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Eco-socialism, Green socialism or Socialist ecology is an ideology merging aspects of Marxism, socialism, Green politics, ecology and the anti-globalization movement. Eco-socialists generally believe that the expansion of the capitalist system is the cause of social exclusion, poverty and environmental degradation through globalization and imperialism, under the supervision of repressive states and transstatal structures; they advocate the non-violent dismantling of capitalism and the state, focusing on collective ownership of the means of production by freely associated producers and restoration of the Commons.1
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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 (Red Greens should be contrasted with Blue Greens). The term Watermelon is commonly applied, often as an insult, to describe professed 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 usually attributed to either Petr Beckmann or, more frequently, Warren T. Brookes,234 both conservative critics of environmentalism, and is apparently common in Australia,56 New Zealand7 and the United States8 (a website in New Zealand, The Watermelon, uses the term as a compliment, stating that it is "green on the outside and liberal on the inside", using the term 'liberal' while also citing "socialist political leanings", reflecting the use of the term 'liberal' to describe the Left-wing in many English-speaking countries7). Red Greens are often considered 'fundies' or 'fundamentalist greens', a term usually associated with Deep Ecology despite the fact that 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'.910
Eco-socialists also criticise bureaucratic and elite theories of 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.1 Eco-socialists aim for a world of communal ownership of the means of production by "freely associated producers" with all forms of domination eclipsed, especially gender inequality and racism.1 This often includes the restoration of commons land in opposition to private property,11 in which local control of resources valorizes the Marxist concept of use value above exchange value.12 Practically, eco-socialists have developed different theories of ways to mobilise action on an internationalist basis, developing networks of grassroots individuals and groups that can radically transform society through non-violent "prefigurative projects" for a post-capitalist, post-statist world.12
Contrary to the depiction of Karl Marx by some environmentalists,13 social ecologists14 and fellow socialists15 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".12 Eco-socialist authors, like John Bellamy Foster16 and Paul Burkett,17 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 [the planet] down to succeeding generations in an improved condition".18 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 "entirely active relationship".12
Therefore William Morris, the English novelist, poet and designer, is largely credited with developing key principles of what was later called eco-socialism.19 During the 1880s and 1890s, Morris promoted his eco-socialist ideas within the Social Democratic Federation and Socialist League.20
Following the Russian Revolution, some environmentalists and environmental scientists attempted to integrate ecological consciousness into Bolshevism, although many such people were later purged by the Communist Party of the Soviet Union.21 The "pre-revolutionary environmental movement", encouraged by 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.12
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.22 East German dissident writer and activist Rudolph Bahro published two books addressing the relationship between socialism and ecology - The Alternative in Eastern Europe23 and Socialism and Survival24 - 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.25 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.26 A key development in the 1980s, was the creation of the journal "Capitalism, Nature, Socialism" in short CNS 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 1990s saw the socialist feminists Mary Mellor27 and Ariel Salleh28 address environmental issues within an eco-socialist paradigm. With the rising profile of the anti-globalization movement in the Global South, an "environmentalism of the poor", combining ecological awareness and social justice, has also become prominent.11 David Pepper also released his important work, Ecosocialism: From Deep Ecology to Social Justice, in 1994, which critiques the current approach of many within Green politics, particularly Deep Ecologists.29
In 2001, Joel Kovel, a social scientist, psychiatrist and former candidate for the Green Party of the United States (GPUS) Presidential nomination in 2000, and Michael Löwy, an anthropologist and member of the Reunified Fourth International (a principal Trotskyist organisation), released An ecosocialist manifesto, which has been adopted by some organisations20 and suggests possible routes for the growth of eco-socialist consciousness.1 Kovel's 2002 work, The Enemy of Nature: The End of Capitalism or the End of the World?,12 is considered by many to be the most up-to-date exposition of eco-socialist thought.19
