The Dialectics of Ecology and Ecological Civilization

The materialist dialectics pioneered by Karl Marx and Frederick Engels remains a crucial method for understanding modern issues, including environmental problems. As early as the 1970s, Howard Parsons observed, “Marx and Engels laid down the basic outline and method of dialectical knowledge, but by its very definition such knowledge must be continuously informed and brought up to date, so that it can become relevant and useful with regard to the life-and-death issues that men face anew day after day.”¹ The foundation of dialectics lies in real human beings and the history they have created—both natural and human history—and, thus, dialectics will acquire new forms as human life evolves.

The natural and physical world we inhabit today has experienced profound transformations. According to a widely recognized concept, we have entered the Anthropocene Epoch.² In this phase, humanity has become the dominant force driving the development of Earth’s systems, triggering what is referred to as the “anthropogenic rift” in Earth’s history.³ This rift primarily is characterized by the “Great Acceleration” of global environmental changes and the breaching of planetary boundaries. Furthermore, these ecological crises are closely related to issues of social injustice. The book Global Change and the Earth System, written by a number of respected scientists, notes: “In a world in which the disparity between the wealthy and the poor, both within and between countries, is growing, equity issues are important in any consideration of global environmental management.”⁴ Moreover, it is crucial to note that this systemic crisis has not directly led to a transformation of society toward sustainability. On the contrary, it has been co-opted by neoliberalism, exacerbating the crisis.

According to the neoliberal perspective, the finite and contingent nature of the earth gives rise to the problem of how to allocate and conserve natural resources effectively. In this context, the privatization and marketization of natural resources are seen as the most efficient means of managing the planet. Consequently, the Anthropocene crisis has not been recognized by capitalism as a fundamental challenge; instead, it has become a new opportunity for capitalism to green itself and expand.⁵ Therefore, we urgently need to revive Marxist dialectics and develop the dialectics of ecology that is relevant to contemporary issues in order to analyze the Anthropocene crisis through the lens of dialectical materialism. This means that it is essential to engage in an ecological critique of capitalism, advance a socio-ecological revolution, and ultimately move toward a new ecological civilization based on the harmonious coexistence of humanity and nature.

Reflections on Criticisms of the Dialectics of Nature

Since the publication of History and Class Consciousness by Georg Lukács in 1923, Marx’s dialectics has often been narrowly understood as a social or historical dialectics that excludes nature.⁶ In this framework, the dialectics of nature is seen as a theory attempting to abstractly uncover the dialectical laws of the natural world, divorced from human consciousness. Subsequently, the dialectics of nature was regarded as a deviation from Marx’s dialectics, especially as expressed by Engels. Perry Anderson argues that “Western Marxism, in fact, was to commence with a decisive double rejection of Engels’s philosophical heritage—by Karl Korsch and Lukács in Marxism and Philosophy and History and Class Consciousness respectively. Thereafter, aversion to the later texts of Engels was to be common to virtually all currents within it, from [Jean-Paul] Sartre to [Lucio] Colletti, and [Louis] Althusser to [Herbert] Marcuse.”⁷ This rejection has in effect weakened the materialist foundation of Marxist dialectics and hindered the development of a scientific ecological critique.⁸

Overall, Western Marxist critiques of Engels’s dialectics of nature typically focus on two main points. The first concerns Engels’s view of nature. Critics argue that Marx approached nature through human practice, whereas Engels, influenced by G. W. F. Hegel’s panlogism, detached dialectics from human practice and applied it abstractly to nature. For instance, Alfred Schmidt claims that “Engels passed beyond Marx’s conception of the relation between nature and social history and fell back into a dogmatic metaphysics.” In his eyes, Engels’s dialectics of nature is “an attempt to extend the materialism of the French Enlightenment in its systematic form with the help of dialectics.”⁹ The second criticism concerns the application of dialectics. Marx’s dialectics, critics argue, concerns the interaction between subject and object within the social and historical process, as opposed to Engels’s focus on dialectics as three universal, objective laws. Norman Levine claims that “the form of Engels’s application of dialectics to nature was un-Marxian,” suggesting that Engels’s dialectical approach became “a metaphysical view of nature and a determinist view of social evolution.”¹⁰ Such critiques undermine the integrity of dialectical materialism, thus requiring a critical response.¹¹

