside other ‘eco-anarchist’ theories and politics such as Murray Bookchin's ‘social ecology’ or more recent defences of ‘eco-anarchism’ such as Alan Carter's A Radical Green Political Theory, or Derek Wall's Babylon and Beyond. The importance of doing this would have been to both show how there are versions of ‘eco-anarchist’ thinking which are not ‘primitivist’ in the sense of requiring a return to pre-modern levels of technology, social or economic standards, and that there are distinctly ‘green’ as opposed to ‘environmental’ versions of eco-anarchist thinking. While there is some brief discussion of Bookchin in Chapter 2, where he is rightly viewed as a critic of ‘eco-primitivism’, there is no sustained engagement with his thinking or that of other non-primitivist eco-anarchist thinking and action. This reader would have liked to see a more sustained and comprehensive engagement with the literature on the politics, ideology and tactics of the direct action green movement and it is a pity Humphrey's interesting normative analysis was not brought to bare in relation to other forms of radical green direct action politics occupying the ‘missing ground’ as he puts it off the distance between ‘terrorism’ and ‘civil disobedience’ (p. 62). It is not simply the type of direct action which is normatively important but also the particular character of the types of ‘goods’ which direct action aims to protect. Here, Humphrey makes a significant argument that turns on the policy irreversibility of ecological damage, and claims that this unique feature can serve as a possible justification for environmental direct action (p. 64). Here Humphrey's arguments could be buttressed by ethical arguments based around the notion of ‘critical natural capital’ in discussions of ‘substitutability’ and ‘compensation’ of different forms of human and natural capital one finds in debates around sustainable development and intergenerational justice. As well as an obvious link to these debates, there was also a missed opportunity in the discussion of ecological restoration (pp. 74–75) where similar arguments about the ethical status of ‘critical natural capital’ have been used.

Humphrey's caution against the (conservative) embrace of deliberative democracy for pursuing green political ends is well-made and his call for more open, disruptive and robust (civic republican in my view as indicated below) forms of democratic politics is one which I would certainly endorse (Barry, 2005). There is a broadly ‘liberal democratic’ feel to the book as a whole, in part meaning there is the standard references to theorists such as Rawls as setting the relevant normative standards or parameters for discussion. Thus, when Humphrey writes that, ‘On the influential Rawlsian view, then, it seems both that environmental direct action is unlikely to count as civil disobedience, and even if it does it is unlikely to be justified for justice-based reasons’ (p. 73), I am probably not alone in being tempted to say ‘too bad for Rawlsian theory!’. While of course not meaning to dismiss a whole body of knowledge, there is something rather constrained and constraining about parts of the book in its uncritical acceptance of a broadly liberal set of justificatory principles as the relevant standards and appropriate ethical–political idiom for discussing ecological claims. Perhaps what this book points to the limits of liberal democracy and green politics and points to, as Robyn Eckersley (1992) stated more than 16 years ago, that green politics is ‘post’ but not ‘anti-liberal’? Thus if Humphrey is correct about re-casting autonomy ‘robs autonomy of its intrinsic connection to liberal-democratic theory’ (p. 92), then perhaps this too is another indication of the need for green political theory and action to more fully evolve beyond a liberal democratic framing of its central concerns and principles? Humphrey comes close to saying this when he rightly points out that ‘if elements of liberal democratic practice seem inherently inimitable to environmental norms, there seems no good a priori reason why environmentalists should bind themselves to political procedures in stark conflict with their axiology’ (p. 93). A fortiori this may also hold for liberal democratic theory as much as for liberal democratic practice.

