Eco-socialism
Eco-socialism 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.
Eco-socialism asserts that the capitalist economic system is fundamentally incompatible with the ecological and social requirements of sustainability. 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. By this logic, market-based solutions to ecological crises are rejected as technical tweaks that do not confront capitalism's structural failures. 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.
Eco-socialists advocate dismantling capitalism, focusing on social ownership of the means of production by freely associated producers, and restoring the commons.
Ideology
Eco-socialists are critical of many past and existing forms of both green politics and socialism. They are often described as "Red Greens" – adherents to Green politics with clear anti-capitalist views, often inspired by Marxism.Eco-socialists 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. 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.
This often includes the restoration of commons land in opposition to private property, in which local control of resources valorizes the Marxist concept of use value above exchange value. Practically, eco-socialists have generated various strategies to mobilise action on an internationalist basis, developing networks of grassroots individuals and groups that can radically transform society through nonviolent "prefigurative projects" for a post-capitalist, post-statist world.
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, and usually attributed to either Petr Beckmann or, more frequently, Warren T. Brookes, both critics of environmentalism. The term is also found in non-English speaking political discourse.
The Watermelon, a New Zealand website, uses the term proudly, stating that it is "green on the outside and liberal on the inside", while also citing "socialist political leanings", reflecting the use of the term "liberal" to describe the political left in many English-speaking countries. Red Greens are often considered "fundies" or "fundamentalist greens", a term usually associated with deep ecology even though the German Green Party "fundi" faction included eco-socialists, and eco-socialists in other Green Parties, like Derek Wall, have been described in the press as fundies.
History
1880s–1930s
Contrary to the depiction of Karl Marx by some environmentalists, social ecologists and fellow socialists as a productivist who favoured the domination of nature, eco-socialists have revisited Marx's writings and believe that he "was a main originator of the ecological world-view". Eco-socialist authors, like John Bellamy Foster and Paul Burkett, point to Marx's discussion of a "metabolic rift" between man and nature, his statement that "private ownership of the globe by single individuals will appear quite absurd as private ownership of one man by another" and his observation that a society must "hand it down to succeeding generations in an improved condition". Nonetheless, other eco-socialists feel that Marx overlooked a "recognition of nature in and for itself", ignoring its "receptivity" and treating nature as "subjected to labor from the start" in an "essentially active relationship".William Morris, the English novelist, poet and designer, is largely credited with developing key principles of what was later called eco-socialism. During the 1880s and 1890s, Morris promoted his eco-socialist ideas within the Social Democratic Federation and the Socialist League.
Following the Russian Revolution, some environmentalists and environmental scientists attempted to integrate ecological consciousness into Bolshevism, although many such people were later purged from the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. The "pre-revolutionary environmental movement", encouraged by the revolutionary scientist Aleksandr Bogdanov and the Proletkul't organisation, made efforts to "integrate production with natural laws and limits" in the first decade of Soviet rule, before Joseph Stalin attacked ecologists and the science of ecology and the Soviet Union fell into the pseudo-science of the state biologist Trofim Lysenko, who "set about to rearrange the Russian map" in ignorance of environmental limits.
1950s–1960s
Social ecology is closely related to the work and ideas of Murray Bookchin and influenced by anarchist Peter Kropotkin. Social ecologists assert that the present ecological crisis has its roots in human social problems, and that the domination of human-over-nature stems from the domination of human-over-human. In 1958, Murray Bookchin defined himself as an anarchist, seeing parallels between anarchism and ecology. His first book, Our Synthetic Environment, was published under the pseudonym Lewis Herber in 1962, a few months before Rachel Carson's Silent Spring. The book described a broad range of environmental ills but received little attention because of its political radicalism. His groundbreaking essay "Ecology and Revolutionary Thought" introduced ecology as a concept in radical politics. In 1968, he founded another group that published the influential Anarchos magazine, which published that and other innovative essays on post-scarcity and on ecological technologies such as solar and wind energy, and on decentralization and miniaturization. Lecturing throughout the United States, he helped popularize the concept of ecology to the counterculture.Post-Scarcity Anarchism is a collection of essays written by Murray Bookchin and first published in 1971 by Ramparts Press. It outlines the possible form anarchism might take under conditions of post-scarcity. It is one of Bookchin's major works, and its radical thesis provoked controversy for being utopian and messianic in its faith in the liberatory potential of technology. Bookchin argues that post-industrial societies are also post-scarcity societies, and can thus imagine "the fulfillment of the social and cultural potentialities latent in a technology of abundance". The self-administration of society is now made possible by technological advancement and, when technology is used in an ecologically sensitive manner, the revolutionary potential of society will be much changed. In 1982, his book The Ecology of Freedom had a profound impact on the emerging ecology movement, both in the United States and abroad. He was a principal figure in the Burlington Greens in 1986–1990, an ecology group that ran candidates for city council on a program to create neighborhood democracy.
Bookchin later developed a political philosophy to complement social ecology which he called "Communalism". While originally conceived as a form of social anarchism, he later developed Communalism into a separate ideology which incorporates what he saw as the most beneficial elements of Anarchism, Marxism, syndicalism, and radical ecology.
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 libertarian municipalism which involves the establishment of face-to-face democratic institutions which are to grow and expand confederally with the goal of eventually replacing the nation-state.
1970s–1990s
In the 1970s, Barry Commoner, suggesting a left-wing response to The Limits to Growth model that predicted catastrophic resource depletion and spurred environmentalism, postulated that capitalist technologies were chiefly responsible for environmental degradation, as opposed to population pressures. East German dissident writer and activist Rudolf Bahro published two books addressing the relationship between socialism and ecology – The Alternative in Eastern Europe and Socialism and Survival – which promoted a 'new party' and led to his arrest, for which he gained international notoriety.At around the same time, Alan Roberts, an Australian Marxist, posited that people's unfulfilled needs fuelled consumerism. Fellow Australian Ted Trainer further called upon socialists to develop a system that met human needs, in contrast to the capitalist system of created wants. A key development in the 1980s was the creation of the journal Capitalism, Nature, Socialism with James O'Connor as founding editor and the first issue in 1988. The debates ensued led to a host of theoretical works by O'Connor, Carolyn Merchant, Paul Burkett and others.
The Australian Democratic Socialist Party launched the Green Left Weekly newspaper in 1991, following a period of working within Green Alliance and Green Party groups in formation. This ceased when the Australian Greens adopted a policy of proscription of other political groups in August 1991. The DSP also published a comprehensive policy resolution, "Socialism and Human Survival" in book form in 1990, with an expanded second edition in 1999 entitled "Environment, Capitalism & Socialism".