"FAT JEWELS", le fils qui n'a pu aller au bout de ses rêves.

Proclamation for a ecology-policy By Jean Zin, Thursday January 19, 2006 Introduction of the book "the ecology-policy to the era of information" 

 A spectrum haunts the nightmares of the globalized commercial world: the spectrum of ecology. All the political, religious or commercial powers of the old man and the new world grouped in a holy alliance to make allegiance there, verbally at least, making display of international tops in world conferences of their constant concern of the ecological questions... very continuously, most of the time, as if nothing were not! In greatest confusion mix durable development, safeguard of nature, crisis of energy and altermondialism to reduce ecology to a vague threat which planes on our heads while remaining completely soft and imperceptible, pulled about between contradictory tendencies. Each one seems persuaded of the need for an alternative ecologist without having the least idea in the way of reaching that point, until denying its political and social character to be satisfied with a catastrophism without nuances, of good intentions, great declarations and small gestures...

It results two things from them: 

- ecology is already recognized like a power by all the powers of planet.

- It is high time that the ecologists expose to the face of the whole world their designs, their goals, their tendencies and that they oppose to the spectrum ecology a genuine proclamation ecologist with a concrete programme of alternative to the productivism.

It is the goal which proposes this small book which gathers of the texts written during these ten last years of fights and controversies ecologists, attempts to dissipate confusion by giving contents to the project of the ecology-policy and a direction with ecology as response to the ruptures of civilization which we know. Beyond a vague awakening of extended from the ecological destruction and dead ends of the productivism, it is a question of taking part in the construction of a political alternative ecologist and new reports/ratios of productions in conformity with the new productive forces.

 Indeed, as each one can note it in its daily existence, we live considerable upheavals with the entry in the era of information and the knowledge, to which the ecology-policy is connected closely that it is by the requirement of formation and human development as well as by the regulation of our environment and the safeguarding of the ecological threats. The question of the control of information is obviously central there, taking the step on the reports/ratios of force. The lessons of were it not sufficiently drawn whereas all the data changed into a few decades: technique, production, consumption, media, finances... The old institutions are discredited, the productivism is called into question, wage-earning exhausts themselves while spreading but if the urgencies are done well increasingly pressing, we do not have to so much fear this revolution which is announced and could bring to us a better life, a true release of work and a greater solidarity with the realization of our rights like right to the existence: passage of the marchandisation of the world to the valorization of the person, the growth to the human development, wage-earning productivist to the guaranteed income.

One sees that the ecology-policy has nothing to do with old traditions, it is well rather confrontation with the most current reality, that of completed universalization, the climatic changes, the industrial accidents and the exhaustion of the resources, in a world dominated by the technique, unified world of satellites, networks, information, goods where we seek to find quality of life and lost user-friendliness.

No the mystery, the requirement ecologist is born from the ecological disasters of the productivism, like sociology and socialism had been born from the destruction of the company by liberal capitalism individualistic and massifiant. It is the intensive exploitation of the natural resources which shook the reports/ratios of humanity to nature, exceeding the vital limits. Our concern inevitably goes towards what threatens us and as always one recognizes the importance of the things or people only at the time when we have suddenly missed them!

 - Reflexive modernity

What is this thus that the ecology-policy? By stressing pollution, the exhaustion of the resources, the destruction of the environments and the risks technological, i.e. on the negative one of our industry and progress, ecology leads us to relativize the beneficial character of the technical innovations and the legitimacy of our mode of development, which raises the question at the same time principle of precaution and an alternative to our consumer society. Ecology is born from a reflexion on the modernization of the companies, which Ulrich Beck calls reflexive modernity (the company of the risk). It is a new cognitive stage, self-awareness collective which are the negation of the separation of the economy with the company and nature, knowledge of the limits, of possible and the necessary one, but especially of our ignorance, even of our madness (principle of precaution). It is however opposite liberal skepticism because it is also the refusal of blind laissez-faire, an evolution undergone passively, with the profit of the investment in the future and the collective action, requirement of reflexion on the consequences of our acts and our production (principle of responsibility).

Of course this projection in the future can be reduced for some to the conservation of our advantages present or even to the return of the traditions of the past, but to put the question of our common future obliges us to discuss our bases, of what imports us in the company, of the conditions which make that a company, not only one economy, is bearable. Since one refuses to let oneself make and to adapt to "insupportable" conditions more and more by medicine or the genetics, it is well the company which it is necessary to change in the name of our human purposes and our to be-together, what is called user-friendliness. The safeguarding of our future, it is the passage of the history undergone with the conceived history, it is to reaffirm our collective freedom and our responsibility towards the future generations but is especially to give the human values before the private interests, the qualitative one before the quantitative one, with all the difficulty of the conflict of the values and the cultures...

