[Marxism] Ecosocialist International Network Meets in Belem, Brazil

[Fred Fuentes <fred.fuentes@xxxxxxxxx>]

[Ian Angus, co-founder of the Ecosocialist International Network and
editor of Climate and Capitalism http://climateandcapitalism.com/,
from where the below article comes from, will be a feature speaker at
the World At A Crossroads conference to be held in Sydney over the
Easter weekend (April 10-12). To buy your tickets now for the
conference go to http://www.worldatacrossroads.org/register. For more
info on the conference visit http://www.worldatacrossroads.org/]

Ecosocialist International Network Meets in Belem

Cy Gonick

http://climateandcapitalism.com/?p=624

On February 2, the day after the concluding session of the World
Social Forum in Belem, Brasil, an estimated 110 delegates turned up at
the second ever meeting of the Ecosocialist International Network.
The first meeting of the EIN, attracting 60 ecosocialists, was held in
Paris in October 2007.

That meeting, made up mainly of northern intellectuals, concluded that
the second meeting needed to bring in ecosocialists of the south
including indigenous peoples.  That goal was fully accomplished at
Belem.  By my count fewer than 25 of the delegates were of the north
(three from Canada, the others mainly European).  The rest were South
Americans, mainly from Brasil with a sizable group from Peru including
the veteran revolutionary Hugo Blanco, and one each from Africa and
India.

One of the main objectives of this meeting was to consider the draft
of the Ecosocialist Declaration, a revised version of the Ecosocialist
Manifesto written by Joel Kovel and Michael Lowy nearly a decade
earlier.

A fair amount of the discussion occurred around the wisdom of using
the term 'socialist' with its negative associations in Peru where the
Shining Path, a Maoist group, killed thousands of peasants over a
decade or so  but also in Chile, where a weak kneed social democratic
government calls itself socialist, to say nothing of the abuses and
environmental catastrophes of the old USSR
.
The conclusion of this discussion seemed to be to retain the name
'ecosocialist' but to remind people that this is 21st century
socialism of Cuba and Venezuela, not of the Shining Path and
Chernobyl.

Joel Kovel explained that if traditional socialism focused on more
production and more work, ecosocialism is about the conversion of
production and the reorganization of cities along ecocentric
principles; and about the reduction of work hours and the
democratization of the workplace. Only limits on accumulation will
save the planet, he said, concluding that society will transcend
capitalism only with ecosocialism

Kovel said that ecosocialism is a new idea, an historic idea with the
potential to mobilize millions into action to meet the challenges of
energy security, food security and climate change. While the
ecosocialist declaration is an evolving document, with vigorous effort
and good organization the network, he declared, it could get a million
signatures world-wide endorsing the declaration, or 10 million and
even a hundred million.

And ecosocialism needs to be taken into the state, the unions and
everywhere. But that requires an organizational structure and a budget
that does not currently exist. The EIN is almost entirely a virtual
(on line) organization.  An organizational structure now exists in
only a few countries.

Although none of the indigenous Canadian organizers of the Defenders
of the Land Gathering held in Winnipeg last fall were present at this
meeting, I had the impression throughout that they would feel very
comfortable here and in terms of their struggles against resource
exploitation that they would be in the vanguard of the EIN.

Several delegates emphasized the importance of getting ecology
accepted as a central issue within the WSF and introducing
ecosocialism to the larger environmental movement.  At the moment,
ecosocialism is still marginal and, being anticapitalist,
anti-imperialist, anti-racist and socialist  at the fringes of today's
environmental movement.

Upcoming 2009 events for mobilizations include the October Defenders
of Mother Earth in Peru and the December UN Kyoto Round Two meetings
in Copenhagen, the latter of which is expected to attract vast numbers
of environmentalists  some of whom aim to shut down the meetings.

As it turned out, the meeting decided that further work on the
Ecosocialist Declaration is necessary  in particular to make it a
shorter, more popular statement and one with more punch.  And little
was actually decided about organization except to work towards
establishing national and regional committees and ultimately an
international office.

Obviously, much work lies ahead.


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