Dismantling capitalism for people and nature
Environmental Justice as Ecosocialism
‘Growth for the sake of growth is the ideology of the cancer cell.’
― Edward Abbey, The Journey Home (1991)
Environmental destruction and human unfreedom have the same roots: the global capitalist system. This system is designed to extract profit for the few by treating nature as an infinite resource for industrial processing, and people as dispensable cogs in the processing machines. In its pursuit of unending economic growth, capitalism thrives on the exploitation of people and planet. By replacing capitalism with socialist systems that prioritise people and respect nature, we can reverse this damage. On this approach, environmental justice requires ecosocialism.
‘It is easier to imagine the end of the world than the end of capitalism.’
― Fredric Jameson
Examples in action
Degrowth
The Degrowth Institute calls for reversing society’s commitment to endless economic growth and advocates for true and lasting sustainability focused on global ecology and wealth inequality.
People’s Land Policy – A Manifesto for Land Justice
People’s Land Policy campaigns for a revolutionary vision of the land owning system: The Commons, which stands in contrast to the current model based on private ownership. The Commons is not just about rights to use common land, but also about the recognition of the earth as a common inheritance and gift of nature for all to care for and be sustained by. Furthermore, it is a social processing of ‘Commoning’, where ‘Commoners’ are involved democratically and paricipatorily to achieve ecologically responsible production, equitable distribution and resilient communities of care.
Diggers and Dreamers – Intentional Communities in Britain
Diggers and Dreamers promotes another way of life – living communally by intention, such as a Cohousing Community, a Big House Commune, an Urban Communal, a Spiritual Community, or a Low Impact Community, the idea and practice of which dates back long in history and thrives in 21st-century UK.
‘As long as hierarchy persists, as long as domination organises humanity around a system of elites, the project of dominating nature will continue to exist and inevitably lead our planet to ecological extinction’.
― Murray Bookchin, Toward an Ecological Society (1980)
Further reading
- David Pepper, 1993, Eco-Socialism: From Deep Ecology to Social Justice, Routledge. Link.
- Kohei Saito, 2025, Slow Down: How Degrowth Communism Can Save the Earth, Weidenfeld & Nicholson. Link.
- Joel Kovel, 2007, The Enemy of Nature, Fernwood Publishing. Link.
- Alyssa Battistoni, 2025, Free Gifts: Capitalism and the Politics of Nature, Princeton University Press. Link.
‘If we have to care also about the life of water and air, it means precisely that we are what Marx called “universal beings,” as it were, able to step outside ourselves, stand on our own shoulders, and perceive ourselves as a minor moment of the natural totality. To escape into the comfortable modesty of our finitude and mortality is not an option; it is a false exit to a catastrophe.‘
― Slavoj Zizek: Last Exit to Socialism