Social Ecology Union

The Social Ecology Union is a one of the three major political parties in the United Republics. It was formed in the 1977 from numerous grassroots movements and new political organizations that grew following the Second Cultural Revolution, as many members of the first generations to be born after the Second American Civil War felt that the established political parties in America had grown out of touch with the proletariat and their stated aims of achieving communism.

The SEU tends to prioritize decentralized socialism and environmentalism, with many of its members coming from an anarchist background. The party is also critical of large-scale military build-up, a key difference between it and the Liberation Communist Party, viewing nuclear war as a grave danger to human life and the Earth more broadly. The party is also one of the most culturally libertine in the United Republics, and have long been considered champions of women's and minority movements. The party's overarching ideology is strongly influenced by Murray Bookchin's theories of social ecology, although he ironically opted not to join the party.

It is the largest non-governing party at the All-Union Congress of Soviets and the Central Executive Council since 2014. Tokata Iron Eyes is the congressional party leader and Leader of the Opposition in the CEC since 2018.

History
Founded in 1977, the Social Ecology Union was a merger of several grassroots organizations that emerged during the Second Cultural Revolution, an anti-establishment movement from the early 1950’s up until the mid-1970’s, splitting with the dominant Marxist parties over issues like gender and sexuality, use of nuclear energy and especially nuclear weapons, drug use, environmentalism, and the proper utilization of internationalism.

The organizations that formed the SEU are as follows:


 * The General Union of Anarchists, originally a forum for anarchists through the 1930’s and 1940’s. Whilst not a political party, as more independent anarchists were getting elected on the wave of the rise of youth and New Left movements in the 1960s, there was a growing perception that there needed to be a more politically oriented approach to the organization that needs to be fully independent of its association with the main political parties of the day.


 * The American Section of Situationist International. SI, founded in Piedmont, North Italy in 1956 was a merger of various small European avant-garde groups. Its American section was founded in 1960 by Guy Debord, following his exile from Sorbonne to Harvard in 1958 for his controversial work "Report on the Construction of Situations" under the pseudonym THE CRITIC in English. With their tendency towards spontaneous performance art, called “Situations”, such as “flash mobs”, and painting nude models, they would gain an audience with those opposed to the art pushed by official state organs, and sought to satirize it.


 * The Revolutionary Youth Movement (RYM), a radical off-shoot of the All-Union Student League for Industrial Democracy formed in 1960. With the LCP recruiting within the organization, some dissatisfied with how the WCPA successors had grown complacent and conservative with their approach to revolution decided to split and form their own “youth vanguard” to keep the spirit of the revolution alive. Under the flamboyant leadership of Abbie Hoffman, the “Rimmies” would absorb other student organizations in the AUSLID.


 * The Students for a Post-Scarcity Society (SPSS), another off-shoot of the AUSLID, formed in 1965, by the “Fantastik Reading Club of the University of America, Harvard”. Believing that all other youth movements had failed to advance society out of the Dictatorship of the Proletariat, they agitated that the transition be accelerated, with the adoption of “full communism” immediately.


 * The Committee for Racial Equality (CORE), formed in 1960 by splinter members of the African National Congress, Asiatic Council and the American Indian Movement. Feeling that the official WCPA sponsored orgs (and their later LCP and CLP counterparts) failed in their stated goal of advocating for minority rights (only enriching themselves), CORE was formed as a pan-racial alliance to advance equality away from official party business.


 * Communist Party of America (Autonomist), a splinter organization from the Liberation Communist Party, founded in 1969, headed by C.L.R. James and Raya Dunayevskaya, over militarized internationalism’s perceived inadequacies in addressing decentralization and workers’ autonomy and ideological debates on the nature of the FBU as a capitalist superpower.


 * Scientists for Peace and Democracy, founded in 1947 by former members of Project Daisy Bell and faculty and students at the University of America, Princeton and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology as an anti-nuclear organization dedicated to the peaceful application of scientific research. The organization is the keeper of the internationally recognized Doomsday Clock.


 * Earth Defense, founded in 1961 by leftist dissidents from the Nature Conservatory, the Sierra Club, and other environmental groups following the publishing of Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring, believing that decisive political action was needed to protect the environment, as opposed to the bourgeois oriented “outside pressure” of those groups.


 * The Institute of Social Ecology, founded in 1966 by followers of Murray Bookchin, a former Liberation delegate (1956-1958) turned philosopher and social critic, known for works like Our Synthetic Environment and Post-Scarcity Communism.

