Talk:Eco-socialism

Merging Eco-socialism and Red Greens articles

Hi all,

I think the Red Greens article should be merged into this article, Eco-socialism. As far as I can see, the articles are virtually identical, except that Eco-socialism is further developed. The Eco-socialism page already redirects from and refers to Green socialism, so it is natural, in my opinion, that Red Greens should redirect here.

Eco-Socialism is essentially a better term describing the ideology that combines socialism and green politics - eco-socialists would likely call themselves Red Greens or Green Reds, so it should be merged with the ideology to be more coherent.

What do you all think? If no-one has a problem (or no-one replies), I will merge the articles after 5 days.

--Aled Dilwyn Fisher 12:54, 13 July 2006 (UTC)

I support your proposal -- so long as the merger incorporates all non-duplicated material from Red Greens, in particular the Red/Blue Greens contrast. -- Picapica 20:57, 13 July 2006 (UTC)

Support, as long as blue greens are merged into eco-capitalism as well. --C mon 22:58, 13 July 2006 (UTC)

Picapica - I will make sure the Red/Blue contrast is included. C Mon, I support the merging of Blue Greens and Eco-capitalism, but I wonder if there are a few other pages that perhaps should be merged into Eco-capitalism as well, like Natural Capitalism - what do you think? --Aled Dilwyn Fisher 11:10, 14 July 2006 (UTC)

I'd discuss those changes on those talk pages. --C mon 11:50, 14 July 2006 (UTC)

Hi all - as about 5 days have passed without any objections, I will now merge the pages. Please give me more feedback on the merger I make (it's my first merger!)... Aled Dilwyn Fisher 15:22, 18 July 2006 (UTC)

I've changed it so Red Green and Red green both go to the disambiguation page and not here (in line with WP:DAB) especially as there is no meaningful distinction here. Red greens is probably still OK as the others aren't countable.

Also, I love the watermelon thing (but it is making me want to eat one now—the fruit obviously). I thought it sounded questionable but it does seem to be used on the WWW quite a bit. It's not in the OED, but I found a dictionary entry with some RL sources if someone wants to add a reference. Continuing the fruit analogy, do you call someoene who starts off as a Green but starts to become socialist too a pepper? I think I may bit a bit of a pepper. I digress.

Joe Llywelyn Griffith Blakesley _{talk contrib} 20:52, 23 July 2006 (UTC)

Watermelon

When did people first start referring to red-greens as "watermelons"? Harvestdancer 18:38, 6 February 2007 (UTC)

I've No idea on that question, sorry. I have a related queary about the The Watermelon website refered to in the article, where it states that:

(a website in New Zealand, The Watermelon, uses the term as a compliment, stating that it is "green on the outside and liberal on the inside", using the term 'liberal' while also citing "socialist political leanings", reflecting the use of the term 'liberal' to describe the Left-wing in many English-speaking countries[7]).

The link provided in the footnotes is <http://thewatermelon.org/>, an empty site, full of advertising. The only "watermellon" site I've found is The Watermellon Blog <http://www.blognow.com.au/mrpickwick> It's from Australia, not New Zealand, and it's tag line is "The Watermelon Blog Green on the outside, social justice inside". Which negates the commentry on "the use of the term 'liberal' to describe the Left-wing in many English-speaking countries". Maybe there was once a New Zealand based watermellon site, but it's not showing up on google now.

David Colyer (talk) 00:23, 1 October 2009 (UTC)

Kovel

Huge amounts of this article refer not to eco-socialism, but just to Kovel. Where whole sections refer only to Kovel's views, these should either be supplemented/replaced by other eco-socialists, or moved to Kovel's own article. BobFromBrockley 14:51, 17 August 2007 (UTC)

-I agree to an extent, but Kovel is the chief person who has written about Eco-socialism and is like Marx to socialism/communism, so is likely to be referenced a hell of a lot. He is the only one who has really talked about eco-socialist transition, so to remove it would take out the main author on the subject and most of the main ideas. I will try to supplement it but recommend not removing it at this stage Aled Dilwyn Fisher 15:11, 17 August 2007 (UTC)

I am not so sure. If Kovel's views diverge from other ecosocialists, then that should be discussed. As Aled points out, He and Lowy are the major figures in eocsocialism (even in the English-speaking world, citations of the two are quite similar with regard to the topic). --Duncan 13:27, 19 August 2007 (UTC)

As of October 5, 2010, there are eighteen other people besides Kovel listed in section entitled "List of Eco-socialists." Therefore, it would seem to me that the article, rather than laying out Kovel's views almost exclusively, should contain the views of a significant number of these other people. It may be that some of these do not position themselves as firmly as Kovel as "ecosocialist," but if they are listed here, the indication is that their views are, in fact, highly relevant to the discussion of ecosocialism. Discussing their views would make this an article about ecosocialism as a developing concept. As the article stands, while very informative regarding Kovel's views, it might more appropriately be entitled, "Joel Kovel's Views of Ecosocialism."

Section titles

The section and subsection titles are, for the most part, much longer than they need to be, and, as a result, they make the table of contents unwieldy. How about if they are edited down to something reasonable and manageable? ---RepublicanJacobite_{The'FortyFive'} 22:09, 4 March 2008 (UTC)

Help to expand Agrarian socialism article

Anyone with the time or inclination...please help to expand the article on agrarian socialism, which is related to eco-socialism but has important differences. Thanks. --172.132.78.19 (talk) 00:37, 18 December 2008 (UTC)

Influence on “existing socialist” regimes

Shouldnt the word Regimes be replaced with Governments considering Regimes is kinda used in a provocative way. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 206.116.10.54 (talk) 17:13, 30 July 2009 (UTC)

Stylistic "use of" "quotes" in this article

I really like this article. However, it is fairly hard to read from a stylistic perspective in terms of the constant and needless use of "quotes" around words which themselves are not particularly "quote worthy". If the term is unique perhaps it deserves some use of italics, or if the original material is worth quoting it should be quoted in context as a block paragraph. Otherwise why not simply assume this is a broad summary of ideas and eliminate the "quotes"? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 70.36.210.43 (talk) 18:22, 10 April 2010 (UTC)

The use of quotes around words and phrases is often to highlight ideologically grounded phraseology - as in, there is a highly deliberate, deeper ideological context to the choice of words being used (eg, discussions on eco-socialism take place within the whole greater realm of socialism proper, which has it's own technical & ideological vocab). The more political science knowledge one has, the more this makes sense - thats the best way I can quickly explain it (the quotes add value and meaning to political scientists). Semmler (talk) 13:08, 29 May 2010 (UTC)