In October 2007, the International Ecosocialist Network was founded in Paris.30
Currently, many Green Parties around the world, such as the Dutch Green Left Party (GroenLinks), contain strong eco-socialist elements. Radical Red-green alliances have been formed in many countries by eco-socialists, radical Greens and other radical left groups. In Denmark, the Red-Green Alliance was formed as a coalition of numerous radical parties. Within the European Parliament, a number of far-left parties from Northern Europe have organized themselves into the Nordic Green Left Alliance. Red Greens feature heavily in the Green Party of Saskatchewan (in Canada but not necessarily affiliated to the Green Party of Canada) and GPUS, while the Green Party of England and Wales features an eco-socialist group, Green Left, that holds a number of important positions within the party, including both the Principal Speakers (the nearest equivalent to leaders) Siân Berry and Dr. Derek Wall, himself an eco-socialist academic.20 Many Marxist organisations also contain eco-socialists, as evidenced by Löwy's involvement in the reunified Fourth International and Socialist Resistance, a British Marxist newspaper that reports on eco-socialist issues and has published a collection of essays on eco-socialist thought in a book entitled Ecosocialism or Barbarism?, which is edited by Jane Kelly and Sheila Malone.3132
Eco-socialism has had a minor influence over developments in the environmental policies of what can be called “existing socialist” regimes, notably the People's Republic of China. Pan Yue, Deputy Director of the PRC's State Environmental Protection Administration, has acknowledged the influence of eco-socialist theory on his championing of environmentalism within China, which has gained him international acclaim (including being nominated for the Person of the Year Award 2006 by The News Statesman,33 a British current affairs magazine). Yue stated in an interview that, while he often finds eco-socialist theory "too idealistic" and lacking "ways of solving actual problems", he believes that it provides "political reference for China’s scientific view of development", "gives socialist ideology room to expand" and offers "a theoretical basis for the establishment of fair international rules" on the environment. He echoes much of eco-socialist thought, attacking international "environmental inequality", refusing to focus on technological fixes and arguing for the construction of "a harmonious, resource-saving and environmentally-friendly society". He also shows a knowledge of eco-socialist history, from the convergence of radical green politics and socialism and their political "red-green alliances" in the post-Soviet era. This focus on eco-socialism has informed an essay, On Socialist Ecological Civilisation, published in September 2006, which, according to chinadialogue, "sparked debate" in China.34
In 2007, it was announced that attempts to form an Ecosocialist International Network (EIN) would be made and an inaugural meeting of the International occurred on October 7th 2007 in Paris.35 The meeting attracted "more than 60 activists from Argentina, Australia, Belgium, Brazil, Canada, Cyprus, Denmark, France, Greece, Italy, Switzerland, United Kingdom, and the United States" and elected a Steering Committee featuring representatives from Britain, the United States, Canada, France, Greece, Argentina, Brazil and Australia, including Joel Kovel, Michael Löwy, Derek Wall, Ian Angus (editor of Climate and Capitalism in Canada) and Ariel Salleh. The Committee states that it wants "to incorporate members from China, India, Africa, Oceania and Eastern Europe". EIN intends "to organize a larger ecosocialist international conference on January 2009, in association with the next World Social Forum in Brazil".36
International networking by eco-socialists has already been seen in the Praxis Research and Education Center, a group on international researchers and activists. Based in Moscow and established in 1997, Praxis, as well as publishing books "by libertarian socialists, Marxist humanists, anarchists, [and] syndicalists", running the Victor Serge Library and opposing war in Chechnya, states that it believes "that capitalism has brought life on the planet near to the brink of catastrophe, and that a form of ecosocialism needs to emerge to replace capitalism before it is too late".3738
Merging aspects of Marxism, socialism, environmentalism and ecology, eco-socialists generally believe that the capitalist system is the cause of social exclusion, inequality and environmental degradation through globalization and imperialism under the supervision of repressive states and transstatal structures.
