The Finnish Left Alliance held its party congress during June 8-9 in Tampere, Finland. The congress approved a visionary and programmatic paper Red-Green Future, which outlines the central features of a red-green society and describes what kind of measures need to be taken for achieving it.
For example, the economic growth is not a value in itself in a red-green society. Environmentally and humanly sustainable society may in principle involve also economic growth, but whether this will or will not be the case, is left open.
The main thrust of the paper is the conviction that social justice can only be reached by meeting the ecological challenges of the present times, for example the climate change and increasing scarcity of natural resources.
The future red-green society in the developed countries will not be based on increased material production. Instead people will be liberated from all-encompassing need for competition against each other. Individually determined combinations of work and leisure, emphasis on important human relations and developing one’s own potentials in free co-operation with other people will be central characteristics of a red-green society. Such categories as “pensioner” or “unemployed” will gradually vanish.
Unconditional basic income is one of the most significant emancipatory tools in an ecologically sustainable and socially just society.
The transition period will require public investment in the ecological transformation of the infrastructure, possibly even by direct funding of the ECB. At the same time, the document holds that ecological economy is more labour-intensive than non-ecological economy, which means that there is no contradiction between employment and ecological demands.