Book Review
Empowering the Earth - Strategies for Social Change
by Alex Begg, GreenBooks, Totnes Devon, 2000. ISBN 1 870098 92 7The book has a web site at http://www.greenbooks.co.uk/empower
Alex Begg has written a book exploring the meaning of power and then drawing out implications for green strategy. It has much to recommend it.
In the first chapter he demonstrates the very large number of often contradictory different definitions and understandings of power that different thinkers from different ideological and different subject backgrounds have used. A major theme of his book is to show that the different dimensions or relations of power - physical/technological, social/community, political/ideological, economic and military - can be shown to be related to one another. In a nutshell his argument is that there is a distinction between power over and power to. "Power over" he identifies as the dominant mainstream. This means hierarchical governments, profit accumulating large scale business, a money economy and consumerism on an increasingly transnational basis. This economic system is based on large scale technologies and its care relationships (health, social care etc.) occur through institutional stadardised processes and a cult of impersonal expertise. The whole road show of "power over" is dependent upon, and uses physical energy in a way which runs counter to the self sustaining and self organising mechanisms of Nature. If Nature, the ecological process, were left to itself its directions of development would be in the opposite direction to what is currently happening. (e.g. left to itself many earth surfaces would eventually return to species diverse forests - the world food production of the "power over system" uses fossil fuels to create an monoculture which prevents this happening. "Power over" ends up disrupting Nature and human communities alike).
In the other direction "power to" is put forward by Begg as both an empowering strategy, a vision and a description of some embryonic arrangements which represent the alternative direction for green activists and society. It means economic and care relationships which are small and human scale at the local level, which are non violent, which involve a move towards non hierarchical government, where care relations and economic relations are based on community, mutuality and co-operation. They work with Nature and natural processes not against them, using renewable and people scale technologies (e.g. if nature wants to create a forest then you help it do so in a manner that is productive, a core permacultural notion).
The consequence of this analysis is that it is futile to conceive of the change to a green society as the capture or as the taking over of the "levers or reigns of power" and using them for green purposes. If a Green Government took over, without it being part of a much wider transformation, it would be able to do very little. It would be neutralised by the context in which it was working, namely the technologies, institutional frameworks, economic structure and military establishment of power over.
For these reasons different models or methods of conceptualisation are necessary to describe and orientate ourselves in a green strategy. The political, economic, care, technological and non-violent (peace) aims have to be pursued together, as a package in a process that is, for Begg, better described in an analogy from epidemiology. Networking of initiatives and actions will, as he sees it, grow a counter cultural movement touching all aspects of life which will create also, in time, the conditions for a different ideological hegemony.
In this process there will often be quite difficult judgements at the interface between the "power over" and "power to" systems. "Power to" considered as a total process or green strategy cannot entirely detach itself from the mainstream (power over) and its relationship to the mainstream system is highly problematic. It is possible to conceive of situations in which "power to" (green initiatives) draw resources and energy out of "power over" (the mainstream) to its advantage; situations where transactions between the two systems mean that it ends up the loser on balance; and more complex situations for example where power over is disrupted and weakened in the relationships. The relationship between the two systems will, for Begg, be one in which there will always be a danger of co-option. We should beware of slipping into complicity and should instead, as he sees it be pursuing a strategy derived from green moral standards which, using his words, allows us to "stay subversive".
The book is a considerable achievement to have worked out the issues and put them down in such a comprehensive way. Whatever I put down now in the way of reservations should not take away that judgement. However I do have a number of caveats and criticisms of the book.
"Staying Subversive"
Begg is clearly very committed to direct action, and has a greater willingness to go for confrontational and resistance style of working than I have, twenty years his senior with a bad back, a bad foot, high blood pressure and chronic stress related digestive problem. There are times when I think things have to be fought out and that it's necessary to take a stand - however nowadays I am more inclined to choose my battles carefully for their strategic or moral importance, rather than building "struggle" into my entire lifestyle. What I'm asking therefore is: does it help to describe the relationship between power to and power over as being intrinsically "subversive"?
