Reasons: why sustainable socialism?

In the early industrialised nations, post-growth capitalisms have become the norm. In the absence of decisive redistribution measures, this weak economic growth is in turn driving inequality. Meanwhile, rapid economic growth in the newly industrialised countries is conjuring up the danger of ecocide. Globally, conflicts over resources, market shares, profits and consumer opportunities are being waged with particular vigour. Ulrich Beck's thesis that the logic of class conflicts over distribution would increasingly be replaced by the “democratic omnipotence” of global ecological risk was, however, mistaken. Climate change shows that ecological risks themselves involve a problem of justice. They affect everyone, but unequally and in different ways. It is clear that capitalism has become an overproductive system whose destructive potential is increasingly overshadowing the social benefits of profit-driven production methods. This system can only survive because it plunders all forms of sociality; it can be neither socially nor ecologically sustainable.