ABSTRACT
This chapter contributes to an eco-socialist critique of widely prevailing theoretical perspectives on capitalism, its crisis and the solutions offered to this crisis. It focuses on examining Keynesianism, monetarism/neo-liberalism, traditional Marxism and Green perspective. Perhaps the most notable theoretical and ideological consequence of multi-fold crises of global capitalism in general and British capitalism in particular during the period of the Great Depression was the undermining of the hegemonic sway of neoclassical economic theory. Rosa Luxemburg’s analytical framework which accorded a key importance to consumption in analysis of the functioning of a capitalist economy had the potential to incorporate ecology. Eco-socialism is, therefore, sharply critical of neo-liberal austerity paradigm but has some degrees of affinity with the ecologically modified Keynesian welfare paradigm. The chapter concludes by arguing that a critical synthesis of Marxian and Green perspectives best captures the most dominant form of the current crisis—the global environmental crisis—of capitalism and offers the most creative way of dealing with this crisis.
