Below are excerpts from a presentation to the panel: “How Environmental Justice/Sustainability Aligns with Political Transformation and Socialism” at Pratt Earth Action Week, April 2021.
Ecosocialism: What Is It and Why Do We Need It?
Richard W. Franke, Ph.D., Professor Emeritus of Anthropology
Montclair State University, New Jersey
franker@montclair.edu https://msuweb.montclair.edu/~franker/
Former resident of the Ecovillage at Ithaca
Ecosocialism is a vision of a society free of most class divisions and with the maximum possible equality among humans – with we humans ourselves living in the most mutually beneficial possible relationship with our natural environment. The ecosocialist movement gradually began developing in the 1980s, first mentioned perhaps in documents of the German Green Party and then theorized more formally by the U.S. economist James O’Connor and associates who founded the journal Capitalism, Nature, Socialism in 1988. Among the scientists and activists who helped develop ecosocialism as a concept are the Spanish Marxist Manuel Sacristán, the British socialist Raymond Williams, the French-Austrian philosopher André Gorz, and the American biologist Barry Commoner; the latter suggested that “some sort of socialism” would be required to overcome mid-twentieth century environmental destruction (Löwy 2020:8).
1. The First Ecosocialist Manifesto
While attending a conference in Vincennes, just outside Paris, in 2001, Marxist academics and activists Michael Löwy and Joel Kovel issued the first Ecosocialist Manifesto. Modeled somewhat on the style of Marx and Engel’s Communist Manifesto of 1848 (which runs about 30 pages), the Ecosocialist Manifesto is fewer than 5 pages long and begins without reference to a “specter,” but with the following:
The twenty-first century opens on a catastrophic note, with an unprecedented degree of ecological breakdown and a chaotic world order beset with terror and clusters of low-grade disintegrative warfare that spread like gangrene across great swaths of the planet.
The authors go on to identify two great “structural forces” that are responsible for the catastrophes:
“…rampant industrialization that overwhelms the earth’s capacity to buffer and contain ecological destabilization” and;
“…the form of imperialism known as globalization…”
And these two forces themselves “are essentially different aspects of the same drive, which must be identified as the central dynamic that moves the whole: the expansion of the world capitalist system” … (Löwy 2015:77).
The manifesto goes on to denounce: greenwashing, squandering of resources, indebtedness, the capitalist injunction to Grow or Die!, the rise of empire, unsustainability, and “fascist degeneration,” leading to the quote of a famous 1915 statement by the early twentieth century socialist Rosa Luxemburg that the choice we face is “Socialism or Barbarism.”1
The Löwy/Kovel manifesto critiques what they call “first-epoch socialisms,” a reference to the Soviet, East European and Chinese experiences (Wallis 2018:42 – 46) and could be extended to include the many 19th century socialist movements as well.2 The fundamental component of their critique is the need for more internal democracy within the socialist movement (Kovel 2002:242) and to put the relationship of humans to nature alongside the relationships among humans as equal mechanisms in overcoming capitalist catastrophe. The manifesto also criticizes “productivist” socialism, a reference to the attempts by, for example, the Soviet Union to match or supersede the capitalist world in production – attempts that brought on damage to the environment. It should be noted that many of today’s environmental concerns were not yet obvious until well into the twentieth century (Löwy 2020:7).
The manifesto further denounces “the attenuated, reformist aims of social democracy.” This is a reference to the Scandinavian and perhaps also British Labor Party programs to expand the social safety net while not profoundly undermining capitalism, only making it more livable.
Although overcoming class inequality is the original and fundamental socialist goal, ecosocialism “struggles to overcome all forms of domination, including, especially, those of gender and race, [along with] a withering away of the dependency upon fossil fuels integral to industrial capitalism.” (Löwy 2015:81)
And finally, ecosocialism “will be international, and universal, or it will be nothing. The crises of our time can and must be seen as revolutionary opportunities, which it is our obligation to affirm and bring into existence.” (Löwy 2015:82)3
As can be seen from the above, the first ecosocialist manifesto was more socialism than ecology. However, at the 2016 Third International Ecosocialist Conference held in Bilbao, Spain, in the Final Manifesto, point #4, we read that capitalism’s driving force towards
…unlimited growth fully collides with the biophysical limits of the planet. We are witnessing a growing exhaustion of natural resources, shortage of drinking water…growing scarcity of strategic minerals, collapsing fisheries, deforestation … an obvious degradation of ecosystems, accelerated loss [of] biodiversity, [worsening] soil contamination and water reserves, degradation or overexploitation of services provided by ecosystems…and unprecedented deterioration of natural balances, not only at the local or regional level, as it took place in the past, but also for the first time in the global environmental system, whose most obvious manifestation is climate change: ecocide. This ECOLOGICAL state of emergency also causes every year millions of environmental refugees.
