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Ecosocialism, What It Means to Me
July 31, 2025 • Mary Nickum
I finally turned to Socialism after many years of bouncing between the capitalist parties and sometimes voting third party. Nothing seemed to enlighten me, share my concerns or represent my political views.
Immediately upon becoming a comrade, I asked for membership in the Ecosocialist Working Group. I was “interviewed” by the WG Chair. The leading question was “What is your background and what expertise do you bring to this Working Group?” I was happy to answer describing my education, work experience and writings, all of which centered on fisheries and oceanography. The WG Chair explained they were working on a pamphlet and could use my expertise. I was delighted and felt I’d finally found a political home.
Of course, that was only the beginning. I worked with other Working Group comrades as we worked through other projects and discussed ecological opportunities. We decided to begin a series of webinars focusing on climate change, which we chose as the top ecological concern. This webinar series, we thought, would help educate Party members as well as those in the general public. We also anticipated this series could help attract new members to SPUSA. Unfortunately, the webinars did not generate the interest we’d hoped. Upon examining the results, we found we lacked adequate promotion—we just weren’t getting the word out to the proper places and lacked funds to advertise the upcoming webinars, funds which we also needed to bring in outside experts from universities and government agencies.
At this time, I had been elected to fill the post of Working Group Chair. I accepted and became more immersed in the SPUSA workings. I attended the National Conventions and joined additional working groups and a study group. I want to join more but time won’t allow it. I realized quickly that I would not be as effective if I didn’t limit my taking on more activities. I have joined and am committed to work with the Labor Working Group, especially on their Labor Rising and Track to the Future projects. My father was a railroad man and I acquired a “love for the rails” from him. I have made many rail passenger trips on the Northern Pacific, the Chicago Northwestern, The Pennsylvania, the New York Central and, of course, Amtrak. I am fully committed to Public Rail. I am now working to merge interest of the Ecosocialist Working Group with the public rail interest of the Labor Working Group. There is much to be gained by both working groups.
What exactly should concern the Ecosocialist Working Group with Public Rail, you might ask. Burning fossil fuel has been identified as the primary culprit in Global Warming, leading to Climate Change. Approximately eighty-five percent of greenhouse gas emissions from the transportation sector are related to the surface transportation system. By eliminating one car and taking public transportation instead of driving, a savings of thirty percent of carbon dioxide emissions can be realized (https://www.kcata.org...). Large trucks and cars are the primary users of fossil fuel. Providing Public Rail to commuter and shipping companies would remove at least thirty percent of the fossil fuel guzzlers from the highways. Public rail would reduce shipping costs for long-haul shippers and public high-speed rail would help commuters make round trips to and from work in a hassle-free, less expensive, more eco-friendly trip (https://www.hsrail.org...).
High-speed rail (HSR) reduces carbon emissions. Steel wheels on steel rails offer superior energy efficiency to rubber wheels on any driving surface. Train wheels have smaller contact area, are designed for minimum friction, and do not surrender energy to change directions as do cars. That means trains can be much bigger than planes and buses. For example, a research study estimated the potential benefits of a 220 mph HSR network in the Midwest could reduce emissions in the region by 3.3M metric tons per year (https://www.hsrail.org...).
High-speed trains collapse dramatically travel times and so draw massive ridership. Amplified passenger activity is focused at train stations, typically in town or city centers and usually with connections to local transit. This has a magnetic effect on development, helping reduce sprawl. Fewer and shorter car trips translate to lower carbon emissions. The benefits can compound, as more frequent and higher-quality public transit leads to increased ridership and city walkability, which leads to further public transit investment. All along the way, emissions continue to decline.
In 2016, Solutionary Rail, a people-powered campaign to electrify America’s railroads to a clean energy future, presented a detailed plan that would update freight and passenger railways with overhead wires to carry high-voltage electricity generated in towns along the lines, and replace diesel locomotives with electric engines. These wires would also provide a new, nationwide electricity transmission system, helping deliver the electricity generated by distributed renewable energy sources. The plan points to several advantages of an electrified railway over the existing U.S. system, but industry and government analysts are skeptical as to whether or not such a plan could be implemented.
Though trains are more efficient than trucks, not all trains are equally efficient. Diesel-powered trains transfer about thirty to thirty-five percent of the energy generated by combustion to the wheels, while supplying electricity directly from an overhead powerline transfers about ninety-five percent of the energy to the wheels. Powering trains with electricity rather than diesel has several other benefits, according to Solutionary Rail:
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We estimate it is fifty percent less expensive to power a train by electricity than by diesel,
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The cost of electric locomotive engines is about twenty percent less than diesel locomotive engines on the global market, and maintenance costs are twenty-five to thirty-five percent less than for diesel engines,
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Eliminating diesel-powered locomotives would reduce air pollution including soot, volatile organic compounds, nitrogen oxides, and sulfur oxides, all of which affect public health as well as the environment,
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Switching from diesel to electricity would also help address the challenge of replacing petroleum-based liquid transportation fuels with cleaner alternatives as we seek to lower greenhouse gas emissions.
