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Among the hopes expressed with the journal's founding was that work would be published on "the issue of 'really existing socialist' nature and ecological problems and prospects in the socialist countries." It was supposed to be a "Last but not least" of subject areas (O'Connor 1988, 5) and it turned out to be more like a least and last, as it has been in leftist scholarship generally. Efforts among socialists (in the broad sense) to explain "really existing socialism" (henceforth, state-socialism) 1 have existed for some time, even as the Russian revolution was unfolding. Yet these efforts have scarcely been at the forefront of discussion and political action, while the task of addressing statesocialism remains as important as ever. The critique or condemnation of state-socialism has been and still is used to deny the possibility of alternatives, if not as a ruse to extoll capitalist relations. This is one reason leftist critiques of state-socialism can inadvertently bolster reactionary viewpoints. State-socialism still matters, even if as a past (or present) to be rejected. In this editorial, I concentrate on the ecological aspects of state-socialist practices, which have been the object of leftist critique largely since the 1970s (and as such reviled, at first). But rather than provide reasons for jettisoning state-socialism altogether, as is often done, I would like to reclaim it for ecosocialist ends and develop a research agenda that can contribute to such a project.

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