2. (Re-) Discovering Marx and Engels’ Ecological Thought
Just as ecosocialism was emerging onto the world historical stage in the 1990s, there almost simultaneously appeared a rediscovery of ecological thinking in classical Marxism in the 19th century that had been languishing for decades. To some, this might seem a cynical or opportunist move on the part of some Marxists to gain credibility after the ecological failures in Soviet, East European and Chinese socialist practices – but it turns out that the proponents of this position have a pretty strong argument.4
The biggest claim critics have made of Marx’s ecological ideas is that Marx adopted the common 19th century position that nature was boundless and that human labor could create affluence forever once socialism was achieved (Foster 1999:372). This
“Promethean” view of nature, however, seems not to take into account Marx and Engels’ concern with “soil exhaustion” brought about by using up natural fertilizers without replacing key ingredients and by concentrating populations in cities where human waste ends up washing down the sewage pipes and into the rivers and oceans. So desperate were 19th century European farmers for soil enrichment that – after the loss of the Peruvian guano deposits – they raided Napoleonic battlefields for human bones to grind into fertilizer (Foster 1999:375). Marx was aware of these problems as well as of the discoveries of the famous German chemist at the time, Justus von Liebig, who discovered the agricultural roles of phosphorous, potassium, and nitrogen. (Foster 1999:376).
Marx combined von Liebig’s discoveries plus his knowledge of the fertilizer shortage in Europe and his observations of the long-distance trade in agricultural products that was moving chemicals around in an unorganized manner to sell goods. He also noted that in agriculture, humans were essentially engaged in an energy and matter exchange. He came up with the idea that capitalist agriculture brought about a “metabolic rift,” that is, the nutrients removed from the soil were not being replaced in the same amounts in any particular location (Foster 1999:380). And capitalist production and imperialism can be part of this process: “For a century and a half, England has indirectly exported the soil of Ireland, without as much as allowing its cultivators the means for making up for the constituents of the soil that had been exhausted” (quoted from Capital Vol. 1 in Foster 1999:383). In his classic 1845 study, The Condition of the Working Class in England, Engels gives page after page of detailed accounts and observations of streets, “generally unpaved, rough, dirty, filled with vegetable and animal refuse, without sewers or gutters, but supplied with foul, stagnant pools instead” (1980[1845:62]). In place of a rational recycling of nutrients to maintain rural soil fertility, the nutrients were being pulled into urban centers, piling up in giant concentrations where they were causes of disease and misery.
The re-discovery of the Marxist “metabolic rift” carries an important implication for modern ecosocialist theory. It constitutes a challenge to mainstream environmentalism which often limits itself to creating “market incentives” (Wallis 2018). If destruction of the soil in 19th century Europe could be a result of the workings of capitalism, could not the same be true of our current dangers? Does the world need a system to exert control over these movements of nutrients – a form of control that would be consistent with ecosocialism? One way to approach this is to consider the ecosocialist proposal for democratic ecological planning.
3. Democratic Ecological Planning
Joel Kovel envisions ecosocialism as
…a great network of productive communities, from agricultural cooperatives, to trans-national scientific teams, to governing assemblies – many varied settings creating the conditions for individual self-realization (2002:247).
Internationally, trade would be regulated by a “‘World People’s Trade Organization,’ controlled by and responsible to a confederation of popular bodies organized on a global basis which will set parameters for regulating trade to allow for the flourishing of ecosystems, while providing at the same time an international forum for the cooperation and unification of peoples” (2002:249) The metabolic rift will be healed – the irrational movement of the elements of nature (such as soil nutrients described above) will be replaced by democratic management of the shifting of nature balanced with local and regional plans for local production.