The next logical question is, if electric locomotives have so many advantages compared to diesel-powered locomotives, why are they not more widespread in the United States? The answer is a typical capitalist answer: money. After the flirtation with electric during the latter three-fourths to half of the twentieth century, a combination of electric and diesel, U.S. railroads have always been a regulated private sector industry, making it much harder for U.S. railroad companies to finance electrification upgrades than to build diesel-fueled systems. As a result, electrified rail is used currently on less than one percent of U.S. railroad tracks while electricity supplies more than one-third of the energy that powers trains globally (https://www.eesi.org...).
This description of public rail and electrification of trains shows an important path our country can take to incorporate Ecosocialism in our daily lives. This brings us around to a description of Socialism and Ecosocialism from my perspective.
Is there a difference between Socialism and Ecosocialism? There shouldn’t be a difference. Socialism is defined as a political and economic system with freedom and equality for all, so people may develop to their fullest potential in harmony with others. Ecosocialism is more specific in that it relates to humans and nature. It requires some understanding of nature and its processes and how humanity can apply socialism to these natural processes. I aim to show how Socialism is not only a political and economic system but is also a natural system.
Ecosocialism, also known as green socialism, socialist ecology, ecological materialism, or revolutionary ecology is an ideology merging aspects of socialism with that of green politics, ecology, and alter-globalization or anti-globalization. Ecosocialists generally believe the expansion of the capitalist system is the cause of social exclusion, poverty, war, and environmental degradation through globalization and imperialism, under the supervision of repressive states and transnational structures.
It is fruitful to look at the tangible legacy left to us by Rosa Luxemburg, which is both inspiring and instructive to those seeking progressive social change. Her clear sighted contributions to Marxism offer much that is relevant today: elaboration of the destructive and anarchic process of capitalist accumulation, inherently prone to militarism, imperialism, and crises; recognition of the impossibility of gradually reforming away these negatives, and, therefore, of the necessity of a revolutionary strategy. We must have an understanding of the world’s working class as the vibrant force capable both of winning reforms and of forging a humane and sane alternative (https://cominsitu.wordpress.com...).
The scale of the environmental crisis is unprecedented in human history. At stake are human civilization and billions of lives. An article last year in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences predicted that for every additional 1̊ C rise beyond the 2019 global average, a billion people will be forced to abandon their locations or endure insufferable heat. The paper warns that under a scenario of increasing emissions, areas now home to a third of the world’s population could experience the same temperatures as the hottest parts of the Sahara within fifty years.
Summing up the findings of some 150 scientific studies, a 2021 paper authored by seventeen scientists warned that the “scale of the threats to the biosphere and all its life forms, including humanity is in fact so great it is difficult to grasp even for well-informed experts.” (https://systemchangenotclimatechange.org...) Adding further urgency, 101 Nobel laureates released an open letter in April 2021 in which they wrote, “We are seized by the great moral issue of our time: the climate crisis and commensurate destruction of nature.” The laureates called for a worldwide fossil fuel non-proliferation treaty.
Global heating is driven by greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, and yet emissions continue at high levels despite the chorus of promises by “climate leaders” in governments. In 2020, global emissions decreased by a meager 5.8 percent because of Covid-19 lockdowns, but they were already on the rebound by the end of the year.
For 2021, the International Energy Agency (IEA) forecasts the second largest annual increase in history of greenhouse gas emissions, as global economies recover from the Covid-19 recession. In May 2021, a record-breaking monthly average concentration of 419 parts per million (ppm) of CO2 was measured in Mauna Loa, Hawaii, breaking the previous May 2020 record of 417 ppm.
The drivers of ecocide, more generally, include not only climate change, but also habitat destruction, toxic dumping, plastic pollution in the oceans, radiation poisoning and other customary byproducts of the global capitalist economy. All of this destruction continues unabated despite the flood of warnings from scientists, lobbying by environmental activists, and even warnings from institutions deeply rooted in the capitalist economy (https://www.resilience.org...).
