An Eco-Socialist Civic Virtue?: Melissa Lane, Rosa Luxemburg, and Eco-Production

• In Event: Reimagining Virtue, Rights, and Masculinity in Environmental Political Theory

Abstract

How should climate change and ecological degradation make us feel? What habits, dispositions, or capacities might characterize individuals prepared to initiate radical political-ecological transformation in the face of immense opposition? Numerous theorists have engaged questions around the sensibilities and skills required for political life using the language of virtue. However, some contemporary democratic theorists have argued that virtue offers a poor foundation for a politics that respects plurality. In this paper, I aim to reclaim the language of virtue for a radically democratic environmental politics through engagements with two figures: the political theorist Melissa Lane and the socialist revolutionary Rosa Luxemburg. I argue that Lane's account of ecological virtue — which aims to equip citizens with capacities of self-moderation in service of the good of sustainability — contains democratic deficits. I suggest Luxemburg's account of the "socialist civic virtues" offers answers to dilemmas occasioned by Lane's account that will be more satisfying to democrats, including those who are deeply suspicious of the language of virtue. I then turn to Luxemburg's writings on animals and botany, arguing that these writings reveal a sensibility that is not just democratic but eco-democratic. Luxemburg is sensitive to the virtues necessary for securing the democratization of production, and to the interpenetration of the exploitation of nature and the exploitation of human beings. Taken together, her account can contribute to a radical politics aiming at the democratic stewardship of the relationship between human beings and nature.

Author

• Max F Foley-Keene, Brown University