Ecosocialism

Framing

Ecosocialism locates the cause of ecological crisis not in particular technologies or consumption habits but in the accumulation structure of capitalism. Production for profit compels expansion, and expansion requires an increasing throughput of matter and energy drawn from nature, so any measure premised on growth only defers the crisis.

The current distinguishes itself from two others. One is Soviet-style productivism, a course that took the expansion of production as the index of socialism and reproduced environmental destruction. The other is market-based green capitalism, which holds that carbon pricing and technological innovation can resolve the crisis. Ecosocialism holds that both paths fail unless the structure of ownership and of decisions over production is changed.

Theoretical resources

Marx's concept of metabolism is a principal resource of the current. Discussion beginning from the passages in Capital on the cycling of soil nutrients developed into the analysis that the metabolism between humanity and nature suffers a rift under capitalist production, and John Bellamy Foster's theory of metabolic rift systematized it.

Formalization as a current came with the Ecosocialist Manifesto of Kovel and Löwy in 2001, which argued for reorganizing the relation between society and nature through social ownership of the means of production and democratic, participatory planning. Discussion afterwards extended into concrete policy areas such as reduction of working time, reorganizing production around use value, public ownership of essential sectors, and just transition.

Debate

The core internal argument concerns growth. Degrowth currents hold that an absolute reduction in material throughput is indispensable, while others hold that a green transition through renewable energy and public investment is possible while maintaining employment and living standards. The difference is sharpest in how the right of the global South to development is treated.

Objections from outside address the feasibility of planning: whether decisions over production that incorporate ecological constraints can be made through democratic procedure. At this point ecosocialist discussion connects to the free association of producers and to models of participatory planning. Since climate policy became an actual policy agenda in many countries, the current's focus has been moving from theoretical critique toward the design of transition paths.