The ecology-policy as a political project is far from being reduced to the environment since it is a dialectical concept which integrates various contradictions and recognizes separation to exceed it, thus connecting countryside and city, nature and company, ecology and policy, room and total. In particular the ecology-policy is not reduced to the cosmopolitanism nor with the globalisation of the world but must remain anchored in the room, requiring even a relocalization of the economy. It is the only response to massifiant totalitarianism, as well as with the disasters of the productivism, thanks to a plural economy and decentralized policies, with the articulation of totality and the individual, with their interdependences and their relative autonomy.

- The alternative to the productivism

The simple fact of putting the question of the company that we want is a radical dispute of economism dominating, the economy like negation of the company and only horizon of our future. Without falling into the Utopia or authoritative planning for as much, it is already a refutation of the liberalism and the assertion of the policy like project, finality, ideal, beyond a disorientated market. Vis-a-vis with the liberalism which triumphs over disappearance over the policy, only ecology can build a new project of credible company which answers the planetary limits as with the lessons of the history: an open and co-operative company for a limited planet.

However the catastrophic historical experiment of various totalitarianisms and voluntarisms still prohibits with the majority to support this question of our common destiny, human freedom disavowing itself for its last faults: it is sworn, one would not take again it more there! This hatred of the thought produced only one post-modernism without consistency in its negation of totality whereas the storm treats us universally, the climate adds up us, that we want it or not. It is not the freedom of the market and of the capital, person in charge for as well for destruction, as should defend to us, but the conditions of a true autonomy of the person. The totalitarianism which threatens us, it is rather that of the goods, the idealism which should be fought, it is that of liberalism and the spectacular passivity.

 Ecology is not a Utopia, it is the continuation of the capitalism productivist which is completely utopian. It is our system of development which is not durable. It is not a question of prophecies with a future, "the catastrophe already took place"! One notes each day a little more the extent of the disaster.

 Beyond the environnementalism, and in the line of Illich, Gorz, Bookchin, the ecology-policy is well an alternative project of company to capitalism productivist, project of relocalization of the economy based on the indivisible tryptique one: guaranteed income, co-operative local elections and local currencies. The ecology-policy like local and human development is construction by the bottom of a total response to the commercial totalitarianism which threatens our vital conditions. It could be that our time not only makes possible what was only one inaccessible dream, but that it imposes it even with the authority of the urgency.

Indeed, one should not only subordinate the economy to the company and the ecological cycles but also benefit of the informational revolution requiring more and more autonomy and from formation, which should result in the reorientation of the economy into the human development, the immaterial one and the services, towards the production of the man by the man rather than material consumption, towards the co-operation of the knowledge rather than the commercial competition... Informational technologies appear also essential in all the regulations by multiplying the capacities of feedback, evaluation of the results and correction or adjustment of the public action. It will be seen that it is one of the decisive stakes for the future to recognize at which point the ecology-policy is related to the era of information.

Initially, it is absolutely essential to clarify the various directions of ecology and to distinguish the ecology-policy, like alternative to the productivism and policy of the future, of all that can claim ecology with various titles, ecology of right-hand side or liberal, administrative or catastrophist! The first text dates of more than 10 years already but did not lose anything of its topicality.

                                                                                         June 2005

Specified of the author:

My book has nothing to do with the environment (nor with nature). It is not a book of sensitizing to the ecological problems but entirely turned towards the construction of an alternative production and social conditions of an exit of the productivism. It is primarily a political book where the economy holds a great place, trying to go up with the human causes and to find there answers political concrete. The environmental problems are not tackled like such, the works on the subject do not miss but what misses is the alternatives which are the object of this small book. The character transversal of the ecology-policy hustles classifications in any case. I benefit from it to stress that it is not a very easy book and that one is not obliged of all to read. It is a compilation of texts which can thus be read separately. It is perhaps not my good book but undoubtedly one of more useful (and it would be necessary that this one is sold so that there are others of them...), testimony of a course and convictions which were reinforced during years, in the wake of Andre Gorz (Miseries of the present, richness of possible) and of Jacques Robin (To change era).