Strategies and Achievements of Actually Existing Ecosocialism

The ecosocialist imagination is very fertile, brimming with policy formulations and final endpoints. When it comes to devising feasible political strategies to arrive at the lofty futures described, the imagination starts to falter or disappear entirely. Curiously, the biggest success so far in spreading ecosocialism and implementing ecosocialist policies at a national scale, in Bolivarian VenezuelaVenezuela, besieged by the US state and their NATO cronies, is arguably the most poorly supported by ecosocialists outside of Venezuela. Yet the Bolivarian process entails an attempt to bridge the divide between grassroots organising and state institutions that ecosocialists should find of decisive interest and seek to emulate. The relatively few attempts to formulate political strategies vacillate between decentralist and centralist tendencies, but none of those ideas builds on historical experiences of communist or other revolutionary parties, including those involved in the making of the Bolivarian Revolution. More troubling is the scarce attention ecosocialists have given to inventorying their own accomplishments and addressing the ruling class violence that ensues whenever any gains are made, even potential ones. Typically, model cases of small geographical significance are indicated that often may bear similarities with aspects of ecosocialism but are not ecosocialist projects in themselves. From can be gleaned in the ecosocialist literature, it appears that, excepting Bolivarian Venezuela, very little has been achieved generally and of lasting consequence in terms of building ecosocialism at any scale. This situation could be reversed if all ecosocialists focused their energies on learning from and supporting Bolivarian Venezuela or if centralism- and state-averse ecosocialists were to prove capable of putting together projects worthy of the globally transforming aims to which they aspire.