My aim for the Design for Revolution web site has been to come up with a design which combines permaculture ideas with socialist ones, to marry sustainability and community: ‘earth care’ and ‘people care’, with a world of personal fulfilment and free access: ‘from each according to his/her means to each according to her/his needs’. The key to unlocking the door which divides these two separate sets of aspirations may be in the notion of ‘a world without exploitation’.

Historically (from 10,000 years ago), an elite class has exploited people (slaves or wage labourers for their energy / combustion within living cells / labour power), domesticated animals (for food and for energy / combustion within living cells / muscle power), and latterly fossil fuels (for energy / combustion in machines). (All of the energy, of course, derives ultimately from the sun via photosynthesis in the cells of plants.) We are told that at least a third of the world’s oil reserves (and indeed the best and most easily accessible third) has been consumed. Fossil fuels may not be anywhere near running out but they will get expensive enough to impact on the capitalist system in potentially destabilising ways. Some argue that World War III is already being fought over access to what remains. Civil liberties are being increasingly severely curtailed because the world is supposed to be on a war footing, which could have an impact on our freedom to explore alternative ways of living. This is all the more reason to put the best ideas together, with a both/and approach instead of either/or.

Socialism aims to avoid exploiting people, but historically has assumed that this will be made possible by developments of technology enabling the exploitation of non-human resources. Permaculture aims to avoid the exploitation of people, animals or fossil fuels. If the latter were possible, it would fulfil the essential goal of socialism. The contribution of socialists, anarchists, and ‘the “thin red/black line” of the anti-market, anti-statist political sector’ is to organise to bring about an exploitation free world, to get it to happen.

More to follow…

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