Let me admit that that the advance of a "power to" strategy would in the long run undermine a "power over" social system. Let's grant too that there will inevitably be conflicts, tensions, friction, clashes of moralities and clashes of ideology. I agree too that there will inevitably be impatience on the part of the promoters of green social change given the urgency of worsening climate change. Perhaps also these changes will develop "too late" so that green low energy life styles will actually be the survival strategies comprehensively adopted finally only when the catastrophe is already overwhelming us. Yet I feel it's obvious that no one big revolutionary transformative event is going change the relationship between a power to strategy and the power over system. Begg says much the same thing himself. In consequence the shock and adjustment crisis that a revolution represents will not be there - especially if this long process has to be non violent in its very essence, as an end in itself. The change as described will have to be gradual and long term through a molecular and extensive process of a host of small project initiatives, small policy and institutional changes, advancing skills, technological innovations and adaptations. Taken on their own and singly, therefore, doesn't it follow that each of the multiplicity of many tiny molecular advances that will be necessary to make up a "power to" change process, will be too small to be justify the word "subversive"? Indeed in this change process greens will often have an opportunity to intervene in, and use, the mainstream's environmental and social policy instruments to develop their projects and lifestyles.
There are certain problems when "power to" is seen as inevitably subversive of "power over" Far better, to my view, not to presuppose the subversiveness of green strategy. If you pre-suppose subversiveness then a variety of repressive responses are likely come down at you from the power over system in the character of a self fulfilling prophecy. By adopting a confrontational, more moral than thou stance, you inevitably define at least some potential allies as adversaries, wind them up and generate friction where it might not have otherwise existed. This strategy may be technically non violent but the assumption of adversarialism will generate friction that will not make for light work.
I do understand where this has come from, in road campaigning, against nuclear missiles etc. but it should not be assumed that new economic relations will inevitably and always be born in the heart of confrontation. Sometimes one has to make a stand. In doing so one is carried way beyond where one ever thought one would have to go. One is driven as much as choosing what then happens during a resistance strategy. All I am saying here is that this is not a conducive lifestyle from which to develop a green community and economy and there is a set of paradoxes and painful choices which cannot be avoided when this happens.
The decision I personally made to go for more confrontation ways of working in the earlier years of my own life ground me down, and made me have to struggle to regain my sanity, to claw my way back from the bitterness, the isolation and extreme insecurity and poverty into which they drove me. I have to acknowledge Begg is aware of these dangers in his text. He has seen what people have done to themselves when they try too hard to stand out against "power over". He mentions at one point "Within the green movement and particularly in the protest camps, many have had experience of people who have lost track of society to the extent that they can barely get by. In other cases it is mainstream society that cannot cope with the non conformism: in at least one case in Denmark, a radical green campaigner came close to being classified as mad and forcibly placed in an institution." (p202). Only one?
Perhaps, because I work in the voluntary sector of the mental health services I would say, wouldn't I, that this is a central issue, perhaps the central issue.. But the reason I came to work in the mental health services is that I tried to hold out against the mainstream in my own life, was an intellectual rebel with the left wing fashions of 20-30 years ago and was an emotional casualty as a result. So I ask how are the casualties in the future to be minimised? How can this be ever presented as something that millions would want to sign up to if it is such a hard road?
