How Marx Can Save the Planet

“It’s easier to imagine the end of the world than the end of capitalism,” the literary critic Fredric Jameson once said of the Left’s lack of political imagination after the collapse of the Soviet Union. The philosopher Mark Fisher called this situation “capitalist realism” in a 2009 book, and the notion resonated widely with the general feeling of powerlessness that prevailed at the time. Some thinkers did continue to critically engage with neoliberalism—over privatization, deregulation, austerity—especially after the financial crisis of 2008. But even the Left seemed to believe then that there was no real alternative to capitalism.

The situation has changed since the 2010s. The last decade or so has been the first age of revolts and revolutions since the collapse of the U.S.S.R. It started with the Arab Spring in 2011, which gave an impulse to Occupy Wall Street and the 15-M Movement in Spain. Despite the defeat of many of these efforts, their endorsement of electoral politics significantly contributed to progressive parties and politicians—Syriza, Podemos, Jeremy Corbyn, Bernie Sanders—and direct citizens’ actions—Fridays for Futures, Extinction Rebellion, Black Lives Matter. Young generations especially are no longer afraid of challenging capitalism. The idea of socialism, even communism, has been revitalized.

But what would a new, emancipatory future look like?

As Oliver Eagleton succinctly summarized in his article for The Ideas Letter, heated debates about postcapitalism within the Left pivot on the antagonism between degrowth and ecomodernism. This is a marked change compared with previous debates on ecosocialism.

In the 20th century, environmentalists often severely criticized Marxism for being naively optimistic in its focus on productivism and indifferent to ecological questions. And socialists accused environmentalists of a bourgeois tendency to marginalize economic inequality and class struggle. Ecosocialism was pathbreaking precisely for softening the tension between the Reds and the Greens.

Eco-Marxists such as John Bellamy Foster and Paul Burkett developed a concept they called the “metabolic rift.” Inspired by Marx’s ecological critique of capitalism in Capital, they convincingly demonstrated that capitalist expansion and its acceleration inevitably undermine material conditions for sustainable production. Unplanned capitalist production, driven by an insatiable desire for endless profit-making, is the root cause of environmental destruction (as our deepening global ecological crisis has made clear). Ecosocialism insisted that an alliance between the Reds and the Greens was a real political option because the exploitation of the working class and the expropriation of nature had a common cause.

Nevertheless, ecosocialists have been divided about how best to organize production. Some have argued that ecosocialist planning enables the rapid development of new green technologies and their more efficient deployment: Ecomodernism believes in the possibility of mastery over nature, at least once it emancipates itself from the irrational pressure of infinite capital accumulation.

Other ecosocialists insist that a much more radical reorganization of humans’ metabolic interaction with the environment is indispensable. Capitalistically developed technologies are inherently destructive, and their fundamental character cannot change, not even under ecosocialism. Natural laws cannot be transcended through the development of more efficient productive forces; ecosocialism must pay more careful consideration to natural boundaries.

Degrowth, Eagleton claims, is naive and dangerously romantic in assuming that wild nature—Nature—is harmonious so long as humans do not intervene. And the Anthropocene has already brought about irreversible changes. If the ambition of degrowth is simply to go back to Nature, the project is politically unfeasible and scientifically wrong.

Yet, for Eagleton, ecomodernism is equally naive in proclaiming the emancipatory potential of capitalist technologies. Green technologies are resource-intensive, and the resources they require are often located in poorer countries. Green growth is likely to reinforce an ecologically unequal exchange under the guise of sustainable development—which in reality only defends the imperial mode of living in the Global North at the cost of people and the environment in the Global South.

Eagleton’s criticisms of both degrowth and ecomodernism are legitimate. But he stops at those without trying to truly overcome the tension between the two concepts. Rather, drawing upon Jameson, he argues that one must resist the temptation of synthesizing the city (ecomodernism) and the country (degrowth). According to this argument, a postcapitalist utopia is not about offering concrete proposals for a new society; it is about refusing to “foreclose the future.”

But Eagleton’s (and Jameson’s) attitudes are trapped in a traditional Marxist belief that prohibits thinking about what alternatives to capitalism might look like in concrete terms. “Utopias are not about mapping out a positive blueprint or creating a perfect political schema,” writes Eagleton. Yet such an attitude seems irresponsible in the face of the emergency that is the climate crisis. A response is needed to the young generations’ yearning for unlocking the real value of post-capitalism.

