Abstract

Provo was the first ecology movement, before the appearance of the green parties. They were all inspired by its treatment of the three main lines: the environment, social solidarity and citizenship/democracy. Pollution was the first question of the Provos: automobile pollution, industrial water pollution. Cars were denounced as engines of death, striking innocent bystanders in the city without adequate repression. The Provos refused to approach economic questions through any other filter but that of social solidarity. They were not only in favor of massive reductions in labor-time, but of the very disappearance of labor. Work no longer structures life... They were pacifists, anti-militarists by nature, condemning all war and believing that non-violence is a sufficient answer. Collective organization, particularly in cooperatives, and the communal existence encouraged by squats, was their natural way of living. Politics begins with the individual. This marks a break with capitalism, with social democracy and with Marxism. Neither right or left politics opens the path through which the new ecological and pacifistic ideas of solidarity can emerge