The network of communities will begin through the creation of “ecological ensembles,” which will grow into islands of resistance, the formation of large-scale ecosocialist political parties – as prefigured perhaps by the Zapatistas who operate on a bioregional scale (2002:234). These ensembles might start out as organic farms, local credit unions, intentional communities, or neighborhood associations – displaying or bringing into action the values of the Green politics movement:
“social justice, ecological wisdom, non-violence, decentralization, community-based economics and economic justice, feminism, respect for diversity, a sense of global responsibility, future-focus and sustainability” (2002:219).5
What holds this vision together is the replacement of the capitalist market by democratic ecological planning. This replacement cannot be by a “politburo” or other similar command board. Instead, a panoply of multi-tiered democratic bodies would take over from the big banks and capitalist enterprises, setting prices, taxes and incentives, banning some production – such as coal-fired plants – but exempting businesses such as “local restaurants, groceries, small shops, or artisan enterprises” (Löwy 2020:3). For worker-owned cooperatives, internal decisions would be made by the workers, but relations with the larger society would be managed by a larger decisionmaking assembly, perhaps within the industry or in the geographic region.6
A major goal of ecosocialist planning would be to generate more free time by shortening the working week and encouraging sports, arts and social activities as alternatives to the accumulation of consumer items.
4.Imagining Ecotopia – A Science Fiction Ecosocialism
In 1975 a tiny company called Banyan Tree Books in Berkeley, California, published Ecotopia: The Notebooks and Reports of William Weston. Twenty publishers had previously rejected the manuscript. This slim science fiction volume of 167 pages eventually sold nearly a million copies in nine languages. More recent editions advertise it as “The first dramatic portrait of an ecologically sustainable society!” The author, Ernest Callenbach (1929−2012) claimed he got his ideas from reading Scientific American and Science magazines. Here’s the plot:
Ecotopia is organized around the news dispatches and the personal diary entries of fictional correspondent William Weston who travels to the new nation of Ecotopia in 1999. Twenty years earlier Northern California, Oregon and Washington had seceded from the U.S. and created an environmentally based new order. (How they managed to break away and stay separate is explained in the book.)7 As the first ever mainstream U.S. reporter to visit Ecotopia, Weston describes the new society they have built – and falls in love with a sexy and open-minded Ecotopian beauty.
Weston finds a decentralized, eco-friendly, relaxed culture with no cars, lots of highspeed trains, and local small-scale hospitals carrying out cradle-to-grave health coverage with less high-tech equipment but more preventive medical practices than in the United States. Ecotopia is divided into five metropolitan and four rural sectors. Local governments have extensive powers. Workers own and self-manage the main productive institutions. People live in extended-family-like groups of five to twenty. The elderly live in these groups and provide childcare and early education. Homes are built of wood or of corn-based plastic tubing and all are centered around rail stations. People cannot inherit land or fortunes, only personal articles. Education focuses on systems-thinking and on project-based experiential learning. Plastics are derived from plants, none from hydrocarbons; they are thus biodegradable. Refrigerators run on household septic tank methane. People use the metric system and recycling containers are found everywhere (remember that this book was written in 1975 when hardly anyone recycled anything in the U.S.). Synthetic chemical fertilizers were totally abandoned and replaced with compost from food waste and sewage. Agriculture has been socialized. Ecotopian scientists were working on strains of plants that could produce electricity from photosynthesis. “Your garden could recycle your sewage and garbage, provide your food, and also light your house.” (1975:106) Books are accessible electronically via computer stations linked to a giant national library in Berkeley.
Taxes are levied only on enterprises (no payroll taxes); train cars are filled with hanging ferns and small plants. Streets are quiet (almost no cars, remember?) with only occasional electric taxis – even in the nation’s capital of San Francisco. Bus service is free and public bikes are found everywhere, available for temporary use. The general work week is 20 hours. Schedules and work discipline are much more lax than in the U.S. overall. A minimum income has become law.
Wood is not exported from Ecotopia. Technicians are working on alternatives to the diesel log trucks that remain a stubborn reminder of the previous way of doing things. To build a house of wood you first have to work for a few months in a forest camp planting trees to replace the wood your house might use. However, “They cut trees and trim them with a strange, almost religious respect: showing the emotional intensity and care we might use in preparing a ballet.” (1975:56).
The GNP of Ecotopia is low:
…mankind, the Ecotopians assumed, was not meant for production…. Instead, humans were meant to take their modest place in a seamless, stable-state web of living organisms.” (1975:43)
5. Conclusions
Callenbach’s vision of Ecotopia suggests how ecosocialism might eventually look. At present, most ecosocialist activity centers around fighting the most abusive aspects of current capitalism. This means first, identifying the cause of ecological damage in the competitive, ever-expansionist nature of capitalism as we have seen in the various manifestos and examples above. Ecosocialism, on the other hand, fits with the most widely used definition of sustainability, as drafted by The World Commission on Environment and Development8 (1987:8) – meeting “the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs.” And sustainable development “must not endanger the natural systems that support life on Earth – the waters, the soils, and the living beings” (1987:45). Capitalism’s damage and destruction needs to be ended. A sustainable world will have to be an ecosocialist world.
