‘Environmentalism’, ‘New Politics’ and Industrialism: Some Theoretical Perspectives

Various conceptions of ‘Environmentalism’ and ‘New Politics’ are surveyed and their logical inconsistencies are identified. It is argued that only a conception of the crisis of industrial society, not the least evident in Eastern Europe, enables a consistent understanding of ‘new politics’. From this conception, stressing the limits of man's mastery over nature on the one hand and the limits of the expansion of formal rationality on the other, the ambivalences in ‘New Politics’ between ‘pre‐industrial’ and ‘post‐industrial’ solutions are identified. The article sketches how the ‘post‐industrial’ position can be developed. Neoliberalism and ‘green’ politics are identified not only as adversaries but rather as competing responses to the crisis of industrialism and the compatibility of ‘green’ and social democratic politics is analysed.