Perhaps it's inevitable that young people will be angry and choose to express their anger directly. Perhaps there is an inevitable generational division of labour in putting together a movement in which there will always be a younger wing of resistance against the destruction of the mainstream at one end while older generations try to create a positive alternative at the other. But let's be clear - if we are to insulate millions of homes the campaigns we might create about the right to erect and live in benders without planning permission will not be very helpful. While struggle politics and development politics are both necessary they do not mix very well. I personally don't think we should take grants from polluters but the issues are more complicated than that. Developing constructive projects and developing protest campaigns are not the same thing. My personal view is that development politics should get the priority and the struggle comes best when, and if, the development of our constructive projects is blocked by the powers that be. At this point one starts fighting inside networks of the local and public authorities having proved yourself as constructive, with something tangible to advance, that has been shown in practice to correspond to the welfare interest of a lot of needy people. For example, at the risk of blowing my own trumpet in an immodest way, I have just spent ten years developing a project where people with mental health problems have developed a community garden, DIY and craft project using recycled materials and a home energy advice project again working for and with people who have had mental health problems.. In the world view of Alex Begg it is clear that the development (the gardening, the benders, the erection of windmills etc.) comes as support for the anti-mainstream protest campaign - those things are put down in the way of the bulldozers but then they are eventually cleared away by the bulldozers.
The underclass and the "new social movements"
It seems that Begg mainly sees the change process as developing out of the protest campaigns of the "new social movements" and out of their moral passion. I see the change process more as developing from projects which offer something tangible to people who are the losers in the mainstream by offering them something tangible that they need. Begg largely writes off the group of marginalised people and cites Andrew Dobson in asking, what I consider a highly academic question: "Can the Green movement make the marginalised class aware that aspiring to affluence has no future?". Yet I think this is the sort of question that one would ask if you see the way forward as getting people to adopt your arguments, adopt your morality - which is the starting point for them joining your protest campaigns. It's all based on getting people to accept your arguments. In this approach what appears to matter is whether the underclass could ever adopt your anti consumerist way of thinking. If you put it like that then no, of course they never would. However that it to present the green future in the wrong way.
It is entirely different if you are offering marginalised people the opportunity to get involved in your community garden project, learn new DIY skills and join an energy advise team. Here the attraction is not the "argument" for a campaign but the activity. In fact there are now plenty of examples of deprived communities developing community gardening projects, e.g in inner city USA. In this case you offer a social network instead of isolation and loneliness, a way of cheapening your cost of living and interests instead of a life of unconstructive drugged up boredom.
I should add also that, in this question of who is going to take up the green strategy, what Begg (and Dobson?) do not do is to recognise that the new social movements are largely made up from the more active and thinking members of the marginalised class or, in certain cases, people from the " new social movements" drive themselves into the marginal underclass when they stand out against the mainstream for long enough (e.g. when they go mad and acquire a mental health record).
Leading with the chin?
Such matters are important. There's a world of different between the two options. One involves offering a very hard lifestyle where the campaigning and protest is at the forefront and the new economic and community relations are there to sustain people on a "war footing", albeit of the non violent kind. The other involves the building of constructive social and environmental projects for people who are on the margins of society. In such projects they can learn production, organising, administrative and other skills, new technologies and cultivation techniques. Such projects will sometimes be able to draw upon social and environmental policy instruments from the mainstream, build a network of supporters among officials and politicians whereas sometimes they will be at odds with policy instruments, against other officials and politicians either trying to change them or even confronting them.
Tony Gibson, the inventor of Planning for Real and a long term peace campaigner himself once used a phrase which I like very much when I heard him say we do not always have to "lead with the chin". The easier option might sometimes be the most effective one. Of course there is a danger, if we adopt this attitude, that we start to look away when difficult things happen. We start to hear no evil and see no evil. Recently I decided I had to do something about the horror of British military policy in Iraq, even if what I can do is very puny. I've also recently taken a stand on various local authority policies in Nottingham which, it seems to me, undermine community development. I know for a fact that this has tied up huge amounts of adminstrative time in the local authority but it's a strategic question. In ths regard if you occupy an office you take up people's time for a mere half an hour. When you pursue a complaint through all the official channels properly you can paralyze and tie up whole departments in their own procedure for much longer - and they have to deal with the issues and not whether you are trespassing or not. When I decide to fight on something I think it helps that I speak from the experience of having built up quite a successful project on the ground in Nottingham.