The first question to address is whether Marx’s view of nature is a merely human-centered or practical conception. As early as his doctoral dissertation, Marx established a non-mechanical, non-deterministic materialist position through his study of Epicurean philosophy. As John Bellamy Foster has written, “For Marx, Epicurus represented the bringing of light or enlightenment, which was a rejection of the religious view of nature—a materialism which was also a form of naturalism and humanism.”¹² Marx’s later work recognized Ludwig Feuerbach’s anthropological materialism, which emphasized the sensual connection between nature and humanity. However, in order to overcome Feuerbach’s limitations, Marx introduced the concept of scientific praxis, understanding human material practice—that is, the metabolism between humanity and nature—as the basis for the development of the sensible world. Nevertheless, Marx emphasized that nature exists independently of humanity. A human being, as an objective being, “only creates or posits objects, because he is posited by objects—because at bottom he is nature.”¹³ Human practice and social development are grounded in nature; without it, humanity cannot engage in any form of creative activity. It needs to be recognized that nature in its pre-human form essentially no longer exists, and human labor continues to transform it. However, the “priority of external nature remains unassailed.”¹⁴ For Marx, nature and society are not separate. Praxis is the primary mode of metabolism in the real natural world, involving two components: humanity and the external nature it confronts. Human society is an emergent form of nature, and the “social reality of nature and human natural science, or the natural science of man, are identical terms.”¹⁵

The second question is whether Engels’s dialectics of nature is a completely abstract view detached from human practice. It is clear that Engels’s conception of dialectics in nature was grounded in natural science, which itself is a human practice. Marx considered science to be historically specific in relation to “particular modes of production,” and Engels noted that “from the very beginning the origin and development of the sciences has been determined by production.”¹⁶ More importantly, Engels’s dialectics of nature, which addresses the origins and evolution of the cosmos, Earth, life, and humanity, presents a dialectical view of nature that simultaneously transcends pure nature and encompasses the human social domain. Engels argued that modern natural science has demonstrated that “the whole of nature was shown as moving in eternal flux and cyclical course,” that humans belong to and exist within nature but can transcend it through labor, allowing them to transform natural objects to serve human purposes.¹⁷ Thus, the “thing-in-itself” became a thing for us.¹⁸ However, Engels also emphasized that although humans differentiate themselves from nature through labor, their practice must still participate in the movement of the entire natural world, governed by natural laws. Human activity is also influenced by social relations and, in order to live in harmony with nature, humanity must create a “conscious organisation of social production.”¹⁹ Thus, Engels’s view of nature, like Marx’s, advocates a dialectical understanding of the relationship between humans and nature. Engels not only grasped the dialectical motion of nature as a whole, but also recognized the crucial influence of human social practice on the natural world and the relationship between humans and nature.

The third question is whether Marx’s dialectics is confined to the realm of social history. A close reading of Marx’s works reveals that he also discussed dialectics in the context of nature and natural sciences.²⁰ In The Poverty of Philosophy, Marx critiques Pierre-Joseph Proudhon’s idealist dialectics, noting, “all that exists, all that lives on land and under water, exists and lives only by some kind of movement.”²¹ In an 1867 discussion with Engels on August Wilhelm von Hofmann’s chemical theory, Marx observed that the law of transformation of quantity into quality is “being attested by history and natural science alike.”²² More importantly, Marx’s Capital is not only a work of social critique that reveals the historical laws of self-negation inherent in the capitalist mode of production, but also an ecological critique addressing the rift and restoration of metabolism between humanity and nature under capitalism.²³ By drawing on the research of natural scientists such as Justus von Liebig, Marx recognized that human social production is inherently linked to and dependent on the universal metabolism of nature.²⁴ In the specific context of capitalist production, this metabolism suffers an “irreparable rift,” and one of the tasks of communism is to regulate the metabolism between humanity and nature in a way that is both humanistic and in accordance with natural laws.²⁵ As Foster has noted, “In Marx’s materialist dialectic, it is true, neither society (the subject/consciousness) nor nature (the object) is subsumed entirely within the other, thus avoiding the pitfalls of both absolute idealism and mechanistic science.”²⁶ Marx’s dialectic is not a dualism between human (society) and nature, but rather a framework that appropriately integrates both.

Finally, is Engels’s dialectics a set of universal laws independent of human practice? Regarding the importance of studying the dialectics of nature, Engels clearly stated: “Marx and I were pretty well the only people to rescue conscious dialectics from German idealist philosophy and apply it in the materialist conception of nature and history. But a knowledge of mathematics and natural science is essential to a conception of nature which is dialectical and at the same time materialist.”²⁷ Engels’s goal was not to apply dialectics to nature, but rather to use the study of nature to elucidate dialectics, thereby rescuing it from Hegel’s mysticism and turning Hegel’s dialectical method upside down through a scientific approach.²⁸ Engels distinguished between subjective and objective dialectics, aiming to show that, on the one hand, dialectics does not merely offer speculative laws of thought, but rather “real laws of development of nature,” grounded in the objective dialectical processes of nature itself.²⁹ On the other hand, dialectics is not only the law of universal interconnections, motion, and development in the world, but also a conscious understanding of these laws using the logic of concepts to reflect the dialectical movement of the world, thereby constituting “a form of theoretical thought which rests on acquaintance with the history of thought and its achievements.”³⁰

