From the first day it appeared online, Climate and Capitalism's masthead has carried the slogan "Ecosocialism or Barbarism: there is no third way." We've been quite clear that ecosocialism is not a new theory or brand of socialism -- it is socialism with Marx's important insights on ecology restored, socialism committed to the fight against ecological destruction. But why do we say that the alternative to ecosocialism is barbarism?
Marxists have used the word "barbarism" in various ways, but most often to describe actions or social conditions that are grossly inhumane, brutal, and violent. It is not a word we use lightly, because it implies not just bad behaviour but violations of the most important norms of human solidarity and civilized life.1
The slogan "Socialism or Barbarism" originated with the great German revolutionary socialist leader Rosa Luxemburg, who repeatedly raised it during World War I. It was a profound concept, one that has become ever more relevant as the years have passed.
Rosa Luxemburg spent her entire adult life organizing and educating the working class to fight for socialism. She was convinced that if socialism didn't triumph, capitalism would become ever more barbaric, wiping out centuries of gains in civilization. In a major 1915 antiwar polemic, she referred to Friedrich Engels' view that society must advance to socialism or revert to barbarism and then asked, "What does a 'reversion to barbarism' mean at the present stage of European civilization?
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