Writing from experience and writing from other writing
Experience counts. It means one can speak with a different kind of authority. This is, I think, important. Begg clearly has experience of non violent direct action and is clearly a brave man who acts on what he believes. He describes the inside of a number of cells in a quite dramatic way. However I am not convinced from the evidence of his book that he knows much about long term project development. We are, it seems to me, in need of texts written from a starting point in experience and practice. If we write from experience I am convinced that those who eventually discover what we have written will find more or less what they need for their own purposes if their experience, problems and situation are close to our own. In this regard I feel that Begg's book is not as valuable as it might be. We do get a picture of the practical things Begg does - his housing co-operative and his provocatively named "Upstart Co-operative", but the practice of these things is dealt with insufficient detail for my tastes.
Of course you cannot entirely write from experience when you are trying to provide a contextual overview, a general sense of orientation and strategy for collectives of people. However without at least a few years experience of trying to make your strategic ideas work I think we should be a bit careful about adopting strategies largely based on synthesising what we have read. It's what University academics tend to do, so this is not particularly a personal criticism of Begg himself, rather more it's a criticism of a wider phenomena.
In the case of this book we learn what Alex Begg thinks by learning what he thinks of Foucault, Fromm, Illich, Bahro, Croft and Beresford, O'Connor, Chomsky, RD Laing and an endless list of other intellectual luminaries. Of course we can't develop our ideas without some relation to what others have thought but at a certain point the requirement of university essays, that we've comprehensively covered what everyone before us has thought and said, actually becomes quite impossible or elitist. It's difficult enough if one is an academic covering a tiny topic specialism, it becomes even more difficult when we are seeking holistic models which span several different academic fields of inquiry and conceptualisation. Writing then becomes a game for a tinier and tinier number of people and only a tiny number of people can then, too, find the reading of the resultant long texts meaningful and possible. I myself think that we've got to recognise that we live in a world where it is now quite impossible to create conceptual generalisations which synthesise or have reference to every other major thinker in the field - even if we could do that for the English language there's probably writers in other languages, as well as writers, starting out from other subject areas, that we don't know about - who would also have something to say.
When you can't see the wood for the trees - too much detail
It would, I think, have been better if Begg had written a much shorter book. I am by no means a fan of Winston Churchill but a colleague recently brought my attention to something he once wrote which I quite like. Apparently at some point or other Churchill wrote: "I didn't have time to write it shorter". I think that this apparently paradoxical statement means what every author knows - that writing is a process of clarification and, at the end of the process, if we have the time to write yet another version, all over again, we can often say it much clearer and much more briefly than we did in our earlier attempts. If we are in too much of a hurry to be heard, however, readers get our first attempts and then they are longer and not so clear. Begg has a way of writing which takes us through a wealth of detail in which we can easily lose sight of the wood for the trees.
Sometimes this is because he wants to overload us with things that really are not necessary and ought to have been edited out. For example while it might be useful to know a little about the evolution of money do we really need to know in this text about money in roman times and Marco Polo's observations about the Moguls? Or again there is a tendency to go into pure hypothesis about various points to a degree that doesn't really take our understanding any further and which, indeed, on deeper reflection, even appears a little absurd. This occurs for example in the discussion about the net gains and losses to green strategy that are possible in transactions at the interface between "power to" and "power over". On page 217 Begg writes about an example in which the gains to "power over" exceed the gains to "power to" , does not lead to self sufficiency, but is nonetheless disruptive of "power over". The example is where a bank loan "is being used to fund a direct action which will put the police in a difficult position and show their unwillingness to enforce some iniquitous law passed by the government." My response to this is to ask who Begg's bank manager is because this is a rather unusual use for a bank loan.