The three laws of dialectics, namely, “the law of the transformation of quantity into quality and vice versa; the law of the interpenetration of opposites; [and] the law of the negation of the negation,” are not positivist laws, but philosophical abstractions that capture the dialectical motion of the world.³¹ As the sciences advance, these laws will be updated and made more concrete.³² Moreover, dialectical thinking is shaped by human practice, as “it is precisely the alteration of nature by men, not solely nature as such, which is the most essential and immediate basis of human thought, and it is in the measure that man has learned to change nature that his intelligence has increased.”³³ Engels saw dialectics not as an abstract, detached system, but as a practical guiding framework for understanding and transforming the world.

Therefore, Engels’s Dialectics of Nature aligns with Marx’s materialist dialectics, offering a view of the dialectics of nature and society.³⁴ This dialectical approach views material processes as the foundation of all reality, examining things and their ideas from perspectives of complexity, interconnection, and change. Humans and their created societies are part of the larger natural whole, and human labor—through the metabolism with nature—serves as the mediator for the co-evolution of nature and society.

At the same time, the dialectics of nature also contain general methodological principles for theoretical innovation. The first step is to establish the materialist principle of starting from the practical reality rather than from abstract principles. Engels emphasized that “the principles are not the starting-point of the investigation, but its final result; they are not applied to nature and human history, but abstracted from them; it is not nature and the realm of man which conform to these principles, but the principles are only valid in so far as they are in conformity with nature and history. That is the only materialist conception of the matter.”³⁵ This means that only by focusing on the historical reality that unfolds can one form scientific dialectical thinking. Any change in the history of nature and society must be grounded in its material base and actual conditions. The next principle is to promote the integration of science and philosophy. It was through the application of research findings from the natural sciences that Engels was able to demonstrate the objectivity of dialectics and expound the modern materialist worldview.

Therefore, to continue the work of Marx and Engels, it is essential to maintain philosophical reflection on science and its history, constantly deepening our understanding of the laws governing the development of nature and society. Furthermore, it is crucial to adhere to the principle of historicity. Historicity is the fundamental principle of dialectics. Engels truly introduced historicity into the realm of nature, portraying “the view of macro-history” of the evolution of the natural world. He emphasized that the laws of dialectics are abstracted from the history of nature and human society.³⁶ Thus, he argued for the unity of materialism and dialectics and the unity of the materialist conception of nature and history, arguing that maintaining this unity is vital for the exploration of human freedom and the transcendence of alienation.

The Discourse of the Dialectics of Ecology

In order for materialist dialectics to evolve, it must not be limited to merely restating or synthesizing the ideas of Marx and Engels. Rather, it should be transformed into a theoretical approach and practical wisdom that can help us address the Anthropocene crisis. Given the significant changes in the natural and social conditions of the Anthropocene and the ongoing deepening of the human survival crisis, there is an urgent need to construct “the method of dialectical ecology, rooted in historical materialism and aimed at transcending the alienation of humanity and nature [which] provides a basis for uniting theory and practice in new, revolutionary ways.”³⁷ Although any attempt to define the dialectics of ecology inevitably involves a degree of one-sidedness, we can broadly outline it as the scientific study of the general laws of universal interconnections, contradictions, and historical change in social-ecological systems. The dialectics of ecology aids us in examining the relationship between human society and nature, deepening the dialectical-ecological critique of capitalism, and exploring pathways toward ecological civilization in the future.

Dialectical Thinking on Social-Ecological Interconnections

As “the science of universal interconnection,” the fundamental significance of dialectics lies in fully understanding various changes and interactions.³⁸ Correspondingly, the dialectics of ecology demands a dialectical perspective on the interrelationship between humans and nature in contemporary society, a perspective that is richly informed by modern natural sciences such as ecology. Engels’s classic assertion that “nature is the proof of dialectics” can be further articulated today as “ecology is the proof of dialectics.”³⁹ Ecology demonstrates that nature is a complex system of interrelated and interdependent parts. Humans are an integral part of nature, dependent on ecological systems, and, through cultural evolution, have become a key species that can shape not only other forms of life but also the entire earth’s ecological system. The dialectics of ecology, informed by ecological knowledge, grasps social-ecological connections at three levels.