In the Ecosocialist manifesto, Kovel and Löwy suggest that capitalist expansion causes both "crises of ecology" through "rampant industrialization" and "societal breakdown" that springs "from the form of imperialism known as globalization". They believe that capitalism's expansion "exposes ecosystems" to pollutants, habitat destruction and resource depletion, "reducing the sensuous vitality of nature to the cold exchangeability required for the accumulation of capital", while submerging "the majority of the world's people to a mere reservoir of labor power" as it penetrates communities through "consumerism and depoliticization".1 Other eco-socialists, like Wall, highlight how, in the Global South, free-market capitalism structures economies to produce export-geared crops that take water from traditional subsistence farms, increasing hunger and the likelihood of famine; furthermore, forests are increasingly cleared and enclosed to produce cash crops that separate people from their local means of production and aggravate poverty. Wall shows that many of the world's poor have access to the means of production through "non-monetised communal means of production", such as subsistence farming, but, despite providing for need and a level of prosperity, these are not included in conventional economics measures, like GNP. Wall therefore views neo-liberal globalization as "part of the long struggle of the state and commercial interests to steal from those who subsist" by removing "access to the resources that sustain ordinary people across the globe".19 Furthermore, Kovel sees the form of neo-liberal globalization as "a return to the pure logic of capital" that "has effectively swept away measures which had inhibited capital’s aggressivity, replacing them with naked exploitation of humanity and nature"; for Kovel, this "tearing down of boundaries", which was "a deliberate response to a serious accumulation crisis" in the 1970s, has become the definition of modern 'globalization'.39
Furthermore, Guha and Martinez-Alier blame globalization for creating increased levels of waste and pollution, and then dumping the waste on the most vulnerable in society, particularly those in the Global South.11 Others have also noted that capitalism disproportionately affects the poorest in the Global North as well, leading to examples of resistance such as the environmental justice movement in the USA, consisting of working-class people and ethnic minorities who highlight the tendency for waste dumps, major road projects and incinerators to be constructed around socially excluded areas. However, as Wall highlights, such campaigns are often ignored or persecuted precisely because they originate among the most marginalized in society: the African-American radical green religious group MOVE, campaigning for ecological revolution and animal rights from Philadelphia, had many members imprisoned or even killed by US authorities from the 1970s onwards.19
Eco-socialism disagrees with the elite theories of capitalism, which tend to label a specific class or social group as conspirators who construct a system that satisfies their greed and personal desires. Instead, eco-socialists suggest that the very system itself is self-perpetuating, fuelled by "extra-human" or "impersonal" forces. Kovel uses the Bhopal industrial disaster as an example. Many anti-corporate observers would blame the avarice of those at the top of many multi-national corporations, such as the Union Carbide Corporation in Bhopal, for seemingly isolated industrial accidents. Conversely, Kovel suggests that Union Carbide were experiencing a decrease in sales that led to falling profits, which, due to stock market conditions, translated into a drop in share values. The depreciation of share value made many shareholders sell their stock, weakening the company and leading to cost-cutting measures that eroded the safety procedures and mechanisms at the Bhopal site. Though this did not, in Kovel's mind, make the Bhopal disaster inevitable, he believes that it illustrates the effect market forces can have on increasing the likelihood of ecological and social problems.12
