A Study On Saral Sarkar's Thought Of Eco-socialism

Saral Sarkar is one of the most representative ecological socialist in Europe. Since 1990s, Saral Sarkar began to think critically about the future of human society and tried finding out a new resolution to the ecological crisis on the social background of increasingly serious ecological crisis on a global basis, the failure of the Soviet traditional socialism, and the flourishing development of the green movement. Saral Sarkar constructs his eco-socialism by inheriting and developing Marx's critical theory, drawing on some other ecological socialists' thougts and absorbing the idea of "limits to growth" from the Club of Rome. The study of Saral Sarkar's eco-socialism will contribute to the further research on the eco-socialism and also provide some insights into the ecological civilization building in China and the establishment and conduction of the green development concept.This thesis, based on the interpretation of the monograph "Eco-socialism or Eco-capitalism? A Critical Analysis of Humanity's Fundamental Choices", elucidates systematically the origin, main contents and analysis of thoughts of Saral Sarkar's eco-socialism. Saral Sarkar reveals the ecological issues of Soviet Union and analyzes the causes why the socialism of Soviet Union failed, that is, the growth limits in the process of economic development, the ecological deterioration triggered by the strategy of developing economy as priority, and moral decay of the "socialist" society. Furthermore, Saral Sarkar makes a comprehensive and systematic critique to eco-capitalism and argues that the traditional approach of eco-capitalism cannot solve the ecological crisis, and the new type of green technology cannot resolve the crisis fundamentally either. He also claimed that capitalist system and ecological sustainability cannot proceed in parallel. On this basis, Saral Sarkar demonstrates the rationality and inevitability of eco-socialism in detail, and also proposes an idea of eco-socialism based on the "limits to growth" paradigm, steady-state economy, full democracy and the new ecological culture.Saral Sarkar reveals the internal compatibility between ecological civilization and socialist system, the anti-ecology nature of capitalist system, and also inherits and carries forward the critical spirit of Marxism. But as a whole, Saral Sarkar doesn't truly understand the quintessence and spiritual essence of the ecological theory of Marxism and has isolated the Marxist theory from its methodology metaphysically. His critique to capitalism doesn't touch the foundation of capitalist system, either. These are characterized as follows:He proposes steady-state economy and zero growth, which is too idealistic and full of characteristics of Utopia; he exaggerates the ecological element as the decisive factor and alleges that the ecological crisis will become the main form of capitalist crisis as a substitution for economic crisis; he also overemphasized the role of morality and cultural edification.