page_title: Mark Satin
section_title: "Ten Key Values" of the U.S. Green Party
hierarchical_section_title: Mark Satin / New Age politics, 1970s – 1980s / "Ten Key Values" of the U.S. Green Party
caption_attribution_description: English: Green Party (USA) convention, Chicago, 12 July 2008, after Cynthia McKinney wins nomination.
context_page_description: Mark Ivor Satin is an American political theorist, author, and newsletter publisher. He is best known for contributing to the development and dissemination of three political perspectives – neopacifism in the 1960s, New Age politics in the 1970s and 1980s, and radical centrism in the 1990s and 2000s. Satin's work is sometimes seen as building toward a new political ideology, and then it is often labeled "transformational", "post-liberal", or "post-Marxist". One historian calls Satin's writing "post-hip".
  After emigrating to Canada at the age of 20 to avoid serving in the Vietnam War, Satin co-founded the Toronto Anti-Draft Programme, which helped bring American war resisters to Canada. He also wrote the Manual for Draft-Age Immigrants to Canada, which sold nearly 100,000 copies. After a period that author Marilyn Ferguson describes as Satin's "anti-ambition experiment", Satin wrote New Age Politics, which identifies an emergent "third force" in North America pursuing such goals as simple living, decentralism, and global responsibility.
context_section_description: By the mid-1980s, Green parties were making inroads all over the world.  A slogan of the West German Greens was, "We are neither left nor right; we are in front".  Some observers, notably British Green Party liaison Sara Parkin, saw the New World Alliance and New Options Newsletter as Green entities.  Others saw the early Greens as one expression of New Age politics.  In 1984, Satin was invited to the founding meeting of the U.S. Green politics movement, and he became a founding member.
  The meeting chose him, along with political theorist Charlene Spretnak, to draft its foundational political statement, "Ten Key Values".  Some accounts recognize futurist and activist Eleanor LeCain as a co-equal drafter.  The drafters drew on suggestions recorded on a flip chart during a marathon plenary brainstorming session, as well as on suggestions received by Satin and Spretnak during the meeting and for many weeks afterward.
  The original "Ten Key Values" statement was approved by the Greens' national steering committee and released in late 1984.  The values in the original statement are: Ecological Wisdom, Grassroots Democracy, Personal and Social Responsibility, Nonviolence, Decentralization, Community-based Economics, Postpatriarchal Values, Respect for Diversity, Global Responsibility, and Future Focus.  One unusual aspect, say many observers, is the way the values are described; instead of declaratory statements full of "shoulds" and "musts", each value is followed by a series of open-ended questions.  "That idea ... came from Mark Satin", Spretnak told scholar Greta Gaard in 1997.  Its effect, says sociologist Paul Lichterman, was to promote dialogue and creative thinking in local Green groups across the U.S.
  The original values statement was, and remains, controversial.  U.S. Green Party co-founder John Rensenbrink credits it with helping to unify the often contentious Greens.  However, party co-founder Howie Hawkins sees it as just a watered-down, "spiritual", and "New Age" version of the German Greens' Four Pillars statement.  Greta Gaard says it fails to call for the elimination of capitalism or racism.  Looking back after 20 years, Green activist Brian Tokar said that "the voice of the original [values] questions is distinctly personal ... and aims to avoid fundamental conflicts with elite social and cultural norms."  A "modified" list of the Ten Key Values became part of the U.S. Greens' political platform.  However, all the open-ended questions were replaced by declaratory sentences, and the U.S. Greens have come to be regarded as a party of the left, rather than one seeking to be neither left nor right.
  Satin himself became increasingly critical of the Greens.  He gave a featured speech at the U.S. Green gathering in 1987 urging them to avoid hyper-detailed platform writing and other projects and specialize in one thing – running people for office who endorse the Ten Key Values.  But the speech failed to persuade.  After the Green gathering in 1989, he urged them to abandon hippie-era fears of money, authority, and leadership.  After the 1990 gathering he complained "I've been Pure before," an allusion to his time in the New World Alliance.  According to Greta Gaard, he then bid farewell to the Greens, but recognized it as a loss: "Whatever I may think of their internal battles and political prospects, the Greens are My People.  Their life choices are my life choices; their failings mirror my own."  Within a year of voicing those words, he stopped New Options Newsletter and applied to law school.
caption: U.S. Green Party national political convention, Chicago, 2008.  A modified Ten Key Values statement remains part of the Green platform.
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