Environmental Politics: Analyses and Alternatives

OVER THE LAST TWENTY YEARS OR SO, analysts on the ‘left’—perhaps still a serviceable phrase until a better one is found—have been rethinking familiar categories partly at least in order to identify new ‘revolutionary subjects’, especially in the new social movements. Environmental destruction and green resistance have been in the orbit of these analyses for some time, and we can now draw on a rich and well-established eco-Marxist (e.g. Ted Benton) and green socialist (e.g. David Pepper) literature. However, reading Capital & Class one would hardly have noticed the existence of such a literature, as it has been only represented in the occasional, relatively isolated article. While no longer ignored in the pages of the journal, Red-Green has not developed into the kind of sustained debate which forms an integral aspect of the CSE tradition with regard to labour process, state theory, or value theory. Recognising the deficiency, the Capital & Class Editorial Board decided a few years ago to start remedying it by, initially, calling for proposals of contributions to a special Red-Green issue of the journal. The number and quality of the responses indicated, encouragingly, scope beyond the special issue for the hoped-for ongoing debate.