Ecosocialism asserts the capitalist economic system is fundamentally incompatible with the ecological and social requirements of sustainability. Thus, according to this analysis, giving economic priority to the fulfillment of human needs while staying within ecological limits, as sustainable development demands, is in conflict with the structural workings of capitalism. By this logic, market-based solutions to ecological crises, such as environmental economics and green economy are rejected as technical tweaks that do not confront the structural failures of capitalism. Ecosocialists advocate for the succession of capitalism with Ecosocialism—an egalitarian economic/political/social structure designed to harmonize human society with non-human ecology and to fulfill human needs, as the only sufficient solution to the present-day ecological crisis, hence, the only path toward sustainability. Ecosocialists advocate dismantling capitalism, focusing on social ownership of the means of production by freely-associated producers, and restoring the commons. Commons are an alternative form of social organization based on two related moral claims. The first is about commons as a form of social-economic provisioning that is functionally, democratically, and morally superior to that provided by market capitalism. The second claim is more ambitious where the commons are a viable and robust alternative to the current neoliberal political economy. It holds the commons, or a system of commons, can be sufficiently stable and enduring to provide essential services and goods at scale, and do this in a way that is more effective, more democratic and more ethical than the institutions of our current neoliberal political economy (https://thecommonsjournal.org...).
I posit the harmonization of human society with non-human ecology requires knowledge of non-human ecology and nature well beyond that of the average citizen. “Greens” is a pejorative term used by ecologists to describe persons who act as spokespeople for ecological ideas, some of which have no scientific basis. This category Ecosocialists must be careful to avoid at all costs, if they want to be taken seriously by ecologists. It is important for ecologists to be in support of Ecosocialists to give a specialist “weight” to arguments for Ecosocialism, against capitalism.
Where then is Ecosocialism going from here? Do Ecosocialists have a future within Socialism? Marxist philosopher Michael Löwy, in a paper first published in Brasil de Fato said that capitalism is solely responsible for environmental destruction. In an interview with Brasil de Fato in partnership with Clube de Aforismos, the Brazilian
philosopher believes that Ecosocialist thinking is the union of the basic ideas of socialism with those of ecology and, therefore, that’s the answer to the environmental disaster we are already experiencing.
The process of “environmental catastrophe has already begun. Floods, increasingly unbearable heat waves, rising sea levels: It’s clear that the process of environmental damage has already begun and is intensifying very quickly.” For him, “The problem is the current system. It’s a systemic logic of the capitalist mode of production, which demands unlimited expansion, occupation of markets, productivism, consumerism, programmed obsolescence, etc. All of this is inherent to this system.”
“There is only one economic system responsible for environmental destruction: capitalism. Particularly in its Neoliberal form, which has predominated over the last 50 years. Ecological damage and climate change have been occurring since the 18th century, but it accelerated intensely after the Second World War and is accelerating even more with Neoliberalism. But it starts at the root of the capitalist mode of production,” stresses Löwy.
“The logic of the system demands it: Productivism, consumerism and therefore climate destruction. This is the system, whether in agriculture, trade or industry, and this leads us to the edge of the abyss.”
Löwy explains that socialism is an essential part of the eventual change that will give an end to environmental disasters; however, the format, as we currently know it, must be rethought. “The socialism of the twenty-first century needs to break with the tradition of a productivist socialism with very negative ecological consequences. We have to develop a socialist project and program, which we call Ecosocialist, with a radical critique of the industrialist process of the Soviet Union,” said Löwy.
According to him, breaking with the irreversible destruction of the planet, which is the path we are rapidly heading down, “Implies breaking with the capitalist system and [putting into practice] some fundamental ideas of socialism, which are collective ownership of the means of production and democratic planning, the population will decide about what we are going to produce, taking into account the limits of the planet and the ecological movement.”
“With Ecosocialism, products will be repairable, durable, and meet fundamental needs. The people, not the market, will decide what those fundamental needs are, and that’s by doing away with advertising, which forces you to consume and buy. This way, people will discover what their real needs are.” (https://peoplesdispatch.org...)
On a different note, Comrade Matt Huber poses some interesting questions in his book Climate Change as Class War. Do we want a “politics of less” or a “politics of more”? Do we focus on production or consumption? Is the political subject that will stop global warming the “working class” or the “professional managerial class” (PMC)? These are interesting questions, but the framing is problematic.
We obviously need more of some things, and less of others. I would agree that production is more important, in many ways, than consumption, but this does not mean consumption is not also extremely important, both analytically and politically.
The core dichotomy we are expected to take sides on is growth. This is both problematic and confusing. People continue to refer to very different things when they talk about growth, and, by extension, degrowth. Does “growth” refer to biophysical or material throughput, energy use, human potential, capital accumulation, or the Human Development Index? Most often it is assumed we think about an increase in gross domestic product (GDP), but how do we measure that?
The disputes between eco-modernists and degrowth is tied to broader questions about whether modernization, industrialization, or capitalism itself, is inherently progressive or reactionary.
I think it is fair to argue that large-scale industry, new technologies, increased productivity, and urbanization have created possibilities for socialism that did not exist in pre-capitalist societies. From this perspective, we see how the development of
the productive forces, and capitalism itself, has produced the working class, aka “its own gravediggers.”
