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FOR AN ECO-COMMUNIST APPROACH  
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Esteban Mercatante and Federico Fuentes
July 23, 2025
Socialist Project
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_ An Alternative to Degrowth and ‘Luxury’ Communism _

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In his new book, Rojo fuego. Reflexiones comunistas frente a la crisis
ecológica
[[link removed]]
(Fiery red: Communist reflections on the ecological crisis), Argentine
Marxist Esteban Mercatante takes aim at capitalism as the root cause
of the “multidimensional” ecological crisis, while engaging in
important dialogues with ecological currents such as degrowth and
ecomodernism. Against these, Mercatante argues for an
“eco-communist” strategy, focused on labour as the agent of both
its own emancipation and the qualitative transformation of society’s
relationship with nature, as the only means to avoid disaster.

With the book only available in Spanish, Federico Fuentes from LINKS
International Journal of Socialist Renewal
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spoke to Mercatante, who is also an editorial board member of Ideas de
Izquierda
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(Left Ideas), to discuss some of the key points raised in his book.

FEDERICO FUENTES (FF): Given the already existing and constantly
expanding range of literature on Marxism, ecology and the climate
crisis, what made you decide to write your book?

ESTEBAN MERCATANTE (EM): It was precisely because this issue has
become such an important focus of contemporary discussions. The
ecological crisis today is an intersecting issue, which means that
this issue and its impacts must be taken into account across different
disciplines.

In this book, I was interested in exploring two things. On the one
hand, I wanted to introduce a Marxist perspective – which is not as
accessible for Spanish-speakers – into the discussion, particularly
here in Argentina where the book was published (it has now also been
published in Spain). Most eco-Marxist works produced in the past
decades, from the early contributions by John Bellamy Foster through
to the more recent writings of Kohei Saito
[[link removed]] and Andreas Malm
[[link removed]], have
been relatively little discussed. Taking into consideration the
dialogue that is occurring between revolutionary left activists and
ecologists, I wanted to try to synthesise some of these contemporary
contributions that put forward an ecological critique. There are also
questions that eco-Marxists need to further develop their ideas on,
and I wanted to contribute to that too.

On the other hand, I want to look at all the ways in which Karl
Marx’s critique of political economy can help expose the
anti-ecological character of capital accumulation. Part of the book
reconstructs the different phases of production and circulation of
capital, from capital-labour relations to the formation of a world
market based on increasingly accelerated flows of commodities and
money. This helps us think through how different ecological problems
are generated at each stage of this cycle.

Lastly, there is another key question that Marxism has struggled to
address – and which we need to debate – and that is how to link
our ecological critique of capital to a revolutionary strategy for
transcending capitalism and prefiguring a society that can move beyond
capital. This is a major weakness in the otherwise important
contributions by Foster, Saito and others. More recent attempts have
sought to deal with this challenge, for example Andreas Malm’s call
for an “ecological Leninism
[[link removed]].”
But, as refreshing as his approach is, his view that the revolutionary
seizure of power, as the first step toward transitioning to a
socialist society, is not on the agenda today leaves his proposal
somewhat floating in the air.

What my book aims to do is contribute to what I believe is a
fundamental discussion on how to develop, from an ecological
perspective, a revolutionary strategy around a communist vision that
both seeks to liberate humanity from exploitation and restore a
balanced metabolism between society and nature, which form a
differentiated unity.

FF: Environmentalists often focus on climate change, but your book
situates this issue within a broader “multidimensional” ecological
crisis. Could you elaborate on this?

EM: The idea that we face a multidimensional crisis has been well
illustrated by the Stockholm Resilience Centre’s study
[[link removed]].
It sets out a series of planetary boundaries. One involves greenhouse
gases and global warming, but it also looks at biodiversity loss,
deforestation and land use changes, ocean acidification, air
pollution, and several other boundaries. All up, the SRC sets out nine
boundaries and a series of critical thresholds for each that should
not be crossed to avoid accelerated deterioration with unforeseeable
consequences for a “tolerable” – let alone desirable – human
life.

