No abstract

The degrowth debate so far has lacked a clear vision of what social subjects, and which processes of political subjectivation, can turn its vision into a political strategy. In this contribution to the debate on degrowth and eco-socialism, I point to the place of labor in the politics of socio-ecological revolution, arguing that degrowth should aim for a truly democratic, workers' controlled production system, where alienation is actively countered by a collective reappropriation of the products of labor and by a truly democratic decisionmaking process over the use of the surplus. Such strategy must be based on an extended concept of class relations that goes beyond the wage labor relation, and toward a broader conception of work as a (gendered and racialized) mediator of social metabolism. I conclude that ecosocialist degrowth should take the form of a struggle for dealienating both industrial and meta-industrial labor.

The article offers an intellectual critique of Marxist political ecology as developed in western Europe between the 1970s and 2000s, focusing on the labour/ecology nexus. My critique is based on the intersection of two levels of analysis: (1) the historical evolution of labour environmentalism, focusing on what I will call the eco-modernist dilemma of labour; (2) the meaning of class politics in relation to the politics of the environment, with a special focus on the production/reproduction dialectic. Focusing on the work of four Marxist intellectuals whose ideas resonated with various social movements across the Left spectrum (labour, environmentalism, feminism and degrowth), the article shows how the current entrenchment of labour within the politics of eco-modernization hides a number of internal fractures and alternative visions of ecology that need to be spelled out in order to open the terrain for a rethinking of ecological politics in class terms today.

The Industrial Revolution (IR) story is the core of a mainstream economic history narrative of energy/development relationships, celebrating Modern Economic Growth (MEG) as the increase in per capita energy consumption in the last two centuries. Such a narrative emphasizes mineral technology and private property as the key elements of growth processes. I will criticize the above narrative, from a socio-environmental history perspective, for its inability to account for two crucial aspects of energy history: 1. the role of social power as key determinant in how energy sources are used and to what ends; 2. the socio-ecological costs associated with the increase of energy consumption. I will then review Environmental History studies on energy/industrialization and highlight possible future developments in the field. The article makes a strong point for the need to look at energy transitions as social processes, and to include the unequal distribution of environmental, health, and social costs of mineral energy into global history narratives.