Eco-socialism
Encyclopedia
Eco-socialism, green socialism or socialist ecology is an ideology
merging aspects of Marxism
, socialism
, green politics
, ecology
and alter-globalization
. Eco-socialists generally believe that the expansion of the capitalist
system is the cause of social exclusion
, poverty
, war
and environmental degradation
through globalization
and imperialism
, under the supervision of repressive states
and transnational structures.
Eco-socialists advocate the dismantling of capitalism and the state, focusing on common ownership of the means of production
by freely associated producers and restoration of the commons.
and socialism
. They are often described as Red Greens - adherents to Green politics with clear anti-capitalist
views, often inspired by Marxism
(Red Greens should be contrasted with Blue Greens).
The term Watermelon is commonly applied, often as an insult, to describe professed Greens
who seem to put "social justice
" goals above ecological
ones, implying they are "green on the outside but red on the inside"; the term is usually attributed to either Petr Beckmann
or, more frequently, Warren T. Brookes
, both critics of environmentalism
, and is apparently common in Australia
, New Zealand
and the United States
A website in New Zealand, The Watermelon, uses the term as a compliment, stating that it is "green on the outside and liberal
on the inside", using the term 'liberal' while also citing "socialist
political leanings", reflecting the use of the term 'liberal' to describe the left-wing in many English-speaking countries. Red Greens are often considered 'fundies
' or 'fundamentalist greens', a term usually associated with Deep Ecology
despite the fact that the German Green Party 'fundi
' faction included eco-socialists, and eco-socialists in other Green Parties, like Derek Wall
, have been described in the press as 'fundies
'.
Eco-socialists also criticise bureaucratic and elite theories of socialism such as Maoism
, Stalinism
and what other critics have termed Bureaucratic Collectivism
or State Capitalism
. Instead, eco-socialists focus on imbuing socialism with ecology while keeping the emancipatory goals of 'first-epoch' socialism. Eco-socialists aim for a world of communal ownership of the means of production
by "freely associated producers" with all forms of domination eclipsed, especially gender inequality
and racism
.
This often includes the restoration of commons land in opposition to private property
, in which local control of resources valorizes the Marxist concept of use value
above exchange value
. Practically, eco-socialists have developed different theories of ways to mobilise action on an internationalist
basis, developing networks of grassroots individuals and groups that can radically transform society through non-violent "prefigurative projects" for a post-capitalist
, post-statist
world.
by some environmentalists, social ecologists
and fellow socialists
as a productivist
who favoured the domination of nature, eco-socialists have revisited Marx's writings and believe that he "was a main originator of the ecological
world-view". Eco-socialist authors, like John Bellamy Foster
and Paul Burkett, point to Marx's discussion of a "metabolic rift" between man and nature, his statement that "private ownership of the globe by single individuals will appear quite absurd as private ownership of one man by another" and his observation that a society must "hand it [the planet] down to succeeding generations in an improved condition". Nonetheless, other eco-socialists feel that Marx overlooked a "recognition of nature in and for itself", ignoring its "receptivity" and treating nature as "subjected to labor from the start" in an "entirely active relationship".
Therefore William Morris
, the English
novelist, poet and designer, is largely credited with developing key principles of what was later called eco-socialism. During the 1880s and 1890s, Morris promoted his eco-socialist ideas within the Social Democratic Federation
and Socialist League
.
Following the Russian Revolution, some environmentalist
s and environmental scientist
s attempted to integrate ecological
consciousness into Bolshevism, although many such people were later purged by the Communist Party of the Soviet Union
. The "pre-revolutionary environmental movement", encouraged by revolutionary scientist Aleksandr Bogdanov and the Proletkul't
organisation, made efforts to "integrate production with natural laws and limits" in the first decade of Soviet
rule, before Joseph Stalin
attacked ecologists and the science of ecology and the Soviet Union fell into the pseudo-science of the state biologist Trofim Lysenko
, who "set about to rearrange the Russia
n map" in ignorance of environmental limits.
, suggesting a left-wing response to the Limits to Growth
model that predicted catastrophic resource depletion
and spurred environmentalism
, postulated that capitalist technologies were chiefly responsible for environmental degradation
, as opposed to population pressures
. East German dissident writer and activist Rudolf Bahro
published two books addressing the relationship between socialism and ecology - The Alternative in Eastern Europe and Socialism and Survival - which promoted a 'new party' and led to his arrest, for which he gained international notoriety.
At around the same time, Alan Roberts, an Australia
n Marxist
, posited that people's unfulfilled needs fuelled consumerism
. Fellow Australian Ted Trainer further called upon socialists to develop a system that met human needs, in contrast to the capitalist system of created wants. A key development in the 1980s was the creation of the journal "Capitalism, Nature, Socialism" in short CNS with James O'Connor
as founding editor and the first issue in 1988. The debates ensued led to a host of theoretical works by O'Connor, Carolyn Merchant
, Paul Burkett and others.
The Australian Democratic Socialist Party
launched the Green Left Weekly
newspaper in 1991, following a period of working within Green Alliance and Green Party groups in formation. This ceased when the Australian Greens
adopted a policy of proscription of other political groups in August 1991. The DSP also published a comprehensive policy resolution, "Socialism and Human Survival" in book form in 1990, with an expanded second edition in 1999 entitled "Environment, Capitalism & Socialism".
Mary Mellor and Ariel Salleh
address environmental issues within an eco-socialist paradigm. With the rising profile of the anti-globalization
movement in the Global South, an "environmentalism
of the poor", combining ecological
awareness and social justice
, has also become prominent. David Pepper also released his important work, Ecosocialism: From Deep Ecology to Social Justice, in 1994, which critiques the current approach of many within Green politics, particularly deep ecologists
.
In 2001, Joel Kovel
, a social scientist, psychiatrist
and former candidate for the Green Party of the United States
(GPUS) Presidential
nomination in 2000, and Michael Löwy
, an anthropologist
and member of the Reunified Fourth International
(a principal Trotskyist organisation), released An ecosocialist manifesto, which has been adopted by some organisations and suggests possible routes for the growth of eco-socialist consciousness. Kovel's 2002 work, The Enemy of Nature: The End of Capitalism or the End of the World?, is considered by many to be the most up-to-date exposition of eco-socialist thought.
In October 2007, the International Ecosocialist Network was founded in Paris
.
(GroenLinks), contain strong eco-socialist elements. Radical Red-green alliance
s have been formed in many countries by eco-socialists, radical Greens
and other radical left groups. In Denmark
, the Red-Green Alliance
was formed as a coalition of numerous radical parties. Within the European Parliament
, a number of far-left parties from Northern Europe
have organized themselves into the Nordic Green Left Alliance
. Red Greens feature heavily in the Green Party of Saskatchewan
(in Canada
but not necessarily affiliated to the Green Party of Canada
) and GPUS
.
The Green Party of England and Wales
features an eco-socialist group, Green Left, that was founded in June 2005 and whose members hold a number of influential positions within the party, including both the former Principal Speaker
s Siân Berry
and Dr. Derek Wall
, himself an eco-socialist and marxist academic, as well as prominent Green Party
candidate and human rights activist Peter Tatchell
. Many Marxist organisations also contain eco-socialists, as evidenced by Löwy's
involvement in the reunified Fourth International
and Socialist Resistance
, a British
Marxist newspaper that reports on eco-socialist issues and has published two collections of essays on eco-socialist thought: Ecosocialism or Barbarism?, edited by Jane Kelly and Sheila Malone, and The Global Fight for Climate Justice, edited by Ian Angus
with a foreword by Derek Wall.
of what can be called “existing socialist
” regimes, notably the People's Republic of China
. Pan Yue
, Deputy Director of the PRC
's State Environmental Protection Administration, has acknowledged the influence of eco-socialist theory on his championing of environmentalism
within China
, which has gained him international acclaim (including being nominated for the Person of the Year Award 2006 by The New Statesman
, a British
current affairs magazine). Yue
stated in an interview that, while he often finds eco-socialist theory "too idealistic" and lacking "ways of solving actual problems", he believes that it provides "political reference for China’s scientific view of development", "gives socialist ideology room to expand" and offers "a theoretical basis for the establishment of fair international rules" on the environment
.
He echoes much of eco-socialist thought, attacking international "environmental inequality", refusing to focus on technological fix
es and arguing for the construction of "a harmonious, resource-saving and environmentally-friendly society". He also shows a knowledge of eco-socialist history, from the convergence of radical green politics and socialism and their political "red-green alliance
s" in the post-Soviet
era. This focus on eco-socialism has informed an essay, On Socialist Ecological Civilisation, published in September 2006, which, according to chinadialogue, "sparked debate" in China
.
The current Constitution of Bolivia
, promulgated in 2009, is the first both ecologic and pro-socialist Constitution in the world, making the Bolivian state officially ecosocialist.
. The meeting attracted "more than 60 activists from Argentina, Australia, Belgium, Brazil, Canada, Cyprus, Denmark, France, Greece, Italy, Switzerland, United Kingdom, and the United States" and elected a Steering Committee featuring representatives from Britain, the United States, Canada, France, Greece, Argentina, Brazil and Australia, including Joel Kovel
, Michael Löwy
, Derek Wall
, Ian Angus
(editor of Climate and Capitalism in Canada
) and Ariel Salleh
. The Committee states that it wants "to incorporate members from China, India, Africa, Oceania and Eastern Europe". EIN held its second international conference in January 2009, in association with the next World Social Forum
in Brazil". The conference released The Belem Ecosocialist Declaration.
International networking by eco-socialists has already been seen in the Praxis Research and Education Center, a group on international researchers and activists. Based in Moscow
and established in 1997, Praxis, as well as publishing books "by libertarian socialists
, Marxist humanists
, anarchists
, [and] syndicalists
", running the Victor Serge
Library and opposing war in Chechnya
, states that it believes "that capitalism has brought life on the planet near to the brink of catastrophe, and that a form of ecosocialism needs to emerge to replace capitalism before it is too late".
, socialism, environmentalism
and ecology, eco-socialists generally believe that the capitalist
system is the cause of social exclusion
, inequality
and environmental degradation
through globalization
and imperialism under the supervision of repressive states and transstatal structures.
In the Ecosocialist manifesto, Kovel
and Löwy
suggest that capitalist expansion causes both "crises of ecology" through "rampant industrialization" and "societal breakdown" that springs "from the form of imperialism known as globalization". They believe that capitalism's expansion "exposes ecosystem
s" to pollutants, habitat destruction and resource depletion
, "reducing the sensuous vitality of nature
to the cold exchangeability required for the accumulation of capital
", while submerging "the majority of the world's people to a mere reservoir of labor power" as it penetrates communities through "consumerism
and depoliticization".
Other eco-socialists, like Wall
, highlight how, in the Global South, free-market capitalism structures economies to produce export-geared crops
that take water from traditional subsistence farms, increasing hunger and the likelihood of famine
; furthermore, forests are increasingly cleared
and enclosed
to produce cash crops that separate people from their local means of production
and aggravate poverty
. Wall
shows that many of the world's poor have access to the means of production
through "non-monetised communal means of production
", such as subsistence farming, but, despite providing for need and a level of prosperity, these are not included in conventional economics measures, like GNP
.
Wall
therefore views neo-liberal
globalization as "part of the long struggle of the state and commercial interests to steal from those who subsist" by removing "access to the resources that sustain ordinary people across the globe". Furthermore, Kovel sees the form of neo-liberal
globalization as "a return to the pure logic of capital" that "has effectively swept away measures which had inhibited capital’s aggressivity, replacing them with naked exploitation of humanity and nature"; for Kovel, this "tearing down of boundaries", which was "a deliberate response to a serious accumulation crisis" in the 1970s, has become the definition of modern 'globalization'.
Furthermore, Guha
and Martinez-Alier blame globalization for creating increased levels of waste
and pollution
, and then dumping the waste
on the most vulnerable in society, particularly those in the Global South. Others have also noted that capitalism disproportionately affects the poorest in the Global North as well, leading to examples of resistance such as the environmental justice
movement in the USA, consisting of working-class people and ethnic minorities who highlight the tendency for waste dumps, major road projects and incinerators to be constructed around socially excluded areas. However, as Wall
highlights, such campaigns are often ignored or persecuted precisely because they originate among the most marginalized in society: the African-American radical green religious group MOVE
, campaigning for ecological revolution and animal rights
from Philadelphia, had many members imprisoned or even killed by US authorities from the 1970s onwards.
Eco-socialism disagrees with the elite theories of capitalism, which tend to label a specific class
or social group as conspirators who construct a system that satisfies their greed and personal desires. Instead, eco-socialists suggest that the very system itself is self-perpetuating, fuelled by "extra-human" or "impersonal" forces. Kovel uses the Bhopal industrial disaster
as an example. Many anti-corporate
observers would blame the avarice of those at the top of many multi-national corporation
s, such as the Union Carbide
Corporation in Bhopal
, for seemingly isolated industrial accidents. Conversely, Kovel suggests that Union Carbide
were experiencing a decrease in sales that led to falling profits, which, due to stock market
conditions, translated into a drop in share values. The depreciation of share value made many shareholders sell their stock, weakening the company and leading to cost-cutting measures that eroded the safety procedures and mechanisms at the Bhopal site. Though this did not, in Kovel's mind, make the Bhopal disaster inevitable, he believes that it illustrates the effect market
forces can have on increasing the likelihood of ecological and social problems.
theories about the contradiction between use value
s and exchange value
s. Kovel
posits that, within a market economy
, goods are not produced to meet needs but are produced to be exchanged for money that we then use to acquire other goods; as we have to keep selling in order to keep buying, we must persuade others to buy our goods just to ensure our survival, which leads to the production of goods with no previous use that can be sold to sustain our ability to buy other goods.
Such goods, in an eco-socialist analysis, produce exchange value
s but have no use value
. Eco-socialists like Kovel stress that this contradiction has reached a destructive extent, where certain essential activities - such as caring for relatives full-time and basic subsistence - are unrewarded, while unnecessary commodities earn individuals huge fortunes and fuel consumerism
and resource depletion
.
argues for a "second contradiction" of underproduction, to complement Marx
's "first" contradiction of capital and labor. While the second contradiction is often considered a theory of environmental degradation, O'Connor's theory in fact goes much further. Building on the work of Karl Polanyi, along with Marx, O'Connor argues that capitalism necessarily undermines the "conditions of production" necessary to sustain the endless accumulation of capital. These conditions of production include soil, water, energy, and so forth. But they also include an adequate public education system, transportation infrastructures, and other services that are not produced directly by capital, but which capital needs in order accumulate effectively. As the conditions of production are exhausted, the costs of production for capital increase. For this reason, the second contradiction generates an underproduction crisis tendency, with the rising cost of inputs and labor, to complement the overproduction tendency of too many commodities for too few customers. Like Marx's contradiction of capital and labor, the second contradiction therefore threatens the system's existence.
In addition, O'Connor believes that, in order to remedy environmental contradictions, the capitalist system innovates new technologies that overcome existing problems but introduce new ones.
O'Connor cites nuclear power
as an example, which he sees as a form of producing energy that is advertised as an alternative to carbon-intensive, non-renewable fossil fuels, but creates long-term radioactive waste
and other dangers to health and security. While O'Connor believes that capitalism is capable of spreading out its economic supports so widely that it can afford to destroy one ecosystem
before moving onto another, he and many other eco-socialists now fear that, with the onset of globalization, the system is running out of new ecosystem
s. Kovel adds that capitalist firms have to continue to extract profit through a combination of intensive or extensive exploitation and selling to new markets, meaning that capitalism must grow
indefinitely to exist, which he thinks is impossible on a planet of finite resources.
expansion is seen by eco-socialists as being "hand in glove" with "corrupt and subservient client states" that repress dissent against the system, governed by international organisations "under the overall supervision of the Western powers
and the superpower
United States
", which subordinate peripheral nations economically and militarily. Kovel
further claims that capitalism itself spurs conflict and, ultimately, war
. Kovel states that the 'War on Terror
', between Islamist extremists and the USA, is caused by "oil imperialism", whereby the capitalist nations require control over sources of energy
, especially oil, which are necessary to continue intensive industrial growth
- in the quest for control of such resources, Kovel argues that the capitalist nations, specifically the USA, have come into conflict with the predominantly Muslim
nations where oil is often found.
Eco-socialists believe that state or self-regulation
of markets does not solve the crisis "because to do so requires setting limits upon accumulation", which is "unacceptable" for a growth
-orientated system; they believe that terrorism
and revolutionary impulses cannot be tackled properly "because to do so would mean abandoning the logic of empire
". Instead, eco-socialists feel that increasing repressive counter-terrorism
increases alienation
and causes further terrorism
and believe that state counter-terrorist
methods are, in Kovel and Löwy
's words, "evolving into a new and malignant variation of fascism
". They echo Rosa Luxemburg
's "stark choice" between "socialism or barbarism", which was believed to be a prediction of the coming of fascism
and further forms of destructive capitalism at the beginning of the twentieth century (Luxemburg
was in fact murdered by proto-fascist
Freikorps
in the revolutionary atmosphere of Germany
in 1919).
argue that almost all goods should be rationally produced and distributed by the state. On the other hand, more grassroots eco-socialists advocate the distribution of goods by society, for example through the extension of the library principle.
In practice however, a synthesis is emerging which calls for democratic regulation of industry in the interests of people and the environment, nationalisation of some key (environmental) industries, local democracy and an extension of co-ops and the library principle.
for not being overtly anti-capitalist
, for working within the existing capitalist
, statist system, for voluntarism
, or for reliance on technological fixes. The eco-socialist ideology is based on a critique of other forms of Green politics, including various forms of Green economics, Localism
, Deep Ecology
, Bioregionalism
and even some manifestations of radical green ideologies
such as Eco-feminism and Social Ecology
.
As Kovel puts it, eco-socialism differs from Green politics at the most fundamental level because the 'Four Pillars
' of Green politics (and the 'Ten Key Values' of the US Green Party
) do not include the demand for the emancipation of labour
and the end of the separation between producers and the means of production
. Many eco-socialists also oppose Malthusianism
and are alarmed by the gulf between Green politics in the Global North and the Global South.
who favour "working within the system". While eco-socialists like Kovel
recognise the ability of within-system approaches to raise awareness, and believe that "the struggle for an ecologically
rational world must include a struggle for the state", he believes that the mainstream Green movement is too easily co-opted by the current powerful socio-political forces as it "passes from citizen-based activism
to ponderous bureaucracies scuffling for 'a seat at the table'".
For Kovel, capitalism is "happy to enlist" the Green movement for "convenience", "control over popular dissent" and "rationalization". He further attacks within-system green initiatives like carbon trading
, which he sees as a "capitalist shell game" that turns pollution
"into a fresh source of profit". Brian Tokar has further criticised carbon trading in this way, suggesting that it augments existing class inequality and gives the "largest 'players'... substantial control over the whole 'game'".
In addition, Kovel criticises the "defeatism" of voluntarism
in some local forms of environmentalism
that do not connect together: he suggests that they can be "drawn off into individualism
" or co-opted to the demands of capitalism, as in the case of certain recycling
projects, where citizens are "induced to provide free labor" to waste management
industries who are involved in the "capitalization of nature". He labels the notion on voluntarism
"ecopolitics
without struggle".
Technological fixes to ecological
problems are also rejected by eco-socialists. Saral Sarkar has updated the thesis of 1970s 'limits to growth
' to exemplify the limits of new capitalist technologies such as hydrogen fuel cells, which require large amounts of energy to split molecules to obtain hydrogen. Furthermore, Kovel notes that "events in nature are reciprocal and multi-determined" and can therefore not be predictably "fixed"; socially, technologies cannot solve social problems because they are not "mechanical". He posits an eco-socialist analysis, developed from Marx
, that patterns of production and social organisation are more important than the forms of technology used within a given configuration of society.
Under capitalism
, he suggests that technology "has been the sine qua non of growth
" - thus he believes that, even in a world with hypothetical "free energy", the effect would be to lower the cost of automobile
production, leading to the massive overproduction
of vehicle
s, "collapsing infrastructure", chronic resource depletion
and the "paving over" of the "remainder of nature
". In the modern world, Kovel considers the supposed efficiency of new post-industrial commodities is a "plain illusion", as miniaturized
components involve many substances and are therefore non-recyclable
(and, theoretically, only simple substances could be retrieved by burning out-of-date equipment, releasing more pollutants). He is quick to warn "environmental liberals
" against over-selling the virtues of renewable energies
that cannot meet the mass energy consumption of the era; although he would still support renewable energy
projects, he believes it is more important to restructure societies to reduce energy use before relying on renewable energy
technologies alone.
" or the "ecological wing of mainstream economics" for being "uninterested in social transformation". He furthers rejects the Neo-Smithian
school, who believe in Adam Smith
's vision of "a capitalism of small producers, freely exchanging with each other", which is self-regulating and competitive.
The school is represented by thinkers like David Korten
who believe in "regulated markets" checked by government
and civil society
but, for Kovel, they do not provide a critique of the expansive nature of capitalism away from localised production and ignore "questions of class
, gender
or any other category of domination". Kovel also criticises their "fairy-tale" view of history, which refers to the abuse of "natural capital
" by the materialism
of the Scientific Revolution
, an assumption that, in Kovel's eyes, seems to suggest that "nature had toiled to put the gift of capital into human hands", rather than capitalism being a product of social relations in human history.
Other forms of Community-based economics
are also rejected by eco-socialists such as Kovel, including followers of E. F. Schumacher
and some members of the Cooperative movement, for advocating "no more than a very halting and isolated first step". He thinks that their principles are "only partially realizable within the institutions of cooperatives in capitalist society" because "the internal cooperation" of cooperatives is "forever hemmed in and compromised" by the need to expand value and compete within the market
. Marx
also believed that cooperative
s within capitalism make workers into "their own capitalist... by enabling them to use the means of production
for the employment of their own labour".
For Kovel and other eco-socialists, Community-based economics
and Green Localism
are "a fantasy" because "strict localism
belongs to the aboriginal stages of society" and would be an "ecological nightmare at present population levels" due to "heat losses from a multitude of dispersed sites, the squandering of scarce resources, the needless reproduction of effort, and cultural impoverishment". While he feels that small-scale production units are "an essential part of the path towards an ecological society", he sees them not as "an end in itself"; in his view, small enterprises can be either capitalist or socialist
in their configuration and therefore must be "consistently anti-capitalist
", through recognition and support of the emancipation of labour, and exist "in a dialectic with the whole of things", as human society will need large-scale projects, such as transport infrastructures.
He highlights the work of Herman Daly
, who exemplifies what eco-socialists see as the good and bad points of ecological economics
- while he offers a critique of capitalism and a desire for "workers ownership", he only believes in workers ownership "kept firmly within a capitalist market", ignoring the eco-socialist desire for struggle in the emancipation of labour and hoping that the interests of labour and management today can be improved so that they are "in harmony".
hold markedly opposite views. Eco-socialists like Kovel have attacked deep ecology
because, like other forms of Green politics and Green economics, it features "virtuous souls" who have "no internal connection with the critique of capitalism and the emancipation of labor". Kovel is particularly scathing about deep ecology
and its "fatuous pronouncement" that Green politics is "neither left nor right, but ahead", which, for him, ignores the notion that "that which does not confront the system comes its instrument".
Even more scathingly, Kovel suggests that in "its effort to decentre humanity within nature", deep ecologists
can "go too far" and argue for the "splitting away of unwanted people", as evidenced by their desire to preserve wilderness
by removing the groups that have lived there "from time immemorial
". Kovel thinks that this lends legitimacy to "capitalist
elites", like the US State Department and the World Bank
, who can make preservation of wilderness
a part of their projects that "have added value as sites for ecotourism
" but remove people from their land. Between 1986 and 1996, Kovel notes that over three million people were displaced by "conservation projects"; in the making of the US National Parks, three hundred Shoshone
Indians
were killed in the development of Yosemite.
Kovel believes that deep ecology
has affected the rest of the Green movement
and led to calls from restrictions on immigration
, "often allying with reactionaries in a... cryptically racist
quest". Indeed, he finds traces of deep ecology
in the "biological reduction" of Nazism
, an ideology many "organicist thinkers" have found appealing, including Herbert Gruhl, a founder of the German Green Party (who subsequently left when it became more Left-wing) and originator of the phrase "neither left nor right, but ahead". Kovel warns that, while 'ecofascism
' is confined to a narrow band of far right
intellectuals and disaffected white power skinheads who involved themselves alongside far left
groups in the anti-globalization movement
, it may be "imposed as a revolution from above
to install an authoritarian
regime in order to preserve the main workings of the system" in times of crisis.
, a philosophy developed by writers like Kirkpatrick Sale
who believe in the self-sufficiency of "appropriate bioregional boundaries" drawn up by inhabitants of "an area", has been thoroughly critiqued by Kovel
, who fears that the "vagueness" of the area will lead to conflict and further boundaries between communities. While Sale
cites the bioregional
living of Native Americans
, Kovel notes that such ideas are impossible to translate to populations of modern proportions, and evidences the fact that Native Americans
held land in commons, rather than private property
- thus, for eco-socialists, bioregionalism
provides no understanding of what is needed to transform society, and what the inevitable "response of the capitalist state" would be to people constructing bioregionalism
.
Kovel also attacks the problems of self-sufficiency. Where Sale
believes in self-sufficient regions "each developing the energy of its peculiar ecology", such as "wood in the northwest [USA]", Kovel asks "how on earth" these can be made sufficient for regional needs, and notes the environmental damage of converting Seattle into a "forest-destroying and smoke-spewing wood-burning" city. Kovel also questions Sale
's insistence on bioregions
that do "not require connections with the outside, but within strict limits", and whether this precludes journeys to visit family members and other forms of travel.
as it "is at the root of patriarchy
and class
". Nevertheless, while Kovel believes that "any path out of capitalism must also be eco-feminist", he criticises types of ecofeminism that are not anti-capitalist
and can "essentialize women's closeness to nature and build from there, submerging history into nature", becoming more at place in the "comforts of the New Age
Growth Centre". These limitations, for Kovel, "keep ecofeminism from becoming a coherent social movement".
, eco-socialists still see themselves as distinct. Kovel
believes this is because Social Ecologists see hierarchy "in-itself" as the cause of ecological
destruction, whereas eco-socialists focus on gender
and class
domination embodied in capitalism and recognise that forms of authority that are not "an expropriation of human power for... self-aggrandizement", such as a student-teacher relationship that is "reciprocal and mutual", are beneficial.
In practice, Kovel describes Social Ecology
as continuing the anarchist
tradition of non-violent direct action, which is "necessary" but "not sufficient" because "it leaves unspoken the question of building an ecological society beyond capital
". Furthermore, Social Ecologists and anarchists
tend to focus on the state alone, rather than the class relations behind state domination (in the view of Marxists
). Kovel fears that this is political, springing from historic hostility to Marxism
among anarchists and sectarianism, which he points out as a fault of the "brilliant" but "dogmatic" founder of Social Ecology, Murray Bookchin
.
and eco-socialism overlap within the Green movement
because both address over-industrialism, and despite the fact that Eco-socialists, like many within the Green movement, are described as neo-Malthusian because of their criticism of economic growth
, Eco-socialists are opposed to Malthusianism
. This divergence stems from the difference between Marxist
and Malthusian
examinations of social injustice - whereas Marx blames inequality
on class
injustice, Malthus
argued that the working-class remained poor because of their greater fertility
and birth rate
s.
Neo-Malthusians have slightly modified this analysis by increasing their focus on overconsumption - nonetheless, eco-socialists find this attention inadequate. They point to the fact that Malthus did not thoroughly examine ecology and that Garrett Hardin
, a key Neo-Malthusian, suggested that further enclosed
and privatised land, as opposed to commons, would solve the chief environmental problem, which Hardin labeled the 'Tragedy of the Commons
'.
and Martinez-Alier attack the gulf between what they see as the two "varieties of environmentalism
" - the environmentalism of the North, an aesthetic environmentalism that is the privilege of wealthy people who no longer have basic material concerns, and the environmentalism of the South, where people's local environment is a source of communal wealth and such issues are a question of survival. Nonetheless, other eco-socialists, such as Wall
, have also pointed out that capitalism disproportionately affects the poorest in the Global North as well, leading to examples of resistance such as the environmental justice
movement in the US and groups like MOVE
.
