Envisioning a Utopian Ecosocialism in the Darkness of the Covid-19 Pandemic

Abstract

ABSTRACT Socialism is one of the great visions of a society in the modern era. Born in the aftermath of the French Revolution and the early days of industrialization, socialism is about achieving freedom and equality in real, practical terms. This article revisits three currents of socialist thought: utopian, Marxian and eco-socialist. Through a reading of these bodies of thought, this article will address the great challenge of our own time – the time of Covid-19 pandemic, a deadly virus that has wreaked havoc across state borders and continents. To envision a remedy to the current socio-historical situation, this article argues for a convergence between Marxian socialism and ecosocialism. Given the current darkness of the Covid-19 pandemic, what is needed is bold and imaginative thinking. To calibrate socialism as a solution to the pandemic-ravaged world, I argue that ecosocialism ought to embrace the utopianism of earlier socialist thought. Ecosocialist demands constitute a real utopia – a radical but possible transformation. Its seeming contradiction between idealism and attainability is the generative tension inherent in concrete utopias. The impact of such a transformation would be a re-integration of the economy into the ecological and the social world.