Eco-Socialism or "Green" Capitalism?

After the ignominious fall of the classical Soviet model of "socialism" in the early 1990s, socialists, communists, and all other kinds of Leftists had felt to have been left in the lurch. With his book Eco-Socialism or Eco-Capitalism? A Critical Analysis of Humanity's Fundamental Choices (1999), Saral Sarkar presented and laid the theoretical foundation of a new conception of socialism, which convinced because it organically synthesized the newly arisen imperative of ecological sustainability and the old ideal of equality among members of humanity. On their part, all opponents of any kind of socialism have also been trying to somehow accommodate the inexorable insights and demands of true ecological sustainability in extant conceptions of capitalism. What they have achieved is not a synthesis, but merely a fake and self-contradictory phrase that does not deserve the prefix "Eco-", and should properly be called "Green"-Capitalism. But they succeeded in hoodwinking millions of worried human beings all over the world. In the last thirty years, Sarkar has been relentlessly trying through speeches and writings to counter their misconceptions of the ecological and social imperatives. In the present two volumes of his Collected Writings, readers will find some of the fruits of his endeavor

Saral Sarkar was born in 1936 in a village of West Bengal, India. After graduating from the University of Calcutta (Kolkata), he studied German language and literature for five years at the Goethe Institute in India and Germany. From 1966 to 1981, he was lecturer of German at the Goethe Institute in Hyderabad, India. Since 1982, he has been living in Cologne, Germany, where he has been active in the Green Movement, Anti-Globalization Movement, and all kinds of ecological and leftist movements. He was member of the Green Party of Germany from 1982 to 1987, but left the party in deep disappointment. Over the years, Sarkar has taken part in many discussions and debates in the above-mentioned areas and published widely in political journals in India, Europe, and the American Continent. His basal theoretical work "Eco-Socialism or Eco-Capitalism? A Critical Analysis of Humanity's Fundamental Choices" (1999, London) has also been published in German, French (in internet), Chinese and Japanese. His other major works are: Green-Alternative Politics in West Germany, Vol. I & II (1993, 1994, Tokyo), and The Crises of Capitalism - A Different Study of Political Economy (2012, Berkeley), which was originally published in German (2010, Neu-Ulm).