Eco-socialism
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Eco-socialism (also known as green socialism, socialist ecology, ecological materialism, or revolutionary ecology)[1] is an ideology merging aspects of socialism with that of green politics, ecology and alter-globalization or anti-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.[2][3]
Eco-socialism asserts that the capitalist economic system is fundamentally incompatible with the ecological and social requirements of sustainability.[4] Thus, according to this analysis, giving economic priority to the fulfillment of human needs while staying within ecological limits, as sustainable development demands, is in conflict with the structural workings of capitalism.[5] By this logic, market-based solutions to ecological crises (such as environmental economics and green economy) are rejected as technical tweaks that do not confront capitalism's structural failures.[6][7] Eco-socialists advocate for the succession of capitalism by eco-socialism—an egalitarian economic/political/social structure designed to harmonize human society with non-human ecology and to fulfill human needs—as the only sufficient solution to the present-day ecological crisis, and hence the only path towards sustainability.[8]
Eco-socialists advocate dismantling capitalism, focusing on common ownership of the means of production by freely associated producers, and restoring the commons.[2]
Ideology
Eco-socialists are critical of many past and existing forms of both
The term "watermelon" is commonly applied, often pejoratively, to 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 common in Australia and New Zealand,[12][13] and usually attributed to either Petr Beckmann or, more frequently, Warren T. Brookes,[14][15][16] both critics of environmentalism.
The Watermelon, a New Zealand website, uses the term proudly, stating that it is "green on the outside and
Eco-socialists also criticise bureaucratic and elite theories of self-described 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.[2] Eco-socialists aim for communal ownership of the means of production by "freely associated producers" with all forms of domination eclipsed, especially gender inequality and racism.[2]
This often includes the restoration of commons land in opposition to
History
1880s–1930s
Contrary to the depiction of
William Morris, the English novelist, poet and designer, is largely credited with developing key principles of what was later called eco-socialism.[30] During the 1880s and 1890s, Morris promoted his eco-socialist ideas within the Social Democratic Federation and the Socialist League.[31]
Following the
1950s–1960s
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Social ecology is closely related to the work and ideas of
Bookchin later developed a political philosophy to complement social ecology which he called "
Politically, Communalists advocate a network of directly democratic citizens' assemblies in individual communities/cities organized in a confederal fashion. This method used to achieve this is called
1970s–1990s
In the 1970s,
At around the same time,
The Australian
1990s onwards
The 1990s saw the
In 2001,
In October 2007, the International Ecosocialist Network was founded in Paris.[57]
Influence on current green and socialist movements
Currently, many Green Parties around the world, such as the
The
Influence on existing socialist regimes
Eco-socialism has had a minor influence over developments in the
He echoes much of eco-socialist thought, attacking international "environmental inequality", refusing to focus on
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.[62]
International organizations
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 7 October 2007 in Paris.[63] 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.[64] The conference released The Belem Ecosocialist Declaration.[64]
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".[65]
Critique of capitalist expansion and globalization
Merging aspects of Marxism, 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 transnational structures.[66]
In the "Ecosocialist Manifesto" (2001), Joel Kovel and Michael Löwy suggest that capitalist expansion causes "crises of ecology" through the "rampant industrialization" and "societal breakdown" that springs "from the form of imperialism known as globalization". They believe that capitalism's expansion "exposes
Other eco-socialists like Derek Wall highlight how in the Global South
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".[70] Furthermore, Kovel sees neoliberalism 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 and limits to accumulation is known as globalization", which was "a deliberate response to a serious accumulation crisis (in the 1970s) that had convinced the leaders of the global economy to install what we know as neoliberalism."[71]
Furthermore,
Eco-socialism disagrees with the elite theories of capitalism, which tend to label a specific
Use and exchange value
Eco-socialism focuses closely on Marx's theories about the contradiction between use values and exchange values. Kovel posits that, within a market, 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.[76]
Such goods, in an eco-socialist analysis, produce exchange values 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.[77]
"Second contradiction" of capitalism
James O'Connor 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.[78][79]
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.[78]
O'Connor cites
Role of the state and transnational organizations
Capitalist 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
Eco-socialists believe that state or self-
Tensions within the eco-socialist discourse
Reflecting tensions within the environmental and socialist movements, there is some conflict of ideas. However, in practice 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 example,
Critique of other forms of green politics
This section relies largely or entirely on a single source. (May 2013) |
Eco-socialists criticise many within the Green movement for not being overtly anti-capitalist, for working within the existing capitalist,
As Kovel puts it, eco-socialism differs from Green politics at the most fundamental level because the '
Opposition to reformism and technologism
Eco-socialists are highly critical of those Greens 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'".[89]
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".[90] 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'".[91][92]
In addition, Kovel criticises the "defeatism" of voluntarism in some local forms of environmentalism that do not connect: 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".[93]
Technological fixes to ecological problems are also rejected by eco-socialists.
