A Study Of Marx’s Ecological Thought

With the development of production, man’s relationship with nature is becoming increasingly strained. This has created serious environmental problems, even to the point of an ecological crisis. In the view of some scholars, ecological crisis has already replaced economic crisis as the main problem confronting contemporary society, and Marx committed the "ecological original sin" because his labor theory of value neglected the value of nature. His conception of socialism, based on the development of production, necessarily exacerbates ecological crisis.As far as Marx’s responsibility for "ecological original sin" is concerned, I have emphasized discovering Marx’s historical materialism or the ecological significance of his later works, refuting western criticisms of Marx from all angles in order to restore Marx’s true image as an "ecological prophet.’In The German Ideology, Marx and Engels claim that the real human has four aspects:human needs, production, social relations, and ideology. Based on this, I claim that carrying out material production, social organization, and intellectual cultural activities in nature is the most basic practical activity in which humans change nature and themselves in order to obtain the materials for survival and development. The root of ecological crisis is that some aspects of human activity cannot be harmonized with nature, but rather oppose nature, destroying the normal material exchange between humans and nature.In Capital, Marx clearly points out that capitalist production "created an irreparable rift in society and through the material transformations determined by the natural laws of life." This is because under capitalism, production is not a means of meeting real needs, but rather of accumulating capital. It does not consider in the least humans’real needs and the constraints they put on production. This necessarily leads to an excess of production therefore to economic and ecological crisis.The remedy to economic crisis prescribed by capitalism is to stimulate consumption and form a consumerist society, consuming surplus products in expanded reproduction. But consumerism implies ecological crisis. Its solution lies in realizing socialism, namely, to produce according to need and distribute according to need. It requires making work the first need of life and making needs an internal limit on production in order to build a human-natural community where person and nature can coordinate with each other in a co-evolutionary way.