Ecosocialism

Summary, part 2

Chapter One: What is Ecosocialism?

Ecosocialism views the capitalist pursuit of profit and mass industrialization as things that will lead us into “an ecological disaster of incalculable proportions” (p. 2). Ecosocialism appeals to the qualitative values of socialism (i.e., the satisfaction of needs, social equality) and the qualitative values of ecology (i.e., the protection of nature, ecological balance). Ecosocialism wants to embed the economy in the environment.

Ecosocialism takes the fundamentals of Marxism, but without the productivist elements. (The productivist element in question being the idea that production is still the principal measure of progress.)

Instead, ecosocialism focuses on how the economy is incompatible with the need to safeguard the natural environment.

Ecosocialism aims to create an “ecologically rational society founded on democratic control, social equality, and the predominance of use value” (p. 7). In this society, there will be collective ownership of the means of production, democratic planning where society makes decisions about investment and production, and a new structure of productive forces.

Ecosocialism rests on two essential arguments. First, that “the present mode of production and consumption of advanced capitalist countries … cannot in any way be extended to the whole planet without a major ecological crisis” (p. 7). Second, that “the continuation of capitalist ‘progress’ … directly threatens … the very survival of the human species” (p. 8). 

Ecosocialism also resists commodity fetishism and reified automation and wants to see the realization of the moral economy (i.e., an economy founded on non-monetary and extra-economic criteria).

Ecosocialism is concerned not just with the modes of production, but also with consumption. Although the act of consumption is not bad, the dominant type of consumption is one that is ostentatious, wasteful, and obsessed with accumulation.

An economic transition to socialism will include democratic planning that would define…

• What products will be subsidized;

• What energy options will be pursued;

• How to reorganize the transport system; and

• How to repair environmental damage.

Ecosocialism does sound like a revolutionary utopia, but that does not mean ecosocialists should not refrain from acting now. “We need to win time” by instituting immediate demands that include (p. 11)...

• Free public transit;

• Rejecting a system of debt and extreme neoliberal structural adjustment programs;

• The defense of public health; and

• Requiring less work time to cope with unemployment (fewer hours per person, more people working) and to “create a society that privileges free time over the accumulation of goods” (p. 12).

We cannot leave this problem to wealthy countries. Capitalists like the former president of Harvard University, Lawrence Summers, said it is economically wise to bring pollution to so-called less developed countries. Thankfully, radical political ecology is becoming more important to anticapitalist neoliberal globalization movements.

Chapter Two: Ecosocialism and Democratic Planning

Beyond what the previous chapter defined as ecosocialism, Löwy would include that ecosocialism also requires the following: (1) collective ownership of the means of production, (2) democratic planning, and (3) a new technological structure of productive forces.

Socialism aims to create a society where we do not dedicate our lives to producing commodities, but instead dedicate them to developing our potentialities.

Ecosocialism must be inspired by Karl Marx’s writing of the Paris Commune: the goal cannot be for the proletariat to own the capitalist state apparatus.

Instead, they must break it and revolutionize the productive apparatus through a radical transformation.

This radical transformation will come from the “democratic planning of the economy that considers the preservation of the ecological equilibrium” (p. 23). This can look like revolutionizing the energy system and discontinuing individual production branches (e.g., nuclear plants, mass fishing).

Discussions about democratic planning usually center around a ‘centralized’ vs. ‘decentralized’ dichotomy, but the main concern for ecosocialism is the “democratic control of the plan at all levels: local, regional, national, continental, and, hopefully, international” (p. 27).

One concern is that a democratically-owned and -operated factory may democratically decide to pollute a river. The hope is that in an ecosocialist world, factory workers would already prioritize the environmental impacts of their decisions such that they would make the right choice.

Democratic planning can, at first, look like representative democracy, but it will not be complete until there is a shift to direct democracy–a democracy where people vote on issues directly, as opposed to voting for representatives who make those decisions on their behalf.

There are alternatives to ecosocialism’s democratic planning, including Michael Albert’s ‘participatory economy’ and the degrowth movement.

Albert’s alternative, however, focuses planning on supply and demand and leaves out ecosocialist goals. Degrowth is too focused on limiting consumption by cutting energy expenditures and renouncing family homes, thus operating with a quantitative conception of growth instead of a qualitative one.

With flaws in both alternatives, this leaves us with ecosocialism’s qualitative transformation of development, which can only come about through democratic planning. 

Such a shift focuses on (1) ending capitalism’s large-scale waste and production of useless products, (2) orienting production to making things that satisfy needs (i.e., water, food, clothing, housing, health, education, transportation, culture), and (3) recognizes that the global South cannot get there without technical and economic help from the North.

While this world may be a utopia, what is a social movement without a utopian vision? To dream of this utopia does not mean not fighting for concrete and urgent reforms. Marx himself wrote of a transitional program where “each small victory, each partial advance, leads to a more radical aim” (p. 37).