" and thus "the name, and the reality" must "become adequate for this time". Eco-socialists have nonetheless often diverged with other Marxist movements. Eco-socialism has also been partly influenced by and associated with agrarian socialism
as well as some forms of Christian socialism
, especially in the United States
.
, eco-socialism is "the realization of the “first-epoch” socialisms" by resurrecting the notion of "free development of all producers", distancing themselves from "the attenuated, reformist aims of social democracy
and the productivist
structures of the bureaucratic variations
of socialism", such as forms of Leninism
and Stalinism
. They ground the failure of past socialist movements in "underdevelopment in the context of hostility by existing capitalist
powers", which led to "the denial of internal democracy" and "emulation of capitalist productivism
". Kovel believes that the forms of 'actually existing socialism' consisted of "public ownership of the means of production
", rather than meeting "the true definition" of socialism as "a free association of producers
", with the Party-State bureaucracy acting as the "alienating substitute 'public'".
In analysing the Russian Revolution
, Kovel feels that "conspiratorial" revolutionary movements "cut off from the development of society" will "find society an inert mass requiring leadership from above". From this, he notes that the anti-democratic Tsarist
heritage meant that the Bolsheviks, who were aided into power by World War One
, were a minority who, when faced with a counter-revolution and invading Western
powers, continued "the extraordinary needs of 'war communism
'", which "put the seal of authoritarianism
" on the revolution; thus, for Kovel, Lenin
and Trotsky
"resorted to terror", shut down the Soviets
(workers' councils) and emulated "capitalist efficiency and productivism
as a means of survival", setting the stage for Stalinism
.
Lenin
, in Kovel's eyes, came to oppose the nascent Bolshevik environmentalism
and its champion Aleksandr Bogdanov, who was later attacked for "idealism"; Kovel describes Lenin
's philosophy as "a sharply dualistic materialism
, rather similar to the Cartesian
separation of matter and consciousness, and perfectly tooled... to the active working over of the dead, dull matter by the human hand", which led him to want to overcome Russia
n backwardness through rapid industrialization. This tendency was, according to Kovel, augmented by a desire to catch-up with the West
and the "severe crisis" of the revolution's first years.
Furthermore, Kovel quotes Trotsky
, who believed in a Communist
"superman" who would "learn how to move rivers and mountains". Kovel believes that, in Stalin
's "revolution from above" and mass terror in response to the early 1930s economic crisis, Trotsky
's writings "were given official imprimatur", despite the fact that Trotsky
himself was eventually purged, as Stalinism
attacked "the very notion of ecology... in addition to ecologies". Kovel adds that Stalin
"would win the gold medal for enmity to nature", and that, in the face of massive environmental degradation
, the inflexible Soviet
bureaucracy became increasingly inefficient and unable to emulate capitalist accumulation, leading to a "vicious cycle" that led to its collapse.
in general as treating ecology "as an afterthought" and holding "a naive faith in the ecological capacities of a working-class defined by generations of capitalist
production". He exemplifies David McNally
, who advocated increasing consumption levels under socialism, which, for Kovel, contradicts any notion of natural limits. He also criticises McNally's belief in releasing the "positive side of capital
's self-expansion" after the emancipation of labor; instead, Kovel argues that a socialist society would "seek not to become larger" but would rather become "more realized", choosing sufficiency and eschewing economic growth
. Kovel further adds that the socialist
movement was historically conditioned by its origins in the era of industrialization so that, when modern socialists
like McNally
advocate a socialism that "cannot be at the expense of the range of human satisfaction", they fail "to recognize that these satisfactions can be problematic with respect to nature when they have been historically shaped by the domination of nature".
by freely associated producers and restoration of the Commons. To get to an eco-socialist society, eco-socialists advocate working-class anti-capitalist
resistance but also believe that there is potential for agency in autonomous, grassroots individuals and groups across the world who can build "prefigurative" projects for non-violent radical social change.
These prefigurative steps go "beyond the market
and the state" and base production on the enhancement of use value
s, leading to the internationalization of resistance communities in an 'Eco-socialist Party' or network of grassroots groups focused on non-violent, radical social transformation. An 'Eco-socialist revolution' is then carried out.
' movement in which workers refuse to participate in projects that are ecologically harmful. Similarly, Kovel
focuses on working-class involvement in the formation of eco-socialist parties or their increased involvement in existing Green Parties; however, he believes that, unlike many other forms of socialist
analysis, "there is no privileged agent" or revolutionary class
, and that there is potential for agency in numerous autonomous, grassroots individuals and groups who can build "prefigurative" projects for non-violent radical social change. He defines "prefiguration" as "the potential for the given to contain the lineaments of what is to be", meaning that "a moment toward the future exists embedded in every point of the social organism where a need arises".
If "everything has prefigurative potential", Kovel notes that forms of potential ecological
production will be "scattered", and thus suggests that "the task is to free them and connect them". While all "human ecosystem
s" have "ecosocialist potential", Kovel points out that ones such as the World Bank
have low potential, whereas internally democratic anti-globalization
"affinity groups" have a high potential through a dialectic that involves the "active bringing and holding together of negations", such as the group acting as an alternative institution ("production of an ecological
/socialist
alternative") and trying to shut down a G8
summit meeting ("resistance to capital"). Therefore "practices that in the same motion enhance use-values and diminish exchange-values are the ideal" for eco-socialists.
s, leading to an "activation" of potentials in others that will "spread across the whole social field" as "a new set of orienting principles" that define an ideology or "'party-life' formation".
In the short-term, eco-socialists like Kovel advocate activities that have the “promise of breaking down the commodity form”. This includes organizing labor, which is a “reconfiguring of the use-value of labor power”; forming cooperatives, allowing “a relatively free association of labor”; forming localised currencies, which he sees as “undercutting the value-basis of money”; and supporting “radical media” that, in his eyes, involve an “undoing of the fetishism of commodities”. Arran Gare
, Wall
and Kovel have advocated economic localisation
in the same vein as many in the Green movement
, although they stress that it must be a prefigurative step rather than an end in itself.
Kovel also advises political parties attempting to “democratize the state” that there should be “dialogue but no compromise” with established political parties, and that there must be “a continual association of electoral work with movement work” to avoid “being sucked back into the system”. Such parties, he believes, should focus on “the local rungs of the political system” first, before running national campaigns that “challenge the existing system by the elementary means of exposing its broken promises”.
Kovel believes in building prefigurations around forms of production based on use value
s, which will provide a practical vision of a post-capitalist
, post-statist
system. Such projects include Indymedia ("a democratic rendering of the use-values of new technologies such as the Internet
, and a continual involvement in wider struggle"), open-source software
, Wikipedia
, public libraries and many other initiatives, especially those developed within the anti-globalisation movement. These strategies, in Wall
's words, "go beyond the market
and the state" by rejecting the supposed dichotomy between private enterprise
and state-owned
production, while also rejecting any combination of the two through a mixed economy
. He states that these present forms of “amphibious politics”, which are “half in the dirty water of the present but seeking to move on to a new, unexplored territory”.
Wall suggests that open source software, for example, opens up “a new form of commons regime in cyberspace
”, which he praises as production “for the pleasure of invention” that gives “access to resources without exchange”. He believes that open source
has “bypassed” both the market
and the state, and could provide “developing countries with free access to vital computer software”. Furthermore, he suggests that an “open source
economy” means that “the barrier between user and provider is eroded”, allowing for “cooperative creativity”. He links this to Marxism
and the notion of usufruct
, asserting that “Marx would have been a Firefox user”.
division of labor which divides workers. However, Kovel believes that examples like the Christian
Bruderhof Communities
(despite elements of patriarchy
that he attacks) show that "communistic" organizations can "survive rather well in a heavily industrialized market
" if they are "protected" from the dependence on the market
by "anti-capitalist
intentionality". He further posits that class struggle
is "internationalized in the face of globalization", as evidenced by a wave of strikes
across the Global South in the first half of the year 2000; indeed, he says that "labor's most cherished values are already immanently ecocentric".
Kovel therefore thinks that these universalizing tendencies must lead to the formation of "a consciously 'Ecosocialist Party'" that is neither like a parliamentary or vanguardist party. Instead, Kovel advocates a form of political party
"grounded in communities of resistance", where delegates from these communities form the core of the party's activists, and these delegates and the "open and transparent" assembly they form are subject to recall
and regular rotation of members. He holds up the Zapatista Army of National Liberation
(EZLN) and the Gaviotas
movement as examples of such communities, which "are produced outside capitalist circuits" and show that "there can be no single way valid for all peoples".
Nonetheless, he also firmly believes in connecting these movements, stating that "ecosocialism will be international or it will be nothing" and hoping that the Ecosocialist Party can retain the autonomy of local communities while supporting them materially. With an ever-expanding party, Kovel hopes that "defections" by capitalists
will occur, leading eventually to the armed forces
and police
who, in joining the revolution
, will signify that "the turning point is reached".
and the formation of a 'World People's Trade Organisation' (WPTO) that democratizes and improves world trade
through the calculation of an 'Ecological Price' (EP) for goods. This would then be followed by a transformation of socioeconomic conditions towards ecological production, commons land and notions of usufruct
(that seek to improve the common property possessed by society) to end private property
. Eco-socialists assert that this must be carried out with adherence to non-violence
use the term “Eco-socialist revolution” to describe the transition to an eco-socialist world society. In the immediate socio-political transition, he believes that four groups will emerge from the revolution – revolutionaries, those “whose productive activity is directly compatible with ecological production” (such as nurses, schoolteachers, librarians, independent farmers and many other examples), those “whose pre-revolutionary practice was given over to capital
” (including the bourgeoisie
, advertising executives and more) and “the workers whose activity added surplus value to capitalist commodities”.
In terms of political organisation, he advocates an “interim assembly” made up of the revolutionaries that can “devise incentives to make sure that vital functions are maintained” (such as short-term continuation of “differential remuneration” for labor), “handle the redistribution of social roles and assets”, convene “in widespread locations”, and send delegates to regional, state, national and international organisations, where every level has an “executive council” that is rotated and can be recalled. From there, he asserts that “productive communities” will “form the political as well as economic unit of society” and “organize others” to make a transition to eco-socialist production.
He adds that people will be allowed to be members of any community they choose with “associate membership” of others, such as a doctor
having main membership of healthcare communities as a doctor
and associate membership of child-rearing communities as a father. Each locality would, in Kovel’s eyes, require one community that administered the areas of jurisdiction through an elected assembly. High-level assemblies would have additional “supervisory” roles over localities to monitor the development of ecosystem
ic integrity, and administer “society-wide services” like transport in “state-like functions”, before the interim assembly can transfer responsibilities to “the level of the society as a whole through appropriate and democratically responsive committees”.
to retain its use in “enabling exchanges” while reducing its functions as “a commodity in its own right” and “repository of value”. He argues for directing money
to “enhancement of use-values” through a “subsidization of use-values” that “preserves the functioning core of the economy while gaining time and space for rebuilding it”. Internationally, he believes in the immediate cessation of speculation
in currencies
(“breaking down the function of money as commodity, and redirecting funds on use-values”), the cancellation of the debt of the Global South (“breaking the back of the value function” of money) and the redirecting the “vast reservoir of mainly phony value” to reparations and “ecologically sound development”. He suggests the end of military aid and other forms of support to “comprador elites in the South” will eventually “lead to their collapse”.
In terms of trade
, Kovel advocates a ‘World People’s Trade Organization’ (WPTO), “responsible to a confederation of popular bodies”, in which “the degree of control over trade
is... proportional to involvement with production”, meaning that “farmers would have a special say over food trade” and so on. He posits that the WPTO should have an elected council that will oversee a reform of prices in favour of an ‘Ecological Price’ (EP) “determined by the difference between actual use-values and fully realized ones”, thus having low tariff
s for forms of ecological production like organic agriculture; he also envisages the high tariff
s on non-ecological production providing subsidies to ecological production units.
The EP would also internalize the costs of current externalities
(like pollution
) and “would be set as a function of the distance traded”, reducing the effects of long-distance transport like carbon emissions and increased packaging of goods. He thinks that this will provide a “standard of transformation” for non-ecological industries, like the automobile industry, thus spurring changes towards ecological production.
production" that, according to Kovel
, goes beyond the socialist
vision of the emancipation of labor to "the realization of use-values and the appropriation of intrinsic value". He envisions a form of production in which "the making of a thing becomes part of the thing made" so that, using a high quality meal as an analogy, "pleasure would obtain for the cooking of the meal" - thus activities "reserved as hobbies under capitalism" would "compose the fabric of everyday life" under eco-socialism.
This, for Kovel, is achieved if labor is "freely chosen and developed... with a fully realized use-value" achieved by a "negation" of exchange-value, and he exemplifies the Food Not Bombs
project for adopting this. He believes that the notion of "mutual recognition... for the process as well as the product" will avoid exploitation
and hierarchy
. With production allowing humanity to "live more directly and receptively embedded in nature
", Kovel predicts that "a reorientation of human need" will occur that recognises ecological
limits and sees technology
as "fully participant in the life of eco-systems", thus removing it from profit-making exercises.
In the course on a Eco-socialist revolution, writers like Kovel advocate the a “rapid conversion to ecosocialist production” for all enterprises, followed by “restoring ecosystem
ic integrity to the workplace” through steps like workers ownership. He then believes that the new enterprises can build “socially developed plans” of production for societal needs, such as efficient light-rail transport components. At the same time, Kovel argues for the transformation of essential but, under capitalism, non-productive labour, such as child care, into productive labour, “thereby giving reproductive labour a status equivalent to productive labour”.
During such a transition, he believes that income should be guaranteed and that money will still be used under “new conditions of value… according to use and to the degree to which ecosystem integrity is developed and advanced by any particular production”. Within this structure, Kovel asserts that markets and will become unnecessary – although “market phenomena” in personal exchanges and other small instances might be adopted – and communities and elected assemblies will democratically decide on the allocation of resources. Istvan Meszaros believes that such "genuinely planned and self-managed (as opposed to bureaucratically planned from above) productive activities" are essential if eco-socialism is to meet its "fundamental objectives".
Eco-socialists are quick to assert that their focus on “production” does not mean that there will be an increase in production and labor under Eco-socialism. Kovel thinks that the emancipation of labor and the realization of use-value will allow “the spheres of work and culture to be reintegrated”. He cites the example of Paraguayan Indian communities (organised by Jesuits) in the eighteenth century who made sure that all community members learned musical instruments, and had labourers take musical instruments to the fields and takes turns playing music or harvesting.
and Martinez-Alier, echo subsistence eco-feminists like Vandana Shiva
when they argue for the restoration of commons land over private property
. They blame ecological
degradation on the inclination to short-term, profit-inspired decisions inherent within a market
system. For them, privatization
of land strips people of their local communal resources in the name of creating markets for neo-liberal globalisation, which benefits a minority. In their view, successful commons systems have been set up around the world throughout history to manage areas cooperatively, based on long-term needs and sustainability
instead of short-term profit.
Many eco-socialists focus on a modified version of the notion of ‘Usufruct
’ to replace capitalist private property
arrangements. As a legal term, Usufruct
refers to the legal right to use and derive profit or benefit from property
that belongs to another person, as long as the property is not damaged. According to eco-socialists like Kovel, a modern interpretation of the idea is “where one uses, enjoys – and through that, improves – another’s property”, as its Latin
etymology “condenses the two meanings of use – as in use-value, and enjoyment – and as in the gratification expressed in freely associated labour”. The idea, according to Kovel, has roots in the Code of Hammurabi
and was first mentioned in Roman law
“where it applied to ambiguities between masters and slaves with respect to property”; it also features in Islam
ic Sharia law
, Aztec law and the Napoleonic Code
.
Crucially for eco-socialists, Marx mentioned the idea when he stated that human beings are no more than the planet’s “usufruct
aries, and, like boni patres familias, they must hand it down to succeeding generations in an improved condition”. Kovel and others have taken on this reading, asserting that, in an eco-socialist society, “everyone will have... rights of use and ownership over those means of production necessary to express the creativity of human nature”, namely “a place of one’s own” to decorate to personal taste, some personal possessions, the body and its attendant sexual and reproductive rights
.
However, Kovel sees property
as “self-contradictory” because individuals emerge “in a tissue of social relations” and “nested circles”, with the self at the centre and extended circles where “issues of sharing arise from early childhood on”. He believes that “the full self is enhanced more by giving than by taking” and that eco-socialism is realized when material possessions weigh “lightly” upon the self – thus restoration of use-value allows things to be taken “concretely and sensuously” but “lightly, since things are enjoyed for themselves and not as buttresses for a shaky ego”.
This, for Kovel, reverses what Marxists see as the commodity fetishism
and atomization of individuals (through the “unappeasable craving” for “having and excluding others from having”) under capitalism. Under eco-socialism, he therefore believes that enhancement of use-value will lead to differentiated ownership between the individual and the collective, where there are “distinct limits on the amount of property
individuals control” and no-one can take control of resources that “would permit the alienation of means of production
from another”. He then hopes that the “hubris” of the notion of “ownership of the planet” will be replaced with usufruct
.
, generally believe that "violence is the rupturing of ecosystem
s" and is therefore "deeply contrary to ecosocialist values". Kovel believes that revolutionary movements must prepare for post-revolutionary violence from counter-revolutionary sources by "prior development of the democratic sphere" within the movement, because "to the degree that people are capable of self-government, so will they turn away from violence and retribution" for "a self-governed people cannot be pushed around by any alien government". It is therefore essential, in Kovel's
view, that the revolution "takes place in" or spreads quickly to the USA, which "is capital's gendarme and will crush any serious threat", and that revolutionaries reject the death penalty and retribution against former opponents or counter-revolutionaries.
or Green movement
s themselves, along with conservative criticisms.
Some socialists
are critical of the word 'eco-socialism'. David Reilly, who questions whether his argument is improved by the use of an "exotic word", argues instead that the "real socialism" is "also a green or 'eco'" one that you get to "by dint of struggle". Other socialists, like Paul Hampton
of the Alliance for Workers' Liberty
(a British
third camp socialist
party), see eco-socialism as "classless ecology", wherein eco-socialists have "given up on the working class
" as the privileged agent of struggle by "borrowing bits from Marx but missing the locus of Marxist politics".
Writing in Capitalism Nature Socialism, Doug Boucher, Peter Caplan, David Schwartzman and Jane Zara criticise eco-socialists in general (and Joel Kovel
in particular) for a deterministic "catastrophism
" that overlooks "the countervailing tendencies of both popular struggles and the efforts of capitalist governments to rationalize the system" and the "accomplishments of the labor movement" that "demonstrate that despite the interests and desires of capitalists, progress toward social justice
is possible". They argue that an ecological socialism must be "built on hope, not fear".
Conservatives
have criticised the perceived opportunism of left-wing
groups who have increased their focus on green issues since the fall of Communism
. Fred L. Smith
Jr., President of the Competitive Enterprise Institute
think-tank, exemplifies the conservative critique of left Greens, attacking the "pantheism
" of the Green movement and conflating "eco-paganism
" with eco-socialism. Like many conservative critics, Smith uses the term 'eco-socialism' to attack non-socialist environmentalists
for advocating restrictions on the free market
, although he does recognise and condemn the influence of socialist ideals on many in the Green movement who reject private property
, and instead advocates market
-based solutions to ecological problems. He nevertheless wrongly claims that eco-socialists endorse "the Malthusian
view of the relationship between man and nature", and states that Al Gore
, a former Democratic Party
Vice President of the United States
and now a climate change
campaigner, is an eco-socialist, despite the fact that Gore
has never used this term and is not recognised as a such by other followers of either Green politics or socialism.
Some environmentalists
and conservation
ists have criticised eco-socialism from within the Green movement. In a review of Joel Kovel
's The Enemy of Nature, David M. Johns criticises eco-socialism for not offering "suggestions about near term conservation
policy" and focusing exclusively on long-term societal transformation. Johns believes that species extinction "started much earlier" than capitalism and suggests that eco-socialism neglects the fact that an ecological
society will need to transcend the destructiveness found in "all large-scale societies". the very tendency that Kovel himself attacks among capitalists and traditional leftists who attempt to reduce nature to "linear" human models. Johns questions whether non-hierarchical social systems can provide for billions of people, and criticises eco-socialists for neglecting issues of population pressure. Furthermore, Johns describes Kovel's argument that human hierarchy is founded on raiding to steal women as "archaic".
Ideology
An ideology is a set of ideas that constitutes one's goals, expectations, and actions. An ideology can be thought of as a comprehensive vision, as a way of looking at things , as in common sense and several philosophical tendencies , or a set of ideas proposed by the dominant class of a society to...
merging aspects of Marxism
Marxism
Marxism is an economic and sociopolitical worldview and method of socioeconomic inquiry that centers upon a materialist interpretation of history, a dialectical view of social change, and an analysis and critique of the development of capitalism. Marxism was pioneered in the early to mid 19th...
, socialism
Socialism
Socialism is an economic system characterized by social ownership of the means of production and cooperative management of the economy; or a political philosophy advocating such a system. "Social ownership" may refer to any one of, or a combination of, the following: cooperative enterprises,...
, green politics
Green politics
Green politics is a political ideology that aims for the creation of an ecologically sustainable society rooted in environmentalism, social liberalism, and grassroots democracy...
, ecology
Ecology
Ecology is the scientific study of the relations that living organisms have with respect to each other and their natural environment. Variables of interest to ecologists include the composition, distribution, amount , number, and changing states of organisms within and among ecosystems...
and alter-globalization
Alter-globalization
Alter-globalization is the name of a social movement that supports global cooperation and interaction, but which opposes the negative effects of economic globalization, feeling that it often works to the detriment of, or does not...
. Eco-socialists generally believe that the expansion of the capitalist
Capitalism
Capitalism is an economic system that became dominant in the Western world following the demise of feudalism. There is no consensus on the precise definition nor on how the term should be used as a historical category...
system is the cause of social exclusion
Social exclusion
Social exclusion is a concept used in many parts of the world to characterise contemporary forms of social disadvantage. Dr. Lynn Todman, director of the Institute on Social Exclusion at the Adler School of Professional Psychology, suggests that social exclusion refers to processes in which...
, poverty
Poverty
Poverty is the lack of a certain amount of material possessions or money. Absolute poverty or destitution is inability to afford basic human needs, which commonly includes clean and fresh water, nutrition, health care, education, clothing and shelter. About 1.7 billion people are estimated to live...
, war
War
War is a state of organized, armed, and often prolonged conflict carried on between states, nations, or other parties typified by extreme aggression, social disruption, and usually high mortality. War should be understood as an actual, intentional and widespread armed conflict between political...
and environmental degradation
Environmental degradation
Environmental degradation is the deterioration of the environment through depletion of resources such as air, water and soil; the destruction of ecosystems and the extinction of wildlife...
through globalization
Globalization
Globalization refers to the increasingly global relationships of culture, people and economic activity. Most often, it refers to economics: the global distribution of the production of goods and services, through reduction of barriers to international trade such as tariffs, export fees, and import...
and imperialism
Imperialism
Imperialism, as defined by Dictionary of Human Geography, is "the creation and/or maintenance of an unequal economic, cultural, and territorial relationships, usually between states and often in the form of an empire, based on domination and subordination." The imperialism of the last 500 years,...
, under the supervision of repressive states
State (polity)
A state is an organized political community, living under a government. States may be sovereign and may enjoy a monopoly on the legal initiation of force and are not dependent on, or subject to any other power or state. Many states are federated states which participate in a federal union...
and transnational structures.
Eco-socialists advocate the dismantling of capitalism and the state, focusing on common ownership of the means of production
Means of production
Means of production refers to physical, non-human inputs used in production—the factories, machines, and tools used to produce wealth — along with both infrastructural capital and natural capital. This includes the classical factors of production minus financial capital and minus human capital...
by freely associated producers and restoration of the commons.
Ideology
Eco-socialists are critical of many past and existing forms of both Green politicsGreen politics
Green politics is a political ideology that aims for the creation of an ecologically sustainable society rooted in environmentalism, social liberalism, and grassroots democracy...
and socialism
Socialism
Socialism is an economic system characterized by social ownership of the means of production and cooperative management of the economy; or a political philosophy advocating such a system. "Social ownership" may refer to any one of, or a combination of, the following: cooperative enterprises,...
. They are often described as Red Greens - adherents to Green politics with clear anti-capitalist
Anti-capitalism
Anti-capitalism describes a wide variety of movements, ideas, and attitudes which oppose capitalism. Anti-capitalists, in the strict sense of the word, are those who wish to completely replace capitalism with another system....
views, often inspired by Marxism
Marxism
Marxism is an economic and sociopolitical worldview and method of socioeconomic inquiry that centers upon a materialist interpretation of history, a dialectical view of social change, and an analysis and critique of the development of capitalism. Marxism was pioneered in the early to mid 19th...
(Red Greens should be contrasted with Blue Greens).
The term Watermelon is commonly applied, often as an insult, to describe professed Greens
Green politics
Green politics is a political ideology that aims for the creation of an ecologically sustainable society rooted in environmentalism, social liberalism, and grassroots democracy...
who seem to put "social justice
Social justice
Social justice generally refers to the idea of creating a society or institution that is based on the principles of equality and solidarity, that understands and values human rights, and that recognizes the dignity of every human being. The term and modern concept of "social justice" was coined by...
" goals above ecological
Ecology
Ecology is the scientific study of the relations that living organisms have with respect to each other and their natural environment. Variables of interest to ecologists include the composition, distribution, amount , number, and changing states of organisms within and among ecosystems...
ones, implying they are "green on the outside but red on the inside"; the term is usually attributed to either Petr Beckmann
Petr Beckmann
Petr Beckmann was a statistician and physicist who became a well-known advocate of libertarianism and nuclear power...
or, more frequently, Warren T. Brookes
Warren T. Brookes
Warren T. Brookes was a longtime journalist with the Boston Herald and the Detroit News and a nationally-syndicated columnist.In 1991 the Competitive Enterprise Institute established the Warren T. Brookes Journalism Fellowship to identify and train journalists who wish to improve their knowledge of...
, both critics of environmentalism
Environmentalism
Environmentalism is a broad philosophy, ideology and social movement regarding concerns for environmental conservation and improvement of the health of the environment, particularly as the measure for this health seeks to incorporate the concerns of non-human elements...
, and is apparently common in Australia
Australia
Australia , officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a country in the Southern Hemisphere comprising the mainland of the Australian continent, the island of Tasmania, and numerous smaller islands in the Indian and Pacific Oceans. It is the world's sixth-largest country by total area...
, New Zealand
New Zealand
New Zealand is an island country in the south-western Pacific Ocean comprising two main landmasses and numerous smaller islands. The country is situated some east of Australia across the Tasman Sea, and roughly south of the Pacific island nations of New Caledonia, Fiji, and Tonga...
and the United States
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
A website in New Zealand, The Watermelon, uses the term as a compliment, stating that it is "green on the outside and liberal
Social liberalism
Social liberalism is the belief that liberalism should include social justice. It differs from classical liberalism in that it believes the legitimate role of the state includes addressing economic and social issues such as unemployment, health care, and education while simultaneously expanding...
on the inside", using the term 'liberal' while also citing "socialist
Socialism
Socialism is an economic system characterized by social ownership of the means of production and cooperative management of the economy; or a political philosophy advocating such a system. "Social ownership" may refer to any one of, or a combination of, the following: cooperative enterprises,...
political leanings", reflecting the use of the term 'liberal' to describe the left-wing in many English-speaking countries. Red Greens are often considered 'fundies
Fundi (politics)
Fundis is short for fundamentalists. The term was used for a faction within the German Green Party. The faction was formed in conflict to the Realo-faction within their party. The term has also been applied to similar conflicts.-General meaning:...
