In 2001, two Marxist academics, Joel Kovel and Michael Löwy, published An Ecosocialist Manifesto. They had become frustrated with many of their comrades in the West who apparently had nothing to say about the prospect of climate and ecological catastrophe. They believed that “the left in general had too little interest in the ecological issue,” and hoped that this manifesto might bring their “socialist comrades to the ecological struggle.”

“Ecosocialism is not yet a spectre, nor is it grounded in any concrete party or movement,” they wrote. “It is only a line of reasoning, based on a reading of the present crisis and the necessary conditions for overcoming it.”

This manifesto, like so many that came before it, was in conscious dialogue with The Communist Manifesto. However, unlike Marx and Engels, the authors lacked a movement with which to associate their ideas. Kovel and Löwy were left to wonder: “Can the spectre be brought into being?”