The point here is that discussions in the realm of pure hypthothesis don't really get us very far. If I wanted to I could suggest a situation where a bank manager takes home the details of a windmill project for which finance is being sought which his adolescent son happens to see. His son is intrigued and decides wind energy technology will become his career and he later designs a much improved technology even though the bank loan is refused. This is to argue a case for trying to get bank loans for unlikely projects. It's totally fanciful as unlikely as bank loans to fund direct action but that's just the point. You can devise any number of scenarios which are hypothetical and beyond a point they are not very useful. While a page or so might do to illustrate the complexity of the issues "at this interface" there's a point beyond which there is no point in taking the reader further.
Emotional relations and power psychology
Finally I want to conclude by some comments about psychology, interiority and mental health. As Begg has read Fromm and RD Laing I was quite disappointed with his treatment of these themes. However one cannot be an expert in everything and the problem for anyone trying to do a holistic analysis of things is that there will almost always be an edge to their knowledge where the failure to have grasped the ideas will weaken the structure of the whole. In this case I think, to my viewpoint, the analysis of personality and power, interpersonal relations and power are all very underdeveloped. Of course, there is a bit there in the book. There's a mention, for example, of Fromm's analysis of sadistic character structures. But this book treats human motivation and orientation in a very cognitive and conceptual way. It is about what people think, including their ideological and ethical choices but there's not much here about what people feel, about emotions. This is more than important. It is in their feelings and emotions that people experience their own body responses - it is here that their physical connection to Nature occurs. When one is continually stressed all the time the frustration, tension and impatience is a body sensation of tense muscles, cramped posture, shallow breathing which eventually kills you or shuts your rational mind down. There is a health dimension to sustainability and it interfaces into care relationships.
There's a host of issues here that are very important. One is that in the "power over" system emotions have to be managed - anger, frustration, fear have to be controlled, regulated and discharged in various ways. You aren't allowed to get angry with your boss or the sergeant major, people above you in the hierarchy, but you can get away with it if you bully someone weaker than yourself, your kids perhaps or social scapegoats. Thus the energy for change gets channelled downwards and the social structure of "power over", considered as an energy field passing through human bodies, is "earthed" downwards on scapegoat social groups. Often human conceptual thought is distorted by the redirected flow of managed emotion - as when one thinks bad of someone one because you are picking a fight with them to offload the bottled up anger. This is the importance of character structure - where large numbers of people lose the ability to think rationally because their thinking is distorted by their feelings. Thoughts are then adjusted to justify the resultant emotional discharge.
Once we allow that people's thinking is more complex in this way we have to allow that their responses to things will often be destructive and self destructive. It also means that the change process has certain dimensions that might be described as therapeutic in the sense that they involve working with our feelings as well as our concepts. This means both recognising where other people are coming from emotionally, as well as knowing ourselves and our own physical limits better, including learning when to retreat when we are hopelessly stressed.
This by no means exhausts the dimensions of the relationship between power and human pyschology. Its a big and complicated question that deserves a thorough discussion. Another question, for example is way in which there is inevitably a negotiation between people and their environment of their estimate of self importance - this has to happen in the work world, interpersonal and social world because we all need reasonably stable orientation vis a vis each other as to how far we should take each other's ideas, opinions, leadership, instructions directions or advice. This has profound cnsequences for our personality and our responses and its a quite complex thing. I'm very fond of quoting the American millionairess who said on one occaision that "Only the little people pay taxes" to illustrate this core notion of "me size" which is integral to the power over society.
To conclude
Alex Begg has put a very great deal of work into writing this book. I hope I have shown that I think it is valuable even though I have crucial points of disagreement. In the end we cannot expect our works to be adopted everywhere in all their details. What matters is that we point people in a general direction, that the books give food for thought and that they spark discussions (or discourses if you like). Books can help to create a climate and a sense of shared direction in a more general sense, if not in all the details. I think Alex Begg has helped to do that.
Brian Davey
November 2000
© BRIAN DAVEY