So bring back Marx. He is essential again today. Unlike Jameson, he always demanded to transcend the antagonism between the city and the country. As I argued in Marx in the Anthropocene (2023) and Slow Down (2024), Marx’s idea of “degrowth communism” offers the synthesis of ecomodernism and degrowth by eliminating the ambivalence of ecosocialism.

Let me unpack the pairing.

Adding “communism” to “degrowth” demystifies the idea that degrowth is about going back to a pristine state of nature. One of Marx’s fundamental insights was to say that the development of productive forces under capitalism creates material conditions for realizing free and sustainable development for all humans. Local, bottom-up eco-villages and community gardens cannot protect us from a planetary ecological catastrophe. A much more systemic transformation is essential—and socialist politics can help scale up degrowth to challenge the capitalist system by universalizing means of production, democratic planning and public services.

Adding “degrowth” to “communism” strips Marxism of its narrow focus on productivism by recognizing insurmountable natural limits. Productive forces cannot be sustained beyond a certain point, no matter the mode of production. Any society, capitalist or communist, that pursues infinite growth eventually rarefies resources. In contrast, degrowth aims for a post-scarcity economy by encouraging sharing and mutual help.

The geographer Matt Huber and the journalist Leigh Phillips have argued that degrowth communism is merely a utopian call to return to pristine nature, as well as a form of neo-Malthusianism—or the pessimistic acceptance of a frugal (or even poor) life in the face of inescapable natural limits. Not so.

Degrowth communism is not a return to Nature—nor is it anti-technology—because it does acknowledge the urgent necessity to massively invest in new green technologies, such as renewable energy and electronic vehicles, in order to decarbonize the entire economy as fast as possible. However, we should not count on future dream technologies such as nuclear fusion and asteroid mining. Instead, let us slow down. In the face of insurmountable natural boundaries, it is a truly revolutionary act to renounce what is unnecessary for a decent life: military spending, private jets, SUVs, advertisements that create artificial desires, excessive meat consumption.

This proposal is not a manifesto for ecological austerity. It simply posits that capitalist abundance and affluence cannot ground a new vision of a future society and that we need to radically redefine our understanding of prosperity. Such is the main contribution of degrowth to communism: It provides, especially to people in the Global North, different values, standards and practices—for example, the importance of shortening work hours for more free disposable time, caring reproductive labor, indigenous traditions and mutual aid.

Degrowth communism welcomes new technologies but without naively believing they can transcend natural limits. Capitalism creates various artificial scarcities through the commodification of, essentially, everything in the world. Communism, in contrast, promises to create radical abundance through the commonification of essential goods and services such as education, medical care, housing and transportation.

Degrowth communism is not a mere utopia. Decommodified goods and services can offer attractive policies for the working class without demanding dream technologies such as nuclear fusion, geoengineering and cultured meat.

Free education and universal medical care are available in Scandinavian countries and elsewhere in Europe. A four-day workweek has been partially implemented on the continent. Some short-haul flights are prohibited in France. To fight overtourism, Amsterdam has banned the construction of new hotels.

These measures are limits within capitalism, but they have the potential to fundamentally challenge capitalism itself, and its insatiable desire for profit, by setting clear socially driven priorities.

No one has proposed degrowth communism before because it was assumed that degrowth and Marxism were incompatible. I believe Marx’s later writings indicate this is not the case. Many still disagree. Foster said in an interview last year that “no concrete evidence could be found of Marx actually advocating what could reasonably be called degrowth” and that attributing the idea of degrowth communism to him is “profoundly ahistorical.”

Of course, Marx did not anticipate everything. He was confined by his own limitations and was not able to fully elaborate a vision of a future society. It is up to us to push his thinking—with him or even against him—as much as possible. It would be dogmatic to prevent Marxists from saying today what Marx did not say in his time. Reading Marx is a political act, and degrowth communism is one reason Marx is worth rereading today.

Marx knew that his project was unfinished. I think he would welcome degrowth communism for bringing theory and practice together and going beyond a conventional image of socialism now 150 years old. And today is the time for degrowth communism, as capitalism hits its absolute limit, threatening to destroy the Earth itself.