In the 1970 General Election, the collective efforts of these counterculture parties and organizations saw enough of an effect in the Congress of Soviets that the LCP and CLP were forced into a coalition to form a majority. LCP saw the need to appease the growing “Loud Majority” with Grace Lee Boggs, a CORE organizer turned LCP Deputy, becoming its party leader in Congress and will be given the Deputy Premier chair under Premier Lyndon Johnson. After Johnson's death in 1971, Boggs herself would be elected Premier. Whilst this seemed like a victory for the now solidified LCP-Counterculture alliance (with even the "Clown Prince of the Counterculture" Abbie Hoffman joining Liberation in 1976), there was still a degree of tension between most of the SecCulRev movements and the official parties thanks to the continued racial/gender disparity in Congress, the growing Apache uranium miners’ reparations movement, and especially the lackluster response to environmental destruction by the two parties as exemplified in the 1970 Gulf of Mexico Oil Spill.

In 1976, with the LCP once again the majority, it was decided by the aforementioned left-wing opposition groups that there needed to be an alternative party, one dedicated to post-Marxist communism and environmentalism that could unite the New Left and successfully break the hegemony of the two WCP successors. After a year of negotiations (with the GUA dragging their feet over forming a political party and the Rimmies eventually splitting between pro-LCP and pro-New Left factions), the Social Ecology Union was formed in the Congress of Soviets as a bloc of New Left parties and independents, later becoming a united party during the 1978 election.

With its existing constituency, the SEU had enough clout in the CEC, such that their endorsement of Fred Hampton led to his election as Premier. However, they could only grow slowly during the 1980’s, as the presence of pacifist elements in the party ran contrary to the prevailing pro-war attitudes. Nevertheless, the revived pacifist, environmentalist, and anti-nuclear movements within the party allowed it to survive, and after endorsing Linda Jenness as Premier in 1986, the SEU first gained the majority through a CLP alliance in 1988, allowing Angela Davis to become the first SEU premier, starting their period as a major party. Premiers from the SEU have since served from 1988 to 1994, 2002 to 2004, and 2008 to 2014.

Factions
The big-tent multi-party structure of SEU has manifested itself into substantial internal factionalism, united by its embrace of Social Ecology and a shared opposition to militarized internationalism and the Marxist orthodoxy espoused by the other two parties.


 * Social Ecologists - The dominant fraction of the party, firmly following Bookchin’s original philosophy and Chomsky’s later editions. Strongly pacifist, very autonomist, very environmentalist. Largely dictates the party policy. Successor to the Institute of Social Ecology, the Revolutionary Youth Movement, Earth Defense, the Communist Party of America (Autonomist), and CORE. Considered the “New Left” fraction. Current leader Tokata Iron Eyes is a member of this fraction


 * Anarchists - Also called “Anarcho-Communist”. Strongly believes in the abolition of the state and the dismantling of all state organs, as well as the destruction of further “coercive elements”. Largely disagrees with Social Ecology in the role of the state as well as the maintenance of certain “armed militias” to keep the peace. Successor to the General Union of Anarchists.


 * Situationists - Mostly consisting of the artistic representatives, still focusing on “situations”, including having Commander Columbia as “Eternal Secretary-General”, and promoting interesting art through the state, helping form CulSec’s “Public Street Art Commission”, focusing on graffiti and other non-traditional art venues and ForSec’s “Make Art, Not War” traveling exhibition as well as spearheading the creation of various "musical roads". Also, the center for the small, but loud “New Age” pseudoscientific minority, who believe in everything from anti-vaccine to anti-medicine to UFO rhetoric. Successor to the American Section of Situationist International.


 * Tektology - Also called the “Neo-Fullerist” or “Technocrat”. Firmly advocates the use of scientific research and new technologies to combat issues like climate change and create a fully automated, upper stage communist state. Follows Buckminster Fuller’s ideas on resource optimization and sustainability, and obviously, Alexander Bogdanov’s ideas of uniting the sciences as a single, interdependent Tektology field. Also advocates increased scientific education in average people alongside social and environmental teaching, believing in forming a “scientifically literate proletariat”. Firmly supports peaceful space exploration and nuclear weapons (which splits it from other fractions). Successor to Scientists for Peace and Democracy and the Student for a Post-Scarcity Society. Former Secretary-General Carl Sagan and current SEU General-Secretary Jess Phoenix are part of this fraction.

Ideology and platform
Ironically, despite the party taking their name and indeed, much of their big-tent ideology from him, Bookchin himself declined to join the SEU, rebuffing Noam Chomsky’s repeated attempts to persuade him, remaining with the LCP. He later explained that while he appreciated the effort, he felt that “social ecology” as he envisioned it worked best as a guideline for an internationalist, councilist system envisioned by Liberation instead of the anarcho-communist one embraced by the new party.