The first is acknowledging the universal interconnection of nature. As Engels noted, “the whole of nature accessible to us forms a system, an interconnected totality of bodies.”⁴⁰ This implies that, from the fundamental physical particles and biological systems to the various levels of the material world in human society, each has its unique material properties while also being part of an interconnected systemic whole. Human beings, as integral members of the ecological system, must fully recognize and respect the universal interconnections and objective laws of nature in order to realize their own potential for sustainable human development. Recognizing the interconnectedness of nature also invites us to rethink the dialectical relationship between subjects and objects in nature. From the perspective of the ecological whole, “in nature nothing takes place in isolation. Everything affects and is affected by every other thing.”⁴¹ Therefore, there is no absolute distinction between subject and object in nature. Acknowledging nature as a “subject” with vitality and creativity is an important step in achieving a liberatory relationship between humanity and nature.

The second is understanding the metabolism between humans and nature in the labor process. Labor is “an eternal natural necessity which mediates the metabolism between man and nature, and therefore human life itself.”⁴² In the real world, nature is increasingly influenced by human labor. However, since humans are part of nature, the interaction between human labor and nature is in fact nature interacting with itself, a process of self-negation in which nature transcends its original material properties. In this process, nature gradually becomes both a product and reality of human activity, with nature and culture interacting and developing in synergy, a phenomenon referred to as the “humanization of nature.” At the same time, humanity’s suchness becomes increasingly enriched and expanded, giving rise to diverse cultural and civilizational forms, known as the “naturalization of humans.” This mutual “shaping” of humans and nature reflects the dialectical relationship between human passivity and activity. On the one hand, humans depend on nature for survival; on the other hand, humans possess unique activity relative to other species. As Marx noted, “an animal produces only itself, whilst man reproduces the whole of nature.”⁴³ Thus, as the only beings known to be self-conscious and capable of constructing objects on multiple scales, humans must recognize ecological sustainability as the premise of their activities and assume responsibility for safeguarding nature.

The third is grasping the historical laws of the unity of nature and society. When humans produce and reproduce life through labor, a twofold relation emerges: “on the one hand as a natural, on the other as a social relation.”⁴⁴ This twofold relation means that the interaction between humans and nature is the process of social metabolism. Acknowledging the social determination of human-nature relations does not negate the objective primacy of nature, nor does it dismiss the distinctness of natural history and human history. Instead, it emphasizes that the unity of humanity and nature has a practical and historical foundation. From a dynamic perspective, in the early stages of history, due to the limitations of human development, nature was perceived as an entirely alien and mysterious force opposing humanity. The purely animalistic consciousness that humans hold towards nature limits the development of social interactions. Human life existed within a social form characterized by “relationships of personal dependence.”⁴⁵ As social production and relations developed, society was able to claim universal possession of nature and the social connections it entailed. However, the “personal independence based upon dependence mediated by things” also led to the domination of private property, which engendered “a real contempt for and practical debasement of nature.”⁴⁶ The overcoming of this alienation between humanity and nature will usher in a new historical stage of human freedom and development.

The Dialectical Reflection on Social-Ecological Contradictions

As Marx noted, dialectics is inherently “critical and revolutionary.”⁴⁷ The dialectics of ecology not only provides a dialectical mode of thought for understanding social-ecological relations, but also serves as a practical principle that reveals social-ecological contradictions and calls for transformation of the existing ecological realities. Dialectical ecocriticism unfolds on three levels.

The first is to learn from history the consequences of excessive mastery of nature, which leads to the “revenge of nature.” Engels emphasized that “we, with flesh, blood and brain, belong to nature, and exist in its midst.”⁴⁸ In the process of mastering nature, “let us not, however, flatter ourselves overmuch on account of our human victories over nature. For each such victory nature takes its revenge on us.”⁴⁹ Engels reminds us that human domination over nature also depends on nature itself, as human production is a manifestation of human natural powers. However, as human domination of nature expands, we must learn to better understand the natural laws that govern the world, and recognize the immediate and long-term consequences of our interference with nature’s processes. Therefore, the “end of nature” caused by human mastery of nature should also be seen as a historical process in which nature is given a more humanistic appearance, ultimately achieving “the true resurrection of nature.”⁵⁰ However, the existing modes of production, having not yet freed themselves from the domination of external necessity, have only aimed at the immediate or most direct economic benefits of production. Therefore, to avoid the “revenge of nature,” a complete transformation of these modes of production and social systems is required.

