ABSTRACT
Multiple interlocking crises are calling into question the continuing viability of capitalism, re-posing Rosa Luxemburg's warning: "(Eco)socialism or barbarism". It seemed at the time as if a new era of stable capitalism had been established, sometimes referred to in retrospect as a "Golden Age". This chapter argues that capitalism is incapable of creating the conditions necessary for the flourishing of human and non-human nature or, to put it another way, for social and ecological sustainability. Two possible guiding principles for imagining an ecosocialist society are the abolition of the metabolic rift and the abolition of the social division of labor. Ecosocialism can be thought of as a self-governing society in which civil society exercises social control over the state and the economy and mediates its relationship with non-human nature. The transformations involved in moving from the present global capitalist system to a fundamentally different alternative system are enormous, and this presents us with a serious dilemma.
