Ecosocialism

The division within the environmental movement between market ecologism and ecosocialism has become increasingly clear with the failure of Copenhagen and the promise of Cochabamba. This issue of CD focuses on the rising tide of ecosocialism. We feature an exclusive interview with ecosocialist founder Joel Kovel; the CD panel at the Peoples’ Summit on building the ecosocialist movement; a first-hand report on the historic Cochabamba meetings by collective member Terisa Turner; Ian Angus’s up to date account of the world-wide ecosocialist movement; Andrea Levy’s critique of climate change deniers on the Left; Cy Gonick’s introduction to ecosocialism as a system of thought; and Leigh Brownhill’s article on food sovereignty.

Though none of us were among the thousand protesters rounded up by Harper’s “security” forces, many CD collective members took part in the march and in the rallies in defense of those summarily arrested. In effect, all that this summit accomplished was to convince the financial markets that G20 leaders had indeed caught the old time economic religion of retrenchment. Austerity or, as it is now termed, fiscal consolidation, is the order of the day. Bailout Keynesianism, the product of previous G20 meetings likely prevented another Great Depression but at the cost of roaring government deficits. Now, still in the face of massive unemployment and industrial overcapacity, the masters of the universe have once again conceded to the old orthodoxies on the evils of public debt. The idea is to shrink the economy by cutting public spending thereby using the resulting unemployment to lower wages, push up profits and spur business investment. When will they ever learn?

Our editorial evaluates the protest tactics of the black bloc and the resulting political violence by the state. Our RebELLEs columnists display their outrage at this unprecedented repression of political dissent and in particular the assault against women protesters. Media columnist Lesley Hughes examines how the mainstream media handled Torontonamo while Chris Webb looks at the role of social media.

We invite readers who want to see more debate about both the black bloc and the police to look at the Canadian Dimension website. We have posted a dozen or so articles there which have drawn many comments. No doubt our editorial in this issue will draw many more.

Canadian Dimension magazine has the most interesting sports columnist in all of Canada. Who would have thought? We rank Simon Black up there with widely respected U.S. sports journalist Dave Zirin. Look at Simon’s article on CLR James in this issue. See if you don’t agree!

“All That’s Left,” our back of the mag section, usually includes reviews of books, film, theatre and music. In this issue we are pleased to publish an extensive review of an important book on Montreal in the Sixties by a young academic, Sean Mills. The reviewer is Bryan Palmer, one of Canada’s leading historians, who we are always proud to feature in CD. The limits of magazine space precludes us from having a more extensive review section. For that reason, we have just opened up a review section on the CD website which we invite you to explore.

Canadian Dimension’s weekly radio program, Alert starts its fifth season in September. If you don’t live in Vancouver, Winnipeg, Ottawa, Halifax or any of the other dozen or so cities whose campus and community radio stations carry Alert, you can hear us on line by selecting Alert on the CD website or on Rabble.ca