In the midst of a catastrophic crisis of capitalist accumulation, the alternative is eco-socialism, a new way of knowing one’s relationship to nature that deconstructs and decenters anthropocentrism in favor of ecocentric subjectivities.

However, while the Marxist critique makes it clear that the ecological crisis cannot be solved within the parameter of global capitalism, socialism, as it is often understood, will also not in itself overcome the ecological crisis. The problem here is not just that what has been called “really existing socialism” in the twentieth century, most notably the Soviet Union and China which were ecological disasters, but the anthropocentric and productivist assumptions that were built into much of classical socialist thinking. The anthropocentric assumption implies that human beings have a privileged position vis-à-vis the rest of nature and have, therefore, the right to exploit and change nature fully to their advantage; in effect, that we must conquer nature. The productivist assumption is the assumption that production can be unlimited—in order that, by using increased technological development to reduce necessary collective labor time, we can go from the “kingdom of necessity” to the “realm of freedom.” Nature, then, remains a resource to be controlled and dominated. ¶ There is a need then for a new way of thinking about socialism— what has been called “ecosocialism.” In an article entitled “Five Theses on Ecosocialism,” Joel Kovel defines ecosocialism as follows: “Ecosocialism is a transformation of the original socialist project. It is ‘this-epoch socialism,’ reflecting the ascension of the ecological crisis alongside and interpenetrated with the accumulation crises of classical capitalism.” Kovel goes on to insist that ecosocialism is not just a new mode of production but also “a new mode of being, a spiritual as well as a material transforming proceeding from a prefiguration.” Thus, it is not just a vision of a new society but a “prefigurative praxis” in which the social praxis of the present is animated by such a vision, a praxis which challenges the logic of endless growth and adopts “an ethic of ecocentrism, that is, of caring for nature and granting it intrinsic value.” In a keynote address at the Economic Ecosocialism conference in Quito, Ecuador, Kovel reiterates the idea of granting nature an intrinsic value, which he defines “as an assertion that we should value nature for itself, irrespective of what we would do to it—value it intrinsically and thereby as a function of its inherent right.” Thus, it is not enough to reject exchange value and embrace use value. Use value must also be rejected when it conflicts with the intrinsic value of nature, and the embracing of the intrinsic value of nature is a social and spiritual praxis. For Kovel, “spirit is a dimension of human existence defined by the property of going beyond the socially constructed boundaries of the self.” As we shall see, the spiritual dimension of existence can also present a challenge to all self constructions, including the construction of a species-self. ¶ Kovel, claims that some of the failure of traditional socialist thinking can be traced to Marx. While applauding the early Marx’s recognition of the integral relation between humanity and the rest of nature, a recognition that prefigures an ecocentric ethic, and while granting that elements of his earlier ecological understanding remain in Marx’s mature work, Kovel nonetheless argues that “as Marx matured his youthful insight into the unity of humanism and naturalism became weaker.” As an example of Marx’s turning away from his earlier ecological insight, Kovel cites Marx’s famous passage describes the labor process in Capital, volume one. Commenting on that passage, Kovel writes, In Capital nature is reduced to an organ subordinated to the master’s mind and an instrument of labor, indeed, the whole earth is seen as such an instrument. Though the worker is a force of nature, he is opposed to nature, and this opposition is chosen of his own accord. Thus Man is purely active, as nature is passive. . .. If nature is just a thing-like ‘stuff’ for “Man” to work upon, then it has lost the formative quality essential for ecosystemic being. ¶ In contrast, Kovel suggests that an ecocentric understanding of labor would recognize nature’s “co-productivity.” It would “involve a going-with nature, a reading of its ways, and fundamentally, a kind of receptivity to it: a realization that we are not split off and above it. This opens upon a recognition of nature within us and ourselves within nature.”25 ¶ Michael Löwy has also developed an analysis of ecosocialism which goes beyond the way socialism has been traditionally understood. For Löwy, ecosocialism requires “that Marxists undertake a critical revision of `productive forces’ and that they break radically with the ideology of linear progress and with the technological and economic paradigm of mod-ern industrial civilization.”26 Like Kovel, Löwy identifies Marx as partially responsible for the problem. Was Marx productivist? Löwy answer is Yes and No. “No to the extent that no one has denounced the capitalist logic of capitalism—as well as the accumulation of capital, wealth, and commodities—as vehemently as Marx did. . .. For Marx, the supreme goal of technical progress is not the infinite accumulation of goods (‘having’) but the reduction of the work day and the accumulation of free time.”27 On the other hand, “Yes to the extent that one often sees in Marx and Engels (and all the more in later Marxism) a tendency to make `development of the productive forces’ the principle vector of progress, along with an insufficiently critical attitude toward industrial civilization, notably in its destructive relationship to the environment.”28 ¶ Are Kovel and Löwy right about Marx? This is the subject of a fierce debate. Marxist thinkers like John Bellamy Foster, Paul Burkett, and Kohei Saito have offered a robust defense of Marx’s ecological bona fides, and they seek to demonstrate, through various passages in his later writings as well as his notebooks, that Marx not only understood the importance of an ecological perspective but also developed theoretical concepts that are crucial for the ecosocialist project. I shall not here enter into this debate. Instead, what I want to suggest is that for the purposes of this essay, it does not matter whether or not Kovel and Löwy are correct about Marx and Engels, since traditionally socialists who took their inspiration from Marx and Engels, did not very much care about the intrinsic value of nature and often considered the socialist project to entail the continued development of the forces of production and increased domination of nature. A typical example is Trotsky’s comment on the relation between human beings and nature in socialist society in an essay in Literature and Revolution: “through the machine, man in Socialist society will command nature in its entirety. . . . He will point out places for mountains and passes. He will change the course of rivers, and he will lay down rules for the ocean.”¶ Ecosocialism is not only a vision of a different kind of society, but it requires a human being with a sociality and a new sensibility that would differ not only from capitalist “human nature” but also from the traditional socialist “human nature.” While retaining the idea that “we shall have an association in which the free development of each is the condition for the free development of all,” it would insist that that this association sees itself as part of larger association with the totality of the biosphere and respect its “free development.” It would see humans as co-producers with nature. It would reject the idea that the continued development of the productive forces is a mark of progress or that the transition to a “higher phase of communist society” requires an increase of the productive forces to the point where “all the springs of common wealth flow more abundantly.” Such a new sensibility would require not only new economic relations but new social relations grounded in a different kind of subjectivity.