Ecosocialism: A Radical Alternative

Löwy, Michaël

doi:10.1007/978-3-030-33920-3_10

Cited by 31 publications

(37 citation statements)

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“…Marxian thinking remains associated with failed political projects, and whilst this negative reception is partly understandable, it is a fatal mistake to abandon realistic and insightful economic theory for these reasons. On the other hand, there are also many writings about ecological sustainability from a Marxian perspective, which is sometimes termed 'eco-socialism' [63] or 'eco-Marxism'. Early seminal contributions by James O'Connor [64,65] and more contemporary leading examples, such as Andreas Malm's Fossil Capital [66] or Jason Moore's Capitalism in the Web of Life [67] and essential eco-feminist contributions, such as Ariel Salleh's 'Ecofeminism as Politics' [68] gain importance, as global ecological crisis intensify.…”

Section: Better Economic Foundations For Better Decisionsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Roots, Riots, and Radical Change—A Road Less Travelled for Ecological Economics

Pirgmaier

Steinberger

2019

Sustainability

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In this paper, we put forward a new research agenda for ecological economics, based on three realisations. We then show how these can be connected through research and used to generate insights with the potential for application in broader, systemic change. The first realisation is that the core ambition of ecological economics, that of addressing the scale of human environmental resource use and associated impacts, often remains an aspirational goal, rather than being applied within research. In understanding intertwined environmental and social challenges, systemic approaches (including system dynamics) should be revitalised to address the full scope of what is possible or desirable. The second realisation is that the focus on biophysical and economic quantification and methods has been at the expense of a comprehensive social understanding of environmental impacts and barriers to change—including the role of power, social class, geographical location, historical change, and achieving human well-being. For instance, by fetishising growth as the core problem, attention is diverted away from underlying social drivers—monetary gains as profits, rent, or interest fuelled by capitalist competition and, ultimately, unequal power relations. The third realisation is that ecological economics situates itself with respect to mainstream (neoclassical) economics, but simultaneously adopts some of its mandate and blind spots, even in its more progressive camps. Pragmatic attempts to adopt mainstream concepts and tools often comfort, rather than challenge, the reproduction of the very power relations that stand in the way of sustainability transitions. We consider these three realisations as impediments for developing ecological economics as an emancipatory critical research paradigm and political project. We will not focus on or detail the failings of ecological economics, but state what we believe they are and reformulate them as research priorities. By describing and bringing these three elements together, we are able to outline an ambitious research agenda for ecological economics, one capable of catalysing real social change.

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Section: Better Economic Foundations For Better Decisionsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Roots, Riots, and Radical Change—A Road Less Travelled for Ecological Economics

Pirgmaier

Steinberger

2019

Sustainability

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“…These often maintain a higher commitment to the sovereignty regime and to national development, as is the case with China particularly, than the global Northern imperium. The third challenge arises from counter‐hegemonic groups (middle and lower peasantries, semi‐proletarians, indigenous groups particularly) propounding a post‐capitalist way of ‘good living’ akin to eco‐socialism (Lowy ).…”

Section: The ‘Post‐neoliberal’ Food Regime: Land‐grabbing and Neo‐extmentioning

confidence: 99%

Food Regimes, Capital, State, and Class: Friedmann and McMichael Revisited

Tilzey

2019

Sociologia Ruralis

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Friedmann and McMichael's work, through their concept of the 'food regime', has been foundational to our thinking about the relation between capitalism, the state, and agriculture. Given the thirtieth anniversary of the publication of their seminal 1989 paper in this journal (Agriculture and the State System: The Rise and Decline of National Agricultures, 1870 to the Present) it seems very appropriate to commemorate this event by undertaking a reassessment of that paper. This article undertakes such a reassessment by examining and critiquing: the theoretical assumptions underlying the paper, particularly in relation to capitalism, class, and the state. This directs attention particularly to: the authors' (implicit) definition of capitalism; the relation between capitalism and the modern state; their treatment of 'class' and 'class struggle'; and their periodisation of food regimes and the dynamics underlying them, these being premised on their theoretical assumptions. The second, third, and, fourth sections occupy the bulk of the paper. The second section develops a significantly revised theoretical foundation for thinking about the dynamics underlying food regimes, while the third section deploys this as the basis for a new periodisation of food regimes. This periodisation includes a proposed Fifth, or 'Post-Neoliberal' Food Regime, and the final section examines this in detail.determinism and linearity of 'structural Marxism' (the 'second school', see below), an impulse, as implied above, that has only increased, if not always been realised, since 1989 (see Campbell and Dixon 2009). Indeed, these authors suggest that 'it is only possible… to understand the significance of these new perspectives by understanding food regimes as a key historical and theoretical pivot that moved debates in rural sociology from a rather narrow, structural and orthodox political economy of agriculture to a more contingent, historically contextual understanding of the many configurations… of agri-food capitalisms' (Campbell and Dixon 2009, p. 261).We argue, however, and as implied above, that, in the case of McMichael, theoretical provision for such 'contingency' has not been realised other than 'outside' the regime (see Tilzey 2017), while, in the case of Friedmann, her theoretical shift to engage 'contingency' has been undertaken through her partial embrace of post-structural and post-modern frames. These do not, we suggest, afford a rigorous basis for conceptualising 'contingency', however. We argue that this unresolved tension between 'structure' and 'contingency' in FRT, as presented by Friedmann and McMichael, arises through a missed opportunity to embrace RT in its entirety, together with their apparent lack of awareness of other important and related developments in 'post-structuralist' (but not 'post-structural') Marxian theorynotably, 'Political Marxism', Poulantzian state-capital theory, and neo-Gramscian theory. Indeed, it may be argued that this unresolved tension and their omission to present a theoretical basis for con...

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“…Lowy is one modern ecosocialist who argues that Marx did not adequately consider how capitalism would become so ceaselessly destructive of the natural habitat. 7 Saito writes that since Marx's most important work, Capital, remained incomplete, the later notebook materials must be assigned special value. Roughly half of these entries dealt with several natural sciences -biology, chemistry, botany, geology -yet "the importance of this work remained neglected for more than a century."…”

Section: In Search Of An Ecological Marxmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Carl Boggs the foundations of the modern Western capitalist/industrial civilization." 1 Lowy himself was rather skeptical that the Marxist classics were adequate to this task.…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

Was Karl Marx an Ecosocialist?

Boggs¹

2020

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Ecosocialism: A Radical Alternative

Cited by 31 publications

References 0 publications

Roots, Riots, and Radical Change—A Road Less Travelled for Ecological Economics

Roots, Riots, and Radical Change—A Road Less Travelled for Ecological Economics

Food Regimes, Capital, State, and Class: Friedmann and McMichael Revisited

Was Karl Marx an Ecosocialist?

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