Rudolf Bahro 1935-1997

Rudolf Bahro was a communist dissident, an early member of the (West) German Greens and a leading proponent of spiritual Green political thought and action. Throughout the early 1980s, Bahro became an increasingly vocal and public critic of the 'realo' wing of the German Greens and became a leading spokesperson for the 'fundi' or fundamentalist wing of the party. For Bahro, personal inner transformation was a necessary and desirable part of, and precondition for, the wider social and cultural transformation of Western civilization away from its ecologically destructive path. Green politics must be based on spiritualistic values, in Bahro's view, because, as Eckersley points out, for Bahro 'the challenge of ecological degradation is primarily a cultural and spiritual one and only secondarily an economic one'. Bahro also held a professorship at Humboldt University in Berlin in 'social ecology', but Bahro's work is not to be confused with the resolutely non-spiritual social ecology conceived and developed by Murray Bookchin.