Page 34 RAIN Oct./Nov. 1983 nature and people because they adopt "soft energy paths"; like all "technotwits" (to use Amory Lovins' description of himself in a personal conversation with me), they merely cushion or conceal the dangers to the biosphere and to human life by placing ecological technologies in a straitjacket of hierarchical values rather than by challenging the values and the institutions they represent. By the same token, even decentralization becomes meaningless if it denotes logistical advantages of supply and recycling rather than human scale. If our goal in decentralizing society (or, as the "ecology"-oriented politicians like to put it, striking a "balance" between "decentralization" and "centralization") is intended to acquire "fresh food" or to "recycle wastes" easily or to reduce "transportahon costs" or to foster "more" popular control (not, be it noted, complete popular control) over social life, decentralization too is divested of its rich ecological and libertarian meaning as a network of free, naturally balanced communities based on direct face-to- face democracy and fully actualized selves who can really engage in the seZ/-management and seZ/-activity so vital for the achievement of an ecological society. Like I am disturbed by a widespread technocratic mentality and political opportunism that threaten to replace social ecology by a new form of social engineering. alternate technology, decentralization is reduced to a mere technical strategem for concealing hierarchy and domination. The "ecological" vision of "municipal control of power," "nationalization of industry," not to speak of vague terms like "economic democracy," may seemingly restrict utilities and corporations, but leaves their overall control of society largely unchallenged. Indeed, even a nationalized corporate structure remains a bureaucratic and hierarchical one. As an individual who has been deeply involved in ecological issues for decades, I am trying to alert well- intentioned, ecologically oriented people to a profoundly serious problem in our movement. To put my concerns in the most direct form possible: I am disturbed by a widespread technocratic mentality and political opportunism that threaten to replace social ecology by a new form of social engineering. For a time it seemed that the ecology movement might well fulfill its libertarian potential as a movement for a non-hierarchical society. Reinforced by the most advanced tendencies in the feminist, gay, community, and socially radical movements, it seemed that the ecology movement might well begin to focus its efforts on changing the basic structure of our anti-ecological society, not merely on providing more palatable techniques for perpetuating it or institutional cosmetics for concealing its irremediable diseases. The rise of the anti-nuke alliances based on a decentralized network of affinity groups, on a directly democratic decision-making process, and on direct action seemed to support this hope. The problem that faced the movement seemed primarily one of self-education and public education—the need to fully understand the meaning of the affinity group structure as a lasting, family-type form, the full implications of direct democracy, the concept of direct action as more than a "strategy" but as a deeply rooted sensibility, an outlook that expresses the fact that everyone has the right to take direct control of society and of her or his everyday life. Ironically, the opening of the eighties, so rich in its promise of sweeping changes in values and consciousness, has also seen the emergence of a new opportunism, one that threatens to reduce the ecology movement to a mere cosmetic for the present society. Many self- styled "founders" of the anti-nuke alliances (one thinks here especially of the Clamshell Alliance) have become what Andrew Kopkind has described as "managerial radicals"—the manipulators of a political consensus that operates within the system in the very name of opposing it. The "managerial radical" is not a very new phenomenon. Jerry Brown, like the Kennedy dynasty, has practiced the art in the political field for years. What is striking about the current crop is the extent to which "managerial radicals" come from important radical social movements of the sixties and, more significantly, from the ecology movement of the seventies. The radicals and idealists of the 1930s required decades to reach the middle-aged cynicism needed for capitulation, and they had the honesty to admit it in public. Former members of SDS and ecology action groups capitulate in their late youth or early maturity—and write their "embittered" biographies at 25, 30, or 35 years of age, spiced with rationalizations for their surrender to the status quo. Tom Hayden hardly requires much criticism, as his arguments against direct action at Seabrook last fall attest. Perhaps worse is the emergence of Barry Commoner's "Citizen's Party," of new financial institutions like MUSE (Musicians United for Safe Energy), and the "Voluntary Simplicity" celebration of a dual society of swinging, jeans-clad, high-brow elitists from the middle classes and the conventionally clad, consumer-oriented, low-brow underdogs from the working classes—a dual society generated by the corporate- financed "think tanks" of the Stanford Research Institute. In all of these cases, the radical implications of a decentralized society based on alternate technologies and closely knit communities are shrewdly placed in Jhe service of a technocratic sensibility, of "managerial radicals," and opportunistic careerists. The grave danger here lies in the failure of many idealistic individuals to deal with major social issues on their own terms—to recognize the blatant incompatibilities of goals that remain in deep-seated conflict with each other, goals that cannot possibly coexist without delivering the ecology movement to its worst enemies. More often
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