References
Barnes, Peter. 2006. Capitalism 3.0: A Guide to Reclaiming the Commons. San Francisco: Berrett-Koehler Publishers Incorporated.
Biello, David. 2008a. “Fertilizer Runoff Overwhelms Streams and Rivers–Creating Vast Dead Zone. Scientific American. March 14, 2008. https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/fertilizer-runoff-overwhelms-streams/
_____. 2008b. “Oceanic Dead Zones Continue to Spread: Fertilizer Runoff and Fossil-fuel Use Lead to Massive Areas in the Ocean with Scant or no Oxygen, Killing Large Swaths of Sea Life and Causing Hundreds of Millions of Dollars in Damage.” Scientific American. August 15, 2008. https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/oceanic-dead-zones-spread/
Braun, Elizabeth. 2007. Reactive Nitrogen in the Environment: Too Much or Too Little of a Good Thing. United Nations Environmental Program and the Woods Hole Research Center. Paris and Falmouth, MA. https://wedocs.unep.org/bitstream/handle/20.500.11822/7761/Reactive_Nitrogen.pdf?sequence=3&isAllo wed=y
Breitburg, Denise, et al. 2018. “Declining Oxygen in the Global Ocean and Coastal Waters.” Science 359 (6371), 5 January 2018. https://science.sciencemag.org/content/359/6371/eaam7240
Callenbach, Ernest. 1975. Ecotopia: The Notebooks and Reports of William Weston. Berkeley, CA: Banyan Tree Books.
_____. 1981. Ecotopia Emerging. Berkeley, CA: Banyan Tree Books.
Capra, Fritjof. 1996. The Web of Life. New York: Doubleday Anchor Books.
Democratic Socialists of America. Ecosocialist Working Group. https://www.dsausa.org/working-groups/ecosocialist-working-group/
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_____, and Michael Löwy. 2001. Ecosocialist Manifesto. Green Left – an Anticapitalist Current in the Green Party. Vincennes. https://web.archive.org/web/20070111014358/http://www.greenleft.org.uk/manifesto.shtml
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_____. 2015. Ecosocialism: A Radical Alternative to Capitalist Catastrophe. Chicago: Haymarket Books.
_____. 2018. Why Ecosocialism: For a Red-Green Future. Boston: Tellus Institute. Great Transition Initiative Essay. https://greattransition.org/publication/why-ecosocialism-red-green-future
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Notes
1 Canadian ecosocialist Ian Angus claims to have solved the mystery of the source of this famous quote that comes from Rosa Luxemburg but which she cited while in prison and without access to her books. It was apparently first said by the socialist leader Karl Kautsky in his 1892 pamphlet on the Erfurt Program. https://climateandcapitalism.com/2014/10/22/origin-rosa-luxemburgs-slogan-socialism-barbarism/
2 Many of these movements were critiqued by Friedrich Engels in his famous book: Socialism – Utopian and Scientific.
3 Margaret Overton gives an overview and details of the history and content of ecosocialist manifestos in her 2018 essay: “Marx and Monkeywrenching: What Ecosocialism Means for the Environmental Movement in America.” Her essay contains a lengthy literature list.
https://sites.duke.edu/culanth290s_02_s2018_actingenvironmentally/2018/05/17/marx-andmonkeywrenching-what-eco-socialism-means-for-the-environmental-movement-in-america/
4 Foster (1999:400 – 401) also makes a few observations towards a sociological appreciation of the ecological thought of Durkheim and of Weber.
5 Kovel (2002:208) suggests “sufficiency” is a more appropriate term than “sustainability,” but surely by this point the latter is THE buzzword, for better or for worse.
6 A description of a participatory planning process with much detail appears in Hahnel 2005, especially chapter 8.
7 In 1981 Callenbach came out with a prequel, Ecotopia Emerging. In 1976 poet and novelist Marge Piercy published Woman on the Edge of Time, a utopian science fiction book that may be partly influenced by the experiments at the New Alchemy Institute in Massachusetts and that somewhat parallels Ecotopia but with some different emphases. https://newalchemists.net/
8 Also known as “The Brundtland Report,” after the name of the principal author, Gro Harlem Brundtland.