This is what I mean by a multidimensional ecological crisis. It is
important to raise this because many of the solutions proposed by
green capitalism advocates to deal with ecological problems tend to
focus on a single issue – mainly climate change. This generates
proposals that, while seeking to fix one issue, end up negatively
affecting others. For example, an energy transition requires
extracting minerals such as lithium on a large-scale to produce
storage batteries. But this leads to more resource extraction, which
uses a lot of water and alters ecosystems in dependent countries such
as Chile, Bolivia and Argentina.

FF: Why do you say that the cause of this crisis lies in
“capitalism’s DNA”?

EM: Capitalist society is characterised by the drive to convert nature
into an object that can be valorised. The same occurs with labour
power. Dependent on capital, labour is forced to continuously produce
as much value as physically possible. The law of value, when extended
to nature, implies prioritising the development of techniques that can
facilitate extracting the greatest quantity of resources (whether
agriculture and livestock, tree plantations for timber, fish farms or
minerals) for the lowest price. Nature is “valued” solely in terms
of the cost of appropriating it. Meanwhile, certain areas are set
aside as “dumping grounds” for waste, which is deemed a
“service” capital can exploit.

Under capital’s logic, environmental impacts have historically not
been factored into the business equation. In traditional economic
theory, they appear as an “externality” – something not
intrinsic to business running costs. Capitalist states have sought to
“correct” this through environmental governance, with measures
including taxes, fines and other mechanisms such as carbon credits.
But these do not fundamentally change the relationship between capital
and nature, or the negative impacts of various productive activities.
They simply make companies pay for polluting by putting a “price”
on it, while doing nothing to repair ecosystems.

Capital prioritises short-term profitability, even if that generates
burdensome consequences in the medium or long term. Today we are
seeing some of these unforeseen consequences from past actions, such
as climate change caused by greenhouse gas emissions from preceding
centuries. Yet even now, when we know about these consequences, we see
oil companies, faced with the prospect of winding up their operations,
rushing to extract every last drop of oil, thereby making the
consequences even worse. This behaviour – driven by a viewpoint that
Saito, borrowing a phrase from Marx, aptly describes as “after me
the deluge
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undermines the prospects of intergenerational sustainability.
Sustainability has become a kind of mantra for many companies, but it
is mostly pure greenwashing.

The logic of capitalism leads to attempting the “production of
nature
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as geographer Neil Smith put it; that is, a nature entirely mediated
by the social, by capital. But attempting this – and Smith somewhat
underestimated these limits – is fraught with tensions, because
natural metabolic processes are very complex. Capital’s efforts to
subsume them generate unpredictable consequences, the impacts of which
are proportional to the efforts to dominate nature. This is what
Engels had in mind when he spoke of the “revenge” of nature
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against domination attempts that ignore the limits imposed by
nature’s laws and instead seek to “twist” them for profit.

FF: In the book’s introduction, you explain that the environment is
very present in state policies and business practices. But, borrowing
a phrase from Ajay Singh Chaudhary, you argue what reigns today is
“right-wing climate realism
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What do you mean by this

EM: Chaudhary correctly points out that a significant section of the
ruling class helps ensure climate policies are cosmetic or impotent.
Not because it is denialist but because it believes it can survive
accelerating deterioration as climate events become ever more
recurrent and catastrophic. Chaudhary puts forward the idea of an
“armed lifeboat
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in which those with sufficient resources can – and do – invest in
underground bunkers equipped with all the basic necessities, while
simultaneously investing in technologies that might one day allow a
chosen few to evacuate Earth.

The obvious question is how much of this is feasible and how much is
pure science fiction, at least for now. But I am interested in the
idea that these sectors see no contradiction in acknowledging the
ecological crisis while refusing to promote initiatives that could do
something about it. It debunks the idea we so often hear that “we
are all in this together
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When it comes to the ecological crisis, we are not all in this
together. That is why the working class and poor must promote our own
solutions, because no section of the ruling class – denialist or
non-denialist – is going to do that for us.

