Ekosocjalizm: między ruchem społecznym a teorią marksowską
Ecosocialism: Between Social Movement and Marx’s Theory

Summary/Abstract: The aim of this paper is to analyze the meanings of the notion of ecosocialism in the contemporary political and philosophical discourse.In the first step, I distinguish ecosocialism as a movement and ecosocialism as a theory. Global ecosocialist movement is united by its political demands. However, it includes currents with diverse theoretical assumptions. I focus on the opposition of currents referring to the Marxist tradition and currents which could be called, following Joan Martinez- -Alier, “ecological neo-narodnism,” that is referring to traditional ethics and values of existing communities, as in the case of numerous indigenous or eco-feminist movements. Those currents have different views on numerous issues, including the question of development.In the second step, concerning ecosocialism as a theory, two positions based on Karl Marx’s theory have been analyzed. According to the first one, represented by Joel Kovel and Michael Löwy, Marx’s thought should be supplemented with the ecological dimension. According to the second position, adopted by John Bellamy Foster, ecosocialism is the very Marx’s idea, presented in Capital. Bringing into the fore the concepts of metabolism and metabolic rift, Foster discovers the ecological, in the contemporary sense, dimension of the thought of the mature Marx.I show that one should distinguish ecosocialism in the political sense from ecosocialism in the philosophical sense. On the philosophical level, the dissimilarity of positions has its genesis in the interpretation of Marx’s ontology: Kovel and Löwy are the followers of the Marxism-Humanism tradition, Foster breaks with this tradition and reads Marx’s ontology in the perspective of Epicurean materialism.

• Details
• Contents