The second is to analyze the link between domination over nature and domination over humans. Human survival and development throughout history have manifested as an increasingly reasonable organization of nature and society. However, “reason has always existed, but not always in a reasonable form.”⁵¹ Rationalization of the real world often means a dual strengthening of both the domination over nature and the domination over human beings themselves. Human domination over nature is premised on social domination, and domination over others can only be maintained through domination over nature. However, capitalist rationality is, in fact, irrational, because behind its so-called free conquest and free exchange lies an economic relationship of domination where capitalists exert control over both nature and laborers. This leads to the paradox that “at the same pace that mankind masters nature, man seems to become enslaved to other men or to his own infamy.”⁵²

The third is to reveal the inherent contradiction between capital and ecology. As Foster argues, “Today, reason demands that both exploitation and expropriation, and the related exterminist tendencies of our time, be overcome.”⁵³ The critique of capitalism’s unreason must expose its anti-ecological characteristics. In the formation and development of capitalist economies, the form of human appropriation of nature underwent a historical shift. The new bourgeoisie (arising in part from the land aristocracy) accumulated capital through the expropriation of collective land and other means of production, which allowed them to exploit both nature and labor.⁵⁴ This means that the labor process, as the metabolism between humanity and nature, was subjected to the complete domination of the logic of capital. Capitalist production transforms unpaid natural forces into its own productive forces, creating a great rift in the Earth’s metabolism. The most concentrated manifestation of the intrinsic contradiction between capital and ecology is the conflict between the infinite pursuit of value accumulation by capital and the finite nature of the earth’s ecology. Capital, as value that maintains and valorizes itself, fundamentally reflects exploitative social relations of production.⁵⁵ In order to maximize valorization, capital accumulation must maintain an infinite expansion, destroying all limitations that hinder the enlargement of production and the boundaries of ecological sustainability. Foster points out: “there is an inherent conflict between the maintenance of ecosystems and the biosphere and the kind of rapid, unbounded economic growth that capitalism represents.”⁵⁶ At the same time, due to its inherent drive for absolute accumulation, capital inevitably promotes the globalization of production. Under the impetus of capital accumulation, the resource extraction and pollution shifting by core countries toward peripheral nations, a form of ecological imperialism, leads to a global shift and expansion of the rift in the metabolism of nature. It is within the production and reproduction of capitalism that the contradiction between capital and ecology is continuously amplified, manifesting as a trend of global expansion.

The Dialectical Strategy of Social-Ecological Revolution

The dialectics of ecology not only encompasses the negation of the existing world, but also pursues the realization of a higher stage of civilization, a process that is intertwined with specific practical tasks during each historical transformation. Thus, it is described as the doctrine of historical development, all-embracing and full of contradictions.⁵⁷ In this regard, the dialectics of ecology aims to achieve a revolutionary reconciliation between humanity and nature, advocating for a social-ecological revolution that opposes capitalism.

The primary task of the social-ecological revolution is to change the exploitative system of capitalism. Engels emphasized that for humanity to mature and become independent, social relations must be reasonable. “Only conscious organisation of social production, in which production and distribution are carried on in a planned way, can lift mankind above the rest of the animal world as regards the social aspect, in the same way that production in general has done this for mankind in the specifically biological aspect.”⁵⁸ History shows that capitalism, due to its mindless economic expansion, resource waste, conspicuous consumption, and unreasonable logic of profit at all costs, is pushing the earth toward the brink of destruction. Therefore, only by breaking the rule of capital can the modern ecological crisis be fundamentally resolved.

The second key task of the social-ecological revolution is the reconstruction of the socioeconomic base, promoting an overall social and ecological transformation. On the one hand, the reconstruction of the economic base needs to follow basic ecological socialist principles. This includes moving away from an obsession with purely quantitative economic growth and instead pursuing a qualitative transformation of development, establishing collective and socialized forms of production, and implementing democratic economic planning and social solidarity. On the other hand, economic transformation must be combined with a structural transformation of society as a whole. The key is to discover and create alternative economic forms, political rules, and social expectations, making a just, unified, and sustainable mode of production and life possible, universal, and systematic. This process will be one of progress and setbacks, full of contradictions and continuous learning.⁵⁹

The third task of the social-ecological revolution is the identification of the subjects of change. Since the social-ecological revolution challenges the power structure centered on capitalist domination, class action has a strategic unifying function that brings together struggles from different dimensions.⁶⁰ When the capitalization and financialization of nature become new modes of capital accumulation, defending the environmental conditions for human survival also becomes a critical aspect of class struggle, giving rise to the “environmental proletariat,” or “a broad, unified coalition of working humanity in revolt against ecological degradation and social exploitation.”⁶¹ Undoubtedly, the growth of the environmental proletariat, along with the ongoing global green left movement, is a long-term historical process. Central to this process is the need to intertwine resistance to economic and environmental exploitation, social revolution, and ecological revolution in everyday struggles, linking concrete experiences of conflict with alternative transformative visions aimed at ecological socialism.

