radicals, which do not form a major part of the class interests of traditional
working-class left-wing groups, whose attitudes to cherished values like racial
tolerance or freedom of speech are not necessarily very different from those of
orthodox right-wing movements. Rather than a concentration on the entirely
pragmatic and materialist improvement of living conditions, green socialism is
likely to be concerned with more abstract values, but asenvironmentalism
becomes more and more important in the policies of all political parties, it is
unclear what future green socialism has. When ecological concerns were
largely disregarded, a green, or green socialist, party could draw support simply
because they urged that such issues should be on the political agenda. Now that
this basic point is recognized, the vital question of how to deal with the issues
comes to the front, inevitably involving ideological disputes between major
political parties. Thus the important question for a voter whose primary
concern is the environment becomes one of whether, for example, capitalist
or socialist policies are likely best to guarantee success in a commonly accepted
endeavour. As such the green socialist movement has probably served its overt
purpose. There was, however, always an element in the movement which
sought for a much more radical change in society, in which ecological
awareness was just the most useful point of discussion. What may give the
Green movement more political hope is the essential collapse of the old left-
wing reliance onsocial democracyas a political creed. In a world where
political competition is largely between more or less liberal versions of
moderate conservativism and where the orthodox left and right share almost
identical economic policies, the Greens might have a hope of offering a
genuine alternative. The main problem is whether they ought to accept
coalition with traditional parties as a road to power and influence. Where
they have done this, notably in Germany, they have tended to have little
influence but had to share the collective blame for failure of traditional policies.
Grotius
Hugo Grotius (1583-1645) was a Dutch lawyer, though he spent much of his
life in exile in France. He is often regarded as the founder ofinternational
lawand, indeed, of theoretical work in international relations. Even today
lawyers and political scientists refer to ‘the Grotian World System’ to char-
acterize commonly held beliefs about the nature ofstatesand the proper
relations between them. Writing at a time when religion was still seen as the
primary source of law, and in the early part of the development ofnation
states, Grotius attempted to argue for the existence of a natural law
governing inter-state relations. Natural law was not religious, but based on
deep human instincts; indeed, Grotius held that even God could not change
natural law. The argument amounts to the claim that rational and well-
Grotius