Left Green Network
{{Infobox political party
| name = Left Green Network
| colorcode = Green
| founders = Murray Bookchin
Howie Hawkins
| founded = {{start date|1988|4|}}
| dissolved = {{end date|1993||}}
| newspaper = Left Green Notes
| ideology = Ecosocialism
Social ecology
Libertarian municipalism
| position = Far-left
}}
The Left Green Network (LGN) was an ecosocialist organization created by Murray Bookchin and Howie Hawkins.
History
In 1984, members of the Institute for Social Ecology, which Bookchin directed, participated in the "Founding Conference of a National Green Politics Organization", which was a precursor to the Green Party of the United States, in order to oppose the top-down creation of a national party.{{cite web |title=Early History of the United States Green Party, 1984-2001 |first1=John |last1=Rensenbrink |date=May 15, 2017 |url=https://www.gp.org/early_history |url-status=live |archive-date=15 Jul 2023 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20230715042328/https://www.gp.org/early_history}} The anti-party attendees won, and the proto-Greens instead created many local Green Committees of Correspondence (GCoC). In 1987, Bookchin spoke at the National Green Gathering, where he denounced Earth First! and Dave Foreman as social reactionaries for opposing aid to starving people.{{cite journal |title=Bizarre and Wonderful |first1=Wes |last1=Enzinna |volume=39 |number=9 |date=4 May 2017 |journal=London Review of Books |url=https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v39/n09/wes-enzinna/bizarre-and-wonderful}}
In 1988, Bookchin and Hawkins founded LGN as a radical alternative to liberalism in the US Green movement, based around the principles of social ecology and libertarian municipalism.{{cite web |last1=Biehl |first1=Janet |author1-link=Janet Biehl |title=The Left Green Network (1988–91) |url=http://www.biehlonbookchin.com/left-green-network/ |website=Ecology or Catastrophe |access-date=November 16, 2019 |url-status=usurped |date=March 22, 2015 |archive-date=March 25, 2015 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20150325131724/http://www.biehlonbookchin.com/left-green-network/}}{{cite web |publisher=Green Pages |title=Murray Bookchin turns 101 years old |first1=Garret |last1=Wassermann |date=March 6, 2022 |quote=While Bookchin ultimately split with the Greens over disagreements on strategy, particularly his insistence on radical municipalism instead of national electoral campaigns, the ideas of social ecology still had a profound influence on the first Green platform and the founding of the original Greens/Green Party USA in 1991, and many of those ideas were brought over to the Green Party of the United States when it was founded after Nader’s presidential run in 2000. For example, social ecology articulated several key guiding principles, including direct democracy, non-hierarchy, respect for diversity, decentralization, social justice via a radical inclusive humanism, and a call for a new moral economy to replace profit-driven capitalism; it isn’t hard to see how these evolved into the Four Pillars and Ten Key Values that guide the party today. |url=https://greenpagesnews.org/murray-bookchin-turns-101-years-old/ |url-status=live |archive-date=April 6, 2022 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20220406103716/https://greenpagesnews.org/murray-bookchin-turns-101-years-old/}} About 50 people attended the founding conference.{{cite journal |title=Toward a Left Green Politics: The Iowa Conference |first1=Eric |last1=Chester |page=3 |journal=Resist Newsletter |number=217 |date=August 1989 |url=https://digitalrepository.trincoll.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1214&context=resistnewsletter#page=4}} LGN worked within the GCoC to advance social ecologist views,{{cite book |title=Defending the Earth: A Debate |first1=Dave |last1=Foreman |first2=Murray |last2=Bookchin |date=1991 |publisher=Black Rose Books |url=https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/murray-bookchin-and-dave-foreman-defending-the-earth-a-debate}} to demand a stronger anti-capitalist stance, and to oppose realo politics.{{cite journal |first1=Murray |last1=Bookchin |first2=Janet |last2=Biehl |title=A Critique of the Draft Program of the Left Green Network |journal=Left Green Perspectives |number=23 |date=May 24, 1991 |url=https://social-ecology.org/wp/1991/06/left-green-perspectives-23/ |url-status=live |archive-date=November 20, 2020 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20201120000000/https://social-ecology.org/wp/1991/06/left-green-perspectives-23/}} [https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/murray-bookchin-and-janet-biehl-a-critique-of-the-draft-program-of-the-left-green-network Alt URL] In their founding documents, LGN explicitly rejected the "left wing of the possible" framing coined by Michael Harrington of the Democratic Socialists of America.
In 1991, GCoC members who supported electoral politics created the Green Party Organizing Committee (GPOC). At the fourth GCoC conference, the LGN crashed GPOC meetings and won control of the organization. As a result, the GCoC was restructured into the Greens/Green Party USA (G/GPUSA),{{cite web |url=http://www.c-span.org/video/?20897-1/official-formation-green-partyusa |date=August 27, 1991 |title=Official Formation of the Green Party-USA |publisher=C-SPAN}} which focused more on direct membership and direct action than on electoral work.
The formation of the G/GPUSA split the Green movement. As a result, the GPOC dissolved and became the Green Politics Network, which would eventually create the election-focused Association of State Green Parties (ASGP) in 1996 after Ralph Nader's presidential campaign.{{cite web |url=http://www.gp.org/1996-founding-meeting |title=Green Party - 1996 Founding Meeting |publisher=Green Party of the United States |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20140527213118/http://www.gp.org/1996-founding-meeting |archive-date=2014-05-27}} From 1996 to 1999, the ASGP and G/GPUSA competed over Green candidates and dues-payers. In 2000 and 2001, ASGP leader Mike Feinstein and G/GPUSA leader Howie Hawkins attempted to merge their organizations. However, at the 2001 G/GPUSA convention, this proposal won majority support, but not the necessary 2/3 majority. The G/GPUSA analogized this split to the fundi–realo split in the German Greens, with G/GPUSA as fundis and GPUS as realos.{{cite web |url=http://www.greenparty.org/why.php |title=Why are there two Green Parties? |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20140523095726/http://www.greenparty.org/why.php |access-date=5 October 2019|archive-date=2014-05-23 }} In the long run, the ASGP was more successful: In 2001, the ASGP became the modern Green Party of the United States (GPUS), while the G/GPUSA would shrink until it dissolved in 2019.
In the 1990s, as enthusiasm for socialism faded, the LGN also faded away until it became defunct in 1993.{{cite book |title=Ecofeminists and the Greens |first1=Greta |last1=Gaard |date=1998 |publisher=Temple University Press |isbn=978-1-4399-0398-8 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=MnD1D37szowC&pg=PA88 |quote=Formed in 1988, the Left Green Network reached its height of influence in 1990; by 1993 it had diminished into an association in name only (it has never entirely disbanded).}}
Impact
Due to its power in the G/GPUSA, LGN played a large role in shaping the Green movement's political positions, especially its focus on ecological social justice rather than a narrow environmentalism. In 2020, former LGN member Howie Hawkins ran on the GPUS ticket for president of the US.
See also
References
{{reflist}}
Category:1988 establishments in the United States
Category:1993 disestablishments in the United States
Category:Defunct political parties in the United States
Category:Green Party of the United States
Category:Green Party of the United States organizations