Nevertheless, social ecology continued to be the bedrock of the official SEU ideology, as a nexus point of sorts between old-school anarchism, environmentalism, and the neo-Marxism of the New Left.

Other influences include critical theorist Herbert Marcuse, German philosopher Ernst Bloch, scientist Buckminster Fuller (especially his works, Operating Manual for Spaceship Earth (1968), and Utopia or Oblivion (1969), linguist and philosopher Noam Chomsky, and marine biologist Rachel Carson. Carson’s 1961 book Silent Spring, exploring the effects of pesticides and Chomsky’s 1968 book American Power and the New Mandarins, which heavily critiqued the Nixon Doctrine (or “forceful rollback” as it has been called) and militarized internationalism are considered foundational texts alongside Bookchin’s work, as listed in the official “Social Ecology Book Club” website.

Social Ecology views environmentalism as part of the larger struggles against unjust hierarchies and exploitation. Climate Change and pollution are caused by the exploitation of the environment by capitalists and state capitalists. Thus, environmentalism is not separate from the struggle against capitalism, but an essential part of it, as human society and the environment are inexplicably tied. They seek not to separate humans and the environment, but to integrate them in such a way that benefits both.

Taking from Pyotr Kropotkin, the SEU holds that people are naturally cooperative and that prehistoric civilizations were built on cooperation and mutual aid, before the systems of feudalism and later capitalism imposed hierarchies that caused much oppression both to humans and the environment.

Therefore, a return to the lack of hierarchies would heal both rifts. The SEU firmly believes in decentralization, placing governance within “municipalities”, lowering the federal government reach, and allowing people to govern locally. They also seek to “simplify” democracy, pushing for fewer government layers and more direct democracy, giving the people more of a say in legislation. They also promote more teaching in social work and environmentalism, and reorienting mandatory service in those areas, away from militarism.

Autonomism, the ability of the working class to self-organize independent of the state, political parties, and labor union federations is a big part of this sort of “people power”. They hope to ensure people don’t have to rely on official organs and can organize and do good entirely by themselves. Because of this, they were instrumental in organizing occupations considered outside the traditional purview of the Marxist proletariat and organized labor, including “lumpen elements” (sex workers, unemployed, domestic workers, buskers, odd jobbers, etc.), and promoting experimental, avante-garde art considered unpalatable and “anti-social” by the state or major media collectives.

Contrary to the claims of critics, the SEU is not anti-technology. In the words of astronomer Carl Sagan, later the Secretary-General of the United Republics, “technology is a tool, and like all tools, it can be used for great good or great harm. We believe in the use of science and technology for great good.” Indeed, modern Tektology orients with the SEU, believing that the idea of interdependence between humanity and nature applies also to the sciences. Science, instead of being separate, antagonistic fields, can be seen as a series of interdependent fields that act together to describe the natural world and the ways humans can better understand it.

Technology that can be beneficial includes the internet (a tool for organization and learning) and alternative energies like solar and wind power, as well as satellites to monitor both the Earth and space. Technology considered harmful include nuclear weapons (the abolition of which is a key part of the Social Ecology charter from its inception) and fossil fuels. The SEU helped break up the power of the Oil and Natural Gas Commission in the 80’s and 90’s, and has called on the Secretariat of Energy to fully abolish its fossil fuel and nuclear energy commissions and promote its solar, wind, hydro, and geothermal energy commissions.

Pacifism, another SEU constant since its inception, is often misunderstood by critics as capitalist apologia or indifference. In his 1984 debate with writer and Liberation stalwart, William F. Buckley, Jr, on his PBS-2 program Crossfire, Chomsky stated of the organization’s pacifism, “We are not stating that capitalism isn’t a grave threat, but warfare between states is not the answer. Especially not nuclear warfare. It often hurts the working class more than it helps”.

As opposed to the active rollback of militarized internationalism or the containment of Communist Labor, the SEU believes in the “Third Way”- try to build working class and environmental organizations within capitalist countries to peacefully demonstrate against corporations and states, slowly dismantling the power of the state by providing other options.

To that end, the SEU seeks to expand the powers of the “Workers’ Peace and Environmental Council” to provide funds for such organizations and work with internal groups in the AFS like the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament, to pressure the UASR and FBU into abolishing their nuclear stockpiles. Premier Peter Camejo partially succeeded with the “Nuclear Disengagement Treaty of 2002”, which lowered the stockpiles of both the UASR and FBU by 20%. So-called "alt-internationalism" has become something of a rallying cry for the party in recent years.