Ecosocialism

History

John Bellamy Foster:

"Soviet-type societies were destructive of the environment on a level comparable to the West, and turned into repressive class societies sui generis (of their own type). Nonetheless, a vast environmental movement developed in the USSR in the 1970s and ‘80s, led by scientists, along with the emergence of the largest conservation organization in the world. There were proposals by some Soviet economists, to revise the USSR’s planning system in terms of indicators of “gross social wealth,” considering ecological factors. All of this went away with the dissolution of the USSR. But it is important to understand that there was a powerful ecosocialist critique developing among leading critical Soviet intellectuals. What we see today as China’s notion of “ecological civilization” was first developed by ecosocialist thinkers in the Soviet Union. Meanwhile, ecosocialism arose separately in the West in the 1980s and ‘90s, and now has spread across the world.

Ecosocialism thus emerged as a radical movement both in capitalist and “actually existing socialist” societies. Unlike mainstream Green theory, it recognizes that to overcome the greatest historical challenge humanity has ever faced it will be necessary to carry out a revolutionary reconstitution of society at large. More and more people, especially in the global South, are concluding, as a result of their own material experiences, that the degradation of the environment and the exploitation of human beings have a common basis in an alienated system that needs to be transcended. This takes us back to the classical historical-materialist tradition associated with Marx and Engels, which emerged at a time when struggles over the workplace, the urban environment, and the land were seen as inextricably connected. Understood in these terms, ecosocialism, is based on the dual necessity of substantive equality and ecological sustainability. System Change Not Climate Change!" (https://truthout.org/articles/climate-change-is-the-product-of-how-capitalism-values-nature/)