An interesting point for Humphrey to consider in relation to the justification of direct action for ecological goals would be whether our current dominant conceptions of democracy are sufficient to offer standards by which we can judge direct action politics? And an additional point here is that there is a missed opportunity to explore non-ecological green goals and policy objectives such as socio-economic equality, global and environment justice for example and whether there is justification for direct action in the name of equality or environmental justice. Are there normative arguments that offer green political versions of the positions outlined in Ted Honderich's provocative thesis Violence for Equality? Can violence for sustainable development or in the name of creating a sustainable society be justified? Here the views of thinkers such as Martinez-Alier (2002) are instructive in offering a green perspective (and one also very much influenced by both environmental justice and global justice positions) in which the aim of green politics should be (strategically) to escalate conflict rather than to seek compromise with anti-green groups and forces, including the state via strategies such as ‘ecological modernization’. On this point, I think Humphrey would have some sympathy in not rejecting such contestatory political strategies are normatively justifiable and it is his openness to the normative (notwithstanding the strategic impact) justification of contestation over consensus and conciliation which moves him, I would suggest in a broadly ‘green republican’ direction. What I mean by this is that Humphrey's position is close to the green republican I would endorse in which to use the words of Pettit, ‘contestation is more important than consensus’ for a vibrant and robust democratic politics along the lines of Young's defence of ‘disruptive’ democratic political activity (p. 76). I for one have a lot of sympathy for Humphrey's conclusion that the ‘ecological’ bottom line of green politics (not, to stress once again, the non-ecological elements of green politics) cannot be non-contingently connected to democracy, and that therefore, ‘Better one grasps the nettle of contingency and argues in the public sphere for one's values and beliefs’ (p. 93). Here Humphrey's position is closer to emerging ‘green republican’ thinking and less in common with ‘liberal green’ thinking (Barry and Smith, 2008). This ‘green republican position would see the anti-globalization or anti-war protests not as somehow ‘non-deliberative’ (p. 96) but as a healthy sign of robust democratic debate and contestation for ‘hearts and minds’ in the public sphere. On this ‘republican’ reading of Humphrey we can find additional reasons why ‘environmentalists’ must be obliged to give reasons for their actions and therefore engage in ‘reason-giving politics’ (p. 99), otherwise not to give reasons is, as Humphrey points out, to leave oneself open to the charge of being ‘fundamentalist’.

Minor quibbles include the rather uncritical acceptance of Garret Hardin's ‘tragedy of the commons’ and justification of state-sanctioned ‘mutual coercion, mutually agreed upon’ as the solution to the ‘tragedy’. As the work of theorists such as Michael Taylor has shown, there are rational choice accounts justifying non-state forms of cooperation, based in part on the idea of iterative rather than ‘once and for all’ rational choice games (Taylor, 1976, 1982, 1987). A more significant critique of Hardin is that the tragedy of the commons only applies to open-access regimes since commons regulation of resources does involve management, selective exclusion and ensuring there is no ‘free for all’. Taylor's rational choice justification for non-state forms of commons regimes has been reinforced empirically by the work of Elinor Ostrom and others who examine ‘real-world’ examples of commons regimes over fisheries, forestry, arable land and other ecologically productive resources. These theoretical and empirical analyses of ‘commons regimes’ also cut off at the knees Humphrey's endorsement of Hardin's methodological individualistic approach to deal with ecological problems as the only game in town (p. 28). Finally, on this ‘survivalist’ or ‘environmentalist’ mode of thinking, it is also rather surprising that the works of Jared Diamond (Collapse), Howard Kunstler (The Long Emergency) or Thomas Homer-Dixon (The Upside of Down) were not discussed as a more recent, and also not all anti-democratic evolution of this form of analysis. A final quibble is there is no discussion of other green arguments against deliberative democracy, such as those articulated by John O’Neill (2002a, 2002b) which again I think would strengthen Humphrey's overall argument, as would attention to the ‘conflict resolution’ literature as one possible body of knowledge to help guide us in resolving or coping with value-based disagreement and contestation.

Humphrey is surely right to suggest that ‘Environmental protestors…have a different conception of democratic politics’ (p. 101) and therefore should not be bound by either dominant conceptions of liberal democratic thinking and practice or necessarily recent evolutions within liberalism such as deliberative democracy. Here, as indicated above, I think Humphrey is moving in a ‘green republican’ direction and the endorsement of more attention to the practices of democracy and seeing political activism as an intrinsic part of democracy as opposed to abstract and ideal democratic theories is timely (p. 144). Perhaps, one of the most important contributions Humphrey makes is the following statement at the end of chapter 6:

As we seek to understand how citizens should behave in a democratic political order, therefore, it is time that political theorists stopped demonising activists and the strategies they employ, and started examining the store of actual practical wisdom from democratic political movements of the past and the present. It is from that wisdom that a viable democratic theory is most likely to emerge. (p. 113)

While I agree strongly with this, it is important also to point out that it is perhaps liberal political theorists who need to listen to this advice, since non-liberal political theorists, greens, republicans, feminists, Marxists, anarchists and others have long adopted more positive attitudes towards political activism. Once again, this book left me wondering (not that I need much convincing!) whether green political theory and practice should leave behind the liberal democratic framing in which it is has largely evolved? As Humphrey indicates on p. 123 liberalism itself can be viewed as an ‘ideology’ – with all the partiality and non-neutrality that it entails. Is it now time for a ‘post-liberal’ green political theory? If ‘green public reasons would not be the same as liberal public reasons’ (p. 138), then it may be time for some ‘unreasonable green politics’ (as viewed by liberalism), and for pointing this out in a clear, analytical, careful and compelling manner, Humphrey should be congratulated.