Research On John Bellamy Foster’s Ecological Marxism

Marxist theorists blame the lack of modern green eco-consciousness, and the attitude Marx adopts to control nature and develop economy with the type of "Bacon" is representative of anthropocentrism. In response to this accusation, John · Foster, the North American representative of Ecological Marxism, responds to it based on re-interpretation of Marxist philosophy.Through investigating the comprehensive background of Marx’s life and the historical development of Marxist thought, Foster thinks that ecological thought is an important part of Marxist thought. After deeply interpretating Marx’s ecological thinking and investigating the one-sided understanding on Marx’s ecological thinking of contemporary ecological scholars, Foster describes the philosophical basis of Marx’s ecological thinking, and on the basis of "ecological materialism", he points out the themes in Marx’s ecology, and overally outlines the basic framework of Marx’s ecology. Through examining the development process of "Marxist materialism", he re-constructs Marx’s "natural materialism" based on Epicurean philosophy; Through analyzing the ways materialism promots the production of ecological thinking, he takes "metabolism" as the center to construct Marx’s of "eco-materialist" thought, and rejects the accusations of green theorists on Marxism; Through exploring the relationship between capitalism and ecological crisis, Foster shows the critical position on capitalism and the requirements of political practice of ecological revolution.Foster’s re-interpretation of Marx’s ecology possesses great theoretical and practical significance. His Ecological Marxism enriches or promotes the contemporary interpretations of Marxism. It not only provides a fundamental guidance for today’s ecological development, more importantly, it has important implications for us to continue the road of sustainable development, turn into the ecological civilization and build the socialist harmonious society. However, here are also some theoretical limitations in his thought. Among them, the main drawback is that in order to rebuild the ecological Marxist materialism, he traces the basis of Marx’s natural materialism to Epicurus, which misunderstands the practical materialism of Marx. We think only the characteristics of practical materialism in Marxist philosophy, and Marx’s critique and disclosal on capitalist essential contradiction, can provide theoretical foundation for the so-called "ecological materialism". It is also the theoretical basic points on which we can reflect the human centrism and review natural ethics and the value of nature.Foster is the theorist with most systematic exposition on Marx’s ecological thought by far. The paper starts from the extensive and intensive dimensions. It not only includes Marx’s whole life and the history of the Marxist emergence and development, but also trangresses philosophy, natural science, sociology, economics, ecology and other disciplines. He concludes that Marxism contains systematic ecological thought, Marx’s materialism, political economy and the system of scientific socialism provide the comprehensive and systematic theory to resolve the ecological crisis of capitalism. Undoubtedly, in the developing history of ecological Marxism, Foster possesses the landmark for building Marx’s ecology, and also expands the understanding of Marx’s philosophy for descendants looking back the history of Marxist Philosophy from the ecological aspect.