Politics of Fear v. Quests for Transformation

Over at the Daily Dish Peter Suderman writes a favorable review of my environmentalism as a politics of fear piece. He accepts that environmentalism is a politics of fear, turning the quest for survival into a full-blooded political ideology. But then goes on to argue: "That said, I wonder if there is not something inevitable about collective quests for revolution and transformation." I disagree with putting it this way.

First, my point in the essay is that, to the degree environmentalism presents itself as a 'collective quest for revolution and transformation,' it is false advertising. It is no such quest. It actually has conservative aims - preserve what we have before it's destroyed - dressed up as a radical politics. For those looking for transformative projects, their embrace of environmentalism is misplaced.

Second, Suderman suggests that these "collective quests," whatever their concrete aims, are going to become more frequent. "In our secular, post-modern age, in which most people living in the first world have their basic needs met, there is an innate urge to find meaning in grand causes." This reductionist argument was first made by Ronald Inglehart in his book Modernization and Postmodernization, which attempted to explain the 'altruistic' and 'other-oriented' character of New Left movements and consumer politics in the very terms that Suderman suggests. However, I think this argument fits uneasily with some basic historical facts. For instance, one of the dominant pieces of common wisdom of our political life is the idea that we live at the end of history, and the total naturalization of certain basic issues of social structure - like capitalism and the liberal state. Most 'transformation' movements today take place within these constraints, calling into question how 'transformative' these quests really are. I would even go so far as to say that many of the 'altruistic,' value-based movements of today, like consumer politics reflect the narcissistic core of consumer society. On that point, I can't really explain myself here though.

Also, far more revolutionary movements, of a much more sustained and transformative character, are observable in earlier periods, including not just the 1960s but even more so the 1920s and 30s, not to mention 1870s and 1840s and so on. Or a more limited example: participation in American politics was much more vigorous in the late 19th century (think Populism) than in the late 20th century. Some kind of functional explanation of revolutionary energy in relation to poverty or prosperity just doesn't work (we can find reactionary periods in the past too). If it did, there would be no point of political argument, really, because politics would just be a function of economics in a rather crude way.

So I take Suderman's point, and agree with him that we need to think about why a desire for change would be poured into a conservative movement like environmentalism. But I disagree with his analysis.