' or 'fundamentalist greens', a term usually associated with Deep Ecology
Deep ecology
Deep ecology is a contemporary ecological philosophy that recognizes an inherent worth of all living beings, regardless of their instrumental utility to human needs. The philosophy emphasizes the interdependence of organisms within ecosystems and that of ecosystems with each other within the...
despite the fact that the German Green Party 'fundi
Fundi (politics)
Fundis is short for fundamentalists. The term was used for a faction within the German Green Party. The faction was formed in conflict to the Realo-faction within their party. The term has also been applied to similar conflicts.-General meaning:...
' faction included eco-socialists, and eco-socialists in other Green Parties, like Derek Wall
Derek Wall
Derek Wall is an English politician and member of the Green Party of England and Wales. Formerly the party's Principal Speaker, he is known as a prominent ecosocialist, campaigning both for environmentalism and socialism. Alongside his political role, Wall is an academic and a writer, having...
, have been described in the press as 'fundies
Fundi (politics)
Fundis is short for fundamentalists. The term was used for a faction within the German Green Party. The faction was formed in conflict to the Realo-faction within their party. The term has also been applied to similar conflicts.-General meaning:...
'.
Eco-socialists also criticise bureaucratic and elite theories of socialism such as Maoism
Maoism
Maoism, also known as the Mao Zedong Thought , is claimed by Maoists as an anti-Revisionist form of Marxist communist theory, derived from the teachings of the Chinese political leader Mao Zedong . Developed during the 1950s and 1960s, it was widely applied as the political and military guiding...
, Stalinism
Stalinism
Stalinism refers to the ideology that Joseph Stalin conceived and implemented in the Soviet Union, and is generally considered a branch of Marxist–Leninist ideology but considered by some historians to be a significant deviation from this philosophy...
and what other critics have termed Bureaucratic Collectivism
Bureaucratic collectivism
Bureaucratic collectivism is a theory of class society. It is used by some Trotskyists to describe the nature of the Soviet Union under Joseph Stalin, and other similar states in Central and Eastern Europe and elsewhere .- Theory :...
or State Capitalism
State capitalism
The term State capitalism has various meanings, but is usually described as commercial economic activity undertaken by the state with management of the productive forces in a capitalist manner, even if the state is nominally socialist. State capitalism is usually characterized by the dominance or...
. Instead, eco-socialists focus on imbuing socialism with ecology while keeping the emancipatory goals of 'first-epoch' socialism. Eco-socialists aim for a world of communal ownership of the means of production
Means of production
Means of production refers to physical, non-human inputs used in production—the factories, machines, and tools used to produce wealth — along with both infrastructural capital and natural capital. This includes the classical factors of production minus financial capital and minus human capital...
by "freely associated producers" with all forms of domination eclipsed, especially gender inequality
Ecofeminism
Ecofeminism is a social and political movement which points to the existence of considerable common ground between environmentalism and feminism, with some currents linking deep ecology and feminism...
and racism
Racism
Racism is the belief that inherent different traits in human racial groups justify discrimination. In the modern English language, the term "racism" is used predominantly as a pejorative epithet. It is applied especially to the practice or advocacy of racial discrimination of a pernicious nature...
.
This often includes the restoration of commons land in opposition to private property
Private property
Private property is the right of persons and firms to obtain, own, control, employ, dispose of, and bequeath land, capital, and other forms of property. Private property is distinguishable from public property, which refers to assets owned by a state, community or government rather than by...
, in which local control of resources valorizes the Marxist concept of use value
Use value
Use value or value in use is the utility of consuming a good; the want-satisfying power of a good or service in classical political economy. In Marx's critique of political economy, any labor-product has a value and a use-value, and if it is traded as a commodity in markets, it additionally has an...
above exchange value
Exchange value
In political economy and especially Marxian economics, exchange value refers to one of four major attributes of a commodity, i.e., an item or service produced for, and sold on the market...
. Practically, eco-socialists have developed different theories of ways to mobilise action on an internationalist
Internationalism (politics)
Internationalism is a political movement which advocates a greater economic and political cooperation among nations for the theoretical benefit of all...
basis, developing networks of grassroots individuals and groups that can radically transform society through non-violent "prefigurative projects" for a post-capitalist
Post-capitalism
Post-capitalism refers to any hypothetical future economic system that is to supersede capitalism as the dominant form of economic organization.-Post-capitalist systems:There have been a number of proposals for a new economic system to replace capitalism...
, post-statist
Anti-statism
Anti-statism is a term describing opposition to state intervention into personal, social, and economic affairs. Anti-statist views may reject the state completely as well as rulership in general , they may wish to reduce the size and scope of the state to a minimum , or they may advocate a...
world.
1880s-1930s - Marx, Morris and influence on the Russian Revolution
Contrary to the depiction of Karl MarxKarl Marx
Karl Heinrich Marx was a German philosopher, economist, sociologist, historian, journalist, and revolutionary socialist. His ideas played a significant role in the development of social science and the socialist political movement...
by some environmentalists, social ecologists
Social ecology
Social ecology is a philosophy developed by Murray Bookchin in the 1960s.It holds that present ecological problems are rooted in deep-seated social problems, particularly in dominatory hierarchical political and social systems. These have resulted in an uncritical acceptance of an overly...
and fellow socialists
Socialism
Socialism is an economic system characterized by social ownership of the means of production and cooperative management of the economy; or a political philosophy advocating such a system. "Social ownership" may refer to any one of, or a combination of, the following: cooperative enterprises,...
as a productivist
Productivism
Productivism is the belief that measurable economic productivity and growth is the purpose of human organization , and that "more production is necessarily good".-Arguments for productivism:...
who favoured the domination of nature, eco-socialists have revisited Marx's writings and believe that he "was a main originator of the ecological
Ecology
Ecology is the scientific study of the relations that living organisms have with respect to each other and their natural environment. Variables of interest to ecologists include the composition, distribution, amount , number, and changing states of organisms within and among ecosystems...
world-view". Eco-socialist authors, like John Bellamy Foster
John Bellamy Foster
John Bellamy Foster is a professor of sociology at the University of Oregon and also editor of Monthly Review, an independent socialist magazine. His writings have focused on political economy, environmental sociology, and Marxist theory...
and Paul Burkett, point to Marx's discussion of a "metabolic rift" between man and nature, his statement that "private ownership of the globe by single individuals will appear quite absurd as private ownership of one man by another" and his observation that a society must "hand it [the planet] down to succeeding generations in an improved condition". Nonetheless, other eco-socialists feel that Marx overlooked a "recognition of nature in and for itself", ignoring its "receptivity" and treating nature as "subjected to labor from the start" in an "entirely active relationship".
Therefore William Morris
William Morris
William Morris 24 March 18343 October 1896 was an English textile designer, artist, writer, and socialist associated with the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood and the English Arts and Crafts Movement...
, the English
England
England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west, with the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...
novelist, poet and designer, is largely credited with developing key principles of what was later called eco-socialism. During the 1880s and 1890s, Morris promoted his eco-socialist ideas within the Social Democratic Federation
Social Democratic Federation
The Social Democratic Federation was established as Britain's first organised socialist political party by H. M. Hyndman, and had its first meeting on June 7, 1881. Those joining the SDF included William Morris, George Lansbury and Eleanor Marx. However, Friedrich Engels, Karl Marx's long-term...
and Socialist League
Socialist League (UK, 1885)
The Socialist League was an early revolutionary socialist organisation in the United Kingdom. The organisation began as a dissident offshoot of the Social Democratic Federation of Henry Hyndman at the end of 1884. Never an ideologically harmonious group, by the 1890s the group had turned from...
.
Following the Russian Revolution, some environmentalist
Environmentalism
Environmentalism is a broad philosophy, ideology and social movement regarding concerns for environmental conservation and improvement of the health of the environment, particularly as the measure for this health seeks to incorporate the concerns of non-human elements...
s and environmental scientist
Environmental science
Environmental science is an interdisciplinary academic field that integrates physical and biological sciences, to the study of the environment, and the solution of environmental problems...
s attempted to integrate ecological
Ecology
Ecology is the scientific study of the relations that living organisms have with respect to each other and their natural environment. Variables of interest to ecologists include the composition, distribution, amount , number, and changing states of organisms within and among ecosystems...
consciousness into Bolshevism, although many such people were later purged by the Communist Party of the Soviet Union
Communist Party of the Soviet Union
The Communist Party of the Soviet Union was the only legal, ruling political party in the Soviet Union and one of the largest communist organizations in the world...
. The "pre-revolutionary environmental movement", encouraged by revolutionary scientist Aleksandr Bogdanov and the Proletkul't
Proletkult
Proletkult was movement which arose in the Russian revolution and was active from 1917 to 1925 which aspired to provide the foundations for what was intended to be a truly proletarian art devoid of bourgeois influence.The name is a portmanteau of "proletarskaya kultura" , which are better-known as...
organisation, made efforts to "integrate production with natural laws and limits" in the first decade of Soviet
Soviet Union
The Soviet Union , officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics , was a constitutionally socialist state that existed in Eurasia between 1922 and 1991....
rule, before Joseph Stalin
Joseph Stalin
Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin was the Premier of the Soviet Union from 6 May 1941 to 5 March 1953. He was among the Bolshevik revolutionaries who brought about the October Revolution and had held the position of first General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union's Central Committee...
attacked ecologists and the science of ecology and the Soviet Union fell into the pseudo-science of the state biologist Trofim Lysenko
Trofim Lysenko
Trofim Denisovich Lysenko was a Soviet agronomist of Ukrainian origin, who was director of Soviet biology under Joseph Stalin. Lysenko rejected Mendelian genetics in favor of the hybridization theories of Russian horticulturist Ivan Vladimirovich Michurin, and adopted them into a powerful...
, who "set about to rearrange the Russia
Russia
Russia or , officially known as both Russia and the Russian Federation , is a country in northern Eurasia. It is a federal semi-presidential republic, comprising 83 federal subjects...
n map" in ignorance of environmental limits.
1970s-1990s - Rise of environmentalism and engagement with Marxism and 'actually existing socialism'
In the 1970s, Barry CommonerBarry Commoner
Barry Commoner is an American biologist, college professor, and eco-socialist. He ran for president of the United States in the 1980 US presidential election on the Citizens Party ticket. He was also editor of Science Illustrated magazine.-Biography:Commoner was born in Brooklyn...
, suggesting a left-wing response to the Limits to Growth
Limits to Growth
The Limits to Growth is a 1972 book modeling the consequences of a rapidly growing world population and finite resource supplies, commissioned by the Club of Rome. Its authors were Donella H. Meadows, Dennis L. Meadows, Jørgen Randers, and William W. Behrens III. The book used the World3 model to...
model that predicted catastrophic resource depletion
Resource depletion
Resource depletion is an economic term referring to the exhaustion of raw materials within a region. Resources are commonly divided between renewable resources and non-renewable resources...
and spurred environmentalism
Environmentalism
Environmentalism is a broad philosophy, ideology and social movement regarding concerns for environmental conservation and improvement of the health of the environment, particularly as the measure for this health seeks to incorporate the concerns of non-human elements...
, postulated that capitalist technologies were chiefly responsible for environmental degradation
Environmental degradation
Environmental degradation is the deterioration of the environment through depletion of resources such as air, water and soil; the destruction of ecosystems and the extinction of wildlife...
, as opposed to population pressures
Overpopulation
Overpopulation is a condition where an organism's numbers exceed the carrying capacity of its habitat. The term often refers to the relationship between the human population and its environment, the Earth...
. East German dissident writer and activist Rudolf Bahro
Rudolf Bahro
Rudolf Bahro was a philosopher, political figure and author who was a noted East German dissident and who became a leader of the West German party The Greens...
published two books addressing the relationship between socialism and ecology - The Alternative in Eastern Europe and Socialism and Survival - which promoted a 'new party' and led to his arrest, for which he gained international notoriety.
At around the same time, Alan Roberts, an Australia
Australia
Australia , officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a country in the Southern Hemisphere comprising the mainland of the Australian continent, the island of Tasmania, and numerous smaller islands in the Indian and Pacific Oceans. It is the world's sixth-largest country by total area...
n Marxist
Marxism
Marxism is an economic and sociopolitical worldview and method of socioeconomic inquiry that centers upon a materialist interpretation of history, a dialectical view of social change, and an analysis and critique of the development of capitalism. Marxism was pioneered in the early to mid 19th...
, posited that people's unfulfilled needs fuelled consumerism
Consumerism
Consumerism is a social and economic order that is based on the systematic creation and fostering of a desire to purchase goods and services in ever greater amounts. The term is often associated with criticisms of consumption starting with Thorstein Veblen...
. Fellow Australian Ted Trainer further called upon socialists to develop a system that met human needs, in contrast to the capitalist system of created wants. A key development in the 1980s was the creation of the journal "Capitalism, Nature, Socialism" in short CNS with James O'Connor
James O'Connor (academic)
James O'Connor is an American sociologist and economist.He is currently an Emeritus Professor of Sociology and Economics at the University of California, Santa Cruz.-Bibliography:* Origins of Socialism in Cuba, 1970...
as founding editor and the first issue in 1988. The debates ensued led to a host of theoretical works by O'Connor, Carolyn Merchant
Carolyn Merchant
Carolyn Merchant is an American ecofeminist philosopher and historian of science most famous for her theory on 'The Death of Nature', whereby she identifies the Enlightenment as the period when science began to atomize, objectify and dissect nature, foretelling its eventual conception as inert...
, Paul Burkett and others.
The Australian Democratic Socialist Party
Democratic Socialist Perspective
The Democratic Socialist Perspective was an Australian Marxist political group, which operated as the largest component of a broad-left socialist formation, the Socialist Alliance...
launched the Green Left Weekly
Green Left Weekly
Green Left Weekly is an Australian radical left-wing newspaper, written by progressive activists to "present the views excluded by the big business media". It was published by the Democratic Socialist Perspective from its inception in 1990 until January 2010, when the DSP merged into the Socialist...
newspaper in 1991, following a period of working within Green Alliance and Green Party groups in formation. This ceased when the Australian Greens
Australian Greens
The Australian Greens, commonly known as The Greens, is an Australian green political party.The party was formed in 1992; however, its origins can be traced to the early environmental movement in Australia and the formation of the United Tasmania Group , the first Green party in the world, which...
adopted a policy of proscription of other political groups in August 1991. The DSP also published a comprehensive policy resolution, "Socialism and Human Survival" in book form in 1990, with an expanded second edition in 1999 entitled "Environment, Capitalism & Socialism".
1990s onwards - Engagement with the anti-globalization movement and The Ecosocialist Manifesto
The 1990s saw the socialist feministsSocialist feminism
Socialist feminism is a branch of feminism that focuses upon both the public and private spheres of a woman's life and argues that liberation can only be achieved by working to end both the economic and cultural sources of women's oppression...
Mary Mellor and Ariel Salleh
Ariel Salleh
Ariel Salleh is an Australian sociologist who writes on social ecology and ecofeminism. In contrast to idealist ecofeminisms coming from philosophy and cultural studies, Salleh's analysis is close to that of fellow sociologists Maria Mies in Germany and Mary Mellor in the United Kingdom....
address environmental issues within an eco-socialist paradigm. With the rising profile of the anti-globalization
Anti-globalization
Criticism of globalization is skepticism of the claimed benefits of the globalization of capitalism. Many of these views are held by the anti-globalization movement however other groups also are critical of the policies of globalization....
movement in the Global South, an "environmentalism
Environmentalism
Environmentalism is a broad philosophy, ideology and social movement regarding concerns for environmental conservation and improvement of the health of the environment, particularly as the measure for this health seeks to incorporate the concerns of non-human elements...
of the poor", combining ecological
Ecology
Ecology is the scientific study of the relations that living organisms have with respect to each other and their natural environment. Variables of interest to ecologists include the composition, distribution, amount , number, and changing states of organisms within and among ecosystems...
awareness and social justice
Social justice
Social justice generally refers to the idea of creating a society or institution that is based on the principles of equality and solidarity, that understands and values human rights, and that recognizes the dignity of every human being. The term and modern concept of "social justice" was coined by...
, has also become prominent. David Pepper also released his important work, Ecosocialism: From Deep Ecology to Social Justice, in 1994, which critiques the current approach of many within Green politics, particularly deep ecologists
Deep ecology
Deep ecology is a contemporary ecological philosophy that recognizes an inherent worth of all living beings, regardless of their instrumental utility to human needs. The philosophy emphasizes the interdependence of organisms within ecosystems and that of ecosystems with each other within the...
.
In 2001, Joel Kovel
Joel Kovel
Joel Kovel is an American politician, academic, writer, and eco-socialist. A practicing psychiatrist and psychoanalyst until the mid-1980s, he has lectured in psychiatry, anthropology, political science and communication studies. He has published many books on his work in psychiatry,...
, a social scientist, psychiatrist
Psychiatry
Psychiatry is the medical specialty devoted to the study and treatment of mental disorders. These mental disorders include various affective, behavioural, cognitive and perceptual abnormalities...
and former candidate for the Green Party of the United States
Green Party (United States)
The Green Party of the United States is a nationally recognized political party which officially formed in 1991. It is a voluntary association of state green parties. Prior to national formation, many state affiliates had already formed and were recognized by other state parties...
(GPUS) Presidential
President of the United States
The President of the United States of America is the head of state and head of government of the United States. The president leads the executive branch of the federal government and is the commander-in-chief of the United States Armed Forces....
nomination in 2000, and Michael Löwy
Michael Löwy
Michael Löwy is a French-Brazilian Marxist sociologist and philosopher. He is presently the emeritus research director in social sciences at the CNRS and lectures at the Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales...
, an anthropologist
Anthropology
Anthropology is the study of humanity. It has origins in the humanities, the natural sciences, and the social sciences. The term "anthropology" is from the Greek anthrōpos , "man", understood to mean mankind or humanity, and -logia , "discourse" or "study", and was first used in 1501 by German...
and member of the Reunified Fourth International
Reunified Fourth International
The Fourth International is a Trotskyist international. In 1963, the majorities of the two public factions of the Fourth International, the International Secretariat and the International Committee, reunited, electing a United Secretariat of the Fourth International...
(a principal Trotskyist organisation), released An ecosocialist manifesto, which has been adopted by some organisations and suggests possible routes for the growth of eco-socialist consciousness. Kovel's 2002 work, The Enemy of Nature: The End of Capitalism or the End of the World?, is considered by many to be the most up-to-date exposition of eco-socialist thought.
In October 2007, the International Ecosocialist Network was founded in Paris
Paris
Paris is the capital and largest city in France, situated on the river Seine, in northern France, at the heart of the Île-de-France region...
.
Influence on current Green and socialist movements
Currently, many Green Parties around the world, such as the Dutch Green Left PartyGreenLeft
GreenLeft is a green political party operating in the Netherlands.GreenLeft was formed on 1 March 1989 as a merger of four left-wing political parties: the Communist Party of the Netherlands, Pacifist Socialist Party, the Political Party of Radicals and the Evangelical People's Party...
(GroenLinks), contain strong eco-socialist elements. Radical Red-green alliance
Red-green alliance
In politics, a red-green alliance is an alliance of "red" social-democratic or democratic socialist parties with "green" environmentalist parties. The alliance is often based on common left political views, especially a shared distrust of corporate or capitalist institutions...
s have been formed in many countries by eco-socialists, radical Greens
Green politics
Green politics is a political ideology that aims for the creation of an ecologically sustainable society rooted in environmentalism, social liberalism, and grassroots democracy...
and other radical left groups. In Denmark
Denmark
Denmark is a Scandinavian country in Northern Europe. The countries of Denmark and Greenland, as well as the Faroe Islands, constitute the Kingdom of Denmark . It is the southernmost of the Nordic countries, southwest of Sweden and south of Norway, and bordered to the south by Germany. Denmark...
, the Red-Green Alliance
Red-Green Alliance (Denmark)
The Red-Green Alliance is a socialist political party in Denmark.- History :The party was formed in 1989 as an electoral alliance by three left-wing parties, Left Socialists , Communist Party of Denmark and Socialist Workers Party...
was formed as a coalition of numerous radical parties. Within the European Parliament
European Parliament
The European Parliament is the directly elected parliamentary institution of the European Union . Together with the Council of the European Union and the Commission, it exercises the legislative function of the EU and it has been described as one of the most powerful legislatures in the world...
, a number of far-left parties from Northern Europe
Northern Europe
Northern Europe is the northern part or region of Europe. Northern Europe typically refers to the seven countries in the northern part of the European subcontinent which includes Denmark, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Norway, Finland and Sweden...
have organized themselves into the Nordic Green Left Alliance
Nordic Green Left Alliance
The Nordic Green Left Alliance is an alliance of Nordic left-wing parties, founded in Reykjavík, Iceland on February 1, 2004.The member organizations of NGLA are: Left Alliance Left-Green Movement Left Party Socialist Left Party Socialist People's Party Republicans Inuit Ataqatigiit Most of...
. Red Greens feature heavily in the Green Party of Saskatchewan
Green Party of Saskatchewan
The Green Party of Saskatchewan is a left-leaning Green political party in the Canadian province of Saskatchewan.It was founded in 1998 as the New Green Alliance by environmental and social justice activists frustrated by the social democratic Saskatchewan New Democratic Party's move to the right...
(in Canada
Canada
Canada is a North American country consisting of ten provinces and three territories. Located in the northern part of the continent, it extends from the Atlantic Ocean in the east to the Pacific Ocean in the west, and northward into the Arctic Ocean...
but not necessarily affiliated to the Green Party of Canada
Green Party of Canada
The Green Party of Canada is a Canadian federal political party founded in 1983 with 10,000–12,000 registered members as of October 2008. The Greens advance a broad multi-issue political platform that reflects its core values of ecological wisdom, social justice, grassroots democracy and...
) and GPUS
Green Party (United States)
The Green Party of the United States is a nationally recognized political party which officially formed in 1991. It is a voluntary association of state green parties. Prior to national formation, many state affiliates had already formed and were recognized by other state parties...
.
The Green Party of England and Wales
Green Party of England and Wales
The Green Party of England and Wales is a political party in England and Wales which follows the traditions of Green politics and maintains a strong commitment to social progressivism. It is the largest Green party in the United Kingdom, containing within it various regional divisions including...
features an eco-socialist group, Green Left, that was founded in June 2005 and whose members hold a number of influential positions within the party, including both the former Principal Speaker
Principal Speaker
Principal Speakers were the public spokespersons of the Green Party of England and Wales but have since been replaced in the party by a national Leader and Deputy Leader...
s Siân Berry
Siân Berry
Siân Berry is an English politician and member of the Green Party of England and Wales. From 2006 to 2007, she was one of the Green Party's Principal Speakers...
and Dr. Derek Wall
Derek Wall
Derek Wall is an English politician and member of the Green Party of England and Wales. Formerly the party's Principal Speaker, he is known as a prominent ecosocialist, campaigning both for environmentalism and socialism. Alongside his political role, Wall is an academic and a writer, having...
, himself an eco-socialist and marxist academic, as well as prominent Green Party
Green Party of England and Wales
The Green Party of England and Wales is a political party in England and Wales which follows the traditions of Green politics and maintains a strong commitment to social progressivism. It is the largest Green party in the United Kingdom, containing within it various regional divisions including...
candidate and human rights activist Peter Tatchell
Peter Tatchell
Peter Gary Tatchell is an Australian-born British political campaigner best known for his work with LGBT social movements...
. Many Marxist organisations also contain eco-socialists, as evidenced by Löwy's
Michael Löwy
Michael Löwy is a French-Brazilian Marxist sociologist and philosopher. He is presently the emeritus research director in social sciences at the CNRS and lectures at the Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales...
involvement in the reunified Fourth International
Reunified Fourth International
The Fourth International is a Trotskyist international. In 1963, the majorities of the two public factions of the Fourth International, the International Secretariat and the International Committee, reunited, electing a United Secretariat of the Fourth International...
and Socialist Resistance
Socialist Resistance
Socialist Resistance is a Trotskyist and ecosocialist organisation in Britain which publishes a Marxist periodical of the same name. In July 2009 the International Socialist Group merged into it, making SR the British Section of the Fourth International.-Origins:It was launched on 8 September...
, a British
United Kingdom
The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...
Marxist newspaper that reports on eco-socialist issues and has published two collections of essays on eco-socialist thought: Ecosocialism or Barbarism?, edited by Jane Kelly and Sheila Malone, and The Global Fight for Climate Justice, edited by Ian Angus
Ian Angus
Ian Angus is a socialist and ecosocialist activist in Canada. Angus joined the New Democratic Party in 1962 and then the Young Socialists in Ottawa in 1964. He was active in the YS and the League for Socialist Action into the 1970s...
with a foreword by Derek Wall.
Influence on “existing socialist” regimes
Eco-socialism has had a minor influence over developments in the environmental policiesEnvironmental policy
Environmental policy is any [course of] action deliberately taken [or not taken] to manage human activities with a view to prevent, reduce, or mitigate harmful effects on nature and natural resources, and ensuring that man-made changes to the environment do not have harmful effects on...
of what can be called “existing socialist
Socialism
Socialism is an economic system characterized by social ownership of the means of production and cooperative management of the economy; or a political philosophy advocating such a system. "Social ownership" may refer to any one of, or a combination of, the following: cooperative enterprises,...
” regimes, notably the People's Republic of China
People's Republic of China
China , officially the People's Republic of China , is the most populous country in the world, with over 1.3 billion citizens. Located in East Asia, the country covers approximately 9.6 million square kilometres...
. Pan Yue
Pan Yue
Pan Yue was born in 1960 in Jiangsu province, People's Republic of China, is one of the Vice Ministers for the Ministry of Environmental Protection in China.-Biography:...
, Deputy Director of the PRC
People's Republic of China
China , officially the People's Republic of China , is the most populous country in the world, with over 1.3 billion citizens. Located in East Asia, the country covers approximately 9.6 million square kilometres...
's State Environmental Protection Administration, has acknowledged the influence of eco-socialist theory on his championing of environmentalism
Environmentalism
Environmentalism is a broad philosophy, ideology and social movement regarding concerns for environmental conservation and improvement of the health of the environment, particularly as the measure for this health seeks to incorporate the concerns of non-human elements...
within China
People's Republic of China
China , officially the People's Republic of China , is the most populous country in the world, with over 1.3 billion citizens. Located in East Asia, the country covers approximately 9.6 million square kilometres...
, which has gained him international acclaim (including being nominated for the Person of the Year Award 2006 by The New Statesman
New Statesman
New Statesman is a British centre-left political and cultural magazine published weekly in London. Founded in 1913, and connected with leading members of the Fabian Society, the magazine reached a circulation peak in the late 1960s....
, a British
United Kingdom
The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...
current affairs magazine). Yue
Pan Yue
Pan Yue was born in 1960 in Jiangsu province, People's Republic of China, is one of the Vice Ministers for the Ministry of Environmental Protection in China.-Biography:...
stated in an interview that, while he often finds eco-socialist theory "too idealistic" and lacking "ways of solving actual problems", he believes that it provides "political reference for China’s scientific view of development", "gives socialist ideology room to expand" and offers "a theoretical basis for the establishment of fair international rules" on the environment
Natural environment
The natural environment encompasses all living and non-living things occurring naturally on Earth or some region thereof. It is an environment that encompasses the interaction of all living species....
.