Eco-socialism focuses closely on Marx's theories about the contradiction between use values and exchange values. Kovel posits that, within a market economy, goods are not produced to meet needs but are produced to be exchanged for money that we then use to acquire other goods; as we have to keep selling in order to keep buying, we must persuade others to buy our goods just to ensure our survival, which leads to the production of goods with no previous use that can be sold to sustain our ability to buy other goods. Such goods, in an eco-socialist analysis, produce exchange values but have no use value. Eco-socialists like Kovel stress that this contradiction has reached a destructive extent, where certain essential activities - such as caring for relatives full-time and basic subsistence - are unrewarded, while unnecessary commodities earn individuals huge fortunes and fuel consumerism and resource depletion.12
James O'Connor has added a "second contradiction" to Marx's original economic contradictions. He suggests that, as capitalism grows, it pollutes the air and water, increases soil erosion (which reduces the availability of productive farmland) and releases harmful chemicals into the natural world, therefore reducing the ability of the environment and workers to sustain growth and, like Marx's dialectical contradictions, therefore threatens the system's own existence.40 In addition, O'Connor believes that, in order to remedy environmental contradictions, the capitalist system innovates new technologies that overcome existing problems but introduce new ones. He cites nuclear power as an example, which he sees as a form of producing energy that is advertised as an alternative to carbon-intensive, non-renewable fossil fuels, but creates long-term radioactive waste and other dangers to health and security. While O'Connor believes that capitalism is capable of spreading out its economic supports so widely that it can afford to destroy one ecosystem before moving onto another, he and many other eco-socialists now fear that, with the onset of globalization, the system is running out of new ecosystems.40 Kovel adds that capitalist firms have to continue to extract profit through a combination of intensive or extensive exploitation and selling to new markets, meaning that capitalism must grow indefinitely to exist, which he thinks is impossible on a planet of finite resources.12
Capitalist expansion is seen by eco-socialists as being "hand in glove" with "corrupt and subservient client states" that repress dissent against the system, governed by international organisations "under the overall supervision of the Western powers and the superpower United States", which subordinate peripheral nations economically and militarily.1 Kovel further claims that capitalism itself spurs conflict and, ultimately, war. Kovel states that the 'War on Terror', between Islamist extremists and the USA, is caused by "oil imperialism", whereby the capitalist nations require control over sources of energy, especially oil, which are necessary to continue intensive industrial growth - in the quest for control of such resources, Kovel argues that the capitalist nations, specifically the USA, have come into conflict with the predominantly Muslim nations where oil is often found.12
Eco-socialists believe that state or self-regulation of markets does not solve the crisis "because to do so requires setting limits upon accumulation", which is "unacceptable" for a growth-orientated system; they believe that terrorism and revolutionary impulses cannot be tackled properly "because to do so would mean abandoning the logic of empire". Instead, eco-socialists feel that increasing repressive counter-terrorism increases alienation and causes further terrorism and believe that state counter-terrorist methods are, in Kovel and Löwy's words, "evolving into a new and malignant variation of fascism". They echo Rosa Luxemburg's "stark choice" between "socialism or barbarism", which was believed to be a prediction of the coming of fascism and further forms of destructive capitalism at the beginning of the twentieth century (Luxemburg was in fact murdered by proto-fascist Freikorps in the revolutionary atmosphere of Germany in 1919).1
Reflecting tensions within the environmental and socialist movements, there is some conflict of ideas. One the one hand, eco-socialists of the International Socialist Group argue that almost all goods should be rationally produced and distributed by the state. On the other hand, more grassroots eco-socialists advocate the distribution of goods by society, for example through the extension of the library principle.
