Research On The Values Of Ecological Marxism

Ecological crisis has become an important problem that human must face.Half a century ago,the "Rome Club" warned the world that human beings are facing ecological threats.However,ecological problems have not been effectively controlled as expected.Ecological Marxism inherits Marx’s historical materialism,analyses the ultimate causes of ecological crisis,and explores ways to solve ecological problems.They believe that the root of ecological problems lies in the capitalist social system.As long as human society is still under the control of capital logic,the anti-ecological nature of capitalism decides that solving ecological problems is only a fantasy.Only by changing the social form and changing the capitalist system to the eco-socialist society can solve the ecological problems.The social change is composed of technological criticism,institutional criticism and value criticism."Value" has two meanings: axios and value.This paper holds that the distorted understanding of the meaning of value is an important manifestation.As the foundation of social structure,poductivity and production relations determine the social ideology as the superstructure of society.However technological development as productivity and production relations as a reflection of social system,determine the orientation of values together.Values can exert the social function of ideology.Values are the internal norms of people’s internal ideals and behaviors,as well as the external manifestations of productivity and production relations.Values reflect the relationship between people and the world,governing people’s way of values,including nature,technology,needs and so on.Eco-Marxism starts from the system to solve the problem of values,eliminates utilitarian values under the logic of capital.This paper combs the historical background and theoretical sources of ecological Marxist values.The tradition of rational supremacy has caused ecological problems.Contemporary ecological protection actions have not made substantial progress.Eco-Marxism examines the evolution of the relationship between man and nature in the history of philosophy,takes Marx’s ecological thought as the theoretical core,inherits the critical tradition of Frankfurt School and amends the paranoid position of the western green trend of thought that advocates over-protection of the environment.By introducing the representative characters of Eco-Marxism,such as Agger,O’Connor,Forster,Gates and Hughes,the ideological connotation and theoretical characteristics of ecological Marxist values are extracted.Firstly,the Eco-Marxist values of ecology respond the criticism of anthropocentrism by ecocentrism,amend and resist the overcorrection of ecocentrism,redefine anthropocentrism and establish a moderate anthropocentrism position with limited orientation of human value appeal.Eco-Marxist values criticize the alienation of production and human alienation caused by the traditional anthropocentric capital proliferation logic,look forward to the harmonious unity of man and nature.Specifically,the Eco-Marxist values have the following four characteristics: adhering to the moderate anthropocentrism position,criticizing the technicalism caused by rationalism,affirming the necessity and rationality of changing the capitalist system,and expressing the ecological socialist value ideal of yearning for the harmonious state between man and nature.The paper takes historical materialism as the criterion to evaluate the content of Eco-Marxist values.The contribution of Eco-Marxism lies in excavating Marx’s ecological thought,reflecting the thinking mode of rationality supremacy since modern times,enriching and expanding the content of traditional historical materialism in the context of contemporary ecological crisis,and criticizing the utilitarian values under the logic of capital proliferation.Meanwhile,we should face the theory‘s shortcomings.There exists one-sided understanding of historical materialism in Eco-Marxist values.As two important dimensions of ecological Marxist theory,values criticism and system criticism pay insufficient attention to the dimension of value change,showing the emptiness of the subject of values change.Based on the progressive significance and limitations of Eco Marxist values and the national conditions,this paper discusses the enlightenment of Eco-Marxist values on China’s ecological construction.We should excave the understanding of Marxist works,provide guidance for the construction of ecological civilization,and realize the organic unity of nature protection and people-oriented.At the same time,we should overcome the limitations of ecological Marxist values and avoid the same mistakes.