Eco-anarchism and liberal reformism

Abstract

Does the environmental crisis require a radical political transformation, a break from mainstream political ideas? Many anarchists claim that ecoreformism must fail. I express my disagreement with this mainly by raising objections to Alan Carter’s statement of eco-anarchism in A Radical Green Political Theory (1999). I argue that its instrumentalism, excessive utopianism and commitment to the dubious ‘state primacy thesis’, makes his eco-anarchism an unsatisfactory perspective on environmentally necessary political changes. I also discuss aspects of Murray Bookchin’s ‘social ecology’ and Val Plumwood’s ’ecological feminism’ when these bear on my discussion in important ways. At various points I build up a sketch of what seems to me a viable form of green liberalism, one which meshes with ‘respect for nature’s otherness’, and so might ground a meaningful eco-reformism. In keeping with the overall theme of this journal I finish by pointing to problems this raises for eco-theology in the context of political eco-reformism.