STåle holgerson
MONDAY, 30.6. 2025
Ecosocialism Agains the Crisis of Capitalism
Today’s economic and ecological crises are not exceptions to an otherwise functioning system but integral to its operation. It is naive to see these upheavals as opportunities for reform or revolution. They are the bedrock of the status quo. Fortunately, the vicious circle sustaining capitalism is not founded on an iron law. Our historical mission in the face of the climate crisis is to create a historical exception to the rule. Capitalism produces crises and crises reproduce capitalism. We need an ecosocialist way out..
This lecture will present a framework for understanding the crises of capitalism and offer reflections on what an ecosocialist response to the climate crisis could be: why we must begin with the assumption that crises themselves do not work to our advantage, how stark binaries between socialist eco-modernism and degrowth obscure necessary complexity, and how climate activism is (most often) class struggle.
Jože Vogrinc
MONDAY, 30.6. 2025
Reproduction of social relationships as orientation framework for ecologic strategies and tactics
In Trump’s world of high uncertainty we should not bind ecologic movements whose objective is de-growth to Green transition as immediate concern. Long-term strategies and tactics are necessary, taking into account multi-level complexity of social processes of environment transformation.
Reproduction of social relationships is hereby treated as an ensemble of intertwined processes of preservation/transformation of environment and of social relations on levels from personal across local and state level to global; everywhere as social (cultural, political) as well as biological in character. These processes are spatialized differently on different levels (e.g. concentrated vs. dispersed). Its temporal modes also differ (e.g. singularity vs. repeatability, different intensity).
The Ecological weight of a social practice is more than a sum of its individual carbon (or digital) footprints. On different spatial levels it has different economic implications; on each level its dependence on political framework, group identities and cultural patterns is different; on each level modes of communication are different. Considered on the plane of someone’s Lebenswelt, its physical conditions and biological consequences in space and time are different to when mediated impact of her/his social bonds on biotic and abiotic ecological process on the Earth is considered.
The RPR scheme should make easier building strategies and tactics. Each point at each level is a crossing of relations open to examination either vertically among levels, and/or among actors on each level here and now in space-time. The immediate concern is to understand better embeddedness of individual engagement in unstable environment of institutions.
lau kin či
TUESDAY, 1.7. 2025
A subaltern perspective on grassroots efforts towards ecological civilization
Since the concept of “ecological civilization” was written into the Constitution of the People’s Republic of China in 2018, it has been promoted as the state’s key strategy in response to developmentalism and environmental degradation. What could this mean for China and for the world? The lecture will explore the challenges and possibilities, stress the importance of taking a subaltern perspective, and highlight the efforts of grassroots communities in charting a viable path for ecological civilization.
mICHAEL J. ALBERT
TUESDAY, 1.7. 2025
Navigating Europe's Polycrisis Towards Postcapitalist Transformation
This lecture will explore the challenges and opportunities that the unfolding polycrisis creates for movements seeking postcapitalist transformation, focusing predominantly on the European context. It will argue that polycrisis analysis is needed to illuminate the political possibility space and identify obstacles and trade-offs that counter-hegemonic movements must navigate.
First we will analyze Europe’s ongoing polycrisis, focusing on some of the key intersections between the climate crisis, economic stagnation, energy and food crises, care crises, a crisis of democracy, the war in Ukraine, and Trumpian trade wars.
Finally, we will look at the various compromises and risks involved in various scenarios for the future and anti-hegemonic tactics that would allow for them to come true.
FEYZI ISMAIL
TUESDAY, 1.7. 2025
Mobilising against the ecological costs of imperialism and war
Warfare, including investment in and maintenance of military infrastructure, are crucial drivers of global carbon emissions and environmental destruction. The escalation of the threat of war in the Middle East, starting with the ongoing destruction of Palestine by Israel and the US, the proxy war with Ukraine and the ramping up of military mobilisation against China, means potential increases in emissions on a massive scale. Yet the ecological costs of imperialism are underemphasised.
Military budgets and national security are seemingly beyond scrutiny. In the UK, defence spending will increase to 2.6% of GDP by 2027 and 3% by 2030 – at the expense of overseas aid and national welfare. Apart from national security, spending is justified on the spurious grounds of job creation. But weapons manufacturing is estimated to employ a mere 135,000 people directly. Most workers are supportive of transitioning out of the defence industry if it means good jobs, fair wages and retraining opportunities. Yet the general approach of union bureaucracies has been to prioritise immediate economic concerns over serious discussion of either the military-industrial complex or the climate crisis.
This lecture considers the ecological dimensions of imperialist war, assesses the ecological damage of these wars and suggests what a just green transition in the defence industry might involve. Ultimately, if addressing the climate crisis is impossible without demilitarisation, then a just transition requires not only the participation and mobilisation of workers in the industry but also the building of anti-imperialist movements.
lorenzo feltrin
WEDNESDAY, 2.7. 2025
Workers and Capitalocene: In and against the ecological crisis
We are in the ecological crisis, and not just as victims of an environmental devastation that is unequally distributed along intersecting hierarchies of class, ‘race’ and gender on a global scale. We are part of the crisis because in our society the vast majority of us rely on capitalist work (our own or that of others) to pay for the things we need to survive. This means we also depend on the infinite growth of commodity production that defines capitalism and drives the ecological crisis.