Ecosocialist thinkers in the twenty-first century should develop a better critique of productivism or uncritical celebration of growth than simply saying that it is bad. We need a more nuanced critique. We must move past the binary of seeing modernism/capitalism “development,” or “growth” as inherently progressive or reactionary. There is the assumption that climate change will create such severe problems, including food shortages, infrastructure collapse, and mass death, that capitalism simply cannot cope; but capitalism has always been adept at placing death in some corners of the world, so that the commercial life of capitalism—and profits—can continue elsewhere. Mass death has never been a fundamental problem for capitalism; the system itself was built on colonialism, wars, and genocides.
Never underestimate the flexibility of capitalism. Today, we see fossil capital and “green capital” appearing to operate together, seamlessly. Capital is, at the same time, both destroying the planet and attempting to save it. This is not a contradiction in terms, because the issue is not the planet, but profit. The problem is, if you destroy the planet while trying to save it, you destroy it (https://climateandcapitalism.com...)
Patrick Bond wrote in 2021, “As Climate Crisis Worsens, the Case for Eco-socialism Strengthens. It is truer now than it was then.” The ensuing crisis, he argues, now requires extreme technological intervention, including wide-ranging CO2 sequestration in a manner that would upend nearly all radical climate activists’ strategies, which have, in contrast, mainly been based on mitigation, dramatically reducing greenhouse emissions at source and confronting not only high-carbon, cheap technology but the billion or so super-polluters’ unsustainable lifestyles (https://www.cadtm.org...).
Over the last seven years as a Socialist and an Ecosocialist I have read Marx, Engels, Lenin, and Ecosocialists up to the present. These writings were helpful, useful and, at times, at odds with each other. Is there a pathway out of capitalism to socialism? Luxemburg thought so in her writings. It is more fruitful to look instead at the tangible legacy left to us by Rosa Luxemburg. Her clear sighted contributions to Marxism offer much that is relevant today: elaboration of the destructive and anarchic process of capitalist accumulation, inherently prone to militarism, imperialism, and crises; recognition of the impossibility of gradually reforming away these negatives, and, therefore, of the necessity of a revolutionary strategy. This calls for an understanding of the world’s working class as the vibrant force capable of winning reforms and forging a humane and sane alternative.
This, again, requires much thought in that our problems are more dire and, in some cases, seem unsolvable. The planet is in trouble and it is the entire plant, which makes it everyone’s problem. Pointing now to Global Warming, the latest deadline for countries to submit plans for slashing the greenhouse gas emissions fueling climate change has passed. Only fifteen countries met it—less than eight percent of the 194 parties currently signed up to the Paris Agreement, which obliges countries to submit new proposals for eliminating emissions every five years (https://theconversation.com/...). This shows that many countries have, what they consider, more pressing concerns. Some may have internal strife, political upheavals or don’t subscribe to the Global Warming issue, in other words they are deniers.
In nearly all environmental issues, there are deniers, but, though vocal, are seldom able to blunt a movement. The Global Warming or Climate Change issue appears to have a world of people who are not taking the warnings seriously. The issue has been discussed repeatedly by environmental scientists. Media outlets have put forward many “specials” on the problem. Magazines and newspapers have published reports on Climate Change, detailing the effects of larger storms and the destruction and loss of life related to those storms, yet the populations of many countries seem to be unaffected.
I ask, “What will it take to get the remaining ninety-two percent of the countries to submit and live up to their plans for how each country intends to help limit an average global temperature rise to 1.5° C above pre-industrial levels, or at most 2° C?” I don’t have an answer. Those who promulgated the Paris Agreement don’t seem to have an answer. Does any group or government agency have an answer? If there is an answer or even a valid idea for a way to encourage these nations to take up their responsibility and submit a workable plan, the planet and its populations would be most grateful.
Sources
https://education.nationalgeographic.org/resource/photosynthesis
https://peoplesdispatch.org/2025/03/12/ecosocialism-is-the-answer-to-environmental-catastrophes/
https://systemchangenotclimatechange.org/article/what-might-an-ecosocialist-society-look-like/
https://thecommonsjournal.org/articles/10.5334/ijc.1400
https://www.cadtm.org/As-Climate-Crisis-Worsens-the-Case-for-Eco-socialism-Strengthens
https://www.eesi.org/articles/view/electrification-of-u.s.-railways-pie-in-the-sky-or-realistic-goal
https://www.hsrail.org/blog/how-will-hsr-reduce-carbon/
https://www.kcata.org/about_kcata/entries/environmental_benefits_of_public_transit
https://www.resilience.org/stories/2021-09-29/what-might-an-ecosocialist-society-look-like/