He echoes much of eco-socialist thought, attacking international "environmental inequality", refusing to focus on technological fix
Technological fix
A technological fix or technical fix refers to an engineering or technical solution to a problem caused by human nature. Frequently the solution is an impractical and/or humorous proposal such as the Internet Protocol Evil bit or the "suitable application of high explosives" to interpersonal problems...
es and arguing for the construction of "a harmonious, resource-saving and environmentally-friendly society". He also shows a knowledge of eco-socialist history, from the convergence of radical green politics and socialism and their political "red-green alliance
Red-green alliance
In politics, a red-green alliance is an alliance of "red" social-democratic or democratic socialist parties with "green" environmentalist parties. The alliance is often based on common left political views, especially a shared distrust of corporate or capitalist institutions...
s" in the post-Soviet
Soviet Union
The Soviet Union , officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics , was a constitutionally socialist state that existed in Eurasia between 1922 and 1991....
era. This focus on eco-socialism has informed an essay, On Socialist Ecological Civilisation, published in September 2006, which, according to chinadialogue, "sparked debate" in China
People's Republic of China
China , officially the People's Republic of China , is the most populous country in the world, with over 1.3 billion citizens. Located in East Asia, the country covers approximately 9.6 million square kilometres...
.
The current Constitution of Bolivia
Constitution of Bolivia
The current Constitution of Bolivia is the 17th constitution in the country's history; previous constitutions were enacted in 1826, 1831, 1834, 1839, 1843, 1851, 1861, 1868, 1871, 1878, 1880, 1938, 1945, 1947, 1961 and 1967. It came into effect on February 7, 2009, when it was promulgated by...
, promulgated in 2009, is the first both ecologic and pro-socialist Constitution in the world, making the Bolivian state officially ecosocialist.
Ecosocialist International Network (EIN) and other international eco-socialist organisations
In 2007, it was announced that attempts to form an Ecosocialist International Network (EIN) would be made and an inaugural meeting of the International occurred on October 7, 2007 in ParisParis
Paris is the capital and largest city in France, situated on the river Seine, in northern France, at the heart of the Île-de-France region...
. The meeting attracted "more than 60 activists from Argentina, Australia, Belgium, Brazil, Canada, Cyprus, Denmark, France, Greece, Italy, Switzerland, United Kingdom, and the United States" and elected a Steering Committee featuring representatives from Britain, the United States, Canada, France, Greece, Argentina, Brazil and Australia, including Joel Kovel
Joel Kovel
Joel Kovel is an American politician, academic, writer, and eco-socialist. A practicing psychiatrist and psychoanalyst until the mid-1980s, he has lectured in psychiatry, anthropology, political science and communication studies. He has published many books on his work in psychiatry,...
, Michael Löwy
Michael Löwy
Michael Löwy is a French-Brazilian Marxist sociologist and philosopher. He is presently the emeritus research director in social sciences at the CNRS and lectures at the Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales...
, Derek Wall
Derek Wall
Derek Wall is an English politician and member of the Green Party of England and Wales. Formerly the party's Principal Speaker, he is known as a prominent ecosocialist, campaigning both for environmentalism and socialism. Alongside his political role, Wall is an academic and a writer, having...
, Ian Angus
Ian Angus
Ian Angus is a socialist and ecosocialist activist in Canada. Angus joined the New Democratic Party in 1962 and then the Young Socialists in Ottawa in 1964. He was active in the YS and the League for Socialist Action into the 1970s...
(editor of Climate and Capitalism in Canada
Canada
Canada is a North American country consisting of ten provinces and three territories. Located in the northern part of the continent, it extends from the Atlantic Ocean in the east to the Pacific Ocean in the west, and northward into the Arctic Ocean...
) and Ariel Salleh
Ariel Salleh
Ariel Salleh is an Australian sociologist who writes on social ecology and ecofeminism. In contrast to idealist ecofeminisms coming from philosophy and cultural studies, Salleh's analysis is close to that of fellow sociologists Maria Mies in Germany and Mary Mellor in the United Kingdom....
. The Committee states that it wants "to incorporate members from China, India, Africa, Oceania and Eastern Europe". EIN held its second international conference in January 2009, in association with the next World Social Forum
World Social Forum
The World Social Forum is an annual meeting of civil society organizations, first held in Brazil, which offers a self-conscious effort to develop an alternative future through the championing of counter-hegemonic globalization...
in Brazil". The conference released The Belem Ecosocialist Declaration.
International networking by eco-socialists has already been seen in the Praxis Research and Education Center, a group on international researchers and activists. Based in Moscow
Moscow
Moscow is the capital, the most populous city, and the most populous federal subject of Russia. The city is a major political, economic, cultural, scientific, religious, financial, educational, and transportation centre of Russia and the continent...
and established in 1997, Praxis, as well as publishing books "by libertarian socialists
Libertarian socialism
Libertarian socialism is a group of political philosophies that promote a non-hierarchical, non-bureaucratic, stateless society without private property in the means of production...
, Marxist humanists
Humanism
Humanism is an approach in study, philosophy, world view or practice that focuses on human values and concerns. In philosophy and social science, humanism is a perspective which affirms some notion of human nature, and is contrasted with anti-humanism....
, anarchists
Anarchism
Anarchism is generally defined as the political philosophy which holds the state to be undesirable, unnecessary, and harmful, or alternatively as opposing authority in the conduct of human relations...
, [and] syndicalists
Syndicalism
Syndicalism is a type of economic system proposed as a replacement for capitalism and an alternative to state socialism, which uses federations of collectivised trade unions or industrial unions...
", running the Victor Serge
Victor Serge
Victor Serge , born Victor Lvovich Kibalchich , was a Russian revolutionary and writer. Originally an anarchist, he joined the Bolsheviks five months after arriving in Petrograd in January 1919 and later worked for the Comintern as a journalist, editor and translator...
Library and opposing war in Chechnya
Second Chechen War
The Second Chechen War, in a later phase better known as the War in the North Caucasus, was launched by the Russian Federation starting 26 August 1999, in response to the Invasion of Dagestan by the Islamic International Peacekeeping Brigade ....
, states that it believes "that capitalism has brought life on the planet near to the brink of catastrophe, and that a form of ecosocialism needs to emerge to replace capitalism before it is too late".
Critique of capitalist expansion and globalisation
Merging aspects of MarxismMarxism
Marxism is an economic and sociopolitical worldview and method of socioeconomic inquiry that centers upon a materialist interpretation of history, a dialectical view of social change, and an analysis and critique of the development of capitalism. Marxism was pioneered in the early to mid 19th...
, socialism, environmentalism
Environmentalism
Environmentalism is a broad philosophy, ideology and social movement regarding concerns for environmental conservation and improvement of the health of the environment, particularly as the measure for this health seeks to incorporate the concerns of non-human elements...
and ecology, eco-socialists generally believe that the capitalist
Capitalism
Capitalism is an economic system that became dominant in the Western world following the demise of feudalism. There is no consensus on the precise definition nor on how the term should be used as a historical category...
system is the cause of social exclusion
Social exclusion
Social exclusion is a concept used in many parts of the world to characterise contemporary forms of social disadvantage. Dr. Lynn Todman, director of the Institute on Social Exclusion at the Adler School of Professional Psychology, suggests that social exclusion refers to processes in which...
, inequality
Economic inequality
Economic inequality comprises all disparities in the distribution of economic assets and income. The term typically refers to inequality among individuals and groups within a society, but can also refer to inequality among countries. The issue of economic inequality is related to the ideas of...
and environmental degradation
Environmental degradation
Environmental degradation is the deterioration of the environment through depletion of resources such as air, water and soil; the destruction of ecosystems and the extinction of wildlife...
through globalization
Globalization
Globalization refers to the increasingly global relationships of culture, people and economic activity. Most often, it refers to economics: the global distribution of the production of goods and services, through reduction of barriers to international trade such as tariffs, export fees, and import...
and imperialism under the supervision of repressive states and transstatal structures.
In the Ecosocialist manifesto, Kovel
Joel Kovel
Joel Kovel is an American politician, academic, writer, and eco-socialist. A practicing psychiatrist and psychoanalyst until the mid-1980s, he has lectured in psychiatry, anthropology, political science and communication studies. He has published many books on his work in psychiatry,...
and Löwy
Michael Löwy
Michael Löwy is a French-Brazilian Marxist sociologist and philosopher. He is presently the emeritus research director in social sciences at the CNRS and lectures at the Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales...
suggest that capitalist expansion causes both "crises of ecology" through "rampant industrialization" and "societal breakdown" that springs "from the form of imperialism known as globalization". They believe that capitalism's expansion "exposes ecosystem
Ecosystem
An ecosystem is a biological environment consisting of all the organisms living in a particular area, as well as all the nonliving , physical components of the environment with which the organisms interact, such as air, soil, water and sunlight....
s" to pollutants, habitat destruction and resource depletion
Resource depletion
Resource depletion is an economic term referring to the exhaustion of raw materials within a region. Resources are commonly divided between renewable resources and non-renewable resources...
, "reducing the sensuous vitality of nature
Nature
Nature, in the broadest sense, is equivalent to the natural world, physical world, or material world. "Nature" refers to the phenomena of the physical world, and also to life in general...
to the cold exchangeability required for the accumulation of capital
Capital (economics)
In economics, capital, capital goods, or real capital refers to already-produced durable goods used in production of goods or services. The capital goods are not significantly consumed, though they may depreciate in the production process...
", while submerging "the majority of the world's people to a mere reservoir of labor power" as it penetrates communities through "consumerism
Consumerism
Consumerism is a social and economic order that is based on the systematic creation and fostering of a desire to purchase goods and services in ever greater amounts. The term is often associated with criticisms of consumption starting with Thorstein Veblen...
and depoliticization".
Other eco-socialists, like Wall
Derek Wall
Derek Wall is an English politician and member of the Green Party of England and Wales. Formerly the party's Principal Speaker, he is known as a prominent ecosocialist, campaigning both for environmentalism and socialism. Alongside his political role, Wall is an academic and a writer, having...
, highlight how, in the Global South, free-market capitalism structures economies to produce export-geared crops
Cash crop
In agriculture, a cash crop is a crop which is grown for profit.The term is used to differentiate from subsistence crops, which are those fed to the producer's own livestock or grown as food for the producer's family...
that take water from traditional subsistence farms, increasing hunger and the likelihood of famine
Famine
A famine is a widespread scarcity of food, caused by several factors including crop failure, overpopulation, or government policies. This phenomenon is usually accompanied or followed by regional malnutrition, starvation, epidemic, and increased mortality. Every continent in the world has...
; furthermore, forests are increasingly cleared
Deforestation
Deforestation is the removal of a forest or stand of trees where the land is thereafter converted to a nonforest use. Examples of deforestation include conversion of forestland to farms, ranches, or urban use....
and enclosed
Enclosure
Enclosure or inclosure is the process which ends traditional rights such as mowing meadows for hay, or grazing livestock on common land. Once enclosed, these uses of the land become restricted to the owner, and it ceases to be common land. In England and Wales the term is also used for the...
to produce cash crops that separate people from their local means of production
Means of production
Means of production refers to physical, non-human inputs used in production—the factories, machines, and tools used to produce wealth — along with both infrastructural capital and natural capital. This includes the classical factors of production minus financial capital and minus human capital...
and aggravate poverty
Poverty
Poverty is the lack of a certain amount of material possessions or money. Absolute poverty or destitution is inability to afford basic human needs, which commonly includes clean and fresh water, nutrition, health care, education, clothing and shelter. About 1.7 billion people are estimated to live...
. Wall
Derek Wall
Derek Wall is an English politician and member of the Green Party of England and Wales. Formerly the party's Principal Speaker, he is known as a prominent ecosocialist, campaigning both for environmentalism and socialism. Alongside his political role, Wall is an academic and a writer, having...
shows that many of the world's poor have access to the means of production
Means of production
Means of production refers to physical, non-human inputs used in production—the factories, machines, and tools used to produce wealth — along with both infrastructural capital and natural capital. This includes the classical factors of production minus financial capital and minus human capital...
through "non-monetised communal means of production
Means of production
Means of production refers to physical, non-human inputs used in production—the factories, machines, and tools used to produce wealth — along with both infrastructural capital and natural capital. This includes the classical factors of production minus financial capital and minus human capital...
", such as subsistence farming, but, despite providing for need and a level of prosperity, these are not included in conventional economics measures, like GNP
Measures of national income and output
A variety of measures of national income and output are used in economics to estimate total economic activity in a country or region, including gross domestic product , gross national product , and net national income . All are specially concerned with counting the total amount of goods and...
.
Wall
Derek Wall
Derek Wall is an English politician and member of the Green Party of England and Wales. Formerly the party's Principal Speaker, he is known as a prominent ecosocialist, campaigning both for environmentalism and socialism. Alongside his political role, Wall is an academic and a writer, having...
therefore views neo-liberal
Neoliberalism
Neoliberalism is a market-driven approach to economic and social policy based on neoclassical theories of economics that emphasizes the efficiency of private enterprise, liberalized trade and relatively open markets, and therefore seeks to maximize the role of the private sector in determining the...
globalization as "part of the long struggle of the state and commercial interests to steal from those who subsist" by removing "access to the resources that sustain ordinary people across the globe". Furthermore, Kovel sees the form of neo-liberal
Neoliberalism
Neoliberalism is a market-driven approach to economic and social policy based on neoclassical theories of economics that emphasizes the efficiency of private enterprise, liberalized trade and relatively open markets, and therefore seeks to maximize the role of the private sector in determining the...
globalization as "a return to the pure logic of capital" that "has effectively swept away measures which had inhibited capital’s aggressivity, replacing them with naked exploitation of humanity and nature"; for Kovel, this "tearing down of boundaries", which was "a deliberate response to a serious accumulation crisis" in the 1970s, has become the definition of modern 'globalization'.
Furthermore, Guha
Ramachandra Guha
Ramachandra Guha is an Indian writer whose research interests have included environmental, social, political and cricket history. He is also a columnist for the newspapers The Telegraph , and The Hindustan Times.-Early life and education:Born in Dehra Dun, Uttarakhand, India in 1958, Guha studied...
and Martinez-Alier blame globalization for creating increased levels of waste
Waste
Waste is unwanted or useless materials. In biology, waste is any of the many unwanted substances or toxins that are expelled from living organisms, metabolic waste; such as urea, sweat or feces. Litter is waste which has been disposed of improperly...
and pollution
Pollution
Pollution is the introduction of contaminants into a natural environment that causes instability, disorder, harm or discomfort to the ecosystem i.e. physical systems or living organisms. Pollution can take the form of chemical substances or energy, such as noise, heat or light...
, and then dumping the waste
Waste
Waste is unwanted or useless materials. In biology, waste is any of the many unwanted substances or toxins that are expelled from living organisms, metabolic waste; such as urea, sweat or feces. Litter is waste which has been disposed of improperly...
on the most vulnerable in society, particularly those in the Global South. Others have also noted that capitalism disproportionately affects the poorest in the Global North as well, leading to examples of resistance such as the environmental justice
Environmental justice
Environmental justice is "the fair treatment and meaningful involvement of all people regardless of race, color, sex, national origin, or income with respect to the development, implementation and enforcement of environmental laws, regulations, and policies." In the words of Bunyan Bryant,...
movement in the USA, consisting of working-class people and ethnic minorities who highlight the tendency for waste dumps, major road projects and incinerators to be constructed around socially excluded areas. However, as Wall
Derek Wall
Derek Wall is an English politician and member of the Green Party of England and Wales. Formerly the party's Principal Speaker, he is known as a prominent ecosocialist, campaigning both for environmentalism and socialism. Alongside his political role, Wall is an academic and a writer, having...
highlights, such campaigns are often ignored or persecuted precisely because they originate among the most marginalized in society: the African-American radical green religious group MOVE
MOVE
MOVE or the MOVE Organization is a Philadelphia-based black liberation group founded by John Africa. MOVE was described by CNN as "a loose-knit, mostly black group whose members all adopted the surname Africa, advocated a "back-to-nature" lifestyle and preached against technology." The group...
, campaigning for ecological revolution and animal rights
Animal rights
Animal rights, also known as animal liberation, is the idea that the most basic interests of non-human animals should be afforded the same consideration as the similar interests of human beings...
from Philadelphia, had many members imprisoned or even killed by US authorities from the 1970s onwards.
Eco-socialism disagrees with the elite theories of capitalism, which tend to label a specific class
Social class
Social classes are economic or cultural arrangements of groups in society. Class is an essential object of analysis for sociologists, political scientists, economists, anthropologists and social historians. In the social sciences, social class is often discussed in terms of 'social stratification'...
or social group as conspirators who construct a system that satisfies their greed and personal desires. Instead, eco-socialists suggest that the very system itself is self-perpetuating, fuelled by "extra-human" or "impersonal" forces. Kovel uses the Bhopal industrial disaster
Bhopal disaster
The Bhopal disaster also known as Bhopal Gas Tragedy was a gas leak incident in India, considered one of the world's worst industrial catastrophes. It occurred on the night of December 2–3, 1984 at the Union Carbide India Limited pesticide plant in Bhopal, Madhya Pradesh, India...
as an example. Many anti-corporate
Anti-corporate activism
Anti-corporate activists believe that the influence of large business corporations poses a threat to the public good and democratic authority...
observers would blame the avarice of those at the top of many multi-national corporation
Multinational corporation
A multi national corporation or enterprise , is a corporation or an enterprise that manages production or delivers services in more than one country. It can also be referred to as an international corporation...
s, such as the Union Carbide
Union Carbide
Union Carbide Corporation is a wholly owned subsidiary of The Dow Chemical Company. It currently employs more than 2,400 people. Union Carbide primarily produces chemicals and polymers that undergo one or more further conversions by customers before reaching consumers. Some are high-volume...
Corporation in Bhopal
Bhopal disaster
The Bhopal disaster also known as Bhopal Gas Tragedy was a gas leak incident in India, considered one of the world's worst industrial catastrophes. It occurred on the night of December 2–3, 1984 at the Union Carbide India Limited pesticide plant in Bhopal, Madhya Pradesh, India...
, for seemingly isolated industrial accidents. Conversely, Kovel suggests that Union Carbide
Bhopal disaster
The Bhopal disaster also known as Bhopal Gas Tragedy was a gas leak incident in India, considered one of the world's worst industrial catastrophes. It occurred on the night of December 2–3, 1984 at the Union Carbide India Limited pesticide plant in Bhopal, Madhya Pradesh, India...
were experiencing a decrease in sales that led to falling profits, which, due to stock market
Stock market
A stock market or equity market is a public entity for the trading of company stock and derivatives at an agreed price; these are securities listed on a stock exchange as well as those only traded privately.The size of the world stock market was estimated at about $36.6 trillion...
conditions, translated into a drop in share values. The depreciation of share value made many shareholders sell their stock, weakening the company and leading to cost-cutting measures that eroded the safety procedures and mechanisms at the Bhopal site. Though this did not, in Kovel's mind, make the Bhopal disaster inevitable, he believes that it illustrates the effect market
Free market
A free market is a competitive market where prices are determined by supply and demand. However, the term is also commonly used for markets in which economic intervention and regulation by the state is limited to tax collection, and enforcement of private ownership and contracts...
forces can have on increasing the likelihood of ecological and social problems.
Use and exchange value
Eco-socialism focuses closely on Marx'sKarl Marx
Karl Heinrich Marx was a German philosopher, economist, sociologist, historian, journalist, and revolutionary socialist. His ideas played a significant role in the development of social science and the socialist political movement...
theories about the contradiction between use value
Use value
Use value or value in use is the utility of consuming a good; the want-satisfying power of a good or service in classical political economy. In Marx's critique of political economy, any labor-product has a value and a use-value, and if it is traded as a commodity in markets, it additionally has an...
s and exchange value
Exchange value
In political economy and especially Marxian economics, exchange value refers to one of four major attributes of a commodity, i.e., an item or service produced for, and sold on the market...
s. Kovel
Joel Kovel
Joel Kovel is an American politician, academic, writer, and eco-socialist. A practicing psychiatrist and psychoanalyst until the mid-1980s, he has lectured in psychiatry, anthropology, political science and communication studies. He has published many books on his work in psychiatry,...
posits that, within a market economy
Market economy
A market economy is an economy in which the prices of goods and services are determined in a free price system. This is often contrasted with a state-directed or planned economy. Market economies can range from hypothetically pure laissez-faire variants to an assortment of real-world mixed...
, goods are not produced to meet needs but are produced to be exchanged for money that we then use to acquire other goods; as we have to keep selling in order to keep buying, we must persuade others to buy our goods just to ensure our survival, which leads to the production of goods with no previous use that can be sold to sustain our ability to buy other goods.
Such goods, in an eco-socialist analysis, produce exchange value
Exchange value
In political economy and especially Marxian economics, exchange value refers to one of four major attributes of a commodity, i.e., an item or service produced for, and sold on the market...
s but have no use value
Use value
Use value or value in use is the utility of consuming a good; the want-satisfying power of a good or service in classical political economy. In Marx's critique of political economy, any labor-product has a value and a use-value, and if it is traded as a commodity in markets, it additionally has an...
. Eco-socialists like Kovel stress that this contradiction has reached a destructive extent, where certain essential activities - such as caring for relatives full-time and basic subsistence - are unrewarded, while unnecessary commodities earn individuals huge fortunes and fuel consumerism
Consumerism
Consumerism is a social and economic order that is based on the systematic creation and fostering of a desire to purchase goods and services in ever greater amounts. The term is often associated with criticisms of consumption starting with Thorstein Veblen...
and resource depletion
Resource depletion
Resource depletion is an economic term referring to the exhaustion of raw materials within a region. Resources are commonly divided between renewable resources and non-renewable resources...
.
The "second contradiction" of capitalism
James O'ConnorJames O'Connor (academic)
James O'Connor is an American sociologist and economist.He is currently an Emeritus Professor of Sociology and Economics at the University of California, Santa Cruz.-Bibliography:* Origins of Socialism in Cuba, 1970...
argues for a "second contradiction" of underproduction, to complement Marx
Karl Marx
Karl Heinrich Marx was a German philosopher, economist, sociologist, historian, journalist, and revolutionary socialist. His ideas played a significant role in the development of social science and the socialist political movement...
's "first" contradiction of capital and labor. While the second contradiction is often considered a theory of environmental degradation, O'Connor's theory in fact goes much further. Building on the work of Karl Polanyi, along with Marx, O'Connor argues that capitalism necessarily undermines the "conditions of production" necessary to sustain the endless accumulation of capital. These conditions of production include soil, water, energy, and so forth. But they also include an adequate public education system, transportation infrastructures, and other services that are not produced directly by capital, but which capital needs in order accumulate effectively. As the conditions of production are exhausted, the costs of production for capital increase. For this reason, the second contradiction generates an underproduction crisis tendency, with the rising cost of inputs and labor, to complement the overproduction tendency of too many commodities for too few customers. Like Marx's contradiction of capital and labor, the second contradiction therefore threatens the system's existence.
In addition, O'Connor believes that, in order to remedy environmental contradictions, the capitalist system innovates new technologies that overcome existing problems but introduce new ones.
O'Connor cites nuclear power
Nuclear power
Nuclear power is the use of sustained nuclear fission to generate heat and electricity. Nuclear power plants provide about 6% of the world's energy and 13–14% of the world's electricity, with the U.S., France, and Japan together accounting for about 50% of nuclear generated electricity...
as an example, which he sees as a form of producing energy that is advertised as an alternative to carbon-intensive, non-renewable fossil fuels, but creates long-term radioactive waste
Radioactive waste
Radioactive wastes are wastes that contain radioactive material. Radioactive wastes are usually by-products of nuclear power generation and other applications of nuclear fission or nuclear technology, such as research and medicine...
and other dangers to health and security. While O'Connor believes that capitalism is capable of spreading out its economic supports so widely that it can afford to destroy one ecosystem
Ecosystem
An ecosystem is a biological environment consisting of all the organisms living in a particular area, as well as all the nonliving , physical components of the environment with which the organisms interact, such as air, soil, water and sunlight....
before moving onto another, he and many other eco-socialists now fear that, with the onset of globalization, the system is running out of new ecosystem
Ecosystem
An ecosystem is a biological environment consisting of all the organisms living in a particular area, as well as all the nonliving , physical components of the environment with which the organisms interact, such as air, soil, water and sunlight....
s. Kovel adds that capitalist firms have to continue to extract profit through a combination of intensive or extensive exploitation and selling to new markets, meaning that capitalism must grow
Economic growth
In economics, economic growth is defined as the increasing capacity of the economy to satisfy the wants of goods and services of the members of society. Economic growth is enabled by increases in productivity, which lowers the inputs for a given amount of output. Lowered costs increase demand...
indefinitely to exist, which he thinks is impossible on a planet of finite resources.
The role of the state and transstatal organisations
CapitalistCapitalism
Capitalism is an economic system that became dominant in the Western world following the demise of feudalism. There is no consensus on the precise definition nor on how the term should be used as a historical category...
expansion is seen by eco-socialists as being "hand in glove" with "corrupt and subservient client states" that repress dissent against the system, governed by international organisations "under the overall supervision of the Western powers
Western world
The Western world, also known as the West and the Occident , is a term referring to the countries of Western Europe , the countries of the Americas, as well all countries of Northern and Central Europe, Australia and New Zealand...
and the superpower
Superpower
A superpower is a state with a dominant position in the international system which has the ability to influence events and its own interests and project power on a worldwide scale to protect those interests...
United States
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
", which subordinate peripheral nations economically and militarily. Kovel
Joel Kovel
Joel Kovel is an American politician, academic, writer, and eco-socialist. A practicing psychiatrist and psychoanalyst until the mid-1980s, he has lectured in psychiatry, anthropology, political science and communication studies. He has published many books on his work in psychiatry,...
further claims that capitalism itself spurs conflict and, ultimately, war
War
War is a state of organized, armed, and often prolonged conflict carried on between states, nations, or other parties typified by extreme aggression, social disruption, and usually high mortality. War should be understood as an actual, intentional and widespread armed conflict between political...
. Kovel states that the 'War on Terror
War on Terror
The War on Terror is a term commonly applied to an international military campaign led by the United States and the United Kingdom with the support of other North Atlantic Treaty Organisation as well as non-NATO countries...
', between Islamist extremists and the USA, is caused by "oil imperialism", whereby the capitalist nations require control over sources of energy
Energy
In physics, energy is an indirectly observed quantity. It is often understood as the ability a physical system has to do work on other physical systems...
, especially oil, which are necessary to continue intensive industrial growth
Economic growth
In economics, economic growth is defined as the increasing capacity of the economy to satisfy the wants of goods and services of the members of society. Economic growth is enabled by increases in productivity, which lowers the inputs for a given amount of output. Lowered costs increase demand...
- in the quest for control of such resources, Kovel argues that the capitalist nations, specifically the USA, have come into conflict with the predominantly Muslim
Muslim
A Muslim, also spelled Moslem, is an adherent of Islam, a monotheistic, Abrahamic religion based on the Quran, which Muslims consider the verbatim word of God as revealed to prophet Muhammad. "Muslim" is the Arabic term for "submitter" .Muslims believe that God is one and incomparable...
nations where oil is often found.
Eco-socialists believe that state or self-regulation
Regulatory economics
Regulatory economics is the economics of regulation, in the sense of the application of law by government that is used for various purposes, such as centrally-planning an economy, remedying market failure, enriching well-connected firms, or benefiting politicians...
of markets does not solve the crisis "because to do so requires setting limits upon accumulation", which is "unacceptable" for a growth
Economic growth
In economics, economic growth is defined as the increasing capacity of the economy to satisfy the wants of goods and services of the members of society. Economic growth is enabled by increases in productivity, which lowers the inputs for a given amount of output. Lowered costs increase demand...
-orientated system; they believe that terrorism
Terrorism
Terrorism is the systematic use of terror, especially as a means of coercion. In the international community, however, terrorism has no universally agreed, legally binding, criminal law definition...
and revolutionary impulses cannot be tackled properly "because to do so would mean abandoning the logic of empire
Empire
The term empire derives from the Latin imperium . Politically, an empire is a geographically extensive group of states and peoples united and ruled either by a monarch or an oligarchy....
