A POSTCAPITALIST PARADIGM: THE COMMON GOOD OF ...

affected by the havoc being wrought on their immediate natural surroundings.
Social struggles against dispossession and to defend the environment,
both by people in the metropolitan areas and by those in the
peripheral areas, constitute the social fabric of the genuine ‘ecology of
the poor’. 23 For what is at stake is not only the right to a healthy environment
but the very existence of these peoples, which is being threatened
increasingly by accumulation through dispossession (Harvey, 2006). As
for the rest, what could be called the ‘ecology of the rich’ or that of the
ruling and governing classes, including a good part of the middle classes
who have adapted themselves, it is mainly ‘balm’ or demagogy, only
made possible thanks to prevailing class structures and power.
The construction of different but interlocking alternatives for other ways
of making or building territorial space in all its complexity, must be socially
and environmentally harmonious, fair and democratic. These should be
collective processes which not only require a commitment to the Common
Good of Humanity (continuance of life), a great capacity to promote
knowledge(s) dialogue, socio-political responsibility and a historical memory
(of society and nature), but above all there should be acknowledgement
by the actors that they are anti-systemic in as much as they seek to
reproduce good quality living conditions for everyone, while also accepting
the diversity of life among those who share the planet with us.
Thus the construction of ‘other kinds of development’ requires, from
the beginning, raising the level of awareness, organization and cohesion
of peoples in their various magnitudes and viable modalities.
At the heart of the present situation, as I have indicated, is that what is
at stake is not only the eco-social viability of certain territorial spaces,
but -for the first time in the history of humanity- the very frame of reference
of life itself.
23 Martinez-Alier has proposed the concept of the ‘ecology of the poor’ referring to
the social movements of the periphery who are fighting for their natural environment,
not as a result of a mere ecological consciousness, but because it is their on -
l y and very often last means of subsistence. See the impressive review of cases of
the ‘ecology of the poor’ that have been documented by the author in: Martinez-
Alier, 2002
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