FF: Has the rising global influence of the far right – we now have
far-right presidents in Argentina and the United States – tipped the
scale more toward denialism, whether in terms of national policies or
in international forums such as the COPs? Related to this, how do you
interpret the rise of ecofascist tendencies
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within this broader far right?

EM: Undoubtedly, as the extreme right grows stronger globally, the
voices of denialism, which reject the Paris Agreement and the 2030
Agenda and want to disengage from the COPs, are gaining strength. But
divisions and tensions are arising among them, which means things are
not so clear cut. Until two months ago [US President Donald] Trump and
[tech billionaire] Elon Musk were allies; now they are at loggerheads.
The former has always been a denialist, while the latter champions
electric automobiles. As a result of this clash, it seems we will have
cuts to public funding for electric vehicles and associated
technologies. But this could have gone a different way. As we have
often seen, the extreme right, with its very strong denialist
component, has not necessarily translated its ideas into coherent
policies. With each case, we have to look at what different alliances
are formed, what concessions have been made to sectors of big capital,
etc.

It is important to note that denialist attacks have, in their own way,
helped legitimise the stagnant agenda of various multilateral forums.
There is an increasing trend among left and progressive sectors to
defend them against attacks from the right, and even silence
criticisms they once made of the miserliness, impotence and cynicism
that pervades these spaces. These forums, along with corporate
“green capitalism,” have gained some legitimacy from being
attacked by these denialists. We must be alert to this danger.

The emergence of ecofascisms, though still somewhat incipient, is also
important to note. As the consequences of the ecological crisis
worsen, we should not be surprised if “emergency measures” take on
an evermore overtly ecofascist character. For instance, we can see how
the far right tries to draw a link between xenophobia and the view
that the climate crisis will lead to future threats of increased
immigration waves.

We must be clear that if the working class does not develop an
independent, revolutionary political perspective capable of responding
to social needs and showing a way out of these crises by tackling the
root cause – capitalism – then it is increasingly likely that
reactionary solutions will be imposed.

FF: Alongside the growth of ecofascist positions, we are seeing an
increasing promotion of apocalyptic visions, particularly among some
left sectors who believe that a discourse of environmental
catastrophism or collapse will mobilise people. What do you think
about this?

EM: This idea of collapse can take different forms.

One is a rehash of the old mechanistic catastrophism that certain
anti-capitalist left sectors ascribe to any crisis (whether economic
or ecological). Such crises are viewed as objective factors to help
compensate for difficulties in the subjective terrain, that is, for
building a revolutionary social force. Such currents have appeared
throughout the revolutionary movement’s history. It is not
surprising that the ecological crisis provides them with some fuel.

Another current believe it is impossible to sustain any type of social
organisation that is so dependent on scarce fossil fuels, and
therefore resource depletion will inevitably impose reduced social
demand. For them, globalisation will become unsustainable and force a
return to local, communal spheres. Such thinking is often tied to a
certain version of degrowth – not as something desirable, but
something that will inevitably be imposed on us.

Lastly, the idea of collapse can also take the form of a kind of
generalised common sense or “structure of feeling,” which is
reinforced by the rising recurrence of climate disasters. Out of this
has emerged the idea that we have run out of time and are already
inexorably heading toward catastrophe. Rather than triggering
anti-systemic mobilisations, this leads to paralysing pessimism.

Whether arising as a result of mechanistic thinking or pessimism,
collapsism is an obstacle for action. Instead, we must fight against
the impending catastrophe.

FF: Some argue that as Global North countries are largely responsible
for the crisis they should bear the main responsibility, while Global
South countries can use natural resources as they want to develop
their economy. What is your view of this complicated issue, often
called “common but differentiated responsibilities
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most radical form, climate justice?