". Instead, eco-socialists feel that increasing repressive counter-terrorism
Counter-terrorism
Counter-terrorism is the practices, tactics, techniques, and strategies that governments, militaries, police departments and corporations adopt to prevent or in response to terrorist threats and/or acts, both real and imputed.The tactic of terrorism is available to insurgents and governments...
increases alienation
Social alienation
The term social alienation has many discipline-specific uses; Roberts notes how even within the social sciences, it “is used to refer both to a personal psychological state and to a type of social relationship”...
and causes further terrorism
Terrorism
Terrorism is the systematic use of terror, especially as a means of coercion. In the international community, however, terrorism has no universally agreed, legally binding, criminal law definition...
and believe that state counter-terrorist
Counter-terrorism
Counter-terrorism is the practices, tactics, techniques, and strategies that governments, militaries, police departments and corporations adopt to prevent or in response to terrorist threats and/or acts, both real and imputed.The tactic of terrorism is available to insurgents and governments...
methods are, in Kovel and Löwy
Michael Löwy
Michael Löwy is a French-Brazilian Marxist sociologist and philosopher. He is presently the emeritus research director in social sciences at the CNRS and lectures at the Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales...
's words, "evolving into a new and malignant variation of fascism
Fascism
Fascism is a radical authoritarian nationalist political ideology. Fascists seek to rejuvenate their nation based on commitment to the national community as an organic entity, in which individuals are bound together in national identity by suprapersonal connections of ancestry, culture, and blood...
". They echo Rosa Luxemburg
Rosa Luxemburg
Rosa Luxemburg was a Marxist theorist, philosopher, economist and activist of Polish Jewish descent who became a naturalized German citizen...
's "stark choice" between "socialism or barbarism", which was believed to be a prediction of the coming of fascism
Fascism
Fascism is a radical authoritarian nationalist political ideology. Fascists seek to rejuvenate their nation based on commitment to the national community as an organic entity, in which individuals are bound together in national identity by suprapersonal connections of ancestry, culture, and blood...
and further forms of destructive capitalism at the beginning of the twentieth century (Luxemburg
Rosa Luxemburg
Rosa Luxemburg was a Marxist theorist, philosopher, economist and activist of Polish Jewish descent who became a naturalized German citizen...
was in fact murdered by proto-fascist
Fascism
Fascism is a radical authoritarian nationalist political ideology. Fascists seek to rejuvenate their nation based on commitment to the national community as an organic entity, in which individuals are bound together in national identity by suprapersonal connections of ancestry, culture, and blood...
Freikorps
Freikorps
Freikorps are German volunteer military or paramilitary units. The term was originally applied to voluntary armies formed in German lands from the middle of the 18th century onwards. Between World War I and World War II the term was also used for the paramilitary organizations that arose during...
in the revolutionary atmosphere of Germany
Germany
Germany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a federal parliamentary republic in Europe. The country consists of 16 states while the capital and largest city is Berlin. Germany covers an area of 357,021 km2 and has a largely temperate seasonal climate...
in 1919).
Tensions within the Eco-Socialist discourse
Reflecting tensions within the environmental and socialist movements, there is some conflict of ideas. One the one hand, eco-socialists of Socialist ResistanceSocialist Resistance
Socialist Resistance is a Trotskyist and ecosocialist organisation in Britain which publishes a Marxist periodical of the same name. In July 2009 the International Socialist Group merged into it, making SR the British Section of the Fourth International.-Origins:It was launched on 8 September...
argue that almost all goods should be rationally produced and distributed by the state. On the other hand, more grassroots eco-socialists advocate the distribution of goods by society, for example through the extension of the library principle.
In practice however, a synthesis is emerging which calls for democratic regulation of industry in the interests of people and the environment, nationalisation of some key (environmental) industries, local democracy and an extension of co-ops and the library principle.
Critique of other forms of green politics
Eco-socialists criticise many within the Green movementGreen politics
Green politics is a political ideology that aims for the creation of an ecologically sustainable society rooted in environmentalism, social liberalism, and grassroots democracy...
for not being overtly anti-capitalist
Anti-capitalism
Anti-capitalism describes a wide variety of movements, ideas, and attitudes which oppose capitalism. Anti-capitalists, in the strict sense of the word, are those who wish to completely replace capitalism with another system....
, for working within the existing capitalist
Capitalism
Capitalism is an economic system that became dominant in the Western world following the demise of feudalism. There is no consensus on the precise definition nor on how the term should be used as a historical category...
, statist system, for voluntarism
Voluntarism (action)
Voluntarism is sometimes used to mean the use of, or reliance on voluntary action to maintain an institution, carry out a policy, or achieve an end. In this context the word voluntary action means action based on free will, which in turn means action which is performed free from certain constraints...
, or for reliance on technological fixes. The eco-socialist ideology is based on a critique of other forms of Green politics, including various forms of Green economics, Localism
Localism (politics)
Localism describes a range of political philosophies which prioritize the local. Generally, localism supports local production and consumption of goods, local control of government, and promotion of local history, local culture and local identity...
, Deep Ecology
Deep ecology
Deep ecology is a contemporary ecological philosophy that recognizes an inherent worth of all living beings, regardless of their instrumental utility to human needs. The philosophy emphasizes the interdependence of organisms within ecosystems and that of ecosystems with each other within the...
, Bioregionalism
Bioregionalism
Bioregionalism is a political, cultural, and environmental system or set of views based on naturally defined areas called bioregions, similar to ecoregions. Bioregions are defined through physical and environmental features, including watershed boundaries and soil and terrain characteristics...
and even some manifestations of radical green ideologies
Green politics
Green politics is a political ideology that aims for the creation of an ecologically sustainable society rooted in environmentalism, social liberalism, and grassroots democracy...
such as Eco-feminism and Social Ecology
Social ecology
Social ecology is a philosophy developed by Murray Bookchin in the 1960s.It holds that present ecological problems are rooted in deep-seated social problems, particularly in dominatory hierarchical political and social systems. These have resulted in an uncritical acceptance of an overly...
.
As Kovel puts it, eco-socialism differs from Green politics at the most fundamental level because the 'Four Pillars
Four Pillars of the Green Party
The Four Pillars of the Green Party are a foundational statement of Green politics and form the basis of many worldwide Green parties. The Four Pillars are:* Ecological wisdom* Social justice* Grassroots democracy* Nonviolence...
' of Green politics (and the 'Ten Key Values' of the US Green Party
Green Party (United States)
The Green Party of the United States is a nationally recognized political party which officially formed in 1991. It is a voluntary association of state green parties. Prior to national formation, many state affiliates had already formed and were recognized by other state parties...
) do not include the demand for the emancipation of labour
Emancipation of Labour
Emancipation of Labour group was the first Russian Marxist group. Founded by Georgi Plekhanov, Vasily Ignatov, Vera Zasulich, Leo Deutsch, and Pavel Axelrod in Geneva in 1883. Leo Deutsch left the group in 1884 when he was arrested and sent to Siberia. Sergey Ingerman joined the group at 1888...
and the end of the separation between producers and the means of production
Means of production
Means of production refers to physical, non-human inputs used in production—the factories, machines, and tools used to produce wealth — along with both infrastructural capital and natural capital. This includes the classical factors of production minus financial capital and minus human capital...
. Many eco-socialists also oppose Malthusianism
Malthusianism
Malthusianism refers primarily to ideas derived from the political/economic thought of Reverend Thomas Robert Malthus, as laid out initially in his 1798 writings, An Essay on the Principle of Population, which describes how unchecked population growth is exponential while the growth of the food...
and are alarmed by the gulf between Green politics in the Global North and the Global South.
Opposition to within-system approaches, voluntarism and technological fixes
Eco-socialists are highly critical of those GreensGreen politics
Green politics is a political ideology that aims for the creation of an ecologically sustainable society rooted in environmentalism, social liberalism, and grassroots democracy...
who favour "working within the system". While eco-socialists like Kovel
Joel Kovel
Joel Kovel is an American politician, academic, writer, and eco-socialist. A practicing psychiatrist and psychoanalyst until the mid-1980s, he has lectured in psychiatry, anthropology, political science and communication studies. He has published many books on his work in psychiatry,...
recognise the ability of within-system approaches to raise awareness, and believe that "the struggle for an ecologically
Ecology
Ecology is the scientific study of the relations that living organisms have with respect to each other and their natural environment. Variables of interest to ecologists include the composition, distribution, amount , number, and changing states of organisms within and among ecosystems...
rational world must include a struggle for the state", he believes that the mainstream Green movement is too easily co-opted by the current powerful socio-political forces as it "passes from citizen-based activism
Activism
Activism consists of intentional efforts to bring about social, political, economic, or environmental change. Activism can take a wide range of forms from writing letters to newspapers or politicians, political campaigning, economic activism such as boycotts or preferentially patronizing...
to ponderous bureaucracies scuffling for 'a seat at the table'".
For Kovel, capitalism is "happy to enlist" the Green movement for "convenience", "control over popular dissent" and "rationalization". He further attacks within-system green initiatives like carbon trading
Carbon emission trading
Carbon emissions trading is a form of emissions trading that specifically targets carbon dioxide and it currently constitutes the bulk of emissions trading....
, which he sees as a "capitalist shell game" that turns pollution
Pollution
Pollution is the introduction of contaminants into a natural environment that causes instability, disorder, harm or discomfort to the ecosystem i.e. physical systems or living organisms. Pollution can take the form of chemical substances or energy, such as noise, heat or light...
"into a fresh source of profit". Brian Tokar has further criticised carbon trading in this way, suggesting that it augments existing class inequality and gives the "largest 'players'... substantial control over the whole 'game'".
In addition, Kovel criticises the "defeatism" of voluntarism
Voluntarism (action)
Voluntarism is sometimes used to mean the use of, or reliance on voluntary action to maintain an institution, carry out a policy, or achieve an end. In this context the word voluntary action means action based on free will, which in turn means action which is performed free from certain constraints...
in some local forms of environmentalism
Environmentalism
Environmentalism is a broad philosophy, ideology and social movement regarding concerns for environmental conservation and improvement of the health of the environment, particularly as the measure for this health seeks to incorporate the concerns of non-human elements...
that do not connect together: he suggests that they can be "drawn off into individualism
Individualism
Individualism is the moral stance, political philosophy, ideology, or social outlook that stresses "the moral worth of the individual". Individualists promote the exercise of one's goals and desires and so value independence and self-reliance while opposing most external interference upon one's own...
" or co-opted to the demands of capitalism, as in the case of certain recycling
Recycling
Recycling is processing used materials into new products to prevent waste of potentially useful materials, reduce the consumption of fresh raw materials, reduce energy usage, reduce air pollution and water pollution by reducing the need for "conventional" waste disposal, and lower greenhouse...
projects, where citizens are "induced to provide free labor" to waste management
Waste management
Waste management is the collection, transport, processing or disposal,managing and monitoring of waste materials. The term usually relates to materials produced by human activity, and the process is generally undertaken to reduce their effect on health, the environment or aesthetics...
industries who are involved in the "capitalization of nature". He labels the notion on voluntarism
Voluntarism (action)
Voluntarism is sometimes used to mean the use of, or reliance on voluntary action to maintain an institution, carry out a policy, or achieve an end. In this context the word voluntary action means action based on free will, which in turn means action which is performed free from certain constraints...
"ecopolitics
Green politics
Green politics is a political ideology that aims for the creation of an ecologically sustainable society rooted in environmentalism, social liberalism, and grassroots democracy...
without struggle".
Technological fixes to ecological
Ecology
Ecology is the scientific study of the relations that living organisms have with respect to each other and their natural environment. Variables of interest to ecologists include the composition, distribution, amount , number, and changing states of organisms within and among ecosystems...
problems are also rejected by eco-socialists. Saral Sarkar has updated the thesis of 1970s 'limits to growth
Limits to Growth
The Limits to Growth is a 1972 book modeling the consequences of a rapidly growing world population and finite resource supplies, commissioned by the Club of Rome. Its authors were Donella H. Meadows, Dennis L. Meadows, Jørgen Randers, and William W. Behrens III. The book used the World3 model to...
' to exemplify the limits of new capitalist technologies such as hydrogen fuel cells, which require large amounts of energy to split molecules to obtain hydrogen. Furthermore, Kovel notes that "events in nature are reciprocal and multi-determined" and can therefore not be predictably "fixed"; socially, technologies cannot solve social problems because they are not "mechanical". He posits an eco-socialist analysis, developed from Marx
Karl Marx
Karl Heinrich Marx was a German philosopher, economist, sociologist, historian, journalist, and revolutionary socialist. His ideas played a significant role in the development of social science and the socialist political movement...
, that patterns of production and social organisation are more important than the forms of technology used within a given configuration of society.
Under capitalism
Capitalism
Capitalism is an economic system that became dominant in the Western world following the demise of feudalism. There is no consensus on the precise definition nor on how the term should be used as a historical category...
, he suggests that technology "has been the sine qua non of growth
Economic growth
In economics, economic growth is defined as the increasing capacity of the economy to satisfy the wants of goods and services of the members of society. Economic growth is enabled by increases in productivity, which lowers the inputs for a given amount of output. Lowered costs increase demand...
" - thus he believes that, even in a world with hypothetical "free energy", the effect would be to lower the cost of automobile
Automobile
An automobile, autocar, motor car or car is a wheeled motor vehicle used for transporting passengers, which also carries its own engine or motor...
production, leading to the massive overproduction
Overproduction
In economics, overproduction, oversupply or excess of supply refers to excess of supply over demand of products being offered to the market...
of vehicle
Vehicle
A vehicle is a device that is designed or used to transport people or cargo. Most often vehicles are manufactured, such as bicycles, cars, motorcycles, trains, ships, boats, and aircraft....
s, "collapsing infrastructure", chronic resource depletion
Resource depletion
Resource depletion is an economic term referring to the exhaustion of raw materials within a region. Resources are commonly divided between renewable resources and non-renewable resources...
and the "paving over" of the "remainder of nature
Nature
Nature, in the broadest sense, is equivalent to the natural world, physical world, or material world. "Nature" refers to the phenomena of the physical world, and also to life in general...
". In the modern world, Kovel considers the supposed efficiency of new post-industrial commodities is a "plain illusion", as miniaturized
Miniaturization
Miniaturization is the creation of ever-smaller scales for mechanical, optical, and electronic products and devices...
components involve many substances and are therefore non-recyclable
Recycling
Recycling is processing used materials into new products to prevent waste of potentially useful materials, reduce the consumption of fresh raw materials, reduce energy usage, reduce air pollution and water pollution by reducing the need for "conventional" waste disposal, and lower greenhouse...
(and, theoretically, only simple substances could be retrieved by burning out-of-date equipment, releasing more pollutants). He is quick to warn "environmental liberals
Liberalism
Liberalism is the belief in the importance of liberty and equal rights. Liberals espouse a wide array of views depending on their understanding of these principles, but generally, liberals support ideas such as constitutionalism, liberal democracy, free and fair elections, human rights,...
" against over-selling the virtues of renewable energies
Renewable energy
Renewable energy is energy which comes from natural resources such as sunlight, wind, rain, tides, and geothermal heat, which are renewable . About 16% of global final energy consumption comes from renewables, with 10% coming from traditional biomass, which is mainly used for heating, and 3.4% from...
that cannot meet the mass energy consumption of the era; although he would still support renewable energy
Renewable energy
Renewable energy is energy which comes from natural resources such as sunlight, wind, rain, tides, and geothermal heat, which are renewable . About 16% of global final energy consumption comes from renewables, with 10% coming from traditional biomass, which is mainly used for heating, and 3.4% from...
projects, he believes it is more important to restructure societies to reduce energy use before relying on renewable energy
Renewable energy
Renewable energy is energy which comes from natural resources such as sunlight, wind, rain, tides, and geothermal heat, which are renewable . About 16% of global final energy consumption comes from renewables, with 10% coming from traditional biomass, which is mainly used for heating, and 3.4% from...
technologies alone.
Critique of Green economics
Eco-socialists have based their ideas for political strategy on a critique of several different trends in Green economics. At the most fundamental level, eco-socialists reject what Kovel calls "ecological economicsEcological economics
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" or the "ecological wing of mainstream economics" for being "uninterested in social transformation". He furthers rejects the Neo-Smithian
Adam Smith
Adam Smith was a Scottish social philosopher and a pioneer of political economy. One of the key figures of the Scottish Enlightenment, Smith is the author of The Theory of Moral Sentiments and An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations...
school, who believe in Adam Smith
Adam Smith
Adam Smith was a Scottish social philosopher and a pioneer of political economy. One of the key figures of the Scottish Enlightenment, Smith is the author of The Theory of Moral Sentiments and An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations...
's vision of "a capitalism of small producers, freely exchanging with each other", which is self-regulating and competitive.
The school is represented by thinkers like David Korten
David Korten
David C. Korten is an American economist, author, and former Professor of the Harvard Business School, political activist and prominent critic of corporate globalization, "by training and inclination a student of psychology and behavioral systems". His best-known publication is When Corporations...
who believe in "regulated markets" checked by government
Government
Government refers to the legislators, administrators, and arbitrators in the administrative bureaucracy who control a state at a given time, and to the system of government by which they are organized...
and civil society
Civil society
Civil society is composed of the totality of many voluntary social relationships, civic and social organizations, and institutions that form the basis of a functioning society, as distinct from the force-backed structures of a state , the commercial institutions of the market, and private criminal...
but, for Kovel, they do not provide a critique of the expansive nature of capitalism away from localised production and ignore "questions of class
Social class
Social classes are economic or cultural arrangements of groups in society. Class is an essential object of analysis for sociologists, political scientists, economists, anthropologists and social historians. In the social sciences, social class is often discussed in terms of 'social stratification'...
, gender
Gender
Gender is a range of characteristics used to distinguish between males and females, particularly in the cases of men and women and the masculine and feminine attributes assigned to them. Depending on the context, the discriminating characteristics vary from sex to social role to gender identity...
or any other category of domination". Kovel also criticises their "fairy-tale" view of history, which refers to the abuse of "natural capital
Natural capital
Natural capital is the extension of the economic notion of capital to goods and services relating to the natural environment. Natural capital is thus the stock of natural ecosystems that yields a flow of valuable ecosystem goods or services into the future...
" by the materialism
Materialism
In philosophy, the theory of materialism holds that the only thing that exists is matter; that all things are composed of material and all phenomena are the result of material interactions. In other words, matter is the only substance...
of the Scientific Revolution
Scientific revolution
The Scientific Revolution is an era associated primarily with the 16th and 17th centuries during which new ideas and knowledge in physics, astronomy, biology, medicine and chemistry transformed medieval and ancient views of nature and laid the foundations for modern science...
, an assumption that, in Kovel's eyes, seems to suggest that "nature had toiled to put the gift of capital into human hands", rather than capitalism being a product of social relations in human history.
Other forms of Community-based economics
Community-based economics
Community-based economics or community economics is an economic system that encourages local substitution. It is most similar the lifeways of those practicing voluntary simplicity, including traditional Mennonite, Amish, and modern eco-village communities...
are also rejected by eco-socialists such as Kovel, including followers of E. F. Schumacher
E. F. Schumacher
Ernst Friedrich "Fritz" Schumacher was an internationally influential economic thinker, statistician and economist in Britain, serving as Chief Economic Advisor to the UK National Coal Board for two decades. His ideas became popularized in much of the English-speaking world during the 1970s...
and some members of the Cooperative movement, for advocating "no more than a very halting and isolated first step". He thinks that their principles are "only partially realizable within the institutions of cooperatives in capitalist society" because "the internal cooperation" of cooperatives is "forever hemmed in and compromised" by the need to expand value and compete within the market
Free market
A free market is a competitive market where prices are determined by supply and demand. However, the term is also commonly used for markets in which economic intervention and regulation by the state is limited to tax collection, and enforcement of private ownership and contracts...
. Marx
Karl Marx
Karl Heinrich Marx was a German philosopher, economist, sociologist, historian, journalist, and revolutionary socialist. His ideas played a significant role in the development of social science and the socialist political movement...
also believed that cooperative
Cooperative
A cooperative is a business organization owned and operated by a group of individuals for their mutual benefit...
s within capitalism make workers into "their own capitalist... by enabling them to use the means of production
Means of production
Means of production refers to physical, non-human inputs used in production—the factories, machines, and tools used to produce wealth — along with both infrastructural capital and natural capital. This includes the classical factors of production minus financial capital and minus human capital...
for the employment of their own labour".
For Kovel and other eco-socialists, Community-based economics
Community-based economics
Community-based economics or community economics is an economic system that encourages local substitution. It is most similar the lifeways of those practicing voluntary simplicity, including traditional Mennonite, Amish, and modern eco-village communities...
and Green Localism
Localism (politics)
Localism describes a range of political philosophies which prioritize the local. Generally, localism supports local production and consumption of goods, local control of government, and promotion of local history, local culture and local identity...
are "a fantasy" because "strict localism
Localism (politics)
Localism describes a range of political philosophies which prioritize the local. Generally, localism supports local production and consumption of goods, local control of government, and promotion of local history, local culture and local identity...
belongs to the aboriginal stages of society" and would be an "ecological nightmare at present population levels" due to "heat losses from a multitude of dispersed sites, the squandering of scarce resources, the needless reproduction of effort, and cultural impoverishment". While he feels that small-scale production units are "an essential part of the path towards an ecological society", he sees them not as "an end in itself"; in his view, small enterprises can be either capitalist or socialist
Socialism
Socialism is an economic system characterized by social ownership of the means of production and cooperative management of the economy; or a political philosophy advocating such a system. "Social ownership" may refer to any one of, or a combination of, the following: cooperative enterprises,...
in their configuration and therefore must be "consistently anti-capitalist
Anti-capitalism
Anti-capitalism describes a wide variety of movements, ideas, and attitudes which oppose capitalism. Anti-capitalists, in the strict sense of the word, are those who wish to completely replace capitalism with another system....
", through recognition and support of the emancipation of labour, and exist "in a dialectic with the whole of things", as human society will need large-scale projects, such as transport infrastructures.
He highlights the work of Herman Daly
Herman Daly
Herman Daly is an American ecological economist and professor at the School of Public Policy of University of Maryland, College Park in the United States....
, who exemplifies what eco-socialists see as the good and bad points of ecological economics
Ecological economics
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- while he offers a critique of capitalism and a desire for "workers ownership", he only believes in workers ownership "kept firmly within a capitalist market", ignoring the eco-socialist desire for struggle in the emancipation of labour and hoping that the interests of labour and management today can be improved so that they are "in harmony".
Critique of Deep Ecology
Despite the inclusion of both in political factions like the 'Fundies' of the German Green Party, eco-socialists and deep ecologistsDeep ecology
Deep ecology is a contemporary ecological philosophy that recognizes an inherent worth of all living beings, regardless of their instrumental utility to human needs. The philosophy emphasizes the interdependence of organisms within ecosystems and that of ecosystems with each other within the...
hold markedly opposite views. Eco-socialists like Kovel have attacked deep ecology
Deep ecology
Deep ecology is a contemporary ecological philosophy that recognizes an inherent worth of all living beings, regardless of their instrumental utility to human needs. The philosophy emphasizes the interdependence of organisms within ecosystems and that of ecosystems with each other within the...
because, like other forms of Green politics and Green economics, it features "virtuous souls" who have "no internal connection with the critique of capitalism and the emancipation of labor". Kovel is particularly scathing about deep ecology
Deep ecology
Deep ecology is a contemporary ecological philosophy that recognizes an inherent worth of all living beings, regardless of their instrumental utility to human needs. The philosophy emphasizes the interdependence of organisms within ecosystems and that of ecosystems with each other within the...
and its "fatuous pronouncement" that Green politics is "neither left nor right, but ahead", which, for him, ignores the notion that "that which does not confront the system comes its instrument".
Even more scathingly, Kovel suggests that in "its effort to decentre humanity within nature", deep ecologists
Deep ecology
Deep ecology is a contemporary ecological philosophy that recognizes an inherent worth of all living beings, regardless of their instrumental utility to human needs. The philosophy emphasizes the interdependence of organisms within ecosystems and that of ecosystems with each other within the...
can "go too far" and argue for the "splitting away of unwanted people", as evidenced by their desire to preserve wilderness
Wilderness
Wilderness or wildland is a natural environment on Earth that has not been significantly modified by human activity. It may also be defined as: "The most intact, undisturbed wild natural areas left on our planet—those last truly wild places that humans do not control and have not developed with...
by removing the groups that have lived there "from time immemorial
Time immemorial
Time immemorial is a phrase meaning time extending beyond the reach of memory, record, or tradition, indefinitely ancient, "ancient beyond memory or record"...
". Kovel thinks that this lends legitimacy to "capitalist
Capitalism
Capitalism is an economic system that became dominant in the Western world following the demise of feudalism. There is no consensus on the precise definition nor on how the term should be used as a historical category...
elites", like the US State Department and the World Bank
World Bank
The World Bank is an international financial institution that provides loans to developing countries for capital programmes.The World Bank's official goal is the reduction of poverty...
, who can make preservation of wilderness
Wilderness
Wilderness or wildland is a natural environment on Earth that has not been significantly modified by human activity. It may also be defined as: "The most intact, undisturbed wild natural areas left on our planet—those last truly wild places that humans do not control and have not developed with...
a part of their projects that "have added value as sites for ecotourism
Ecotourism
Ecotourism is a form of tourism visiting fragile, pristine, and usually protected areas, intended as a low impact and often small scale alternative to standard commercial tourism...
" but remove people from their land. Between 1986 and 1996, Kovel notes that over three million people were displaced by "conservation projects"; in the making of the US National Parks, three hundred Shoshone
Shoshone
The Shoshone or Shoshoni are a Native American tribe in the United States with three large divisions: the Northern, the Western and the Eastern....
Indians
Indigenous peoples of the Americas
The indigenous peoples of the Americas are the pre-Columbian inhabitants of North and South America, their descendants and other ethnic groups who are identified with those peoples. Indigenous peoples are known in Canada as Aboriginal peoples, and in the United States as Native Americans...
were killed in the development of Yosemite.
Kovel believes that deep ecology
Deep ecology
Deep ecology is a contemporary ecological philosophy that recognizes an inherent worth of all living beings, regardless of their instrumental utility to human needs. The philosophy emphasizes the interdependence of organisms within ecosystems and that of ecosystems with each other within the...
has affected the rest of the Green movement
Green politics
Green politics is a political ideology that aims for the creation of an ecologically sustainable society rooted in environmentalism, social liberalism, and grassroots democracy...
and led to calls from restrictions on immigration
Immigration
Immigration is the act of foreigners passing or coming into a country for the purpose of permanent residence...
, "often allying with reactionaries in a... cryptically racist
Racism
Racism is the belief that inherent different traits in human racial groups justify discrimination. In the modern English language, the term "racism" is used predominantly as a pejorative epithet. It is applied especially to the practice or advocacy of racial discrimination of a pernicious nature...
quest". Indeed, he finds traces of deep ecology
Deep ecology
Deep ecology is a contemporary ecological philosophy that recognizes an inherent worth of all living beings, regardless of their instrumental utility to human needs. The philosophy emphasizes the interdependence of organisms within ecosystems and that of ecosystems with each other within the...
in the "biological reduction" of Nazism
Nazism
Nazism, the common short form name of National Socialism was the ideology and practice of the Nazi Party and of Nazi Germany...
, an ideology many "organicist thinkers" have found appealing, including Herbert Gruhl, a founder of the German Green Party (who subsequently left when it became more Left-wing) and originator of the phrase "neither left nor right, but ahead". Kovel warns that, while 'ecofascism
Ecofascism
Ecofascism, can be used in two different ways:# The term is used as a pejorative by political conservatives, centrists, and leftists to discredit deep ecology, mainstream environmentalism, radical environmentalism and other ecological positions....