In particular, the reproduction of the working class as a class is tied to the reproduction of capital as a social relation, and vice versa. Nonetheless, workers’ insertion in capital accumulation also has an antagonistic face, rooted in their very separation from the means of production. Therefore, labour is potentially a crucial collective actor needed to address the ecological crisis.
This presentation uses the tools of operaista class composition analysis, along with the example of Porto Marghera workers’ struggles against noxiousness in Italy’s Long 1968 and the more recent dispute by Florence’s Ex GKN automotive workers for an ecological conversion from below, to explore the transformations of the global working class over the last decades, offering insights on the possibilities for convergence between workplace and community mobilisations for alternatives to the jobs versus environment dilemma, against the ecological crisis.
sinan eden
WEDNESDAY, 2.7. 2025
Movement-level strategies from the bottom and to the left: climate jobs campaign
That the climate justice movement ecosystem needs, simultaneously, a mass movement and a transformative ambition is trivial at this point of the climate emergency combined with the outright authoritarian turn of governments. So someone(s) will have to build exactly that. Yet, repeating this trivial observation without a strategic intervention (intellectualism or theoretical hygiene) and without a clear grasp of the movement ecosystem (reducing it to an amorphous "diversity" where every approach is accepted equally) doesn't change our reality.
This is propositional session, at the starting point of which lie a deep sense of frustration, anxiety and responsibility. We will first discuss what movement-level strategy means, using the tools introduced in the recently published book "All In: a revolutionary theory to stop climate collapse". Then we will explore the concrete experience of the climate jobs campaign building a unifying framework for trade unions and climate justice groups. These campaigns, launched after 2010, have been developed in different countries and have experienced different degrees of success and failure.
rita calvario
THURSDAY, 4.7. 2025
Edible Revolutions: Food, Power, and Postcapitalist Struggles
What is the role of food in socio-ecological postcapitalist transformation? This lecture critically examines the tensions inherent in food activism, focusing on the theoretical and practical dimensions of food justice and food sovereignty. It explores divergent approaches to power, the State, and community, assessing their implications for systemic change. Furthermore, it interrogates the intersections between alternative food networks, social movement formation, and alliance-building through the principle of “unity in diversity,” emphasizing their role in fostering radical subjectivities and advancing emancipatory futures.
tsui sit
THURSDAY, 4.7. 2025
Rural Regeneration in China
zoi kristina siamanta
THURSDAY, 4.7. 2025
Towards postcapitalist renewable energy development: considerations and practices
Socioecological devastation from capitalogenic environmental and climate change is already here. Hegemonic, techno-managerial approaches to mitigate climate change, such as large-scale renewable energy projects, intensify capitalism, creating further devastation. A plethora of initiatives, struggles and praxes across the world actively contest them animating different worlds based on caring relations. Drawing from the “Community Renewable Energy Ecologies (CREE)” approach, the talk will focus on reconceptualizations, practices and strategies for transitioning towards postcapitalist renewable energy development based on commoning that supports emancipation, pluriversal world-making and more flourishing socioecologies.
The talk explores questions such as how can we rethink ‘renewable energy’ to support difference, autonomy and thriving futures? What insights do transformative initiatives (on energy) bring? How can we practically build renewable energy projects based on commoning and caring relations? What kind of politics and strategies are needed for egalitarian renewable energy systems and how can such politics and strategies nourish broader socioecological change?
ekaterina čertkovskaja
FRIDAY, 5.7. 2025
Degrowth strategies for socio-ecological transformation
How can socio-ecological transformation come about? This lecture will address this question by drawing on the academic-activist discussion on degrowth. Degrowth has been mobilised to show why perpetual pursuit of economic growth is problematic and to elaborate what alternatives to growth and capitalism look like, putting ecological sustainability, social justice and wellbeing to the forefront. Recently, the question how to foster these alternatives and bring about socio-ecological transformation of our societies – namely the question of strategy – has become key. This lecture introduces strategy as a dynamic concept and argues for the importance to think about it analytically. Building on whilst diverging from the vocabulary of Erik Olin Wright, it lays out three modes of transformation, their corresponding strategic logics, as well as dynamics between them, helping to orient, decide and reflect on strategic configurations in different contexts.
When can a strategy be considered successful? Any breakthrough must continue to exist within the framework of the socio-environmental relations that constrain new practices. However, the struggle for survival itself is not generally the strategic goal of an endeavour; the goal is usually the transformation or elimination of these relationships. Examples of successful breakthroughs are of the utmost importance, as they open up the theoretical and practical horizon for breaking away from defensive efforts or attempts to mitigate the worst excesses of society. However, these examples should not be considered pure gold, i.e. as perfect models that can be imitated. Instead, we need to reflect on both the conditions of their breakthrough and their strategic adequacy. At the same time, success must be seen above all as taking the struggle to a higher or more sophisticated level, which brings about a new need to make strategic choices under the new conditions these breakthroughs have helped to co-create.
photo: Katja Cankar
Contact
- info@politicalecology-ljubljana.si
Links
LIFE IP CARE4CLIMATE (LIFE17 IPC/SI/000007) is an integrated project, financed by the European Comission's LIFE Programme, the Slovenian Climate Fund and partners' own contributions.
The opinions expressed in this document are those of the author(s) only and should not be considered as representative of the European Union's official position.
English (UK) 
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