If your students are like mine, their eagerness could not be greater for fresh, engaging, and promising prescriptions for what ails us all. Many will appreciate this unique and inspiring book, a bold blueprint for the steady and pragmatic building of an ecological society from transformed components of our capitalist industrial culture.
Author Roy Morrison disagrees with activists focused on securing ever-better management of our affairs or ever-finer authority figures to show us the way. He insists our problems are more fundamental than management issues, and he rejects elitist formulas that denigrate the average citizen's abilities. He also disagrees with change-agents resigned to seeking minor gains; he insists thoroughgoing social changes are both necessary and possible.
Morrison makes a persuasive case for bottom-up democracy as the engine to achieve an ecological civilization. He explains why business-as-usual is not sustainable, whatever one's social class. His thesis is conservative, in that it rests upon a realization of fundamental democratic values (citizen empowerment, etc.).
It is also radical in insisting that we must soon find alternatives to endless production, mindless consumption, the worship of power, and the centrality of profit-seeking ("The attempt to continue forever the growth of production and consumption is deeply contemptuous of life.").
Readers will gain fresh insights into such fundamental matters as industrialism, ecological civilization, the economic system of an ecological society, the ecological commons, sustainability, and ecological democracy.
Students are especially likely to appreciate Morrison's support for the democratic variety of ESOP, and his three "heartening examples of what is possible now" - the Mondragon cooperative system in the Basque region of Spain, Co-op Atlantic in Canada's easternmost provinces, and the Seikatsu Cooperative Club of Japan. Each is thought to represent ecological democracy in action, and is thereby a field test of Morrison's vision.
The book has at least two limitations: While decidedly pro-worker, it cites the actions of only one American labor union local in its 241 pages. And while engaging and even lyrical at times, it require sustained and thoughtful attention for maximum reader gain. Morrison operates at a very high level, and his book is probably best used in a graduate or advanced undergrad course.
These matters not withstanding, the book stands out as a useful, provocative, and illuminating guide to social activism of consequence. Bundled with my favorite text/novel, Ecotopia, by Ernest Callenbach, the book warrants careful attention. ("Industrialism will not be undermined by the barbarians at the gate, but by the awakened within.").
Readers will find it mind-stretching and spirit-feeding, a welcome addition to the reading fare of all intent on seeing activists help midwife the peaceful and progressive transformation of our world.
Ecological Democracy. By Roy Morrison. Boston, MA: South End Press, 1995. 241pp. Cloth $XX.XX. Paper $16.00.
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