' is confined to a narrow band of far right
Far right
Far-right, extreme right, hard right, radical right, and ultra-right are terms used to discuss the qualitative or quantitative position a group or person occupies within right-wing politics. Far-right politics may involve anti-immigration and anti-integration stances towards groups that are...
intellectuals and disaffected white power skinheads who involved themselves alongside far left
Far left
Far left, also known as the revolutionary left, radical left and extreme left are terms which refer to the highest degree of leftist positions among left-wing politics...
groups in the anti-globalization movement
Anti-globalization movement
The anti-globalization movement, or counter-globalisation movement, is critical of the globalization of corporate capitalism. The movement is also commonly referred to as the global justice movement, alter-globalization movement, anti-globalist movement, anti-corporate globalization movement, or...
, it may be "imposed as a revolution from above
Revolution from above
A revolution from above refers to major political and social changes that are imposed by an elite on the population it dominates. By contrast, the plain term revolution suggests that pressure from below is a major driving force in events, even if other social groups cooperate with — or ultimately...
to install an authoritarian
Authoritarianism
Authoritarianism is a form of social organization characterized by submission to authority. It is usually opposed to individualism and democracy...
regime in order to preserve the main workings of the system" in times of crisis.
Critique of bioregionalism
BioregionalismBioregionalism
Bioregionalism is a political, cultural, and environmental system or set of views based on naturally defined areas called bioregions, similar to ecoregions. Bioregions are defined through physical and environmental features, including watershed boundaries and soil and terrain characteristics...
, a philosophy developed by writers like Kirkpatrick Sale
Kirkpatrick Sale
Kirkpatrick Sale is an independent scholar and author who has written prolifically about political decentralism, environmentalism, luddism and technology...
who believe in the self-sufficiency of "appropriate bioregional boundaries" drawn up by inhabitants of "an area", has been thoroughly critiqued by Kovel
Joel Kovel
Joel Kovel is an American politician, academic, writer, and eco-socialist. A practicing psychiatrist and psychoanalyst until the mid-1980s, he has lectured in psychiatry, anthropology, political science and communication studies. He has published many books on his work in psychiatry,...
, who fears that the "vagueness" of the area will lead to conflict and further boundaries between communities. While Sale
Kirkpatrick Sale
Kirkpatrick Sale is an independent scholar and author who has written prolifically about political decentralism, environmentalism, luddism and technology...
cites the bioregional
Bioregionalism
Bioregionalism is a political, cultural, and environmental system or set of views based on naturally defined areas called bioregions, similar to ecoregions. Bioregions are defined through physical and environmental features, including watershed boundaries and soil and terrain characteristics...
living of Native Americans
Indigenous peoples of the Americas
The indigenous peoples of the Americas are the pre-Columbian inhabitants of North and South America, their descendants and other ethnic groups who are identified with those peoples. Indigenous peoples are known in Canada as Aboriginal peoples, and in the United States as Native Americans...
, Kovel notes that such ideas are impossible to translate to populations of modern proportions, and evidences the fact that Native Americans
Indigenous peoples of the Americas
The indigenous peoples of the Americas are the pre-Columbian inhabitants of North and South America, their descendants and other ethnic groups who are identified with those peoples. Indigenous peoples are known in Canada as Aboriginal peoples, and in the United States as Native Americans...
held land in commons, rather than private property
Private property
Private property is the right of persons and firms to obtain, own, control, employ, dispose of, and bequeath land, capital, and other forms of property. Private property is distinguishable from public property, which refers to assets owned by a state, community or government rather than by...
- thus, for eco-socialists, bioregionalism
Bioregionalism
Bioregionalism is a political, cultural, and environmental system or set of views based on naturally defined areas called bioregions, similar to ecoregions. Bioregions are defined through physical and environmental features, including watershed boundaries and soil and terrain characteristics...
provides no understanding of what is needed to transform society, and what the inevitable "response of the capitalist state" would be to people constructing bioregionalism
Bioregionalism
Bioregionalism is a political, cultural, and environmental system or set of views based on naturally defined areas called bioregions, similar to ecoregions. Bioregions are defined through physical and environmental features, including watershed boundaries and soil and terrain characteristics...
.
Kovel also attacks the problems of self-sufficiency. Where Sale
Kirkpatrick Sale
Kirkpatrick Sale is an independent scholar and author who has written prolifically about political decentralism, environmentalism, luddism and technology...
believes in self-sufficient regions "each developing the energy of its peculiar ecology", such as "wood in the northwest [USA]", Kovel asks "how on earth" these can be made sufficient for regional needs, and notes the environmental damage of converting Seattle into a "forest-destroying and smoke-spewing wood-burning" city. Kovel also questions Sale
Kirkpatrick Sale
Kirkpatrick Sale is an independent scholar and author who has written prolifically about political decentralism, environmentalism, luddism and technology...
's insistence on bioregions
Bioregionalism
Bioregionalism is a political, cultural, and environmental system or set of views based on naturally defined areas called bioregions, similar to ecoregions. Bioregions are defined through physical and environmental features, including watershed boundaries and soil and terrain characteristics...
that do "not require connections with the outside, but within strict limits", and whether this precludes journeys to visit family members and other forms of travel.
Critique of variants of eco-feminism
Like many variants of socialism and Green politics, eco-socialists recognise the importance of "the gendered bifurcation of nature" and support the emancipation of genderGender
Gender is a range of characteristics used to distinguish between males and females, particularly in the cases of men and women and the masculine and feminine attributes assigned to them. Depending on the context, the discriminating characteristics vary from sex to social role to gender identity...
as it "is at the root of patriarchy
Patriarchy
Patriarchy is a social system in which the role of the male as the primary authority figure is central to social organization, and where fathers hold authority over women, children, and property. It implies the institutions of male rule and privilege, and entails female subordination...
and class
Social class
Social classes are economic or cultural arrangements of groups in society. Class is an essential object of analysis for sociologists, political scientists, economists, anthropologists and social historians. In the social sciences, social class is often discussed in terms of 'social stratification'...
". Nevertheless, while Kovel believes that "any path out of capitalism must also be eco-feminist", he criticises types of ecofeminism that are not anti-capitalist
Anti-capitalism
Anti-capitalism describes a wide variety of movements, ideas, and attitudes which oppose capitalism. Anti-capitalists, in the strict sense of the word, are those who wish to completely replace capitalism with another system....
and can "essentialize women's closeness to nature and build from there, submerging history into nature", becoming more at place in the "comforts of the New Age
New Age
The New Age movement is a Western spiritual movement that developed in the second half of the 20th century. Its central precepts have been described as "drawing on both Eastern and Western spiritual and metaphysical traditions and then infusing them with influences from self-help and motivational...
Growth Centre". These limitations, for Kovel, "keep ecofeminism from becoming a coherent social movement".
Critique of Social Ecology
While having much in common with the radical tradition of Social EcologySocial ecology
Social ecology is a philosophy developed by Murray Bookchin in the 1960s.It holds that present ecological problems are rooted in deep-seated social problems, particularly in dominatory hierarchical political and social systems. These have resulted in an uncritical acceptance of an overly...
, eco-socialists still see themselves as distinct. Kovel
Joel Kovel
Joel Kovel is an American politician, academic, writer, and eco-socialist. A practicing psychiatrist and psychoanalyst until the mid-1980s, he has lectured in psychiatry, anthropology, political science and communication studies. He has published many books on his work in psychiatry,...
believes this is because Social Ecologists see hierarchy "in-itself" as the cause of ecological
Ecology
Ecology is the scientific study of the relations that living organisms have with respect to each other and their natural environment. Variables of interest to ecologists include the composition, distribution, amount , number, and changing states of organisms within and among ecosystems...
destruction, whereas eco-socialists focus on gender
Gender
Gender is a range of characteristics used to distinguish between males and females, particularly in the cases of men and women and the masculine and feminine attributes assigned to them. Depending on the context, the discriminating characteristics vary from sex to social role to gender identity...
and class
Social class
Social classes are economic or cultural arrangements of groups in society. Class is an essential object of analysis for sociologists, political scientists, economists, anthropologists and social historians. In the social sciences, social class is often discussed in terms of 'social stratification'...
domination embodied in capitalism and recognise that forms of authority that are not "an expropriation of human power for... self-aggrandizement", such as a student-teacher relationship that is "reciprocal and mutual", are beneficial.
In practice, Kovel describes Social Ecology
Social ecology
Social ecology is a philosophy developed by Murray Bookchin in the 1960s.It holds that present ecological problems are rooted in deep-seated social problems, particularly in dominatory hierarchical political and social systems. These have resulted in an uncritical acceptance of an overly...
as continuing the anarchist
Anarchism
Anarchism is generally defined as the political philosophy which holds the state to be undesirable, unnecessary, and harmful, or alternatively as opposing authority in the conduct of human relations...
tradition of non-violent direct action, which is "necessary" but "not sufficient" because "it leaves unspoken the question of building an ecological society beyond capital
Capitalism
Capitalism is an economic system that became dominant in the Western world following the demise of feudalism. There is no consensus on the precise definition nor on how the term should be used as a historical category...
". Furthermore, Social Ecologists and anarchists
Anarchism
Anarchism is generally defined as the political philosophy which holds the state to be undesirable, unnecessary, and harmful, or alternatively as opposing authority in the conduct of human relations...
tend to focus on the state alone, rather than the class relations behind state domination (in the view of Marxists
Karl Marx
Karl Heinrich Marx was a German philosopher, economist, sociologist, historian, journalist, and revolutionary socialist. His ideas played a significant role in the development of social science and the socialist political movement...
). Kovel fears that this is political, springing from historic hostility to Marxism
Marxism
Marxism is an economic and sociopolitical worldview and method of socioeconomic inquiry that centers upon a materialist interpretation of history, a dialectical view of social change, and an analysis and critique of the development of capitalism. Marxism was pioneered in the early to mid 19th...
among anarchists and sectarianism, which he points out as a fault of the "brilliant" but "dogmatic" founder of Social Ecology, Murray Bookchin
Murray Bookchin
Murray Bookchin was an American libertarian socialist author, orator, and philosopher. A pioneer in the ecology movement, Bookchin was the founder of the social ecology movement within anarchist, libertarian socialist and ecological thought. He was the author of two dozen books on politics,...
.
Opposition to Malthusianism and Neo-Malthusianism
While MalthusianismMalthusianism
Malthusianism refers primarily to ideas derived from the political/economic thought of Reverend Thomas Robert Malthus, as laid out initially in his 1798 writings, An Essay on the Principle of Population, which describes how unchecked population growth is exponential while the growth of the food...
and eco-socialism overlap within the Green movement
Green politics
Green politics is a political ideology that aims for the creation of an ecologically sustainable society rooted in environmentalism, social liberalism, and grassroots democracy...
because both address over-industrialism, and despite the fact that Eco-socialists, like many within the Green movement, are described as neo-Malthusian because of their criticism of economic growth
Economic growth
In economics, economic growth is defined as the increasing capacity of the economy to satisfy the wants of goods and services of the members of society. Economic growth is enabled by increases in productivity, which lowers the inputs for a given amount of output. Lowered costs increase demand...
, Eco-socialists are opposed to Malthusianism
Malthusianism
Malthusianism refers primarily to ideas derived from the political/economic thought of Reverend Thomas Robert Malthus, as laid out initially in his 1798 writings, An Essay on the Principle of Population, which describes how unchecked population growth is exponential while the growth of the food...
. This divergence stems from the difference between Marxist
Karl Marx
Karl Heinrich Marx was a German philosopher, economist, sociologist, historian, journalist, and revolutionary socialist. His ideas played a significant role in the development of social science and the socialist political movement...
and Malthusian
Malthusianism
Malthusianism refers primarily to ideas derived from the political/economic thought of Reverend Thomas Robert Malthus, as laid out initially in his 1798 writings, An Essay on the Principle of Population, which describes how unchecked population growth is exponential while the growth of the food...
examinations of social injustice - whereas Marx blames inequality
Social inequality
Social inequality refers to a situation in which individual groups in a society do not have equal social status. Areas of potential social inequality include voting rights, freedom of speech and assembly, the extent of property rights and access to education, health care, quality housing and other...
on class
Social class
Social classes are economic or cultural arrangements of groups in society. Class is an essential object of analysis for sociologists, political scientists, economists, anthropologists and social historians. In the social sciences, social class is often discussed in terms of 'social stratification'...
injustice, Malthus
Thomas Malthus
The Reverend Thomas Robert Malthus FRS was an English scholar, influential in political economy and demography. Malthus popularized the economic theory of rent....
argued that the working-class remained poor because of their greater fertility
Fertility
Fertility is the natural capability of producing offsprings. As a measure, "fertility rate" is the number of children born per couple, person or population. Fertility differs from fecundity, which is defined as the potential for reproduction...
and birth rate
Birth rate
Crude birth rate is the nativity or childbirths per 1,000 people per year . Another word used interchangeably with "birth rate" is "natality". When the crude birth rate is subtracted from the crude death rate, it reveals the rate of natural increase...
s.
Neo-Malthusians have slightly modified this analysis by increasing their focus on overconsumption - nonetheless, eco-socialists find this attention inadequate. They point to the fact that Malthus did not thoroughly examine ecology and that Garrett Hardin
Garrett Hardin
Garrett James Hardin was an American ecologist who warned of the dangers of overpopulation and whose concept of the tragedy of the commons brought attention to "the damage that innocent actions by individuals can inflict on the environment"...
, a key Neo-Malthusian, suggested that further enclosed
Enclosure
Enclosure or inclosure is the process which ends traditional rights such as mowing meadows for hay, or grazing livestock on common land. Once enclosed, these uses of the land become restricted to the owner, and it ceases to be common land. In England and Wales the term is also used for the...
and privatised land, as opposed to commons, would solve the chief environmental problem, which Hardin labeled the 'Tragedy of the Commons
Tragedy of the commons
The tragedy of the commons is a dilemma arising from the situation in which multiple individuals, acting independently and rationally consulting their own self-interest, will ultimately deplete a shared limited resource, even when it is clear that it is not in anyone's long-term interest for this...
'.
The "two varieties of environmentalism"
GuhaRamachandra Guha
Ramachandra Guha is an Indian writer whose research interests have included environmental, social, political and cricket history. He is also a columnist for the newspapers The Telegraph , and The Hindustan Times.-Early life and education:Born in Dehra Dun, Uttarakhand, India in 1958, Guha studied...
and Martinez-Alier attack the gulf between what they see as the two "varieties of environmentalism
Environmentalism
Environmentalism is a broad philosophy, ideology and social movement regarding concerns for environmental conservation and improvement of the health of the environment, particularly as the measure for this health seeks to incorporate the concerns of non-human elements...
" - the environmentalism of the North, an aesthetic environmentalism that is the privilege of wealthy people who no longer have basic material concerns, and the environmentalism of the South, where people's local environment is a source of communal wealth and such issues are a question of survival. Nonetheless, other eco-socialists, such as Wall
Derek Wall
Derek Wall is an English politician and member of the Green Party of England and Wales. Formerly the party's Principal Speaker, he is known as a prominent ecosocialist, campaigning both for environmentalism and socialism. Alongside his political role, Wall is an academic and a writer, having...
, have also pointed out that capitalism disproportionately affects the poorest in the Global North as well, leading to examples of resistance such as the environmental justice
Environmental justice
Environmental justice is "the fair treatment and meaningful involvement of all people regardless of race, color, sex, national origin, or income with respect to the development, implementation and enforcement of environmental laws, regulations, and policies." In the words of Bunyan Bryant,...
movement in the US and groups like MOVE
MOVE
MOVE or the MOVE Organization is a Philadelphia-based black liberation group founded by John Africa. MOVE was described by CNN as "a loose-knit, mostly black group whose members all adopted the surname Africa, advocated a "back-to-nature" lifestyle and preached against technology." The group...
.
Critique of other forms of socialism
Eco-socialists choose to use the term 'socialist', despite "the failings of its twentieth century interpretations", because it "still stands for the supersession of capitalCapitalism
Capitalism is an economic system that became dominant in the Western world following the demise of feudalism. There is no consensus on the precise definition nor on how the term should be used as a historical category...
" and thus "the name, and the reality" must "become adequate for this time". Eco-socialists have nonetheless often diverged with other Marxist movements. Eco-socialism has also been partly influenced by and associated with agrarian socialism
Agrarian socialism
Agrarian socialism is a socioeconomic political system which combines an agrarian way of life with socialist economic policies.When compared to standard socialist systems which are generally urban/industrial , internationally oriented, and more progressive/liberal in terms of social orientation,...
as well as some forms of Christian socialism
Christian socialism
Christian socialism generally refers to those on the Christian left whose politics are both Christian and socialist and who see these two philosophies as being interrelated. This category can include Liberation theology and the doctrine of the social gospel...
, especially in the United States
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
.
Critique of 'Actually Existing Socialisms'
For Kovel and LowyMichael Löwy
Michael Löwy is a French-Brazilian Marxist sociologist and philosopher. He is presently the emeritus research director in social sciences at the CNRS and lectures at the Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales...
, eco-socialism is "the realization of the “first-epoch” socialisms" by resurrecting the notion of "free development of all producers", distancing themselves from "the attenuated, reformist aims of social democracy
Social democracy
Social democracy is a political ideology of the center-left on the political spectrum. Social democracy is officially a form of evolutionary reformist socialism. It supports class collaboration as the course to achieve socialism...
and the productivist
Productivism
Productivism is the belief that measurable economic productivity and growth is the purpose of human organization , and that "more production is necessarily good".-Arguments for productivism:...
structures of the bureaucratic variations
Bureaucratic collectivism
Bureaucratic collectivism is a theory of class society. It is used by some Trotskyists to describe the nature of the Soviet Union under Joseph Stalin, and other similar states in Central and Eastern Europe and elsewhere .- Theory :...
of socialism", such as forms of Leninism
Leninism
In Marxist philosophy, Leninism is the body of political theory for the democratic organisation of a revolutionary vanguard party, and the achievement of a direct-democracy dictatorship of the proletariat, as political prelude to the establishment of socialism...
and Stalinism
Stalinism
Stalinism refers to the ideology that Joseph Stalin conceived and implemented in the Soviet Union, and is generally considered a branch of Marxist–Leninist ideology but considered by some historians to be a significant deviation from this philosophy...
. They ground the failure of past socialist movements in "underdevelopment in the context of hostility by existing capitalist
Capitalism
Capitalism is an economic system that became dominant in the Western world following the demise of feudalism. There is no consensus on the precise definition nor on how the term should be used as a historical category...
powers", which led to "the denial of internal democracy" and "emulation of capitalist productivism
Productivism
Productivism is the belief that measurable economic productivity and growth is the purpose of human organization , and that "more production is necessarily good".-Arguments for productivism:...
". Kovel believes that the forms of 'actually existing socialism' consisted of "public ownership of the means of production
Means of production
Means of production refers to physical, non-human inputs used in production—the factories, machines, and tools used to produce wealth — along with both infrastructural capital and natural capital. This includes the classical factors of production minus financial capital and minus human capital...
", rather than meeting "the true definition" of socialism as "a free association of producers
Free association (communism and anarchism)
In the anarchist, Marxist and socialist sense, free association is a kind of relation between individuals where there is no state, social class or authority, in a society that had abolished the private property of means of production...
", with the Party-State bureaucracy acting as the "alienating substitute 'public'".
In analysing the Russian Revolution
Russian Revolution of 1917
The Russian Revolution is the collective term for a series of revolutions in Russia in 1917, which destroyed the Tsarist autocracy and led to the creation of the Soviet Union. The Tsar was deposed and replaced by a provisional government in the first revolution of February 1917...
, Kovel feels that "conspiratorial" revolutionary movements "cut off from the development of society" will "find society an inert mass requiring leadership from above". From this, he notes that the anti-democratic Tsarist
Russian Empire
The Russian Empire was a state that existed from 1721 until the Russian Revolution of 1917. It was the successor to the Tsardom of Russia and the predecessor of the Soviet Union...
heritage meant that the Bolsheviks, who were aided into power by World War One
World War I
World War I , which was predominantly called the World War or the Great War from its occurrence until 1939, and the First World War or World War I thereafter, was a major war centred in Europe that began on 28 July 1914 and lasted until 11 November 1918...
, were a minority who, when faced with a counter-revolution and invading Western
Western world
The Western world, also known as the West and the Occident , is a term referring to the countries of Western Europe , the countries of the Americas, as well all countries of Northern and Central Europe, Australia and New Zealand...
powers, continued "the extraordinary needs of 'war communism
War communism
War communism or military communism was the economic and political system that existed in Soviet Russia during the Russian Civil War, from 1918 to 1921...
'", which "put the seal of authoritarianism
Authoritarianism
Authoritarianism is a form of social organization characterized by submission to authority. It is usually opposed to individualism and democracy...
" on the revolution; thus, for Kovel, Lenin
Vladimir Lenin
Vladimir Ilyich Lenin was a Russian Marxist revolutionary and communist politician who led the October Revolution of 1917. As leader of the Bolsheviks, he headed the Soviet state during its initial years , as it fought to establish control of Russia in the Russian Civil War and worked to create a...
and Trotsky
Leon Trotsky
Leon Trotsky , born Lev Davidovich Bronshtein, was a Russian Marxist revolutionary and theorist, Soviet politician, and the founder and first leader of the Red Army....
"resorted to terror", shut down the Soviets
Soviet (council)
Soviet was a name used for several Russian political organizations. Examples include the Czar's Council of Ministers, which was called the “Soviet of Ministers”; a workers' local council in late Imperial Russia; and the Supreme Soviet of the Soviet Union....
(workers' councils) and emulated "capitalist efficiency and productivism
Productivism
Productivism is the belief that measurable economic productivity and growth is the purpose of human organization , and that "more production is necessarily good".-Arguments for productivism:...
as a means of survival", setting the stage for Stalinism
Stalinism
Stalinism refers to the ideology that Joseph Stalin conceived and implemented in the Soviet Union, and is generally considered a branch of Marxist–Leninist ideology but considered by some historians to be a significant deviation from this philosophy...
.
Lenin
Vladimir Lenin
Vladimir Ilyich Lenin was a Russian Marxist revolutionary and communist politician who led the October Revolution of 1917. As leader of the Bolsheviks, he headed the Soviet state during its initial years , as it fought to establish control of Russia in the Russian Civil War and worked to create a...
, in Kovel's eyes, came to oppose the nascent Bolshevik environmentalism
Environmentalism
Environmentalism is a broad philosophy, ideology and social movement regarding concerns for environmental conservation and improvement of the health of the environment, particularly as the measure for this health seeks to incorporate the concerns of non-human elements...
and its champion Aleksandr Bogdanov, who was later attacked for "idealism"; Kovel describes Lenin
Vladimir Lenin
Vladimir Ilyich Lenin was a Russian Marxist revolutionary and communist politician who led the October Revolution of 1917. As leader of the Bolsheviks, he headed the Soviet state during its initial years , as it fought to establish control of Russia in the Russian Civil War and worked to create a...
's philosophy as "a sharply dualistic materialism
Materialism
In philosophy, the theory of materialism holds that the only thing that exists is matter; that all things are composed of material and all phenomena are the result of material interactions. In other words, matter is the only substance...
, rather similar to the Cartesian
Cartesianism
Cartesian means of or relating to the French philosopher and mathematician René Descartes—from his name—Rene Des-Cartes. It may refer to:*Cartesian anxiety*Cartesian circle*Cartesian dualism...
separation of matter and consciousness, and perfectly tooled... to the active working over of the dead, dull matter by the human hand", which led him to want to overcome Russia
Russia
Russia or , officially known as both Russia and the Russian Federation , is a country in northern Eurasia. It is a federal semi-presidential republic, comprising 83 federal subjects...
n backwardness through rapid industrialization. This tendency was, according to Kovel, augmented by a desire to catch-up with the West
Western world
The Western world, also known as the West and the Occident , is a term referring to the countries of Western Europe , the countries of the Americas, as well all countries of Northern and Central Europe, Australia and New Zealand...
and the "severe crisis" of the revolution's first years.
Furthermore, Kovel quotes Trotsky
Leon Trotsky
Leon Trotsky , born Lev Davidovich Bronshtein, was a Russian Marxist revolutionary and theorist, Soviet politician, and the founder and first leader of the Red Army....
, who believed in a Communist
Communism
Communism is a social, political and economic ideology that aims at the establishment of a classless, moneyless, revolutionary and stateless socialist society structured upon common ownership of the means of production...
"superman" who would "learn how to move rivers and mountains". Kovel believes that, in Stalin
Joseph Stalin
Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin was the Premier of the Soviet Union from 6 May 1941 to 5 March 1953. He was among the Bolshevik revolutionaries who brought about the October Revolution and had held the position of first General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union's Central Committee...
's "revolution from above" and mass terror in response to the early 1930s economic crisis, Trotsky
Leon Trotsky
Leon Trotsky , born Lev Davidovich Bronshtein, was a Russian Marxist revolutionary and theorist, Soviet politician, and the founder and first leader of the Red Army....
's writings "were given official imprimatur", despite the fact that Trotsky
Leon Trotsky
Leon Trotsky , born Lev Davidovich Bronshtein, was a Russian Marxist revolutionary and theorist, Soviet politician, and the founder and first leader of the Red Army....
himself was eventually purged, as Stalinism
Stalinism
Stalinism refers to the ideology that Joseph Stalin conceived and implemented in the Soviet Union, and is generally considered a branch of Marxist–Leninist ideology but considered by some historians to be a significant deviation from this philosophy...
attacked "the very notion of ecology... in addition to ecologies". Kovel adds that Stalin
Joseph Stalin
Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin was the Premier of the Soviet Union from 6 May 1941 to 5 March 1953. He was among the Bolshevik revolutionaries who brought about the October Revolution and had held the position of first General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union's Central Committee...
"would win the gold medal for enmity to nature", and that, in the face of massive environmental degradation
Environmental degradation
Environmental degradation is the deterioration of the environment through depletion of resources such as air, water and soil; the destruction of ecosystems and the extinction of wildlife...
, the inflexible Soviet
Soviet Union
The Soviet Union , officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics , was a constitutionally socialist state that existed in Eurasia between 1922 and 1991....
bureaucracy became increasingly inefficient and unable to emulate capitalist accumulation, leading to a "vicious cycle" that led to its collapse.
Critique of the wider socialist movement
Beyond the forms of 'actually existing socialism', Kovel criticises socialistsSocialism
Socialism is an economic system characterized by social ownership of the means of production and cooperative management of the economy; or a political philosophy advocating such a system. "Social ownership" may refer to any one of, or a combination of, the following: cooperative enterprises,...
in general as treating ecology "as an afterthought" and holding "a naive faith in the ecological capacities of a working-class defined by generations of capitalist
Capitalism
Capitalism is an economic system that became dominant in the Western world following the demise of feudalism. There is no consensus on the precise definition nor on how the term should be used as a historical category...
production". He exemplifies David McNally
David McNally (professor)
David McNally is a Trotskyist theorist and is a Professor of political science at York University in Toronto, Ontario, and chair of the university's political science department....
, who advocated increasing consumption levels under socialism, which, for Kovel, contradicts any notion of natural limits. He also criticises McNally's belief in releasing the "positive side of capital
Capitalism
Capitalism is an economic system that became dominant in the Western world following the demise of feudalism. There is no consensus on the precise definition nor on how the term should be used as a historical category...
's self-expansion" after the emancipation of labor; instead, Kovel argues that a socialist society would "seek not to become larger" but would rather become "more realized", choosing sufficiency and eschewing economic growth
Economic growth
In economics, economic growth is defined as the increasing capacity of the economy to satisfy the wants of goods and services of the members of society. Economic growth is enabled by increases in productivity, which lowers the inputs for a given amount of output. Lowered costs increase demand...
. Kovel further adds that the socialist
Socialism
Socialism is an economic system characterized by social ownership of the means of production and cooperative management of the economy; or a political philosophy advocating such a system. "Social ownership" may refer to any one of, or a combination of, the following: cooperative enterprises,...
movement was historically conditioned by its origins in the era of industrialization so that, when modern socialists
Socialism
Socialism is an economic system characterized by social ownership of the means of production and cooperative management of the economy; or a political philosophy advocating such a system. "Social ownership" may refer to any one of, or a combination of, the following: cooperative enterprises,...
like McNally
David McNally (professor)
David McNally is a Trotskyist theorist and is a Professor of political science at York University in Toronto, Ontario, and chair of the university's political science department....
advocate a socialism that "cannot be at the expense of the range of human satisfaction", they fail "to recognize that these satisfactions can be problematic with respect to nature when they have been historically shaped by the domination of nature".