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
Critique of green economics
Eco-socialists have based their ideas for political strategy on a critique of several different trends in
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.[98]
Other forms of
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".[100] 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.[101]
He highlights the work of steady-state theorist Herman Daly, who exemplifies what eco-socialists see as the good and bad points of ecological economics — while Daly 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".[102]
Critique of deep ecology
Despite the inclusion of both in political factions like the
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
Kovel believes that deep ecology has affected the rest of the Green movement and led to calls for restrictions on
Critique of bioregionalism
Bioregionalism, 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",[106] has been thoroughly critiqued by Kovel, who fears that the "vagueness" of the area will lead to conflict and further boundaries between communities.[107] While Sale cites the bioregional living of Native Americans,[106] 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.[107]
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 [US]",[106] 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.[108]
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 gender as it "is at the root of patriarchy and class".[109] 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".[110]
Critique of social ecology
While having much in common with the radical tradition of social ecology, 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 the 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.[111]
In practice, Kovel describes social ecology as continuing the anarchist tradition of
Opposition to Malthusianism and neo-Malthusianism
While Malthusianism and eco-socialism overlap within the Green movement because both address
Neo-Malthusians have slightly modified this analysis by increasing their focus on
"Two varieties of environmentalism"
Critique of other forms of socialism
Eco-socialists choose to use the term "
Critique of actually existing socialism
For Kovel and Michael Löwy, eco-socialism is "the realization of the 'first-epoch' socialisms" by resurrecting the notion of "free development of all producers", and distancing themselves from "the attenuated, reformist aims of
In analysing the
In Kovel's eyes, Lenin 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 Russian 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.[120]
Furthermore, Kovel quotes Trotsky, who believed in a Communist "superman" who would "learn how to move rivers and mountains".[121][page needed] 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.[122]
Critique of the wider socialist movement
Beyond the forms of "actually existing socialism", Kovel criticises socialists 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 cites
Eco-socialist strategy
Eco-socialists generally advocate the non-violent dismantling of capitalism and the state, focusing on collective ownership of the means of production by freely associated producers and restoration of the Commons.[2] 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.[20]
These prefigurative steps go "beyond the market and the state"[125] and base production on the enhancement of use values, 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.[20]
Agency
Many eco-socialists, like Alan Roberts, have encouraged working-class action and resistance, such as the 'green ban' movement in which workers refuse to participate in projects that are ecologically harmful.[49] Similarly, Kovel and Hans A. Baer focus on working-class involvement in the formation of new eco-socialist parties or their increased involvement in existing Green Parties;[126] 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".[20]
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 ecosystems" 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.[127]
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 "delegitimate 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 ecosystems, 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".[20]
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
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".[130]
Kovel believes in building prefigurations around forms of production based on use values, which will provide a practical vision of a post-capitalist, post-statist system. Such projects include
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".[133]
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
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.[134] 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".[135]
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
Revolution and transition to eco-socialism
This section relies largely or entirely on a single source. (May 2013) |
The revolution as envisaged by eco-socialists involves an immediate socio-political transition. Internationally, eco-socialists believe in a reform of the nature of money 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.[137] Eco-socialists assert that this must be carried out with adherence to non-violence.[138]
Immediate aftermath of the revolution
Eco-socialists like Kovel 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, namely 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".[139]
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.[140]
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 ecosystemic 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".[20]
Transnational trade and capital reform
In Kovel's eyes, part of the eco-socialist transition is the reforming money 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".[20]
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
The EP would also internalize the costs of current
Ecological production
Eco-socialists pursue "ecological 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.[141]
This, for Kovel, is achieved if labor is "freely chosen and developed... with a fully realized use-value" achieved by a "negation" of
In the course on an Eco-socialist revolution, writers like Kovel and Baer advocate a "rapid conversion to ecosocialist production" for all enterprises, followed by "restoring ecosystemic integrity to the workplace" through steps like workers ownership.[143][144] 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".[145]
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.