EM: This view contains an important critique of systemic inequalities.
This is something formally recognised in international governance, for
example when differentiated greenhouse gas emission targets are made
on developed and developing countries, respectively. Global climate
justice movements have helped bring many of these issues to the fore.
Ecological currents have also developed concepts such as unequal
ecological exchange and ecological debt
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However, the problem for dependent countries, whose economies remain
dependent on the Global North’s, is that “capitalist
development” has become a pipe dream, something recent history shows
is impossible for them in an imperialist world. In my book El
imperialismo en tiempos de desorden mundial
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(Imperialism in times of world disorder), I look at how the formation
of global value chains
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has condemned dependent countries to a “race to the bottom”, in
which each strives to offer more flexible labour and environmental
regulation and tax incentives to attract investment. The result is
that even countries with some success inserting themselves into the
many links within existing value chains have not managed to develop
their economies in any significant way. Rather, we see increasingly
unequal value distribution along these chains, with richer countries
taking the lion’s share.

That is one issue. The second issue is we must question what
development means in times of ecological crisis. It must be clearly
stated that non-capitalist perspectives are the only way, first, to
break the chains of dependence and plunder, and, second, promote a
society that can fully satisfy social needs while maintaining a
healthy metabolism between humans and nature. Capitalism cannot do
this.

FF: You write that “different currents within critical ecology and
ecosocialism give very different answers to what should be the central
coordinates guiding the organisation of post-capitalist societies.”
What are these main currents?

EM: Broadly speaking, these currents today tend to be polarised
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between
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proponents of degrowth and advocates of an anti-capitalist or
ecomodernist accelerationism.

The main target of degrowth – as its name suggests – is economic
growth, which is identified as the main cause of the ecological crisis
in its multiple dimensions. Significant space is dedicated to the
“ideology” of growth in most of these writings. Many degrowth
texts spend time explaining how gross domestic product (GDP) growth
became an incontrovertible measure of economic success, and how all
economic policies since the 1930s are based on stimulating continuous
growth. Degrowthers argue that you cannot put an equal sign between
GDP growth – or more specifically GDP per capita – and wellbeing.
They say, beyond a certain point, higher GDP per capita does not
equate to an equivalent improvement in people’s lives.

It is worth keeping in mind that these authors write from, and think
about, their situation in rich countries. Their argument that what we
face today is over-consumption, and that resource extraction far
exceeds the planet’s capacity to replenish what is extracted, makes
sense when we talk about developed countries. They raise concepts such
as the “imperial mode of living
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which says rich societies live beyond sustainable limits, and do so at
the expense of the rest of the planet from which they extract
resources and offload the costs of environmental impacts.

This raises an interesting issue by inserting imperialism into the
ecological question. But, at the same time, it contains several
problems. For instance, discussion tends to end up going down the path
of questioning consumption rather than production itself, which,
beyond any intentions, slightly blurs the systemic root of the
problem. Also, the working classes in rich countries end up being
viewed as participants in this “imperial mode of living” – or,
at least, are not explicitly excluded. This is despite multiple
indicators showing a marked deterioration in their living standards in
recent decades, due to privatisation and global economic
restructuring. This is not clearly incorporated into degrowth
perspectives.

This does not mean the burden of responsibility should be equally
shared. Inequality is a very important aspect of these views: the idea
that the ultra-rich – with their planes, yachts and mansions –
share overwhelming responsibility for creating such a large ecological
footprint. Moreover, questioning the notion of economic growth as an
end in itself, as degrowthers do, is important. Productivist ideas
have gained a foothold even among some anti-capitalist sectors,
despite being a dead end. So, such warnings are valuable.

But there are big weaknesses in degrowth perspectives in terms of
developing consistent alternatives. They say there must be qualitative
changes in how things are produced, but struggle to come up with
concrete measures. The quantitative emphasis – reducing the scale of
production and consumption – is the only thing they clearly
articulate.

The common denominator between different visions of degrowth is a
vague, and often ambiguous, anti-capitalist stance. Questioning
economic growth as an end in itself means opposing a basic aspect of
capitalism, because there is no continuous capital accumulation of
value if there is no concomitant rise in resource extraction. But it
is much more difficult to translate this negative idea into a positive
alternative.

