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conducive to creating a socially and ecologically just society. The answers to
these questions represent the core of revolutionary praxis, and clearly, cannot
be sufficiently explored within the scope of this book. However, we may take
a brief look at some key issues that we must consider as we begin to approach
such questions of social and ecological reconstruction.
To begin with a caveat, it is crucial to emphasize that such questions
should not lead to a series of static formulas that dictate how to ‘universally5
engage in creating a new ecological politics. The revolutionary process, the
movement from where society is to where it ought to go, must be created by
the very people who are engaged in particular struggles for freedom. However,
by
invoking
an
organic
rationality,
we
may
explore
how
particular
communities, in concert with other communities, may think about how to
develop a set of political practices that are meaningful and relevant to their
own needs and desires.
For example, the principle of mutualism may serve as an objective
criterion to which different communities can appeal as they think about how to
create rational political practices. In this dialectical process, communities may
both differentiate and retain the general principle of mutualism to create new
forms of non-hierarchical self-government. For instance, the idea of a New
England town meeting represents a ‘differentiated5 form of the general idea of
‘mutualism5. Although the idea of a New England town meetings is not
reducible to the general idea of ‘mutualism5, the general idea of mutualism is
dialectically retained within the particular idea of a New England ‘town
meeting5.
Again, the idea of a New England town meeting is a political
practice developed by a particular group of people at a specific time and place
within history. Yet, within this particular historical institution is the general idea
of ‘mutualism5 that existed centuries before the New England town meeting
ever came into being.
By thinking about how to particularize a general and objective organizing
principle such as ‘mutualism5, communities may begin to think rationally about
how to create ecological political structures. It is through the dialectic of public
debate and discussion that citizens move from the general to the particular,
differentiating such nascent ideas as mutualism into a multitude of public
policies that will shape political, social, and ecological practices within a
particular community.
Yet once again, these principles do not represent deterministic ‘natural
facts5. Rather, they constitute nascent yet stable objective potentialities that may
be worked like clay by citizens as they respond to the particular sensibility,
culture, and ecology of their own community. They represent potentialities that
have been actualized throughout the evolutionary record, giving rise to a world
that is increasingly complex, diverse, conscious, and free.