This paper contributes to Contradictions’ “Conceptual Dictionary” by exploring the history, theory, and practical implications of the notion of “ecosocialism”. The first part of the text follows the historical and ideological development of ecosocialism and examines its broad and diverse anarchist, feminist, and Marxist roots. This part of the text also introduces key authors of ecosocialism and their work. The subsequent part identifies critical ideas and offers a theoretical overview of scholarly and political debates about the relationship between ecosocialism and other environmental and socio-critical approaches. Finally, the text further explores the practical and political vision of the concept and reflects on the future of ecosocialist strategy.
The article is devoted to the discussions concerning economic growth and the environmental crisis that took place in Poland in the 1970s. The author focuses on two scientific conferences and the publications that accompanied them in order to analyse the questions of economic growth, science, technology, and consumption with regard to raising awareness of the ecological crisis. The reception of the Polish translation of The Limits to Growth is one of the questions discussed more specifically in the article. The main purpose of the article is to amend the ecological dimension of socialist thought and to reconstruct the main tensions and contradictions between the ecological and productivist tendencies within socialist ideology. The author analyses these questions in the context of degrowth theory and with regard to the current climate and ecological crisis.