chapotraphouse

One of the core issues in Marxist ecology is the separation of town and country, how we unevenly develop urban/rural systems and the increased toll that takes on natural ones as a result. We need degrowth, decommodification, and a biocentric reintegration of those three systems. Solar punk is just an aesthetic but alongside art nouveau it's the kind of aesthetic you need to communicate a better way of life. If people just see their treats being taken away they turn reactionary. If they just see the climate crisis as an inevitable apocalypse, they turn reactionary. Solar punk is a non-reactionary example of the neo-luddite garden cities we should be moving toward. It's much more holistically anticapitalist than other punk or traditionalist movements, and it's pleasant when we need radical optimism and significant lifestyle changes that otherwise seem difficult.

The task of a Marxist with a movement like that is to identify the things people like about it and situate it in theory. There's a solid 100+ years of theory on those themes which tie them into larger and more practical things to organise around. Solar punk is a vehicle to get people interested in socialist urbanism and critical ecology, not some utopian goal in itself.