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
Commons, property and usufruct
Most eco-socialists, including Alier and Guha, echo subsistence eco-feminists like
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
Crucially for eco-socialists, Marx mentioned the idea when he stated that human beings are no more than the planet's "usufructaries, and, like boni patres familias, they must hand it down to succeeding generations in an improved condition".[28] 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.[149]
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".[150]
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.[151]
Non-violence
Most eco-socialists are involved in
Although traditionally non-violent, there is growing scepticism of solely using non-violent tactics as a strategy in the eco-socialist agenda and as a way of dismantling harmful systems. Although progress has been made in the climate movement with non-violent tactics (as demonstrated by XR who pushed the UK government to declare a climate emergency), the movement is still failing to bring about radical decarbonisation. As eco-socialist activist, Andreas Malm states in his book How to Blow Up a Pipeline, “If non-violence is not to be treated as a holy covenant or rite, then one must adopt the explicitly anti-Gandhian position of Mandela: ‘I called for non-violent protest for as long as it was effective’, as ‘a tactic that should be abandoned when it no longer worked.” [153] Malm argues there is another phase beyond peaceful protest.
Criticism
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 socialist or Green movements themselves, along with conservative criticism.
Some socialists are critical of the term "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".[154] 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".[155]
Writing in
Conservatives have criticised the perceived opportunism of left-wing groups who have increased their focus on green issues since the fall of
Some environmentalists and
List of eco-socialists
- Elmar Altvater
- Ian Angus
- Abdullah Öcalan
- Rudolph Bahro
- Hugo Blanco
- Murray Bookchin
- Jabari Brisport
- Walt Brown
- Barry Commoner
- Jeremy Corbyn
- Jutta Ditfurth
- Sabrina Fernandes
- John Bellamy Foster
- Alberto Garzón
- Ramachandra Guha
- Donna Haraway
- Howie Hawkins
- Jason Hickel
- Joan Herrera i Torres
- Jesse Klaver
- Naomi Klein
- Joel Kovel
- Dimitri Lascaris
- Enrique Leff
- Michael Löwy
- Caroline Lucas
- Andreas Malm
- David McReynolds
- Jean-Luc Mélenchon
- Chico Mendes
- Luka Mesec
- William Morris
- James O'Connor (academic)
- David Orton
- Simon Pirani
- Lee Rhiannon
- Raül Romeva
- Manuel Sacristán
- Ariel Salleh
- Joan Saura
- Pernille Skipper
- Jill Stein
- Chlöe Swarbrick
- Alan Thornett
- Peter Tatchell
- Alex Tyrrell
- Derek Wall
- Raymond Williams
- Gerrard Winstanley
See also
- Critique of political economy
- Diggers movement
- Eco-communalism
- Eco-social market economy
- Ecological democracy
- Ecological economics
- Green left
- Green libertarianism
- Green politics and parties
- Green socialism
- Green New Deal
- Marxist philosophy of nature
- Radical environmentalism
- Red socialism
- Veganarchism
- Yellow socialism
- Social-ecology
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Bibliography
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External links
This article's use of external links may not follow Wikipedia's policies or guidelines. (August 2019) |
- ASIN B06VSFFLDR.
- The Ecosocialist International Network
- Capitalism Nature Socialism (CNS) (Journal). Taylor & Francis Online page
- Borgnäs, Kajsa; Eskelinen, Teppo; Perkiö, Johanna; Warlenius, Rikard (2015). The Politics of Ecosocialism: Transforming welfare. ISBN 9781138810464.
- Climate and Capitalism. (An online journal edited by Ian Angus).
- Environment, Capitalism & Socialism. Sydney: Resistance Books. 1999. ISBN 9780909196998. Archived from the original on 21 August 2008.)
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