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What do you guys think of the reddit alternatives?
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this post was submitted on 22 May 2026
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When I speak of 'moderately conservative communists,' I mean something closer to someone who acknowledges that to survive the ecological catastrophe and economic madness, we must become conservative. We must conserve the commons, the state's capacity to protect its citizens, and the welfare state against the 'radical' destruction of the market. Basically I think we should have a strong state that limits the freedom of corporations to destroy us.
Please counter-attack where I go astray, preferably viciously too.
I don't really think "conservative" is a helpful angle due to the connotations. I think "pragmatic, and planned" are good descriptors. The advancement of green energy, the radical restructuring of society, all of this is definitely not seen as "conservative." Further, I'm confused if you mean social democracy, or socialism proper (ie, Nordic capitalism vs. China's socialist market economy).
I understand the hesitation with the word, but I think we need to reclaim it. If we look at the ecological crisis, the market is the 'radical' force destroying the planet. To be a communist who wants to strictly protect the environment is, by definition, a 'conservative' act. We are trying to conserve the habitability of the Earth. It isn't about choosing between Nordic social democracy or China's model; it is about the state acting as a adequate defense against the chaos of the market.
My issue with both choices is that both are ultimately still playing by the rules of global capital. I'm talking about a 'conservatism' that refuses both. It isn't about being 'pragmatic' or simply 'planned' in my opinion, it is about the strict protection of the commons.
I understand, but at least if we are to consider the march towards communism as the continued development of humanity onto a qualitatively new level, this is a progression. We can be conservationists with respect to the environment, but certainly not conservative. To try to hold back the wheel of history is to be reactionary, not progressive.
The state is not opposed to the market, which is why I brought up the Nordic countries and China. In capitalism, the state serves capitalists. In socialism, the state serves the working classes. A socialist state is necessary for supremacy over capital, which is why revolution is necessary.
But isn't the 'wheel of history' precisely what is driving us toward ecological collapse? Sometimes the truly revolutionary act is to stop the clock, to say 'enough' to this automatic march of progress. If 'progress' means the destruction of the environment, then the only way to be truly progressive is to become conservative: to stubbornly conserve the commons and our material existence against the market's drive to destroy them. We have to survive the 'march' before we can reach the destination.
I agree that the socialist state must serve the working class, but I would argue that this service is inherently a conservative project. The state must act as a guardian, conserving the health, housing, and resources of the people against the chaotic 'progress' of the market. We shouldn't fear the word 'conservative' if it means we are refusing to let the logic of capital degrade our lives. The revolution isn't just about seizing the state; it's about using that state to protect us.
Progress doesn't mean the destruction of the environment. You cannot stop the clock. Progress is necessary to stop the destruction, and to take a more harmonious approach. See how China is combatting desertification, and is rapidly electrifying and adopting solar as the biggest new energy source. This is progress.
As for the state protecting the people, this is progressive. Nay, revolutionary. The people take political power in their own hands, and can radically transform the world and better meet their place in it. The wheel of history is pressed forward.
I fear you're on a pipeline towards eco-fascism. Not saying you're an eco-fascist, to be clear, but the combination of trying to stop progress while also adopting prop environmental policies can definitely lead people down that road. It's not a nice road.
I think you may have the causality backwards. Eco-fascism thrives on scarcity, no? In my mind, it is what happens when the state fails to manage resources and people are forced to fight for scraps. My point is that we must use the state to strictly conserve the commons to ensure there is enough for everyone. That is the opposite of fascism. It is the only guarantee against it. As for China, simply electrifying the economy with solar panels doesn't change the underlying logic of endless accumulation. We can't just assume the 'wheel of history' will save us if we don't grab the wheel ourselves.
Not really, we need to advance to make production more green, efficient, and to reduce our impact on the environment.
But when you make production more efficient, people don't consume less. They consume more. 'Green advancement' is often just a license to expand the exploitation of nature under a new label. We cannot 'advance' our way out of a systemic crisis, but if we fundamentally change our relationship to consumption, maybe we can start to really rip the e-brake on how efficiently we have been and currently are exploiting nature.
