Vol. 51 No. 202 (2021): Green New Deal!? How red is the new green?

"And we can hand this world over to our children as a better place" - this sentence was not formulated by the Pope, Karl Marx or an aspiring Green Party leader, but by the President of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen. With the "Green Deal," the EU is to become climate-neutral by 2050. Now is "our chance to shape our economies differently and make them more resilient," von der Leyen said. In doing so, the Commission President is taking up a topic that, thanks to social movements such as "Fridays for Future," was strongly brought to public attention before the Corona crisis: climate change. Or is it all just rhetoric again this time?

The PROKLA issue approaches the "Green New Deal" and its confusing mishmash through three thematic strands: the history of ideas, current progressive debates, and currently prevailing politics. How can the transformational potential of the "European Green Deal" be assessed? Does it remain on the level of a technology-fixated ecological modernization, or are there elements that point in the direction of a fundamental socio-ecological transformation?