Eco-socialist strategy
Eco-socialists generally advocate the non-violent dismantling of capitalism and the state, focusing on collective ownership of the means of productionMeans of production
Means of production refers to physical, non-human inputs used in production—the factories, machines, and tools used to produce wealth — along with both infrastructural capital and natural capital. This includes the classical factors of production minus financial capital and minus human capital...
by freely associated producers and restoration of the Commons. To get to an eco-socialist society, eco-socialists advocate working-class anti-capitalist
Anti-capitalism
Anti-capitalism describes a wide variety of movements, ideas, and attitudes which oppose capitalism. Anti-capitalists, in the strict sense of the word, are those who wish to completely replace capitalism with another system....
resistance but also believe that there is potential for agency in autonomous, grassroots individuals and groups across the world who can build "prefigurative" projects for non-violent radical social change.
These prefigurative steps go "beyond the market
Free market
A free market is a competitive market where prices are determined by supply and demand. However, the term is also commonly used for markets in which economic intervention and regulation by the state is limited to tax collection, and enforcement of private ownership and contracts...
and the state" and base production on the enhancement of use value
Use value
Use value or value in use is the utility of consuming a good; the want-satisfying power of a good or service in classical political economy. In Marx's critique of political economy, any labor-product has a value and a use-value, and if it is traded as a commodity in markets, it additionally has an...
s, leading to the internationalization of resistance communities in an 'Eco-socialist Party' or network of grassroots groups focused on non-violent, radical social transformation. An 'Eco-socialist revolution' is then carried out.
Agency
Many eco-socialists, like Alan Roberts, have encouraged working-class action and resistance, such as the 'green banGreen ban
A green ban is a form of strike action, usually taken by a trade union or other organised labour group, which is conducted for environmentalist or conservationist purposes.-Background:...
' movement in which workers refuse to participate in projects that are ecologically harmful. Similarly, Kovel
Joel Kovel
Joel Kovel is an American politician, academic, writer, and eco-socialist. A practicing psychiatrist and psychoanalyst until the mid-1980s, he has lectured in psychiatry, anthropology, political science and communication studies. He has published many books on his work in psychiatry,...
focuses on working-class involvement in the formation of eco-socialist parties or their increased involvement in existing Green Parties; however, he believes that, unlike many other forms of socialist
Socialism
Socialism is an economic system characterized by social ownership of the means of production and cooperative management of the economy; or a political philosophy advocating such a system. "Social ownership" may refer to any one of, or a combination of, the following: cooperative enterprises,...
analysis, "there is no privileged agent" or revolutionary class
Social class
Social classes are economic or cultural arrangements of groups in society. Class is an essential object of analysis for sociologists, political scientists, economists, anthropologists and social historians. In the social sciences, social class is often discussed in terms of 'social stratification'...
, and that there is potential for agency in numerous autonomous, grassroots individuals and groups who can build "prefigurative" projects for non-violent radical social change. He defines "prefiguration" as "the potential for the given to contain the lineaments of what is to be", meaning that "a moment toward the future exists embedded in every point of the social organism where a need arises".
If "everything has prefigurative potential", Kovel notes that forms of potential ecological
Ecology
Ecology is the scientific study of the relations that living organisms have with respect to each other and their natural environment. Variables of interest to ecologists include the composition, distribution, amount , number, and changing states of organisms within and among ecosystems...
production will be "scattered", and thus suggests that "the task is to free them and connect them". While all "human ecosystem
Ecosystem
An ecosystem is a biological environment consisting of all the organisms living in a particular area, as well as all the nonliving , physical components of the environment with which the organisms interact, such as air, soil, water and sunlight....
s" have "ecosocialist potential", Kovel points out that ones such as the World Bank
World Bank
The World Bank is an international financial institution that provides loans to developing countries for capital programmes.The World Bank's official goal is the reduction of poverty...
have low potential, whereas internally democratic anti-globalization
Anti-globalization
Criticism of globalization is skepticism of the claimed benefits of the globalization of capitalism. Many of these views are held by the anti-globalization movement however other groups also are critical of the policies of globalization....
"affinity groups" have a high potential through a dialectic that involves the "active bringing and holding together of negations", such as the group acting as an alternative institution ("production of an ecological
Ecology
Ecology is the scientific study of the relations that living organisms have with respect to each other and their natural environment. Variables of interest to ecologists include the composition, distribution, amount , number, and changing states of organisms within and among ecosystems...
/socialist
Socialism
Socialism is an economic system characterized by social ownership of the means of production and cooperative management of the economy; or a political philosophy advocating such a system. "Social ownership" may refer to any one of, or a combination of, the following: cooperative enterprises,...
alternative") and trying to shut down a G8
G8
The Group of Eight is a forum, created by France in 1975, for the governments of seven major economies: Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the United Kingdom, and the United States. In 1997, the group added Russia, thus becoming the G8...
summit meeting ("resistance to capital"). Therefore "practices that in the same motion enhance use-values and diminish exchange-values are the ideal" for eco-socialists.
Prefiguration
For Kovel, the main prefigurative steps "are that people ruthlessly criticize the capitalist system... and that they include in this a consistent attack on the widespread belief that there can be no alternative to it", which will then "deligitimate the system and release people into struggle". Kovel justifies this by stating that "radical criticism of the given... can be a material force", even without an alternative, "because it can seize the mind of the masses of people", leading to "dynamic" and "exponential", rather than "incremental" and "linear", victories that spread rapidly. Following this, he advocates the expansion of the dialectical eco-socialist potential of groups through sustaining the confrontation and internal cohesion of human ecosystemHuman ecosystem
Human ecosystems are complex cybernetic systems that are increasingly being used by ecological anthropologists and other scholars to examine the ecological aspects of human communities in a way that integrates multiple factors as economics, socio-political organization, psychological factors, and...
s, leading to an "activation" of potentials in others that will "spread across the whole social field" as "a new set of orienting principles" that define an ideology or "'party-life' formation".
In the short-term, eco-socialists like Kovel advocate activities that have the “promise of breaking down the commodity form”. This includes organizing labor, which is a “reconfiguring of the use-value of labor power”; forming cooperatives, allowing “a relatively free association of labor”; forming localised currencies, which he sees as “undercutting the value-basis of money”; and supporting “radical media” that, in his eyes, involve an “undoing of the fetishism of commodities”. Arran Gare
Arran Gare
Arran Gare is an Australian philosopher known mainly for his work in environmental philosophy, philosophy of culture and the metaphysics of process philosophy...
, Wall
Derek Wall
Derek Wall is an English politician and member of the Green Party of England and Wales. Formerly the party's Principal Speaker, he is known as a prominent ecosocialist, campaigning both for environmentalism and socialism. Alongside his political role, Wall is an academic and a writer, having...
and Kovel have advocated economic localisation
Localism (politics)
Localism describes a range of political philosophies which prioritize the local. Generally, localism supports local production and consumption of goods, local control of government, and promotion of local history, local culture and local identity...
in the same vein as many in the Green movement
Green politics
Green politics is a political ideology that aims for the creation of an ecologically sustainable society rooted in environmentalism, social liberalism, and grassroots democracy...
, although they stress that it must be a prefigurative step rather than an end in itself.
Kovel also advises political parties attempting to “democratize the state” that there should be “dialogue but no compromise” with established political parties, and that there must be “a continual association of electoral work with movement work” to avoid “being sucked back into the system”. Such parties, he believes, should focus on “the local rungs of the political system” first, before running national campaigns that “challenge the existing system by the elementary means of exposing its broken promises”.
Kovel believes in building prefigurations around forms of production based on use value
Use value
Use value or value in use is the utility of consuming a good; the want-satisfying power of a good or service in classical political economy. In Marx's critique of political economy, any labor-product has a value and a use-value, and if it is traded as a commodity in markets, it additionally has an...
s, which will provide a practical vision of a post-capitalist
Post-capitalism
Post-capitalism refers to any hypothetical future economic system that is to supersede capitalism as the dominant form of economic organization.-Post-capitalist systems:There have been a number of proposals for a new economic system to replace capitalism...
, post-statist
Anti-statism
Anti-statism is a term describing opposition to state intervention into personal, social, and economic affairs. Anti-statist views may reject the state completely as well as rulership in general , they may wish to reduce the size and scope of the state to a minimum , or they may advocate a...
system. Such projects include Indymedia ("a democratic rendering of the use-values of new technologies such as the Internet
Internet
The Internet is a global system of interconnected computer networks that use the standard Internet protocol suite to serve billions of users worldwide...
, and a continual involvement in wider struggle"), open-source software
Open-source software
Open-source software is computer software that is available in source code form: the source code and certain other rights normally reserved for copyright holders are provided under a software license that permits users to study, change, improve and at times also to distribute the software.Open...
, Wikipedia
Wikipedia
Wikipedia is a free, web-based, collaborative, multilingual encyclopedia project supported by the non-profit Wikimedia Foundation. Its 20 million articles have been written collaboratively by volunteers around the world. Almost all of its articles can be edited by anyone with access to the site,...
, public libraries and many other initiatives, especially those developed within the anti-globalisation movement. These strategies, in Wall
Derek Wall
Derek Wall is an English politician and member of the Green Party of England and Wales. Formerly the party's Principal Speaker, he is known as a prominent ecosocialist, campaigning both for environmentalism and socialism. Alongside his political role, Wall is an academic and a writer, having...
's words, "go beyond the market
Free market
A free market is a competitive market where prices are determined by supply and demand. However, the term is also commonly used for markets in which economic intervention and regulation by the state is limited to tax collection, and enforcement of private ownership and contracts...
and the state" by rejecting the supposed dichotomy between private enterprise
Capitalism
Capitalism is an economic system that became dominant in the Western world following the demise of feudalism. There is no consensus on the precise definition nor on how the term should be used as a historical category...
and state-owned
Government-owned corporation
A government-owned corporation, state-owned company, state-owned entity, state enterprise, publicly owned corporation, government business enterprise, or parastatal is a legal entity created by a government to undertake commercial activities on behalf of an owner government...
production, while also rejecting any combination of the two through a mixed economy
Mixed economy
Mixed economy is an economic system in which both the state and private sector direct the economy, reflecting characteristics of both market economies and planned economies. Most mixed economies can be described as market economies with strong regulatory oversight, in addition to having a variety...
. He states that these present forms of “amphibious politics”, which are “half in the dirty water of the present but seeking to move on to a new, unexplored territory”.
Wall suggests that open source software, for example, opens up “a new form of commons regime in cyberspace
Cyberspace
Cyberspace is the electronic medium of computer networks, in which online communication takes place.The term "cyberspace" was first used by the cyberpunk science fiction author William Gibson, though the concept was described somewhat earlier, for example in the Vernor Vinge short story "True...
”, which he praises as production “for the pleasure of invention” that gives “access to resources without exchange”. He believes that open source
Open source
The term open source describes practices in production and development that promote access to the end product's source materials. Some consider open source a philosophy, others consider it a pragmatic methodology...
has “bypassed” both the market
Free market
A free market is a competitive market where prices are determined by supply and demand. However, the term is also commonly used for markets in which economic intervention and regulation by the state is limited to tax collection, and enforcement of private ownership and contracts...
and the state, and could provide “developing countries with free access to vital computer software”. Furthermore, he suggests that an “open source
Open source
The term open source describes practices in production and development that promote access to the end product's source materials. Some consider open source a philosophy, others consider it a pragmatic methodology...
economy” means that “the barrier between user and provider is eroded”, allowing for “cooperative creativity”. He links this to Marxism
Marxism
Marxism is an economic and sociopolitical worldview and method of socioeconomic inquiry that centers upon a materialist interpretation of history, a dialectical view of social change, and an analysis and critique of the development of capitalism. Marxism was pioneered in the early to mid 19th...
and the notion of usufruct
Usufruct
Usufruct is the legal right to use and derive profit or benefit from property that either belongs to another person or which is under common ownership, as long as the property is not damaged or destroyed...
, asserting that “Marx would have been a Firefox user”.
Internationalization of prefiguration and the 'Eco-socialist Party'
Many eco-socialists have noted that the potential for building such projects is easier for media workers than for those in heavy industry because of the decline in trade unionism and the globalizedGlobalization
Globalization refers to the increasingly global relationships of culture, people and economic activity. Most often, it refers to economics: the global distribution of the production of goods and services, through reduction of barriers to international trade such as tariffs, export fees, and import...
division of labor which divides workers. However, Kovel believes that examples like the Christian
Christianity
Christianity is a monotheistic religion based on the life and teachings of Jesus as presented in canonical gospels and other New Testament writings...
Bruderhof Communities
Bruderhof Communities
The Bruderhof Communities are Christian religious communities with branches in New York, Florida and Pennsylvania in the US, the United Kingdom, Germany, and Australia. They have previously been called The Society of Brothers and were loosely affiliated with the Hutterian Brethren...
(despite elements of patriarchy
Patriarchy
Patriarchy is a social system in which the role of the male as the primary authority figure is central to social organization, and where fathers hold authority over women, children, and property. It implies the institutions of male rule and privilege, and entails female subordination...
that he attacks) show that "communistic" organizations can "survive rather well in a heavily industrialized market
Free market
A free market is a competitive market where prices are determined by supply and demand. However, the term is also commonly used for markets in which economic intervention and regulation by the state is limited to tax collection, and enforcement of private ownership and contracts...
" if they are "protected" from the dependence on the market
Free market
A free market is a competitive market where prices are determined by supply and demand. However, the term is also commonly used for markets in which economic intervention and regulation by the state is limited to tax collection, and enforcement of private ownership and contracts...
by "anti-capitalist
Anti-capitalism
Anti-capitalism describes a wide variety of movements, ideas, and attitudes which oppose capitalism. Anti-capitalists, in the strict sense of the word, are those who wish to completely replace capitalism with another system....
intentionality". He further posits that class struggle
Class struggle
Class struggle is the active expression of a class conflict looked at from any kind of socialist perspective. Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels wrote "The [written] history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggle"....
is "internationalized in the face of globalization", as evidenced by a wave of strikes
Strike action
Strike action, also called labour strike, on strike, greve , or simply strike, is a work stoppage caused by the mass refusal of employees to work. A strike usually takes place in response to employee grievances. Strikes became important during the industrial revolution, when mass labour became...
across the Global South in the first half of the year 2000; indeed, he says that "labor's most cherished values are already immanently ecocentric".
Kovel therefore thinks that these universalizing tendencies must lead to the formation of "a consciously 'Ecosocialist Party'" that is neither like a parliamentary or vanguardist party. Instead, Kovel advocates a form of political party
Political party
A political party is a political organization that typically seeks to influence government policy, usually by nominating their own candidates and trying to seat them in political office. Parties participate in electoral campaigns, educational outreach or protest actions...
"grounded in communities of resistance", where delegates from these communities form the core of the party's activists, and these delegates and the "open and transparent" assembly they form are subject to recall
Recall election
A recall election is a procedure by which voters can remove an elected official from office through a direct vote before his or her term has ended...
and regular rotation of members. He holds up the Zapatista Army of National Liberation
Zapatista Army of National Liberation
The Zapatista Army of National Liberation is a revolutionary leftist group based in Chiapas, the southernmost state of Mexico....
(EZLN) and the Gaviotas
Gaviotas
Gaviotas is an ecovillage located in the llanos of the Colombian department of Vichada. It was founded in 1971 by Paolo Lugari who assembled a group of engineers and scientists in an attempt to create a mode of sustainable living in one of the least hospitable political and geographical climates in...
movement as examples of such communities, which "are produced outside capitalist circuits" and show that "there can be no single way valid for all peoples".
Nonetheless, he also firmly believes in connecting these movements, stating that "ecosocialism will be international or it will be nothing" and hoping that the Ecosocialist Party can retain the autonomy of local communities while supporting them materially. With an ever-expanding party, Kovel hopes that "defections" by capitalists
Capitalism
Capitalism is an economic system that became dominant in the Western world following the demise of feudalism. There is no consensus on the precise definition nor on how the term should be used as a historical category...
will occur, leading eventually to the armed forces
Armed forces
The armed forces of a country are its government-sponsored defense, fighting forces, and organizations. They exist to further the foreign and domestic policies of their governing body, and to defend that body and the nation it represents from external aggressors. In some countries paramilitary...
and police
Police
The police is a personification of the state designated to put in practice the enforced law, protect property and reduce civil disorder in civilian matters. Their powers include the legitimized use of force...
who, in joining the revolution
Revolution
A revolution is a fundamental change in power or organizational structures that takes place in a relatively short period of time.Aristotle described two types of political revolution:...
, will signify that "the turning point is reached".
’The Revolution’ and transition to eco-socialism
'The Revolution' as envisaged by eco-socialists involves an immediate socio-political transition. Internationally, eco-socialists believe in a reform of the nature of moneyMoney
Money is any object or record that is generally accepted as payment for goods and services and repayment of debts in a given country or socio-economic context. The main functions of money are distinguished as: a medium of exchange; a unit of account; a store of value; and, occasionally in the past,...
and the formation of a 'World People's Trade Organisation' (WPTO) that democratizes and improves world trade
Trade
Trade is the transfer of ownership of goods and services from one person or entity to another. Trade is sometimes loosely called commerce or financial transaction or barter. A network that allows trade is called a market. The original form of trade was barter, the direct exchange of goods and...
through the calculation of an 'Ecological Price' (EP) for goods. This would then be followed by a transformation of socioeconomic conditions towards ecological production, commons land and notions of usufruct
Usufruct
Usufruct is the legal right to use and derive profit or benefit from property that either belongs to another person or which is under common ownership, as long as the property is not damaged or destroyed...
(that seek to improve the common property possessed by society) to end private property
Property
Property is any physical or intangible entity that is owned by a person or jointly by a group of people or a legal entity like a corporation...
. Eco-socialists assert that this must be carried out with adherence to non-violence
The immediate aftermath of the revolution
Eco-socialists like KovelJoel Kovel
Joel Kovel is an American politician, academic, writer, and eco-socialist. A practicing psychiatrist and psychoanalyst until the mid-1980s, he has lectured in psychiatry, anthropology, political science and communication studies. He has published many books on his work in psychiatry,...
use the term “Eco-socialist revolution” to describe the transition to an eco-socialist world society. In the immediate socio-political transition, he believes that four groups will emerge from the revolution – revolutionaries, those “whose productive activity is directly compatible with ecological production” (such as nurses, schoolteachers, librarians, independent farmers and many other examples), those “whose pre-revolutionary practice was given over to capital
Capitalism
Capitalism is an economic system that became dominant in the Western world following the demise of feudalism. There is no consensus on the precise definition nor on how the term should be used as a historical category...
” (including the bourgeoisie
Bourgeoisie
In sociology and political science, bourgeoisie describes a range of groups across history. In the Western world, between the late 18th century and the present day, the bourgeoisie is a social class "characterized by their ownership of capital and their related culture." A member of the...
, advertising executives and more) and “the workers whose activity added surplus value to capitalist commodities”.
In terms of political organisation, he advocates an “interim assembly” made up of the revolutionaries that can “devise incentives to make sure that vital functions are maintained” (such as short-term continuation of “differential remuneration” for labor), “handle the redistribution of social roles and assets”, convene “in widespread locations”, and send delegates to regional, state, national and international organisations, where every level has an “executive council” that is rotated and can be recalled. From there, he asserts that “productive communities” will “form the political as well as economic unit of society” and “organize others” to make a transition to eco-socialist production.
He adds that people will be allowed to be members of any community they choose with “associate membership” of others, such as a doctor
Physician
A physician is a health care provider who practices the profession of medicine, which is concerned with promoting, maintaining or restoring human health through the study, diagnosis, and treatment of disease, injury and other physical and mental impairments...
having main membership of healthcare communities as a doctor
Physician
A physician is a health care provider who practices the profession of medicine, which is concerned with promoting, maintaining or restoring human health through the study, diagnosis, and treatment of disease, injury and other physical and mental impairments...
and associate membership of child-rearing communities as a father. Each locality would, in Kovel’s eyes, require one community that administered the areas of jurisdiction through an elected assembly. High-level assemblies would have additional “supervisory” roles over localities to monitor the development of ecosystem
Ecosystem
An ecosystem is a biological environment consisting of all the organisms living in a particular area, as well as all the nonliving , physical components of the environment with which the organisms interact, such as air, soil, water and sunlight....
ic integrity, and administer “society-wide services” like transport in “state-like functions”, before the interim assembly can transfer responsibilities to “the level of the society as a whole through appropriate and democratically responsive committees”.
Transnational trade and capital reform
Part of the eco-socialist transition, in Kovel’s eyes, is the reforming moneyMoney
Money is any object or record that is generally accepted as payment for goods and services and repayment of debts in a given country or socio-economic context. The main functions of money are distinguished as: a medium of exchange; a unit of account; a store of value; and, occasionally in the past,...
to retain its use in “enabling exchanges” while reducing its functions as “a commodity in its own right” and “repository of value”. He argues for directing money
Money
Money is any object or record that is generally accepted as payment for goods and services and repayment of debts in a given country or socio-economic context. The main functions of money are distinguished as: a medium of exchange; a unit of account; a store of value; and, occasionally in the past,...
to “enhancement of use-values” through a “subsidization of use-values” that “preserves the functioning core of the economy while gaining time and space for rebuilding it”. Internationally, he believes in the immediate cessation of speculation
Speculation
In finance, speculation is a financial action that does not promise safety of the initial investment along with the return on the principal sum...
in currencies
Currency
In economics, currency refers to a generally accepted medium of exchange. These are usually the coins and banknotes of a particular government, which comprise the physical aspects of a nation's money supply...
(“breaking down the function of money as commodity, and redirecting funds on use-values”), the cancellation of the debt of the Global South (“breaking the back of the value function” of money) and the redirecting the “vast reservoir of mainly phony value” to reparations and “ecologically sound development”. He suggests the end of military aid and other forms of support to “comprador elites in the South” will eventually “lead to their collapse”.
In terms of trade
Trade
Trade is the transfer of ownership of goods and services from one person or entity to another. Trade is sometimes loosely called commerce or financial transaction or barter. A network that allows trade is called a market. The original form of trade was barter, the direct exchange of goods and...
, Kovel advocates a ‘World People’s Trade Organization’ (WPTO), “responsible to a confederation of popular bodies”, in which “the degree of control over trade
Trade
Trade is the transfer of ownership of goods and services from one person or entity to another. Trade is sometimes loosely called commerce or financial transaction or barter. A network that allows trade is called a market. The original form of trade was barter, the direct exchange of goods and...
is... proportional to involvement with production”, meaning that “farmers would have a special say over food trade” and so on. He posits that the WPTO should have an elected council that will oversee a reform of prices in favour of an ‘Ecological Price’ (EP) “determined by the difference between actual use-values and fully realized ones”, thus having low tariff
Tariff
A tariff may be either tax on imports or exports , or a list or schedule of prices for such things as rail service, bus routes, and electrical usage ....
s for forms of ecological production like organic agriculture; he also envisages the high tariff
Tariff
A tariff may be either tax on imports or exports , or a list or schedule of prices for such things as rail service, bus routes, and electrical usage ....
s on non-ecological production providing subsidies to ecological production units.
The EP would also internalize the costs of current externalities
Externality
In economics, an externality is a cost or benefit, not transmitted through prices, incurred by a party who did not agree to the action causing the cost or benefit...
(like pollution
Pollution
Pollution is the introduction of contaminants into a natural environment that causes instability, disorder, harm or discomfort to the ecosystem i.e. physical systems or living organisms. Pollution can take the form of chemical substances or energy, such as noise, heat or light...
) and “would be set as a function of the distance traded”, reducing the effects of long-distance transport like carbon emissions and increased packaging of goods. He thinks that this will provide a “standard of transformation” for non-ecological industries, like the automobile industry, thus spurring changes towards ecological production.
Ecological production
Eco-socialists pursue "ecologicalEcology
Ecology is the scientific study of the relations that living organisms have with respect to each other and their natural environment. Variables of interest to ecologists include the composition, distribution, amount , number, and changing states of organisms within and among ecosystems...
production" that, according to Kovel
Joel Kovel
Joel Kovel is an American politician, academic, writer, and eco-socialist. A practicing psychiatrist and psychoanalyst until the mid-1980s, he has lectured in psychiatry, anthropology, political science and communication studies. He has published many books on his work in psychiatry,...
, goes beyond the socialist
Socialism
Socialism is an economic system characterized by social ownership of the means of production and cooperative management of the economy; or a political philosophy advocating such a system. "Social ownership" may refer to any one of, or a combination of, the following: cooperative enterprises,...
vision of the emancipation of labor to "the realization of use-values and the appropriation of intrinsic value". He envisions a form of production in which "the making of a thing becomes part of the thing made" so that, using a high quality meal as an analogy, "pleasure would obtain for the cooking of the meal" - thus activities "reserved as hobbies under capitalism" would "compose the fabric of everyday life" under eco-socialism.
This, for Kovel, is achieved if labor is "freely chosen and developed... with a fully realized use-value" achieved by a "negation" of exchange-value, and he exemplifies the Food Not Bombs
Food Not Bombs
Food Not Bombs is a loose-knit group of independent collectives, serving free vegan and vegetarian food to others. Food Not Bombs' ideology is that myriad corporate and government priorities are skewed to allow hunger to persist in the midst of abundance...
project for adopting this. He believes that the notion of "mutual recognition... for the process as well as the product" will avoid exploitation
Exploitation
This article discusses the term exploitation in the meaning of using something in an unjust or cruel manner.- As unjust benefit :In political economy, economics, and sociology, exploitation involves a persistent social relationship in which certain persons are being mistreated or unfairly used for...
and hierarchy
Hierarchy
A hierarchy is an arrangement of items in which the items are represented as being "above," "below," or "at the same level as" one another...
. With production allowing humanity to "live more directly and receptively embedded in nature
Nature
Nature, in the broadest sense, is equivalent to the natural world, physical world, or material world. "Nature" refers to the phenomena of the physical world, and also to life in general...
", Kovel predicts that "a reorientation of human need" will occur that recognises ecological
Ecology
Ecology is the scientific study of the relations that living organisms have with respect to each other and their natural environment. Variables of interest to ecologists include the composition, distribution, amount , number, and changing states of organisms within and among ecosystems...
limits and sees technology
Technology
Technology is the making, usage, and knowledge of tools, machines, techniques, crafts, systems or methods of organization in order to solve a problem or perform a specific function. It can also refer to the collection of such tools, machinery, and procedures. The word technology comes ;...
as "fully participant in the life of eco-systems", thus removing it from profit-making exercises.
In the course on a Eco-socialist revolution, writers like Kovel advocate the a “rapid conversion to ecosocialist production” for all enterprises, followed by “restoring ecosystem
Ecosystem
An ecosystem is a biological environment consisting of all the organisms living in a particular area, as well as all the nonliving , physical components of the environment with which the organisms interact, such as air, soil, water and sunlight....
ic integrity to the workplace” through steps like workers ownership. He then believes that the new enterprises can build “socially developed plans” of production for societal needs, such as efficient light-rail transport components. At the same time, Kovel argues for the transformation of essential but, under capitalism, non-productive labour, such as child care, into productive labour, “thereby giving reproductive labour a status equivalent to productive labour”.
During such a transition, he believes that income should be guaranteed and that money will still be used under “new conditions of value… according to use and to the degree to which ecosystem integrity is developed and advanced by any particular production”. Within this structure, Kovel asserts that markets and will become unnecessary – although “market phenomena” in personal exchanges and other small instances might be adopted – and communities and elected assemblies will democratically decide on the allocation of resources. Istvan Meszaros believes that such "genuinely planned and self-managed (as opposed to bureaucratically planned from above) productive activities" are essential if eco-socialism is to meet its "fundamental objectives".
