JRM: Thank you for your interest in this topic. However, I think you missed an important part of my argument, namely, the part in which I say that “The question we have to ask is, which system, capitalism or socialism, is more susceptible to productivist tendencies? I think the answer is socialism.”

As I understand it, the ecosocialist critique is really not a critique of capitalism but a critique of “productivism.” So in that regard, whether or not you want to call the Soviet Union by the name it applied to itself, that is, “socialist,” I think you would agree that it is not capitalist.

That opens a couple of issues on which I would be interested to hear your views. One is whether you think that at least some of the founders of the Soviet system intended it to be a socialism system in a sense that you would accept. If so, that would raise the issue of whether the attempt to develop a socialist system inevitably degenerates into a form of noncapitalist productivism, or whether that was just a result of particular historical and cultural circumstances in Russia.

But a more important issue that I would be interested to get your opinon on is whether a nonproductivist socialist system can exist, even though no such system has ever existed as far as I know; at least not on a national scale. Can you develop that part of your argument more fully, or point me to a source that does so? Or is socialism, in your view, simply an ideal type that can never acutally exist? If you can address these issues, it will help me refine my critique of ecosocialism.

Please try to limit yourself to written sources; I find it tedious to extract information from videos and podcasts.