Dialectics of Ecological Civilization

Marx and Engels foresaw the “negation of the negation” in the development of human civilization, a process leading to “the reconciliation of mankind with nature and with itself,” or “the genuine resolution of the conflict between man and nature and between man and man.”⁶² This signifies the transformation from the extinctionism of capitalism to the ecological civilization of socialism.

The concept of “ecological civilization” is rooted in a dialectical understanding of both “ecology” and “civilization.” On the one hand, “civilization” is generally understood in contrast to “barbarity” or “savagery,” implying that civilization involves humanity’s transcendence of its primitive, barbaric state, including the transformation of nature and its laws that previously imposed absolute constraints on human activity. This leads to a view of civilization that appears somewhat detached from nature, implying a humanist value orientation. However, as Arran Gare notes, civilization is opposed not only to barbarity but also to “decadence.”⁶³ That is to say, the prosperity of civilization depends not only on how humanity alters or transcends external conditions to create its own history, but also on how it avoids destroying the world of life through a longing for truth, goodness, and beauty, as well as a sense of responsibility for the future. Therefore, true civilization must be a state of peaceful coexistence and harmony between humanity and nature. On the other hand, when the concept “ecological” is applied to “civilization,” it should not manifest as extreme ecocentrism. “Civilisation is a matter of practice, a social quality,” and ecological sustainability is an achievement of human social development rather than a retreat from human progress.⁶⁴ Therefore, the greatest difference between ecological civilization and other forms of civilization lies in its emphasis on the harmonious coexistence and collaborative development of human society and nature as a conscious consideration and fundamental criterion of civilizational progress. The prerequisite for achieving this is overcoming the alienation inherent in capitalism.⁶⁵

Although the concept of ecological civilization can be traced to various cultural traditions, its contemporary significance is primarily a product of the development of ecological Marxism, particularly in socialist countries such as China.⁶⁶ As early as the 1980s, Chinese scholars began to argue that environmental protection was inherent to the socialist cause.⁶⁷ In 1983, Chinese litterateur Zhao Xinshan explicitly used the term “ecological civilization” in his essay “Ecology and Literary Arts,” asserting that “only when humanity and nature are in a state of peaceful coexistence can enduring happiness for humanity be possible. Without ecological civilization, material and spiritual civilization will not be perfect.”⁶⁸ Shortly thereafter, Chinese agronomist Ye Qianji and economist Liu Sihua introduced the concept of ecological civilization from the perspectives of meeting ecological needs and developing an ecological economy.⁶⁹ More significantly, the Chinese government began incorporating environmental protection and governance into the broader socialist construction and reform agenda in the latter half of the twentieth century. Since 2007, “eco-civilizational progress” has served as the overarching ideological and policy framework for environmental protection, governance, and green development in China. China’s progress in ecological civilization reflects the dialectics of ecology, as it demonstrates a socialist state’s effort to achieve the dialectical unity of environmental protection and civilizational development, as well as the organic integration of social justice and ecological sustainability. The ultimate goal is to scientifically solve environmental problems while historically replacing the barbaric rule of capitalism.⁷⁰ This is undoubtedly a long-term process of exploration and struggle.

The dialectics of ecological civilization can be elucidated in three aspects following the discourse of dialectics of ecology. First, the dialectical relationship between humanity and nature can be understood through the concept of the “life community.” This perspective views the metabolism in nature as the regular movement of the “life community made up of mountains, waters, forests, fields, lakes, and grass,” asserting that the metabolism between humanity and nature is part of the process of the formation and development of the “human-nature life community.” The entire social metabolism occurs within the broader contexts of the “community with a shared future” and the “earth life community.” This view, which emphasizes universal interconnections, dynamic interaction, and mutual evolution, helps establish an ecological materialist conception of nature, grounded in the relationship between humanity and nature—human society and all life on Earth.

