Eco-Socialism or Barbarism
Eco-Socialism
or Barbarism
An up-to-date
Critique of Capitalism
Saral Sarkar / Bruno Kern
Published by: Initiative Eco-Socialism
(Revised translation of the German original published in 2004)
© Saral Sarkar, Cologne, and Bruno Kern, Mainz. March 2008.
No permission is required for reprinting and selling the unabridged
text, which is expressly welcome.
Eco-Socialism or Barbarism
ContEntS
An Appeal .......................................................................................................... 3
The Most Urgent Social Issue ........................................................................ 7
The Illusion of Sustainable Capitalist Development ................................ 11
and the Necessity of Eco-Socialism
Appendices: ..................................................................................................... 29
I. The Climate Study of the Pentagon
II. Food Versus Biofuels
III. Limits to Growth / Raw Materials Scarcity
IV. Correlation Between Economic Growth and
ecological Degradation
V. Energy Balance
Bibliography ..................................................................................................... 34
Eco-Socialism or Barbarism
An AppEAl
Capitalism is Failing
In 1989, in Europe, something broke down which many leftists had,
despite some doubts, called socialism (after all, capitalism had been abol-
ished in the so-called socialist countries). In China, of course, formally still
the Communist Party is ruling. But in the economy, since the beginning of
the 1980s, it appears that capitalism is being restored. In the beginning of
the 1990s, one could hear all over the world the triumphal shouts of capi-
talism. The philosopher Francis Fukuyama even grandiosely proclaimed
“the end of history“ – in the sense of final world-wide victory of liberal-
democratic capitalism over all other system-ideals. Many people could not
imagine any reason why the era of world peace, which, they thought, had
just begun, could ever come to an en