In practice however, a synthesis is emerging which calls for democratic regulation of industry in the interests of people and the environment, nationalisation of some key (environmental) industries, local democracy and an extension of co-ops and the library principle.41
Eco-socialists criticise many within the Green movement for not being overtly anti-capitalist, for working within the existing capitalist, statist system, for voluntarism, or for reliance on technological fixes. The eco-socialist ideology is based on a critique of other forms of Green politics, including various forms of Green economics, Localism, Deep Ecology, Bioregionalism and even some manifestations of radical green ideologies such as Eco-feminism and Social Ecology. As Kovel puts it, eco-socialism differs from Green politics at the most fundamental level because the 'Four Pillars' of Green politics (and the 'Ten Key Values' of the US Green Party) do not include the demand for the emancipation of labour and the end of the separation between producers and the means of production.12 Many eco-socialists also oppose Malthusianism19 and are alarmed by the gulf between Green politics in the Global North and the Global South.11
Eco-socialists are highly critical of those Greens who favour "working within the system". While eco-socialists like Kovel recognise the ability of within-system approaches to raise awareness, and believe that "the struggle for an ecologically rational world must include a struggle for the state", he believes that the mainstream Green movement is too easily co-opted by the current powerful socio-political forces as it "passes from citizen-based activism to ponderous bureaucracies scuffling for 'a seat at the table'". For Kovel, capitalism is "happy to enlist" the Green movement for "convenience", "control over popular dissent" and "rationalization". He further attacks within-system green initiatives like carbon trading, which he sees as a "capitalist shell game" that turns pollution "into a fresh source of profit".12 Brian Tokar has further criticised carbon trading in this way, suggesting that it augments existing class inequality and gives the "largest 'players'... substantial control over the whole 'game'".42
In addition, Kovel criticises the "defeatism" of voluntarism in some local forms of environmentalism that do not connect together: he suggests that they can be "drawn off into individualism" or co-opted to the demands of capitalism, as in the case of certain recycling projects, where citizens are "induced to provide free labor" to waste management industries who are involved in the "capitalization of nature". He labels the notion on voluntarism "ecopolitics without struggle".12
Technological fixes to ecological problems are also rejected by eco-socialists. Saral Sarkar has updated the thesis of 1970s 'limits to growth' to exemplify the limits of new capitalist technologies such as hydrogen fuel cells, which require large amounts of energy to split molecules to obtain hydrogen.43 Furthermore, Kovel notes that "events in nature are reciprocal and multi-determined" and can therefore not be predictably "fixed"; socially, technologies cannot solve social problems because they are not "mechanical". He posits an eco-socialist analysis, developed from Marx, that patterns of production and social organisation are more important then the forms of technology used within a given configuration of society. Under capitalism, he suggests that technology "has been the sine qua non of growth" - thus he believes that, even in a world with hypothetical "free energy", the effect would be to lower the cost of automobile production, leading to the massive overproduction of vehicles, "collapsing infrastructure", chronic resource depletion and the "paving over" of the "remainder of nature". In the modern world, Kovel considers the supposed efficiency of new post-industrial commodities is a "plain illusion", as miniaturized components involve many substances and are therefore non-recyclable (and, theoretically, only simple substances could be retrieved by burning out-of-date equipment, releasing more pollutants). He is quick to warn "environmental liberals" against over-selling the virtues of renewable energies that cannot meet the mass energy consumption of the era; although he would still support renewable energy projects, he believes it is more important to restructure societies to reduce energy use before relying on renewable energy technologies alone.12
Eco-socialists have based their ideas for political strategy on a critique of several different trends in Green economics. At the most fundamental level, eco-socialists reject what Kovel calls "ecological economics" or the "ecological wing of mainstream economics" for being "uninterested in social transformation". He furthers rejects the Neo-Smithian school, who believe in Adam Smith's vision of "a capitalism of small producers, freely exchanging with each other", which is self-regulating and competitive. The school is represented by thinkers like David Korten who believe in "regulated markets" checked by government and civil society but, for Kovel, they do not provide a critique of the expansive nature of capitalism away from localised production and ignore "questions of class, gender or any other category of domination". Kovel also criticises their "fairy-tale" view of history, which refers to the abuse of "natural capital" by the materialism of the Scientific Revolution, an assumption that, in Kovel's eyes, seems to suggest that "nature had toiled to put the gift of capital into human hands", rather than capitalism being a product of social relations in human history.12