Second, the concept of “lucid waters and lush mountains are invaluable assets” is used to address social ecological contradictions. Chinese leadership has stated: “We want green waters and green mountains, but we also want gold mountains and silver mountains. It is better to have green waters and green mountains than gold mountains and silver mountains—and green waters and the green mountains are gold mountains and silver mountains. We will never seek economic growth at the expense of the environment.”⁷¹ This statement acknowledges, on the one hand, the multifaceted value of nature, asserting that a high-quality ecological environment can meet the people’s needs for a better life and foster widespread social well-being. On the other hand, it emphasizes that only by protecting nature can sustainable economic and social development be achieved, and the ecological and socioeconomic benefits of nature be fully realized. This, in turn, expresses the principles of ecological priority and green development. The concept of “lucid waters and lush mountains are as valuable as mountains of gold and silver” embodies an ecological-materialist view of history. It firmly holds that “the rise or fall of a society is dependent on its relationship with nature,” and that “eco-environmental protection…means preserving and developing productive forces.” Moreover, it asserts that “a good environment is part of the public’s wellbeing; green mountains and blue skies bring delight and happiness to the people.”⁷²

Third, by promoting “modernization through the harmonious coexistence of humanity and nature,” China aims to drive the green transformation of socialism. This concept originates from the new vision of the Communist Party of China (CPC) for advancing Chinese modernization. In 2022, the Twentieth National Congress of the CPC defined five key characteristics of Chinese modernization, including: addressing the reality of a huge population, common prosperity for all, material and cultural-ethical advancement, harmony between humanity and nature, and peaceful development.⁷³ These five characteristics are clearly not fully realized facts; rather, they need to be gradually clarified through historical exploration. Modernization in harmony with nature is part of the overall concept of Chinese modernization, which means that it requires: (1) prioritizing the coordination of the population with the resources and carrying capacity of the environment; (2) ensuring public ownership of natural resources and social sharing of ecological welfare in the process of advancing common prosperity; (3) producing ecological products and cultivating ecological culture in the context of pursuing coordination between material and cultural-ethical advancement; (4) opposing any form of ecological imperialism and extractivism; and (5) promoting the creation of a clean and beautiful world while adhering to the path of peaceful development.

Faced with such a complex green transformation task, it is necessary to apply systematic reform and innovative thinking to deepen the understanding of the regularity of eco-civilizational progress. To this end, in July 2023, General Secretary of the CPC Central Committee Xi Jinping outlined several major relationships that need to be addressed in the promotion of ecological civilization, including: (1) the relationship between high-quality socioeconomic development and high-level environmental protection; (2) the relationship between key environmental issues and coordinated governance; (3) the relationship between natural restoration and human-driven restoration of ecosystems; (4) the relationship between the external constraints provided by the rule of law and the endogenous power driven by voluntary actions from the masses; and (5) the relationship between China’s firm commitment to its “dual carbon” goals (peaking carbon dioxide emissions by 2030, and achieving carbon neutrality by 2060) and the nation’s independent actions.⁷⁴ In response to the deployment outlined at the National Conference on Ecological and Environmental Protection, the Chinese government issued opinions on comprehensively promoting the construction of a beautiful China and accelerating the all-round green transformation of economic and social development within a year. The documents cover various areas of eco-civilizational progress, such as industrial infrastructure, energy and transportation, production and consumption, and urban and rural development. They also respond to key issues, including green economic development, environmental pollution prevention and control, ecosystem protection, and safety risk management. Furthermore, the documents involve complex dynamics related to the construction of pilot demonstration platforms, policy and institutional improvement, technological innovation, and multi-stakeholder participation and international cooperation.

As with any major transformation, it will not be achieved overnight. Although significant progress has been made in China’s ecological civilization, there remain a series of challenges. The greatest of these challenges is how to continue advancing ecological civilization under the increasingly deteriorating international situation and growing domestic development pressures, and how to translate the concept and policies of eco-civilizational progress into specific social practices. In this regard, it is essential to further apply dialectical methodology in the development of ecological civilization in China.

First, it is necessary to reconcile the relationship between utilizing and restraining capital. Compared to most countries and regions in the world, contemporary China, having established a basic socialist system, has more favorable social conditions for promoting ecological civilization. One important aspect of this is the continuous “greening” of the political ideology and governance strategies of the CPC. For example, the Twentieth National Congress emphasized that Chinese modernization is socialist modernization and that “respecting, adapting to, and protecting nature is essential for building China into a modern socialist country in all respects.”⁷⁵ However, due to the social conditions of the primary stage of socialism and the influence of the capitalist-dominated world system, China’s eco-civilizational progress cannot simply reject economic policy tools based on market mechanisms and capital functions. These internationally mainstream green development measures, while seemingly universally effective if developed and widely applied, may impact and erode socialist institutions and cultural concepts. For this reason, since 2020, the CPC and the government have repeatedly emphasized that we must understand the nature of capital and how it works, setting up “traffic lights” for capital to make sure that no capital of any type can be allowed to run out of control.⁷⁶ Therefore, China’s progress toward ecological civilization must not only break free from traditional underdeveloped socialism but also guard against the “green capitalism” trap. This means fully utilizing market mechanisms, fiscal and financial policies, and capital management methods to optimize the allocation of natural resources and build a green modern economic system. It also requires accelerating the improvement of the socialist institutional system, exploring effective forms of public ownership, and continually enhancing the ability to engage with capital and control it, thereby advancing the historical trend of “transcending capital through itself.”⁷⁷