There are also differences among exponents of degrowth on the
alternative. Some authors, such as Serge Latouche
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hostile to the idea of socialism, given the past experiences of the
former bureaucratised workers’ states, and accuse all Marxists of
being productivist. Others argue that a steady-state capitalist
economy
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(in which some sustained measures avoid growth while guaranteeing
reproduction at a stable rate) may be possible, and that therefore
degrowth and capitalism are not inherently antagonistic. There are
also those with more anti-capitalist views, such Jason Hickel
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or Kohei Saito, the latter of which explicitly advocates for degrowth
communism
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Notwithstanding these nuances, what characterises all these visions is
their focus on a kind of minimum or immediate program, which may vary
a little but is basically conceived as demands on the state. They
include some interesting issues we can agree on – such as reducing
the working day – but are not combined with a transitional
perspective, or something resembling a strategy to transcend
capitalism.

Standing opposed to these positions – in an almost mirror-like
fashion – is ecomodernism. From this perspective, the answer to the
ecological crisis lies in accelerating technological development. Its
central diagnosis is that, under capitalism, innovation is unable to
fulfil its full potential, as it gets harder to translate it into
profitable business models that justify investments. Aaron Bastani’s
book _Fully Automated Luxury Communism_
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is a prime example. In Bastani’s view, freeing technological
development from the constraints imposed by capitalist relations of
production would make it possible to fully automate production
processes.

In this sense, ecomodernism is opposed to reducing metabolism. On the
contrary, they argue the need to continue pursuing growth, and perhaps
even growing faster, in order to come up with innovations that can
solve environmental problems. The problems capitalism generates are
simply reduced to a lack of planning. Ecomodernism envisions forms of
consumption intrinsic to this mode of production continuing beyond
capitalism, thus contributing to their naturalisation and
dehistoricisation. Technology is also fetishised. It tends to be given
an aura of neutrality, when in fact all new developments and
innovations are shaped by class relations.

For ecomodernists, there is almost no limit to the so-called
decoupling of the economy from the environment
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– that is, ensuring the least possible impact in terms of resource
extraction and waste production. The expansion of what Bastani defines
as “fully automated luxury communism” can therefore apparently
occur without encountering any sustainability problems. They base this
on the claim that this has been occurring for a long time under
capitalism in the more developed countries.

The problem is that, despite undeniable efficiency gains in terms of
material impacts, statistics on so-called decoupling mostly leave out
the fact that, due to changes in the global division of labour, such
countries depend much more on material processes occurring outside
their borders; namely, industrial processes in developing countries
that are controlled by multinationals based in imperialist countries.
What we have is less decoupling than the offshoring of production
processes to third countries, through which environmental impacts are
“outsourced”. Once we take this “offshoring” into account when
looking at ecological footprints, the scale of decoupling is largely
reduced, if it does not disappear altogether.

Putting faith in an automated luxury communism based on such weak
assumptions can only lead to ruin. Precisely because they do not want
to put all their eggs in one basket, they often hedge their bets,
saying that if we cannot achieve enough decoupling, then the answer
lies in space mining (the extraction of metals from asteroids) and
using outer space as a dumping ground for the trash accumulating in
increasingly unsustainable ways across much of the planet.

Lastly, ecomodernists think more in terms of eliminating labour than
transforming it. Dave Beech views this current as essentially
anti-work [[link removed]]. This shows itself in
the absence of the working class as a subject with any role to play in
its emancipation or establishing a different social metabolism. They
hope that the system’s contractions, worsened by the kind of
accelerationism they propose, will produce a post-capitalism that
enables planning, along with the “democratisation” and extension
of the consumption patterns of the rich to the rest of society.

Given these patterns cannot be made universal within the finite limits
of the planet, it is not surprising they have to conjure up
intergalactic solutions to environmental challenges. What we are left
with are proposals such as Bastani’s, that offer a (luxury)
“communist” variant of the kind of space ravings of Elon Musk or
Jeff Bezos.

FF: Against these currents, you argue the case for an
“eco-communist” perspective? What is eco-communism? Why and how
does it differ from eco-socialism?