Other forms of Community-based economics are also rejected by eco-socialists such as Kovel, including followers of E. F. Schumacher and some members of the Cooperative movement, for advocating "no more than a very halting and isolated first step". He thinks that their principles are "only partially realizable within the institutions of cooperatives in capitalist society" because "the internal cooperation" of cooperatives is "forever hemmed in and compromised" by the need to expand value and compete within the market.12 Marx also believed that cooperatives within capitalism make workers into "their own capitalist... by enabling them to use the means of production for the employment of their own labour".18 For Kovel and other eco-socialists, Community-based economics and Green Localism are "a fantasy" because "strict localism belongs to the aboriginal stages of society" and would be an "ecological nightmare at present population levels" due to "heat loses from a multitude of dispersed sites, the squandering of scare resources, the needless reproduction of effort, and cultural impoverishment". While he feels that small-scale production units are "an essential part of the path towards an ecological society", he sees them not as "an end in itself"; in his view, small enterprises can be either capitalist or socialist in their configuration and therefore must be "consistently anti-capitalist", through recognition and support of the emancipation of labour, and exist "in a dialectic with the whole of things", as human society will need large-scale projects, such as transport infrastructures. He highlights the work of Herman Daly, who exemplifies what eco-socialists see as the good and bad points of ecological economics - while he offers a critique of capitalism and a desire for "workers ownership", he only believes in workers ownership "kept firmly within a capitalist market", ignoring the eco-socialist desire for struggle in the emancipation of labour and hoping that the interests of labour and management today can be improved so that they are "in harmony".12
Despite the inclusion of both in political factions like the 'Fundies' of the German Green Party, eco-socialists and deep ecologists hold markedly opposite views. Eco-socialists like Kovel have attacked deep ecology because, like other forms of Green politics and Green economics, it features "virtuous souls" who have "no internal connection with the critique of capitalism and the emancipation of labor". Kovel is particularly scathing about deep ecology and its "fatuous pronouncement" that Green politics is "neither left nor right, but ahead", which, for him, ignores the notion that "that which does not confront the system comes its instrument".12
Even more scathingly, Kovel suggests that in "its effort to decentre humanity within nature", deep ecologists can "go too far" and argue for the "splitting away of unwanted people", as evidenced by their desire to preserve wilderness by removing the groups that have lived there "from time immemorial". Kovel thinks that this lends legitimacy to "capitalist elites", like the US State Department and the World Bank, who can make preservation of wilderness a part of their projects that "have added value as sites for ecotourism" but remove people from their land. Between 1986 and 1996, Kovel notes that over three million people were displaced by "conservation projects"; in the making of the US National Parks, three hundred Shoshone Indians were killed in the development of Yosemite. Kovel believes that deep ecology has affected the rest of the Green movement and led to calls from restrictions on immigration, "often allying with reactionaries in a... cryptically racist quest". Indeed, he finds traces of deep ecology in the "biological reduction" of Nazism, an ideology many "organicist thinkers" have found appealing, including Herbert Gruhl, a founder of the German Green Party (who subsequently left when it became more Left-wing) and originator of the phrase "neither left nor right, but ahead". Kovel warns that, while 'ecofascism' is confined to a narrow band of far right intellectuals and disaffected white power skinheads who involved themselves alongside far left groups in the anti-globalization movement, it may be "imposed as a revolution from above to install an authoritarian regime in order to preserve the main workings of the system" in times of crisis.12
Bioregionalism, a philosophy developed by writers like Kirkpatrick Sale who believe in the self-sufficiency of "appropriate bioregional boundaries" drawn up by inhabitants of "an area",44 has been thoroughly critiqued by Kovel, who fears that the "vagueness" of the area will lead to conflict and further boundaries between communities.12 While Sale sites the bioregional living of Native Americans,44 Kovel notes that such ideas are impossible to translate to populations of modern proportions, and evidences the fact that Native Americans held land in commons, rather than private property - thus, for eco-socialists, bioregionalism provides no understanding of what is needed to transform society, and what the inevitable "response of the capitalist state" would be to people constructing bioregionalism.12
