In the ‘Paralipomena’ (or side notes) to On the Concept of History, Walter Benjamin (2003: 393) once criticized the Marxist conception of labour for its characteristic ‘exploitation of nature’. In an attempt to overcome the Promethean vision of revolution, Benjamin famously wrote:

The metaphor of the ‘emergency brake’ is more important than ever today. In the face of ecological disasters, environmentalism starts to demand radical systemic change by ending limitless economic growth in order to terminate the ceaseless exploitation of humanity and the robbery of nature. In short, today’s emergency brake implies a call for degrowth.

Marxism has been, however, unable to adequately respond to this call for degrowth. Even those eco-Marxists who are critical of productivism are reluctant to accept the idea of degrowth, which they believe is politically unattractive and ineffective. Instead, they stick to the possibility of further sustainable growth under socialism, once the anarchy of market competition under capitalism is transcended (Vergara-Camus 2019). Thus, even after the idea of ecosocialism has softened the long-lasting antagonism between Green and Red, there remains a significant tension between ecosocialism and degrowth. The situation is changing, however. One of the most important advocates of degrowth, Serge Latouche (2019: 65), has accepted the idea of ecosocialism as a basis for degrowth, advocating the need ‘to propose forms of politics in a way that is coherent with the objectives of the ecosocialist project for the next era’. Considering the fact that degrowth is often conceived as the third path alternative to both capitalism and socialism, there has been a remarkable shift in recent years among the proponents of degrowth in a clearly anti-capitalist direction. This opens up a space for new dialogues with Marxists, who have been critical of degrowth’s ambiguity in terms of its compatibility with the market economy. It is worth investigating further whether ‘socialism without growth’ (Kallis 2017) and ‘ecosocialist degrowth’ (Löwy et al. 2022) are compatible with Marx’s own vision of post-capitalism.