The major question of our time is the question of how to effectively organise in and against the climate crisis. It is abundantly clear that the catastrophic effects of ecological breakdown threatens the basis for any form of decent life.
As our name suggests, we are informed by eco-socialist theory and strategy, which makes the claim that addressing the climate and ecological crises and building socialism in the 21st century go hand-in-hand. Ecological awareness only goes so far without a Marxian critique of capitalism. Eco-socialism articulates the need for a society which organises production not for profit, but for social needs and environmental protection.
Primary Resources:
- ‘What Is Socialism for the Twenty-First Century?’, Lebowitz, Monthly Review (2016) – This presentation speech by Michael Lebowitz provides the basis for the core principles of a socialism fit for our current moment. Fundamentally, it calls for a politics where society no longer is structured around profit, but the free development of the human and nonhuman world.
- ‘Burnt: Fighting For Climate Justice’, Saltmarsh, (2021) – From ESH’s very own Chris Saltmarsh, ‘Burnt’ articulates a politics from which our organisation has evolved. Capitalism remains the primary impeder of a just and sustainable society, but the conditions in 2026 force us to transcend the politics of a Green New Deal.
- ‘How do we get there? Some thoughts on ecosocialist tactics & strategy’, O’Dwyer, Rupture (2021) – Published in the eco-socialist and feminist journal Rupture, Diana O’Dwyer makes clear that despite unignorable temporal differences, the goals of halting further climate collapse and ending capitalism are fundamentally interlinked. Only by integrating environmental, labour, anti-racist and social liberation struggles will we build the mass support necessary for eco-socialist transformation.
- ‘Climate Leninism and Revolutionary Transition’, Heron and Dean, Spectre Journal (2022) – Two of the foremost thinkers on the contemporary ecological left, Jodi Dean and Kai Heron remind us that revolutionary change is key to the problem of transition. They introduce ‘Climate Leninism’ as a framework within which to operate: a politics built around an organised, durable party structure that is capable of coordinating long-term revolutionary strategy.
- ‘Cochabamba Agreement’, World People’s Conference on Climate Change and the Rights of Mother Earth, (2010) – In April of 2010, a conference called The World People’s Conference on Climate Change and the Rights of Mother Earth was held in Bolivia, from which the ‘Cochabamba Agreement’ was produced. This document puts forth a vision of an anticapitalist, anti-imperialist future led by Indigenous Peoples that restores harmony with nature and among human beings.
- ‘War, ecocide and eco-socialist transition’, Heron, GND Media (2022) – The horrors of genocide and war loom as large as the climate crisis as a grim reflection on humanity’s state of affairs, yet Heron critiques the tendency to separate the two into distinct malformations. Instead, his article frames war as a way capitalism organises nature through processes such as ‘ecocide’, and that eco-socialist transition must place anti-militarism and anti-imperialism at the heart of its project.
- ‘Eco-socialism: An Introduction’, Engel-Di Mauro, (2024) – Offering an extensive overview of eco-socialist theory and the many variants therein, this book traces the critical role Marxism has had on the eco-socialist left, as well as exploration of the potential pathways emerging in contemporary debates.
- ‘Climate Change as Class War: Building Socialism on a Warming Planet’, Huber, (2022) – Positioning climate change as foundationally a class issue, Huber argues that any politics confronting climate change must be fought along class lines via class struggle against those who own, control and profit from our current model of ecologically destructive production.
Supplementary Reading:
- ‘Karl Marx’s Ecosocialism: Capital, Nature, and the Unfinished Critique of Political Economy’, Saito, (2017)
- ‘Socialist States and the Environment: Lessons for Eco-Socialist Futures’, Engel-Di Mauro, (2021)
- ‘Corona, Climate, Chronic Emergency: War Communism in the Twenty-First Century’, Malm, (2021)
- ‘Workers of the Earth: Labour, Ecology and Reproduction in the Age of Climate Change’, Barca, (2024)
- ‘A People’s Green New Deal: Obstacles and Prospects’, Ajl, Agrarian South: Journal of Political Economy 10.2, (2021)
- ‘Red Vegans against Green Peasants’, Ajl and Wallace, New Socialist (2021)
- ‘Transcending the metabolic rift: a theory of crises in the capitalist world-ecology’, Moore, Journal of Peasant Studies 38.1, (2011)
- ‘Resisting Green Colonialism: Lithium, Bolivia, and the Green New Deal’, Willis, New Socialist (2019)
- ‘The state in the transformation to a sustainable postgrowth economy’, Koch, Environmental Politics 29.1 (2020)
- ‘Ecofeminism Against Capitalism and for the Commons’, Giacomini et al, Capitalism Nature Socialism 29.1 (2018)
- ‘The Red Deal’, The Red Nation, (2021)
- ‘A People’s Green New Deal’, Ajl, (2021)
- ‘Or Something Worse: Why We Need To Disrupt the Climate Transition’, Beuret, (2025)
- ‘Women and Nature: Towards an Ecosocialist Feminism’, Spear, Rupture (2021)
- ‘Against a Military Transition’, Edwards and Rogaly, The BreakDown (2024)
- ‘Neither Productivism nor Degrowth’, Holgerson, Spectre (2023)
- ‘Radical Abundance: How to Win a Green Democratic Future’, Russell, Milburn and Heron, (2025)