Kovel also attacks the problems of self-sufficiency. Where Sale believes in self-sufficient regions "each developing the energy of its peculiar ecology", such as "wood in the northwest [USA]",44 Kovel asks "how on earth" these can be made sufficient for regional needs, and notes the environmental damage of converting Seattle into a "forest-destroying and smoke-spewing wood-burning" city. Kovel also questions Sale's insistence on bioregions that do "not require connections with the outside, but within strict limits", and whether this precludes journeys to visit family members and other forms of travel.12
Like many variants of socialism and Green politics, eco-socialists recognise the importance of "the gendered bifurcation of nature" and support the emancipation of gender as it "is at the root of patriarchy and class". Nevertheless, while Kovel believes that "any path out of capitalism must also be eco-feminist", he criticises types of ecofeminism that are not anti-capitalist and can "essentialize women's closeness to nature and build from there, submerging history into nature", becoming more at place in the "comforts of the New Age Growth Centre". These limitations, for Kovel, "keep ecofeminism from becoming a coherent social movement".12
While having much in common with the radical tradition of Social Ecology, eco-socialists still see themselves as distinct. Kovel believes this is because Social Ecologists see hierarchy "in-itself" as the cause of ecological destruction, whereas eco-socialists focus on gender and class domination embodied in capitalism and recognise that forms of authority that are not "an expropriation of human power for... self-aggrandizement", such as a student-teacher relationship that is "reciprocal and mutual", are beneficial. In practice, Kovel describes Social Ecology as continuing the anarchist tradition of non-violent direct action, which is "necessary" but "not sufficient" because "it leaves unspoken the question of building an ecological society beyond capital". Furthermore, Social Ecologists and anarchists tend to focus on the state alone, rather than the class relations behind state domination (in the view of Marxists). Kovel fears that this is political, springing from historic hostility to Marxism among anarchists and sectarianism, which he points out as a fault of the "brilliant" but "dogmatic" founder of Social Ecology, Murray Bookchin.12
While Malthusianism and eco-socialism overlap within the Green movement because both address over-industrialism, and despite the fact that Eco-socialists, like many within the Green movement, are described as neo-Malthusian because of their criticism of economic growth, Eco-socialists are opposed to Malthusianism. This divergence stems from the difference between Marxist and Malthusian examinations of social injustice - whereas Marx blames inequality on class injustice, Malthus argued that the working-class remained poor because of their greater fertility and birth rates. Neo-Malthusians have slightly modified this analysis by increasing their focus on overconsumption - nonetheless, eco-socialists find this attention inadequate. They point to the fact that Malthus did not thoroughly examine ecology and that Garrett Hardin, a key Neo-Malthusian, suggested that further enclosed and privatised land, as opposed to commons, would solve the chief environmental problem, which Hardin labeled the 'Tragedy of the Commons'.19
Guha and Martinez-Alier attack the gulf between what they see as the two "varieties of environmentalism" - the environmentalism of the North, an aesthetic environmentalism that is the privilege of wealthy people who no longer have basic material concerns, and the environmentalism of the South, where people's local environment is a source of communal wealth and such issues are a question of survival.11 Nonetheless, other eco-socialists, such as Wall, have also pointed out that capitalism disproportionately affects the poorest in the Global North as well, leading to examples of resistance such as the environmental justice movement in the US and groups like MOVE.19
Eco-socialists choose to use the term 'socialist', despite "the failings of its twentieth century interpretations", because it "still stands for the supersession of capital" and thus "the name, and the reality" must "become adequate for this time".1 Eco-socialists have nonetheless often diverged with other Marxist movements.
For Kovel and Lowy, eco-socialism is "the realization of the “first-epoch” socialisms" by resurrecting the notion of "free development of all producers", distancing themselves from "the attenuated, reformist aims of social democracy and the productivist structures of the bureaucratic variations of socialism", such as forms of Leninism and Stalinism.1 They ground the failure of past socialist movements in "underdevelopment in the context of hostility by existing capitalist powers", which led to "the denial of internal democracy" and "emulation of capitalist productivism".1 Kovel believes that the for