You can both produce more efficiently and without excess without stopping advancement.
You are treating advancement like it is a neutral force of nature, but it is really just driven by the need to keep growing. You say we can be efficient without excess, but that ignores how efficiency actually works in the real world. When we figure out how to use a resource more efficiently, we do not use less of it overall. We just consume more because it becomes cheaper. Making green tech more efficient does not hit the brakes on the machine. It just gives the system a cheaper, greener excuse to expand mining and infrastructure.
You assume a socialist state will just choose to stop producing once it is efficient enough, but the whole logic of advancement requires endless expansion. If the socialist state keeps up the project of endless industrial growth just with a red flag over the factories, the planet still burns. The relentless drive for more production caused the ecological crisis in the first place. Doing it faster and greener is not the cure. You cannot run an infinite growth engine on a finite planet and expect it to voluntarily stop. The climate does not care if the bulldozer destroying the forest is owned by a billionaire or a workers' collective. Believing that efficiency will magically solve overconsumption without us fundamentally changing our relationship to consumption is just wishful thinking.
I think you're confusing the profit motive with development. Accumulation of capital is what drives endless expansion and overconsumption. Socialism is necessary to stop that cycle, as rather than profit, suiting the needs of humanity becomes the goal.
You say that shifting from profit to human need stops the cycle of endless expansion, but I think you are underestimating how elastic "human needs" actually are. Under an industrial socialist system, if the state decides that everyone needs an electric car, a modern apartment, and global supply chains for fresh produce year-round, the expansion continues. The motive changes, but the physical extraction stays the same.
To build all that green infrastructure to meet those needs, you still have to mine lithium, cobalt, and rare earth metals on a massive scale. Those mines still destroy ecosystems and pollute water, whether the workers or capitalists own them. Profit does not physically dig the holes in the earth. Machines and labor do that. Changing the reason we dig the hole does not stop the hole from destroying the local environment.
The core issue is that you are replacing the profit motive with a productivist motive. You are assuming that as long as we are producing for need instead of profit, we can keep expanding production indefinitely. But the planet has hard physical limits. A truly socialist system has to recognize those limits and intentionally restrict what we consume, not just change who is doing the consuming. If your version of socialism just promises more stuff for everyone, you are still running an infinite growth engine on a finite planet.
Changing from the profit motive to a planned economy dramatically changes how and why human development is steered. Socialism of course will advance production, but it ends consumerism, and having humans over capital means we can decide to have a more harmonious impact on the environment. Profit makes this pretty much impossible, as capital is a control system for accumulation.
I agree that removing the profit motive changes how the economy is steered, but you are assuming the new drivers will automatically choose harmony. You say socialism will advance production while ending consumerism, but those two things contradict each other. If you are advancing production, you have to consume the output or use it to expand further. Otherwise you are just creating massive waste.
The bigger issue is that you keep treating harmony as a decision we can just make once capital is out of the way. Advancing production requires physical extraction. Planning does not magically make lithium mining or cobalt refining clean. A planned economy still has to dig the same holes in the ground and process the same materials to build the green infrastructure you want. You are just doing the destruction on a schedule instead of for a profit margin.
Historically, planned economies did not decide to be harmonious either. They decided to industrialize rapidly to compete with capitalist countries, and the environment suffered greatly for it. If the primary goal remains advancing the productive forces, the physical impact on the planet remains destructive. Changing who holds the steering wheel does not change the fact that the vehicle is still an industrial machine tearing up the ground beneath it. At some point, you actually have to ease off the gas pedal, not just plan a more efficient route.
Developing and advancing does not mean continuing consumerism. The overproduction of cheap plastic goods and planned obsolescence are purely problems of capital, not socialism. We can develop more intelligently, without relying on a system that requires production of endless trinkets at the destruction of the environment. Extraction will not end, sure, but it can be done more intelligently, and it can be minimized.
