COLLAPSIST DEBATE

HIGHLIGHTED SECTION DOCUMENT

Highlighted materials, current discussions, new developments

Ecosocialism versus Collapsist Marxism (Sections I, II, III and IV).

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The following is a discussion material on the relationship between the contemporary ecological-energy crisis, the possible prospect of a near civilisational collapse and the recent controversy that has erupted between ecosocialist positions and the new theoretical-ideological positions of the so-called "Collapsist Marxism". A contextualisation of some aspects of the collapsist critique of Ecosocialism is offered here, and a conversation with the intellectual Michael Lowy is reproduced in the second part of this material, in which he replies to this critique.

Some elements of the Marxist collapse critique of Ecosocialism

For some months now, various ecosocialist organisations in Chile, Argentina and other Latin American countries have been the target of a powerful ideological attack campaign on social networks by a new communications referent that operates under the name of "Marxism and Collapse". One of the central objectives of this referent has been to polemicise with some of the central figures and positions of Ecosocialism, for example those represented by the Marxist intellectual Michael Lowy. One of the central positions of this group has been to repeatedly deny several of the central precepts of traditional Marxist programmes and ecosocialist strategy; that is, for example, the idea that a revolutionary change in the social relations of production and the establishment of a new productive regime oriented towards the satisfaction of social needs would be capable of both "halting" (or "reversing") the effects of the current ecological-energy crisis, as well as "avoiding" a phenomenon of near civilisational collapse.

On the contrary, "Marxism and Collapse" would defend the need for a new theoretical and strategic framework within the world left in order to account for the phenomenon of civilisational collapse and human extinction which, as a product of the combination of the destructive effects of the current ecological-energy crisis and the traditional contradictions of the decadent capitalist system, would be impossible to stop. According to this approach, this would place the socialist forces as a whole before a scenario unprecedented in modern revolutionary history which would be characterised, among other things, by the "practical irruption" (unlike in past centuries) of the "horizon of barbarism" theoretically anticipated by a series of Marxist thinkers such as Rosa Luxemburg or Walter Benjamin. (Continue reading in the link below).