Presentation short abstract

Both capitalist economies and real-existing socialist economies have relied on growth. We use the framework of growth imperatives to highlight key moments of path dependence in the history of real-existing socialism, to draw lessons for a transition towards an ecosocialist metabolic order.

Presentation long abstract

The growing scholarly debate on “growth imperatives” highlights the structural factors driving the capitalist world-system towards continuous economic expansion, despite ecological and climate crises. Yet much less attention has been given to how similar compulsions operated within regimes of real-existing socialism, and what this reveals about the challenges of an ecosocialist transition. Thus, in our contribution, we explore the driving forces behind economic growth within existing socialist economies and governments, seeking to draw lessons from the contradictions of real-existing socialism, and to contribute to theorising the ecosocialist transition.

To achieve this, our paper offers a historical-comparative analysis of Comecon economies from the end of World War II to their collapse and market transition in the early 1990s. Combining qualitative and quantitative indicators, it examines how geopolitical pressures stemming from the semi-peripheral position of socialist countries, developmentalist state strategies, and consumerist-authoritarian social compacts generated their own forms of growth imperatives. Using a path-dependence approach, we identify major shifts, such as the economic crisis marking the end of the Stalinist era and the failure of technocratic governance in the late 1980s. The analysis employs a dataset from the Vienna Institute for International Economic Studies, containing key indicators related to “growth imperatives,” to examine contradictions within socialist experiences and to draw lessons for a potentially more successful transition to an ecosocialist “metabolic order”.