2. Ecosocialism

Young School 2025 – outline

Part 1 – Ecological disaster and capitalism

The disaster and the threat of a cataclysm today.

• Climate Change

• Accelerated decline in biodiversity

• Changes in land use

• Changes in the biogeochemical cycles of nitrogen and phosphorus.

• Freshwater consumption and impact on the hydrological cycle

• Introduction of new entities

• Oceans and cryosphere

• Atmospheric aerosol load.

The history of capitalism is the history of ecological devastation/appropriation

• Enclosures in medieval England.

• Mercantilism and the first steps towards environmental destruction.

• The first industrial revolution and the turning point towards the modern ecological crisis.

• Oil, petrochemicals, electricity: the second industrial revolution.

• Nuclear power and mass consumption: thirty ‘glorious’ years?

• The neoliberal turning point.

• Enclosures: the return!

Part 2 – Progress, ecology, Marxism

• Definitions of progress.

• The birth of (scientific) ecology.

• The two ecologies and progress.

• And Marx?

• Romanticism, anti-capitalism and nature.

• The contributions of ecofeminists and materialist feminists.

Part 3 – Manifesto for an ecosocialist revolution

• The historical crisis of the socialist alternative

• Why ecosocialist?

• What kind of degrowth?

• Are we idealists? Utopians?

• Our transitional approach

• What strategy?

Manifesto for an ecosocialist revolution – Break with capitalist growth [1]