It is an example of an idea that developed on the fringes and which is slowly taking centre stage. Over the past year, from social democrats to the radical Left, the concept of ecosocialism has started to bring people together - or is at least being debated.
No one could have foreseen that a Marxist concept that developed in academic circles in the United States in the 1970s would one day become such a political attraction. Yet the basic principle of ecosocialism - that environmentalism is not possible within the framework of the capitalist market economy, and that socialism is not possible without breaking away from 'productivism' - is becoming ever more widely accepted. “The historical analysis that the causes of the environmental crisis and of all forms of social domination have a common origin – capitalism – has prevailed,” says philosopher Paul Guillibert, author of the book 'Terre et Capital'.
Clémentine Autain, the French Member of Parliament for the radical-left La France Insoumise (LFI) party and member of the Gauche Écosocialiste (GES), which was founded in mid-May and is part of the LFI, also espouses this approach, as does the president of the Belgian Socialist Party, Paul Magnette, author of an 'ecosocialist manifesto', who has inspired his French counterpart Olivier Faure.
Enlargement : Illustration 1
Paul Magnette has discussed the issue with Clémentine Autain and another LFI MP, François Ruffin, further proof of growing closeness between two sections of the Left who had been far apart. “There are differences between us, but what we're looking for overall is a large unifying project that leaves behind the divisions of the 20th century and which redefines a common perspective on the Left,” says Clémentine Autain.
Interviewed by Mediapart, Paul Magnette also see the development as a welcome update in terms of ideology. “Ecosocialism is an intersection of self-criticism: socialists must be self-critical about their long alliance with productivism, and environmentalists must acknowledge that the reason they've trodden water for 50 years is because they haven't been able to entrench natural issues in social issues,” he says. “We have the opportunity to build some form of convergence. “
Ecosocialism's cultural success
This intersection of self-criticism also emerged during a conference held in early June by Génération.s, the party founded by former socialist government minister Benoît Hamon, and which has enshrined ecosocialism in its strategic positioning. “The end of the 20th century showed that it wasn't enough to right capitalism's wrongs, we had to get away from it. Ecosocialism offers this, while freeing us from the dogmatism within which we've become imprisoned,” says Léa Filoche, the party's national coordinator. The anti-capitalism party Le Nouveau Parti Anticapitaliste (NPA) – which is about to undergo major changes – adopted the same approach years ago.
The Left has struggled for a long time to recover from the disillusionment of 'real socialism' and of the social-liberal 'Third Way. But because it has been carefully constructed and is linked to a programme and a strategy, ecosocialism now provides the Left with an alternative, ambitious and desirable social project.
The enthusiasm engendered by Kohei Saito's book 'Marx in the Anthropocene - Towards the Idea of Degrowth Communism', which has sold half a million copies in Japan, bears testimony to this hope for ideological renewal. “This incredible success shows that there is a search for an alternative that goes beyond the superficial waffle that forms the content of politics today, because the Left needs a world vision,” says Daniel Tanuro, a Belgian essayist, member of the Trotskyist Fourth International and a major author in the world of ecosocialism.
It's been a long task of theoretical construction that's accelerating under the pressure of climate events.
The exponential consequences of climate disruption have shattered the old distinction between the workers' movement, organised according to a 'productivist' interpretation of Marxism, and environmental groups, who specialise in the fight against pollution and industrial risks. The antagonism has given way to a need for cross-fertilisation, one that was expressed in the recent protests against pension reform. “'There are no pensioners on a burning planet' [editor's note, a slogan used at the pension reform demonstrations] is an ecosocialist slogan,” Benoît Hamon told a gathering of socialists recently, suggesting that the culture of ecosocialism has already won. The environmental movement Soulèvements de la Terre – which has just been officially dissolved by the government - is also evidence of this unprecedented convergence of ideas.
“It's been a long task of theoretical construction that's accelerating under the pressure of climate events,” says environmental activist Claire Lejeune, who joined the campaign team of LFI presidential candidate Jean-Luc Mélenchon in 2022. “The intertwining of crises generates forms of action and reflection which are ecosocialist, even if they are not described as such. Camille Étienne [editor's note, a climate activist and author of a recent essay] supports actions which are in line with ecosocialist radicalness. There's a basic shift that's causing this word to return, because it chimes with activist and social reality.”
