STATEMENT OF PURPOSE
Ecosocialist Horizons seeks to advance ecosocialism as a world-view and as a movement capable of offering real answers to the crises caused by capitalism.
Whether these crises be social, economic or ecological, an integrated approach is necessary.
While we conceive of our work holistically, we can categorize our activities into three areas aimed at creating ecosocialist consciousness.
1
Providing news and analysis of ecosocialist concern through a multi-media website and other publications.
2
Educating our members to produce creative work and to organize events and actions.
3
Organizing convergences to advance diverse struggles towards an ecosocialist horizon.
WHAT IS ECOSOCIALISM?
Ecosocialism is a vision of a transformed society in harmony with nature, and the development of practices that can attain it. It is directed toward alternatives to all socially and ecologically destructive systems, such as patriarchy, racism, homophobia and the fossil-fuel based economy. It is based on a perspective that regards other species and natural ecosystems as valuable in themselves and as partners in a common destiny.
Ecosocialism shares with traditional socialism a passion for justice. It shares the conviction that capitalism has been a deadly detour for humanity. We understand capitalism to be a class society based on infinite expansion, through the exploitation of labor and the ransacking of nature. Ecosocialists are also guided by the life-ways of indigenous peoples whose economies are embedded in a classless society in fundamental unity with nature. We draw upon the wisdom of the ages as well as the latest science, and will do what can be done to bring a new society, beyond capitalism, into existence.
We recognize that ecosocialism on a global scale is a long way from being realized. But it is on the horizon: far off, yet rising; indefinite yet vital, a terrain to be mapped, explored, and brought into existence. Our mission is to facilitate a global movement toward the ecosocialist horizon. The whole future depends upon it.
TRANSITION TO ECOSOCIALISM
Ecosocialist Prefiguration
“An important political principle now emerges — one that applies to the production of use-values for the sustenance of life, and also to the production of ways beyond capital. The potential for the given to contain the lineaments of what is to be may be called prefiguration…
The prefigurative praxes that are to overcome capital in an ecosocialist way are at once very remote and exactly at hand. They are remote insofar as the entire regime of capital stands in the way of their realization; and they are at hand insofar as a movement toward the future exists embedded in every point of the social organism where a need arises… If everything has a prefigurative potential, then prefiguration will be scattered over the entire, disorderly surface of the world… This is a blessing, because it signifies that there is no privileged agent of ecosocialist transformation, but it also imposes a great responsibility. For as they now exist, instances of ecocentric production are scattered and mainly entrapped like irritants in the pores of capital. The task is to free them and connect them, so that their inherent potential may be realized.” – Joel Kovel, The Enemy of Nature, p240-241
Prefiguration is a fancy word that means to try to live and think like the future, right now. It means that we do not have to wait until we have a perfect world to start creating the kind of society that we want. We can start right now, by creating alternative schools, offices, hospitals, factories, homes, senior centers, etc. To prefigure is to experiment with the kind of society we would need in order to be sustainable and caring. It means we should build cooperatives and other institutions that “show” people what ecosocialism is, rather than just “telling” them. The very existence of an ecosocialist farm, school, hospital, senior center, museum, park, etc, is proof that ecosocialism is possible. Prefiguration is making ecosocialism possible here and now in order to demonstrate to our neighbors and friends how exactly we can live differently. That we can grow food ourselves, that work can be fulfilling and life-affirming rather than dreadful drudgery, that school can be a place of wonder and learning instead of rules and dullness, that we can produce by ourselves for ourselves without bosses.
To prefigure is also to return to what is truly immortal in humanity — our limitless imagination:
To see a world in a grain of sand,
And a heaven in a wild flower,
Hold infinity in the palm of your hand,
And eternity in an hour.
(Auguries of Innocence, by William Blake)