Eco-socialists are quick to assert that their focus on “production” does not mean that there will be an increase in production and labor under Eco-socialism. Kovel thinks that the emancipation of labor and the realization of use-value will allow “the spheres of work and culture to be reintegrated”. He cites the example of Paraguayan Indian communities (organised by Jesuits) in the eighteenth century who made sure that all community members learned musical instruments, and had labourers take musical instruments to the fields and takes turns playing music or harvesting.
Commons, property and ‘usufruct’
Most eco-socialists, including GuhaRamachandra Guha
Ramachandra Guha is an Indian writer whose research interests have included environmental, social, political and cricket history. He is also a columnist for the newspapers The Telegraph , and The Hindustan Times.-Early life and education:Born in Dehra Dun, Uttarakhand, India in 1958, Guha studied...
and Martinez-Alier, echo subsistence eco-feminists like Vandana Shiva
Vandana Shiva
Vandana Shiva , is a philosopher, environmental activist, and eco feminist. Shiva, currently based in Delhi, has authored more than 20 books and over 500 papers in leading scientific and technical journals. She was trained as a physicist and received her Ph.D...
when they argue for the restoration of commons land over private property
Private property
Private property is the right of persons and firms to obtain, own, control, employ, dispose of, and bequeath land, capital, and other forms of property. Private property is distinguishable from public property, which refers to assets owned by a state, community or government rather than by...
. They blame ecological
Ecology
Ecology is the scientific study of the relations that living organisms have with respect to each other and their natural environment. Variables of interest to ecologists include the composition, distribution, amount , number, and changing states of organisms within and among ecosystems...
degradation on the inclination to short-term, profit-inspired decisions inherent within a market
Free market
A free market is a competitive market where prices are determined by supply and demand. However, the term is also commonly used for markets in which economic intervention and regulation by the state is limited to tax collection, and enforcement of private ownership and contracts...
system. For them, privatization
Privatization
Privatization is the incidence or process of transferring ownership of a business, enterprise, agency or public service from the public sector to the private sector or to private non-profit organizations...
of land strips people of their local communal resources in the name of creating markets for neo-liberal globalisation, which benefits a minority. In their view, successful commons systems have been set up around the world throughout history to manage areas cooperatively, based on long-term needs and sustainability
Sustainability
Sustainability is the capacity to endure. For humans, sustainability is the long-term maintenance of well being, which has environmental, economic, and social dimensions, and encompasses the concept of union, an interdependent relationship and mutual responsible position with all living and non...
instead of short-term profit.
Many eco-socialists focus on a modified version of the notion of ‘Usufruct
Usufruct
Usufruct is the legal right to use and derive profit or benefit from property that either belongs to another person or which is under common ownership, as long as the property is not damaged or destroyed...
’ to replace capitalist private property
Property
Property is any physical or intangible entity that is owned by a person or jointly by a group of people or a legal entity like a corporation...
arrangements. As a legal term, Usufruct
Usufruct
Usufruct is the legal right to use and derive profit or benefit from property that either belongs to another person or which is under common ownership, as long as the property is not damaged or destroyed...
refers to the legal right to use and derive profit or benefit from property
Property
Property is any physical or intangible entity that is owned by a person or jointly by a group of people or a legal entity like a corporation...
that belongs to another person, as long as the property is not damaged. According to eco-socialists like Kovel, a modern interpretation of the idea is “where one uses, enjoys – and through that, improves – another’s property”, as its Latin
Latin
Latin is an Italic language originally spoken in Latium and Ancient Rome. It, along with most European languages, is a descendant of the ancient Proto-Indo-European language. Although it is considered a dead language, a number of scholars and members of the Christian clergy speak it fluently, and...
etymology “condenses the two meanings of use – as in use-value, and enjoyment – and as in the gratification expressed in freely associated labour”. The idea, according to Kovel, has roots in the Code of Hammurabi
Code of Hammurabi
The Code of Hammurabi is a well-preserved Babylonian law code, dating to ca. 1780 BC . It is one of the oldest deciphered writings of significant length in the world. The sixth Babylonian king, Hammurabi, enacted the code, and partial copies exist on a human-sized stone stele and various clay...
and was first mentioned in Roman law
Roman law
Roman law is the legal system of ancient Rome, and the legal developments which occurred before the 7th century AD — when the Roman–Byzantine state adopted Greek as the language of government. The development of Roman law comprises more than a thousand years of jurisprudence — from the Twelve...
“where it applied to ambiguities between masters and slaves with respect to property”; it also features in Islam
Islam
Islam . The most common are and . : Arabic pronunciation varies regionally. The first vowel ranges from ~~. The second vowel ranges from ~~~...
ic Sharia law
Sharia
Sharia law, is the moral code and religious law of Islam. Sharia is derived from two primary sources of Islamic law: the precepts set forth in the Quran, and the example set by the Islamic prophet Muhammad in the Sunnah. Fiqh jurisprudence interprets and extends the application of sharia to...
, Aztec law and the Napoleonic Code
Napoleonic code
The Napoleonic Code — or Code Napoléon — is the French civil code, established under Napoléon I in 1804. The code forbade privileges based on birth, allowed freedom of religion, and specified that government jobs go to the most qualified...
.
Crucially for eco-socialists, Marx mentioned the idea when he stated that human beings are no more than the planet’s “usufruct
Usufruct
Usufruct is the legal right to use and derive profit or benefit from property that either belongs to another person or which is under common ownership, as long as the property is not damaged or destroyed...
aries, and, like boni patres familias, they must hand it down to succeeding generations in an improved condition”. Kovel and others have taken on this reading, asserting that, in an eco-socialist society, “everyone will have... rights of use and ownership over those means of production necessary to express the creativity of human nature”, namely “a place of one’s own” to decorate to personal taste, some personal possessions, the body and its attendant sexual and reproductive rights
Reproductive rights
Reproductive rights are legal rights and freedoms relating to reproduction and reproductive health. The World Health Organization defines reproductive rights as follows:...
.
However, Kovel sees property
Property
Property is any physical or intangible entity that is owned by a person or jointly by a group of people or a legal entity like a corporation...
as “self-contradictory” because individuals emerge “in a tissue of social relations” and “nested circles”, with the self at the centre and extended circles where “issues of sharing arise from early childhood on”. He believes that “the full self is enhanced more by giving than by taking” and that eco-socialism is realized when material possessions weigh “lightly” upon the self – thus restoration of use-value allows things to be taken “concretely and sensuously” but “lightly, since things are enjoyed for themselves and not as buttresses for a shaky ego”.
This, for Kovel, reverses what Marxists see as the commodity fetishism
Commodity fetishism
In Marx's critique of political economy, commodity fetishism denotes the mystification of human relations said to arise out of the growth of market trade, when social relationships between people are expressed as, mediated by and transformed into, objectified relationships between things .The...
and atomization of individuals (through the “unappeasable craving” for “having and excluding others from having”) under capitalism. Under eco-socialism, he therefore believes that enhancement of use-value will lead to differentiated ownership between the individual and the collective, where there are “distinct limits on the amount of property
Property
Property is any physical or intangible entity that is owned by a person or jointly by a group of people or a legal entity like a corporation...
individuals control” and no-one can take control of resources that “would permit the alienation of means of production
Means of production
Means of production refers to physical, non-human inputs used in production—the factories, machines, and tools used to produce wealth — along with both infrastructural capital and natural capital. This includes the classical factors of production minus financial capital and minus human capital...
from another”. He then hopes that the “hubris” of the notion of “ownership of the planet” will be replaced with usufruct
Usufruct
Usufruct is the legal right to use and derive profit or benefit from property that either belongs to another person or which is under common ownership, as long as the property is not damaged or destroyed...
.
Non-violence
Most eco-socialists are involved in peace and antiwar movements, and eco-socialist writers, like KovelJoel Kovel
Joel Kovel is an American politician, academic, writer, and eco-socialist. A practicing psychiatrist and psychoanalyst until the mid-1980s, he has lectured in psychiatry, anthropology, political science and communication studies. He has published many books on his work in psychiatry,...
, generally believe that "violence is the rupturing of ecosystem
Ecosystem
An ecosystem is a biological environment consisting of all the organisms living in a particular area, as well as all the nonliving , physical components of the environment with which the organisms interact, such as air, soil, water and sunlight....
s" and is therefore "deeply contrary to ecosocialist values". Kovel believes that revolutionary movements must prepare for post-revolutionary violence from counter-revolutionary sources by "prior development of the democratic sphere" within the movement, because "to the degree that people are capable of self-government, so will they turn away from violence and retribution" for "a self-governed people cannot be pushed around by any alien government". It is therefore essential, in Kovel's
Joel Kovel
Joel Kovel is an American politician, academic, writer, and eco-socialist. A practicing psychiatrist and psychoanalyst until the mid-1980s, he has lectured in psychiatry, anthropology, political science and communication studies. He has published many books on his work in psychiatry,...
view, that the revolution "takes place in" or spreads quickly to the USA, which "is capital's gendarme and will crush any serious threat", and that revolutionaries reject the death penalty and retribution against former opponents or counter-revolutionaries.
Criticisms of eco-socialism
While in many ways the criticisms of eco-socialism combine the traditional criticisms of both socialism and Green politics, there are unique critiques of eco-socialism, which are largely from within the traditional SocialistSocialism
Socialism is an economic system characterized by social ownership of the means of production and cooperative management of the economy; or a political philosophy advocating such a system. "Social ownership" may refer to any one of, or a combination of, the following: cooperative enterprises,...
or Green movement
Green politics
Green politics is a political ideology that aims for the creation of an ecologically sustainable society rooted in environmentalism, social liberalism, and grassroots democracy...
s themselves, along with conservative criticisms.
Some socialists
Socialism
Socialism is an economic system characterized by social ownership of the means of production and cooperative management of the economy; or a political philosophy advocating such a system. "Social ownership" may refer to any one of, or a combination of, the following: cooperative enterprises,...
are critical of the word 'eco-socialism'. David Reilly, who questions whether his argument is improved by the use of an "exotic word", argues instead that the "real socialism" is "also a green or 'eco'" one that you get to "by dint of struggle". Other socialists, like Paul Hampton
Paul Hampton
Paul Hampton is an American actor, singer, lyricist and writer. He is listed as one of one hundred major architects of American rock and roll in the British rock journal "Footsoldiers and Kings." While he was a sophomore at Dartmouth College, he was signed to Columbia Records and Columbia...
of the Alliance for Workers' Liberty
Alliance for Workers' Liberty
The Alliance for Workers' Liberty , also known as Workers' Liberty, is a Trotskyist group in Britain. The group has a complex history but has always been identified with the theorist Sean Matgamna...
(a British
United Kingdom
The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...
third camp socialist
Third camp
The third camp, also known as third camp socialism or third camp Trotskyism, is a branch of socialism which aims to oppose both capitalism and Stalinism, by supporting the organised working class as a "third camp"....
party), see eco-socialism as "classless ecology", wherein eco-socialists have "given up on the working class
Working class
Working class is a term used in the social sciences and in ordinary conversation to describe those employed in lower tier jobs , often extending to those in unemployment or otherwise possessing below-average incomes...
" as the privileged agent of struggle by "borrowing bits from Marx but missing the locus of Marxist politics".
Writing in Capitalism Nature Socialism, Doug Boucher, Peter Caplan, David Schwartzman and Jane Zara criticise eco-socialists in general (and Joel Kovel
Joel Kovel
Joel Kovel is an American politician, academic, writer, and eco-socialist. A practicing psychiatrist and psychoanalyst until the mid-1980s, he has lectured in psychiatry, anthropology, political science and communication studies. He has published many books on his work in psychiatry,...
in particular) for a deterministic "catastrophism
Catastrophism
Catastrophism is the theory that the Earth has been affected in the past by sudden, short-lived, violent events, possibly worldwide in scope. The dominant paradigm of modern geology is uniformitarianism , in which slow incremental changes, such as erosion, create the Earth's appearance...
" that overlooks "the countervailing tendencies of both popular struggles and the efforts of capitalist governments to rationalize the system" and the "accomplishments of the labor movement" that "demonstrate that despite the interests and desires of capitalists, progress toward social justice
Social justice
Social justice generally refers to the idea of creating a society or institution that is based on the principles of equality and solidarity, that understands and values human rights, and that recognizes the dignity of every human being. The term and modern concept of "social justice" was coined by...
is possible". They argue that an ecological socialism must be "built on hope, not fear".
Conservatives
Conservatism
Conservatism is a political and social philosophy that promotes the maintenance of traditional institutions and supports, at the most, minimal and gradual change in society. Some conservatives seek to preserve things as they are, emphasizing stability and continuity, while others oppose modernism...
have criticised the perceived opportunism of left-wing
Left-wing politics
In politics, Left, left-wing and leftist generally refer to support for social change to create a more egalitarian society...
groups who have increased their focus on green issues since the fall of Communism
Communism
Communism is a social, political and economic ideology that aims at the establishment of a classless, moneyless, revolutionary and stateless socialist society structured upon common ownership of the means of production...
. Fred L. Smith
Fred L. Smith
Fred L. Smith, Jr. is the President and Founder of the Competitive Enterprise Institute, a Washington, D.C.-based nonprofit libertarian think tank. He has written on topics as antitrust law, environmental regulation, and the economic impacts of global warming....
Jr., President of the Competitive Enterprise Institute
Competitive Enterprise Institute
The Competitive Enterprise Institute is a non-profit think tank founded on March 9, 1984 in Washington, D.C. by lobbyist Fred L. Smith, Jr to advance economic liberty and fight over-regulation by big government...
think-tank, exemplifies the conservative critique of left Greens, attacking the "pantheism
Pantheism
Pantheism is the view that the Universe and God are identical. Pantheists thus do not believe in a personal, anthropomorphic or creator god. The word derives from the Greek meaning "all" and the Greek meaning "God". As such, Pantheism denotes the idea that "God" is best seen as a process of...
" of the Green movement and conflating "eco-paganism
Neopaganism
Neopaganism is an umbrella term used to identify a wide variety of modern religious movements, particularly those influenced by or claiming to be derived from the various pagan beliefs of pre-modern Europe...
" with eco-socialism. Like many conservative critics, Smith uses the term 'eco-socialism' to attack non-socialist environmentalists
Environmentalism
Environmentalism is a broad philosophy, ideology and social movement regarding concerns for environmental conservation and improvement of the health of the environment, particularly as the measure for this health seeks to incorporate the concerns of non-human elements...
for advocating restrictions on the free market
Free market
A free market is a competitive market where prices are determined by supply and demand. However, the term is also commonly used for markets in which economic intervention and regulation by the state is limited to tax collection, and enforcement of private ownership and contracts...
, although he does recognise and condemn the influence of socialist ideals on many in the Green movement who reject private property
Private property
Private property is the right of persons and firms to obtain, own, control, employ, dispose of, and bequeath land, capital, and other forms of property. Private property is distinguishable from public property, which refers to assets owned by a state, community or government rather than by...
, and instead advocates market
Free market
A free market is a competitive market where prices are determined by supply and demand. However, the term is also commonly used for markets in which economic intervention and regulation by the state is limited to tax collection, and enforcement of private ownership and contracts...
-based solutions to ecological problems. He nevertheless wrongly claims that eco-socialists endorse "the Malthusian
Malthusianism
Malthusianism refers primarily to ideas derived from the political/economic thought of Reverend Thomas Robert Malthus, as laid out initially in his 1798 writings, An Essay on the Principle of Population, which describes how unchecked population growth is exponential while the growth of the food...
view of the relationship between man and nature", and states that Al Gore
Al Gore
Albert Arnold "Al" Gore, Jr. served as the 45th Vice President of the United States , under President Bill Clinton. He was the Democratic Party's nominee for President in the 2000 U.S. presidential election....
, a former Democratic Party
Democratic Party (United States)
The Democratic Party is one of two major contemporary political parties in the United States, along with the Republican Party. The party's socially liberal and progressive platform is largely considered center-left in the U.S. political spectrum. The party has the lengthiest record of continuous...
Vice President of the United States
Vice President of the United States
The Vice President of the United States is the holder of a public office created by the United States Constitution. The Vice President, together with the President of the United States, is indirectly elected by the people, through the Electoral College, to a four-year term...
and now a climate change
Climate change
Climate change is a significant and lasting change in the statistical distribution of weather patterns over periods ranging from decades to millions of years. It may be a change in average weather conditions or the distribution of events around that average...
campaigner, is an eco-socialist, despite the fact that Gore
Al Gore
Albert Arnold "Al" Gore, Jr. served as the 45th Vice President of the United States , under President Bill Clinton. He was the Democratic Party's nominee for President in the 2000 U.S. presidential election....
has never used this term and is not recognised as a such by other followers of either Green politics or socialism.
Some environmentalists
Environmentalism
Environmentalism is a broad philosophy, ideology and social movement regarding concerns for environmental conservation and improvement of the health of the environment, particularly as the measure for this health seeks to incorporate the concerns of non-human elements...
and conservation
Conservation movement
The conservation movement, also known as nature conservation, is a political, environmental and a social movement that seeks to protect natural resources including animal, fungus and plant species as well as their habitat for the future....
ists have criticised eco-socialism from within the Green movement. In a review of Joel Kovel
Joel Kovel
Joel Kovel is an American politician, academic, writer, and eco-socialist. A practicing psychiatrist and psychoanalyst until the mid-1980s, he has lectured in psychiatry, anthropology, political science and communication studies. He has published many books on his work in psychiatry,...
's The Enemy of Nature, David M. Johns criticises eco-socialism for not offering "suggestions about near term conservation
Conservation movement
The conservation movement, also known as nature conservation, is a political, environmental and a social movement that seeks to protect natural resources including animal, fungus and plant species as well as their habitat for the future....
policy" and focusing exclusively on long-term societal transformation. Johns believes that species extinction "started much earlier" than capitalism and suggests that eco-socialism neglects the fact that an ecological
Ecology
Ecology is the scientific study of the relations that living organisms have with respect to each other and their natural environment. Variables of interest to ecologists include the composition, distribution, amount , number, and changing states of organisms within and among ecosystems...
society will need to transcend the destructiveness found in "all large-scale societies". the very tendency that Kovel himself attacks among capitalists and traditional leftists who attempt to reduce nature to "linear" human models. Johns questions whether non-hierarchical social systems can provide for billions of people, and criticises eco-socialists for neglecting issues of population pressure. Furthermore, Johns describes Kovel's argument that human hierarchy is founded on raiding to steal women as "archaic".
List of eco-socialists
- Ian AngusIan AngusIan Angus is a socialist and ecosocialist activist in Canada. Angus joined the New Democratic Party in 1962 and then the Young Socialists in Ottawa in 1964. He was active in the YS and the League for Socialist Action into the 1970s...
- Rudolph Bahro
- John Bellamy FosterJohn Bellamy FosterJohn Bellamy Foster is a professor of sociology at the University of Oregon and also editor of Monthly Review, an independent socialist magazine. His writings have focused on political economy, environmental sociology, and Marxist theory...
- Walt BrownWalt BrownWalter Frederick Brown is an American politician and was the presidential candidate of the Socialist Party USA in the 2004 elections. Brown became a socialist in 1948. He served as Democratic member of the Oregon State Senate from 1975 to 1987. Brown also served as a Socialist Party of Oregon...
- Barry CommonerBarry CommonerBarry Commoner is an American biologist, college professor, and eco-socialist. He ran for president of the United States in the 1980 US presidential election on the Citizens Party ticket. He was also editor of Science Illustrated magazine.-Biography:Commoner was born in Brooklyn...
- Ramachandra GuhaRamachandra GuhaRamachandra Guha is an Indian writer whose research interests have included environmental, social, political and cricket history. He is also a columnist for the newspapers The Telegraph , and The Hindustan Times.-Early life and education:Born in Dehra Dun, Uttarakhand, India in 1958, Guha studied...
- Joan Herrera i TorresJoan Herrera i TorresJoan Herrera i Torres is a Spanish Catalan lawyer and politician. he is the leader of the leftist party Iniciativa per Catalunya....
- Joel KovelJoel KovelJoel Kovel is an American politician, academic, writer, and eco-socialist. A practicing psychiatrist and psychoanalyst until the mid-1980s, he has lectured in psychiatry, anthropology, political science and communication studies. He has published many books on his work in psychiatry,...
- Michael LöwyMichael LöwyMichael Löwy is a French-Brazilian Marxist sociologist and philosopher. He is presently the emeritus research director in social sciences at the CNRS and lectures at the Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales...
- David McReynoldsDavid McReynoldsDavid McReynolds is an American democratic socialist and pacifist activist who described himself as "a peace movement bureaucrat" during his 40-year career with Liberation magazine and the War Resisters League...
- Manuel SacristánManuel SacristánManuel Sacristán was a Spanish philosopher and writer.Sacristán, the son of a Francoist collaborator, moved to Barcelona in 1940, thereafter living most of his life in said city...
- William MorrisWilliam MorrisWilliam Morris 24 March 18343 October 1896 was an English textile designer, artist, writer, and socialist associated with the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood and the English Arts and Crafts Movement...
- Alan RobertsAlan RobertsAlan Price-Roberts or Alan Roberts is a British radio presenter, producer and actor.- Broadcasting career :Originally from Marlow, Buckinghamshire, Roberts made his radio debut at 19 with a short stint on Radio England as Rob Allen and a couple of programmes on sister station Britain Radio under...
- Raül RomevaRaül RomevaRaül Romeva i Rueda is a Spanish politician andMember of the European Parliament with the Iniciativa per Catalunya Verds,part of the European Greens and sits onthe European Parliament's Committee on Foreign Affairs...
- Ariel SallehAriel SallehAriel Salleh is an Australian sociologist who writes on social ecology and ecofeminism. In contrast to idealist ecofeminisms coming from philosophy and cultural studies, Salleh's analysis is close to that of fellow sociologists Maria Mies in Germany and Mary Mellor in the United Kingdom....
- Joan Saura
- Alan ThornettAlan ThornettAlan Thornett is a British Trotskyist leader, and one of the officers of the left-wing Respect party.Alan Thornett began his career as a car worker in Cowley, Oxford in 1959. He joined the Communist Party of Great Britain there in 1960 before being recruited with other shop stewards to Gerry...
- Derek WallDerek WallDerek Wall is an English politician and member of the Green Party of England and Wales. Formerly the party's Principal Speaker, he is known as a prominent ecosocialist, campaigning both for environmentalism and socialism. Alongside his political role, Wall is an academic and a writer, having...
- Peter TatchellPeter TatchellPeter Gary Tatchell is an Australian-born British political campaigner best known for his work with LGBT social movements...
See also
- SocialismSocialismSocialism is an economic system characterized by social ownership of the means of production and cooperative management of the economy; or a political philosophy advocating such a system. "Social ownership" may refer to any one of, or a combination of, the following: cooperative enterprises,...
- Social ecologySocial ecologySocial ecology is a philosophy developed by Murray Bookchin in the 1960s.It holds that present ecological problems are rooted in deep-seated social problems, particularly in dominatory hierarchical political and social systems. These have resulted in an uncritical acceptance of an overly...
- Green politicsGreen politicsGreen politics is a political ideology that aims for the creation of an ecologically sustainable society rooted in environmentalism, social liberalism, and grassroots democracy...
- Green anarchismGreen anarchismGreen anarchism, or ecoanarchism, is a school of thought within anarchism which puts a particular emphasis on environmental issues. An important early influence was the thought of the American anarchist Henry David Thoreau and his book Walden...
- EcoCommunalism
- Inclusive DemocracyInclusive DemocracyInclusive Democracy is a political theory and political project that aims for direct democracy, economic democracy in a stateless, moneyless and marketless economy, self-management and ecological democracy...
- MarxismMarxismMarxism is an economic and sociopolitical worldview and method of socioeconomic inquiry that centers upon a materialist interpretation of history, a dialectical view of social change, and an analysis and critique of the development of capitalism. Marxism was pioneered in the early to mid 19th...
- EnvironmentalismEnvironmentalismEnvironmentalism is a broad philosophy, ideology and social movement regarding concerns for environmental conservation and improvement of the health of the environment, particularly as the measure for this health seeks to incorporate the concerns of non-human elements...
- Environmental justiceEnvironmental justiceEnvironmental justice is "the fair treatment and meaningful involvement of all people regardless of race, color, sex, national origin, or income with respect to the development, implementation and enforcement of environmental laws, regulations, and policies." In the words of Bunyan Bryant,...
- Environmental movementEnvironmental movementThe environmental movement, a term that includes the conservation and green politics, is a diverse scientific, social, and political movement for addressing environmental issues....
- Anti-globalizationAnti-globalizationCriticism of globalization is skepticism of the claimed benefits of the globalization of capitalism. Many of these views are held by the anti-globalization movement however other groups also are critical of the policies of globalization....
- Anti-capitalismAnti-capitalismAnti-capitalism describes a wide variety of movements, ideas, and attitudes which oppose capitalism. Anti-capitalists, in the strict sense of the word, are those who wish to completely replace capitalism with another system....
- Green Parties
- Agrarian socialismAgrarian socialismAgrarian socialism is a socioeconomic political system which combines an agrarian way of life with socialist economic policies.When compared to standard socialist systems which are generally urban/industrial , internationally oriented, and more progressive/liberal in terms of social orientation,...
- Green Left (disambiguation)Green Left (disambiguation)Green Left or Left Green may refer to:Political parties:* The GreenLeft in the Netherlands* The Green Left of Croatia* The Left-Green Movement in IcelandFederations of parties:* Federation of The Greens–Green Left in Spain...
- Green leftGreen leftThe term Green left is used primarily to refer to a combination of environmentalism, feminism, socialism, and pacifism in countries where the term is used...
External links
- An ecosocialist manifesto by Joel Kovel and Michael Lowy on Ozleft
- The Ecosocialist International Network
- Capitalism, Nature, Socialism (CNS) - Journal
- Climate and Capitalism An online journal edited by Ian Angus
- http://www.dsp.org.au/node/85Environment, Capitalism & Socialism, by the Democratic Socialist PerspectiveDemocratic Socialist PerspectiveThe Democratic Socialist Perspective was an Australian Marxist political group, which operated as the largest component of a broad-left socialist formation, the Socialist Alliance...
, 1999] - Extract from Ecology and Socialism by The Socialist Party of Great Britain on Common Voice
- Takis FotopoulosTakis FotopoulosTakis Fotopoulos , born , is a political philosopher and economist who founded the inclusive democracy movement. He is noted for his synthesis of the classical democracy with the libertarian socialism and the radical currents in the new social movements...
: "Is de-growth compatible with a market economy?" (The International Journal of Inclusive DemocracyInclusive DemocracyInclusive Democracy is a political theory and political project that aims for direct democracy, economic democracy in a stateless, moneyless and marketless economy, self-management and ecological democracy...
, Volume 3, number 1, 2007). - Another Green World: Derek Wall's Ecosocialist Blog
- Green Unionism In Theory and Practice, by Dan Jakopovich
- Uniting to Win: Labor-Environmental Alliances, by Dan Jakopovich
- Ecosocialism: A Weblog of Ecosocialist Opinion
- Amazon.com: So You'd Like to... Replace Capitalism with Ecosocialism
- Ecosocialism: The Post-Marxist Svnthesis by Robyn Eckersley
- Protecting the Environment in a Participatory Economy, an article by Robin Hahnel
- Ecosocialism: Where Anticapitalism and Ecology Intersect, video presentation by Ian Angus
- After Bali: The Global Fight for Climate Justice , video presentation by Patrick Bond
- The official site of "Ecosocialists Greece" Political Organization
- Capitalism and Ecological Destruction by John Bellamy Foster and Brett Clark, Monthly ReviewMonthly ReviewMonthly Review is an independent Marxist journal published 11 times per year in New York City.-History:The publication was founded by Harvard University economics instructor Paul Sweezy, who became the first editor...
, November 2009