The revolutionary ecological legacy of Herbert Marcuse: the ecosocialist EarthCommonWealth project
"Regressive political forces must be countered today and this is best accomplished through radical collaboration around an agenda recognizing the basic economic and political needs of diverse subaltern communities. System negation must become a new general interest. My methodology extends Herbert Marcuse's critical Marxism with Peter McLaren's analysis of today's predatory stage of capitalism and the educative power of struggle. The author discusses core ethical insights from African philosophical sources, indigenous American philosophy, and radical feminist philosophy. Humanity's first teachings on ethics are to be found in ancient African proverbs. These subsequently served also as a critique of colonialism and neocolonialism. Long suppressed indigenous America sources supply a philosophical and political critique of Euro-centric economic and cultural values. They also offer an understanding of humanity's place in nature, the leadership of women, and attest to modes of cooperative and egalitarian forms of community. Feminist anthropology furnishes an historical context for understanding he origins of patriarchy and how to move beyond dominator power to new forms of partnership power. I also find core commonalities in the world's major wisdom traditions including Daoism, Confucianism, Hinduism, Buddhism, Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. Intercultural ethical insights contribute not primarily to a politics of difference, but rather to a universally humanist politics of solidarity and hope. EarthCommonWealth envisions the displacement and transcendence of capitalist oligarchy as such, not simply its most bestial and destructive components. This is a green economic alternative because its ecological vision sees all living things and their non-living earthly surroundings as a global community capable of a dignified, deliberate coexistence. The ecological work of Aldo Leopold also comes into play here. Understanding the earth in global ecological terms Leopold saw it is not merely soil and rock; it is a biotic pyramid, a fountain of energy flowing through a circuit of land, minerals, air, water, plants, and animals including the human species. He proposed a dialectical and materialist "land ethic" as a call to conservation and cooperation, in which the individual's rights to private property in land are contrasted unfavorably with historical patterns of communal ownership. EarthCommonWealth Project is searching for a new system of ecological production, egalitarian distribution, shared ownership, and democratized governance having its foundation in the ethics of partnership productivity with an ecosocialist and humanist commitment to living our lives on the planet consistent with the most honorable and aesthetic forms of human social and political fulfillment."--