Ecosocialism

Amid tours of prospective students criss-crossing the Northeastern University campus, some one hundred climate justice activists from the Boston area converged on the Raytheon Amphitheater to hear an amazing assembly of intellectuals and activists discuss "race, class, and the anti-ecological logic of capitalism."

THE BRITISH Marxist Terry Eagleton has observed, "You can tell that capitalism is in trouble when people start talking about capitalism. It indicates that the system has ceased to be as natural as the air we breathe, and can be seen instead as the historically rather recent phenomenon that it is. Moreover, whatever was born can always die."

There can be little doubt about the centrality and severity of the environmental crisis in the present day. Driven by the mindless "grow-or-die" imperative of capitalism, humanity's destruction of the biosphere has reached and even surpassed various critical thresholds, whether in terms of carbon emissions, biodiversity loss, ocean acidification, freshwater depletion, or chemical pollution.

The question of what demands ecosocialists should put forward in response to the climate crisis is a pressing one.  Robin Hahnel, in “An Open Letter to the Climate Justice Movement”, argues that the climate justice movement should demand a cap-and-trade policy, abandoning its traditional stance against carbon trading.  To Hahnel, carbon trading is the most realistic way for society to make carbon emissions cuts in the necessary time frame, and, contrary to the arguments of activists, it can be done in a sociall

I am going to discuss the political implications of climate change as regards the role of the state. The punch line is this: climate change means that the state is coming back. The choice is whether the state’s return will be violent and repressive or whether its return can involve a renovation and transformation that enhances the state’s progressive and democratic features.

"It’s very humbling to be in this room, not to mention on this stage, with all the vision and dedication that’s packed within these four walls. Thanks to the board and Seth Adler, the volunteers, and all of you here tonight for making this conference happen." Dr. Jill Stein was the 2012 US Green Party presidential candidate. She co-authored In Harm’s Way: Toxic Threats to Child Development and Environmental Threats to Healthy Aging, which promote green local economies, sustainable agriculture, clean power, and freedom from toxics.

Some readers may know me as editor of Climate & Capitalism, a web journal that Doug actively supported. I am now editing Ecosocialism Canada as well. I’m pleased to be working with a team of contributors to relaunch this important project. Our common goal is to build on the foundation Doug laid, to make this website an essential resource for the growing movement against capitalist ecocide in Canada, Quebec and the First Nations.

It’s an odd thing, really. in certain precincts of the left, especially across a broad spectrum of what could be called the economic left, our (by which I mean humanity’s) accelerating trajectory toward the climate cliff is little more popular as a topic than it is on the right. In fact, possibly less so. (Plenty of right-wingers love to talk about climate change, if only to deny its grim and urgent scientific reality.

Ecosocialism is an attempt to provide a radical, civilizational alternative to capitalism, rooted in the basic arguments of the ecological movement, and in the Marxist critique of political economy. It opposes to capitalism’s destructive progress (Marx) an economic policy founded on non-monetary and extra-economic criteria: social needs and ecological equilibrium.

The increasing ecological crisis and impending environmental catastrophe that we all face, is leading more on the left to recognise that we have to be both red and green in our politics – we have to be ecosocialist. One without the other is not going to work. That is the strong message from the French left party, Parti de Gauche, which has called for the founding of a European network, opposing the environmental degradation caused by capitalism’s relentless drive for profit.