Historical socialism has faced numerous problems due to lack of development. They didn't simply develop to compete, but because the basis of socialism is in large industry. We cannot freeze history at a communalist level where we are hunter/gatherers, we have to advance to socialism so that we can actually intelligently solve problems leading to climate change and environmental destruction, rather than having capitalism ensure it is destroyed.
Communist ecology is a wide field, and you'd do well to study it.
No one is arguing to freeze history and return to being hunter-gatherers. That seems like a real strawman. I am talking about a steady-state economy where we actually live within our physical means, rather than assuming we can just innovate our way out of finite planetary boundaries.
You keep saying we can extract "intelligently" and "minimize" it, but you have to look at the actual material math of the green transition you keep praising. Building solar panels, wind turbines, and global electric vehicle fleets for billions of people requires an unprecedented scale of mining for lithium, cobalt, copper, and rare earth metals. There is no "intelligent" way to strip mine the deep sea or destroy lithium salt flats that makes it ecologically harmonious. Planning just makes the destruction more organized. The physical limits of the planet do not care how smart our five-year plans are.
You say large industry is the basis of socialism, but large industry is exactly what caused the massive metabolic rift with nature in the first place. Capitalism absolutely accelerated it, but the industrial metabolism itself requires a massive throughput of the natural world. Communist ecology has a lot of great theory, but if it ignores the hard limits to growth and assumes we can infinitely develop our productive forces on a finite planet, it is repeating the exact same productivist mistakes as capitalism. It is just substituting red flags for green ones while the mines keep digging.
I'll gladly revisit communist ecology as soon as it stops ignoring the real material limits of our planet. This explains your fears of me being on a 'eco-fascist pipeline' though i guess. I want to conserve the commons specifically to guarantee abundance and avoid the scarcity that breeds fascism. You, on the other hand, want a centralized state to continue forcing industrial extraction and advancement on a finite planet. When your planned development inevitably hits the hard ecological walls you refuse to acknowledge, it won't be the profit motive deciding who gets the last of the resources. It will be your socialist state. And a state forcing through industrial limits for the 'greater good of historical progress' is a lot closer to the architecture of fascism than a community trying to protect its water from a lithium mine.
I know we've strayed a bit far from the initial talking points(via most of my best points being ignored and retreated from, mind you), but I have to ask, surely you have enough context to no longer be puzzled/confused by the meaning of one characterized as a 'moderately conservative communist'? Did I clarify enough, or only muddy the waters further? If I did clarify enough, what label would you assign yourself in contrast to me and my position? Would it be better (or more productive lol) for me to take on the label of 'degrowth communist'? I feel I understand my position more confidently, but I'm still pretty lost on where your initial confusion stemmed from.
Communist ecology does not ignore the material limits of reality, that's a strawman. Advancing recycling, renewable materials, renewable energy sources, all of it requires more advanced technology, but can be done in a fashion that does not harm the environment. My point is that degrowth does not work, and actually works against the capabilities of advanced ecology. We need to advance onto socialism as quickly as possible so as to end overconsumption and overproduction, but we should not try to freeze where we are at.
I guess what I am trying to say is that advancement does not mean endless production, and large industry does not mean overproduction and overconsumption.
You say advancement doesn't mean endless production, but you haven't explained what physically stops it. You are treating advanced recycling and renewable technology like a magic wand that bypasses the laws of physics. Thermodynamics dictates that recycling is never one hundred percent efficient, and building the infrastructure for a global green energy grid requires a staggering amount of initial extraction. You cannot build solar panels, wind turbines, and batteries out of thin air.
You also keep using the word freeze, but I am not arguing for freezing society. Degrowth is not about returning to the Stone Age. It is about intentionally shrinking the parts of the economy that are actively destroying the planet, like fast fashion, planned obsolescence, and the military industrial complex.
You claim large industry does not mean overproduction, but what exactly limits it under socialism? If the state is trying to meet human needs, and industrial advancement constantly creates new needs as fast as it solves old ones, how do you prevent the system from just producing more? You assume removing the profit motive removes the drive for endless consumption, but the culture of advancement itself creates that desire. Without a hard commitment to physical limits, your planned large industry will still overconsume, just more efficiently.