EM: The term _ecomunismo_ comes from the title of Ariel
Petruccelli’s latest book
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published in Spanish almost at the same time as mine. I adopted the
term because it foregrounds the central issue that ecological Marxism
or ecosocialism must emphasise. Instead of debating whether
“solutions” will come from technology or reducing metabolisms, we
need to organise the needed social forces to attack the foci of
ecological destruction: capitalism and the relations of production
this exploitative social order engenders.

For many critical ecologists, including even some ecosocialists, the
relations of production are a kind of “black box”; a terrain left
unexplored or only tangentially mentioned. They miss the centrality of
ending alienated relations between the great producing class – the
waged labour force – and the means of production. Ecomodernists and
degrowers both talk about reducing the working day, albeit for
different reasons and motivated by different logics, but what is
missing from both is the protagonism of labour – exploited by
capital – as an agent in its own emancipation and in the qualitative
transformation of society’s relationship with nature.

Ending the monopoly of private ownership over the means of production
implies expanding workers’ democracy – the democracy of those who
produce and also consume a great part of what is produced – into a
sphere currently dominated by capital. Under capitalism,
production-consumption is a differentiated unity mediated by the
process of exchange, in which social need can only be expressed as a
financially-sound demand (and can only appear as the choice of one or
another commodity that capitalists have previously decided to produce
and sell). As such, only by socialising the means of production can we
re-establish a genuine unity of both processes, in which production is
based on satisfying social needs – the first step toward any kind of
planning. This is a key aspect that can help us break free from the
polarised debate between “more” or “less” that has dominated
discussions among ecosocialists.

Rationally mastering society’s metabolism with nature by
collectively deciding what to produce (based on which social needs
should be prioritised) does not mean we can avoid difficult decisions
around capitalism’s legacy of environmental destruction. But rather
than these decisions being made by the private power of capital –
backed by governments whose central function is reproducing capitalist
relations of production – it will be the producing class as a whole,
having regained control over the means of production, which will work
out proposals to settle these questions. They will do so while
ensuring that three different objectives are met: fully satisfying
fundamental social needs; democratising production; and seeking to
establish a rational metabolism with nature. Moreover,
“expropriating the expropriators” will allow us to recover a
broader notion of wealth, which breaks with the idea that abundance
must translate into the kind of limitless consumerism that capitalism
has promoted to sell ever increasing numbers of commodities.

Post-capitalist ecomodernist mirages envision the end of labour
through automation, where machines, the ultimate embodiment of
capital, appear as divine incarnations, but nothing is said about how,
what and who will decide what is produced. In contrast, communism, as
we understand it, has at its heart the transformation of labour and
its relationship with nature. This is the cornerstone for recovering
all the potential denied to labour by the alienated relations imposed
on it by capital and, at the same time, for ending the abstraction of
nature. These are the preconditions for moving from the realm of
necessity to the realm of freedom, which presupposes a balanced social
metabolism.

I am not proposing any magic bullet for dealing with the dangerous
ecological crisis that capital will leave behind for any society
emerging from its abolition. Achieving new relations of production
based on collective decision-making will not mean being able to fix
overnight the ecological disaster capitalism has produced. The more
sober proposal I am making is that there is no need to delude
ourselves with the techno-optimistic prometheanism of “fully
automated luxury communism”, or resign ourselves to the hardships
advocated by degrowthers. On the contrary, achieving a society based
on the democratic deliberations of all workers and communities, and on
planned social production through socialisation of the means of
production in the hands of a minority of exploiters, can create the
conditions to allow us to meet the twin objectives of (re)establishing
a balanced social metabolism while fully satisfying social needs. •

Esteban Mercatante is an editorial board member of Ideas de Izquierda
(Left Ideas), and author of _Rojo fuego. Reflexiones comunistas frente
a la crisis ecológica._

Federico Fuentes is the editor of Bolivia Rising
[[link removed]] and co-author, with Marta
Harnecker, of _MAS-IPSP de Bolivia: Instrumento político que surge de
los movimientos sociales_. He is a member of Australia's Socialist
Alliance [[link removed]] and is based in
Venezuela.

* Climate Change
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* Ecology
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* Marxism
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