A shared radical language
Even if all these groups and political figures do not necessarily espouse ecosocialism, they are taking part in a community of ideas. Environmental planning of the economy, a reduction in working hours, making the 'green rule' – which is that you must not take out of nature more than it can replenish itself with – part of the constitution, degrowth, replacing agribusiness with small-scale agriculture, internationalism; all these represent in their view a group of coherent and appropriate responses to the current crises.
However, intellectuals who have laid the theoretical basis for ecosocialism now fear that the idea might be quickly appropriated for electoral reasons. “Scandinavian social-democracy espouses ecosocialism but that hasn't changed its support for productivism at all,” says Daniel Tanuro, who in 2020 wrote 'Trop tard pour être pessimiste! Écosocialisme ou effondrement' ('Too late to be pessimistic! Ecosocialism or collapse'). Philosopher Paul Guillibert says: “As the concept grows, it loses its precision and radicalness”
In France it was philosopher Michael Löwy, who is close to former NPA spokesperson Olivier Besancenot, who came up with an initial definition of ecosocialism at the start of the 2000s. “It's not social management of capitalism, nor an ecological programme that's compatible with the market economy: it has a revolutionary scope in relation to the basic economics of capitalism,” he says today.
Independently of labels, the Left must think simultaneously about social and natural issues, creating the setting in which to build unity.
In recent months the philosopher has championed the radical nature of concept when speaking to various groups on the Left. He also gave a lecture on this issue to LFI-associated think tank Institut La Boétie on May 31st. The Parti de Gauche – predecessor to the LFI – which was co-founded by Jean-Luc Mélenchon in 2008, had adopted this approach early on thanks to the theoretical work done by essayist Corinne Morel Darleux and by Martine Billard, who came from the Greens.
Its re-emergence now, after disappearing during the 2017 and 2022 presidential campaigns - even though the LFI's manifesto was considered a de facto ecosocialist one – is clearly linked to the creation in 2022 of the broad-Left Nouvelle Union Populaire, Écologique et Sociale (NUPES) and its attempts to bring the Left together. “Independently of labels, the Left must think simultaneously about social and natural issues, creating the setting in which to build unity,” says Paul Magnette, president of the Belgian Socialist Party. “While with many socialists one was no longer speaking the same language, what NUPES tells us is that a new common language is in the process of developing between different cultures on the Left. It's very promising for the future,” says Clémentine Autain.
Complementary strategies
Philosopher Paul Guillibert thinks that this trend is symptomatic of the progress made by the Left during a period marked by scientific documentation of climate disruption. “There's a dominant future for ecosocialism within the Left. It's a double advance: from the point of view of ecologists, it shows progress in the critique of capitalism, and from the point of view of anti-capitalists, it's a sign that there is no longer a party of the Left that does not position itself in terms of ecological transition.”
“It opens a possible way to unity in action and demands, even to a position of critical support for a ecosocialist electoral programme, both from the outside and internally,” says Daniel Tanuro. However, he thinks that the Left must “acknowledge the need for degrowth, in the literal meaning of the term, as a transition phase towards a different society.”
As for France's green party, Europe Écologie-Les Verts (EELV), it has turned the page on the era of “neither-nor” - it claimed to be neither of the Right nor the Left – represented by Antoine Waechter in the 1980s. Yet a desire to develop environmental policy as an autonomous force means there is some reticence in the party towards the emergence of ecosocalism. “It's political marketing. Through this concept, leftwing organisations are seeking to integrate what ecological politics has brought to the critique of capitalism into their own theoretical matrix, but I don't see what it brings to ecological thinking,” says Alain Coulombel, a member of the EELV's executive committee. Nonetheless, the party acknowledges the antipathy between environmentalism and capitalism.
There are, therefore, strategic differences that remain - for example, spreading individual initiatives at grassroots level versus harnessing the power of the state to redirect the apparatus of production – and ecosocialism is far from being a homogeneous belief system. But the debate that has been triggered on the Left – both inside and outside NUPES - may yet be fruitful. It could even represent hope on the Left against the shams represented by green capitalism, liberal ecology and the far right's 'localism'.
------------------------------------------------------------------
- The original French version of this article can be found here.
English version by Michael Streeter