Damian F. White

Ecosocialisms, Past, Present and Future: From the Metabolic Rift to a Reconstructive, Dynamic and Hybrid Ecosocialism

ABSTRACT John Bellamy Foster and his colleagues have recently argued that the project of ecosocialism should be understood in terms of a “prefigurative” and “first stage” of red-green thinkers whose insights have largely been transcended by their own work on the metabolic rift. Rift scholars have further argued that “second-stage” ecosocialists should push back against “idealist” deviations occurring amongst historical materialists concerned with the production of nature, socionatures and “hybridity,” as well as more or less all engagements with literatures on eco-technological transitions, industrial ecology and the like, which are implicated in supporting “green capitalism.” This paper critically evaluates these claims. In each case, it is argued, rift scholarship is narrowing the possibilities for interdisciplinary engagement and for thinking in dynamic and reconstructive terms about red-green futures. It is our sense that an ecosocialist vision of just transitions has to be conceptualized as a diverse, dynamic, iterative and always incomplete affair. Anthropocene ecosocialisms are inevitably going to involve co-producing, making and remaking hybrid social ecologies on an irreducibly restless, turbulent and warming planet. We argue that what follows from this is the necessity to both critique and recuperate the better insights of hybrid political ecology and ecological modernities.

Post-Industrial Possibilities and Urban Social Ecologies: Bookchin's Legacy

What is Murray Bookchin’s legacy for the green Left in the unpromising times of the early 21 century? In posing this question, one can immediately anticipate two responses. First, the voice of orthodoxy will inform us that while the man is gone, the program is clear and the task simply a matter of implementation. A second response will begin with exasperated sighs, shift to irritated reactions, and then move swiftly to dissect and dismiss the man and his oeuvre in its entirety.