Toward a Global Dialogue on Ecology and Marxism: A Brief Response to Chinese Scholars

Abstract

Epicurus was significant for Marx both as "the true radical Enlightener of antiquity" and as the main root within antiquity of the viewpoint of scientific modernity. [...]Marx admired Epicurus' concept of freedom (even if a contemplative one) and above all his notion of the "swerve." In directly advancing the latter in his work he also continued to explore the former, incorporating new scientific knowledge into his analysis where necessary - for the simple reason that in his view there was "only one science" and thus human history and human labor were inseparable from the human metabolism with nature.5 In such a conception, then, our understanding of Marx's dialectic is necessarily widened. I have written briefly on the ecological contradictions of the Soviet Union and the role they placed in its demise in a section of my book The Vulnerable Planet, entitled "The Environment of the Cold War: Ecocide in the Soviet Union."