Second, it is necessary to reconcile the relationship between party leadership and socially conscious action. It cannot be denied that eco-civilization progress in China is carried out under the leadership of the CPC. The basic approach is to strengthen scientific organization to stimulate endogenous motivation, creating a “social synergy” for eco-civilizational progress. This means that, while insisting on the Party’s leadership in all efforts to build an ecological civilization, it is equally important to transform the initiative to build a beautiful China into conscious action by all.⁷⁸ The reasonableness of this “top-down” practical framework lies in the fact that a Marxist party, which upholds the principle of putting the people first, is capable of better coordinating the complex contradictions in the modernization process of a late-developing country. It plays the role of a system planner and organized promoter of ecological civilization, while the broad masses of the people serve as the fundamental source of motivation in specific practices. Thus, as a collective undertaking, China’s eco-civilizational progress requires not only the full utilization of the Party’s leadership advantages in scientific planning, strategic innovation, and theoretical advocacy, but also the enhancement of the willingness and capacity for comprehensive participation and democratic oversight among various societal stakeholders, including enterprises, social organizations, and the general public. This is not only a question of how to expand effectively political mobilization and strengthen public ecological education, but also how to improve socialist ecological democracy through institutional design and policy innovation, thereby laying the social foundation for ecological civilization.

Third, it is necessary to reconcile the relationship between safeguarding national development rights and protecting the earth’s ecological security. Objectively, modern environmental protection efforts have mainly emerged from reflections and criticisms of traditional modernization. This has enabled the countries and regions that were first to develop to initiate the green transformation process earlier, while many developing countries are often trapped in the dilemma of whether to abandon economic development or damage the earth’s ecology. Even more problematically, some developed Western countries, driven by their economic and political hegemony and deeply ingrained Western-centric cultural biases, tend to measure the modernization level and ecological efforts of other countries by their own standards. They even use environmental protection as a pretext to maintain their existing competitive advantages and monopolistic rights, thereby suppressing the legitimate development rights of developing countries. For these reasons, environmental justice principles, such as “Common but Differentiated Responsibilities and Respective Capabilities,” are often difficult to implement in international environmental governance and cooperation.

As the largest developing country, China faces particularly prominent international pressure regarding economic development and environmental protection. Therefore, the construction of ecological civilization must, on the one hand, protect China’s development and environmental rights, addressing issues of survival and progress through approaches that foster harmony between humanity and nature. On the other hand, it must be rooted in the shared interests of humanity. While maintaining its independence, China must also engage in international environmental governance and cooperation with an open and proactive mindset, working to foster an inclusive international order that enables green and sustainable development for all nations. Therefore, the construction of ecological civilization is not only a matter for China but also a necessary choice for achieving global sustainable development. It is an essential part of the socialist struggle for substantive equality and ecological harmony.

Notes

1. ↩ Howard L. Parsons, Marx and Engels on Ecology (Westport: Greenwood Press, 1977), 29.
2. ↩ Ian Angus, Facing the Anthropocene: Fossil Capitalism and the Crisis of the Earth System (New York: Monthly Review Press, 2016).
3. ↩ Clive Hamilton and Jacques Grinevald, “Was the Anthropocene Anticipated?,” Anthropocene Review 2, no. 1 (April 2015): 59–72; John Bellamy Foster, Brett Clark, and Richard York, The Ecological Rift: Capitalism’s War on the Earth (New York: Monthly Review Press, 2010).
4. ↩ J. R. McNeill and Peter Engelke, The Great Acceleration: An Environmental History of the Anthropocene since 1945 (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 2014); Will Steffen, Angelina Sanderson, Peter Tyson et al., Global Change and the Earth System: A Planet under Pressure (Berlin: Springer, 2004), 294.
5. ↩ John Bellamy Foster, Capitalism in the Anthropocene: Ecological Ruin or Ecological Revolution (New York: Monthly Review Press, 2022).
6. ↩ Lukács remarked: “The misunderstandings that arise from Engels’ account of dialectics can in the main be put down to the fact that Engels—following Hegel’s mistaken lead—extended the method to apply also to nature. However, the crucial determinants of dialectics—the interaction of subject and object, the unity of theory and practice, the historical changes in the reality underlying the categories as the root cause of changes in thought, etc.—are absent from our knowledge of nature.” See Georg Lukács, History and Class Consciousness: Studies in Marxist Dialectics (Cambridge, Massachusetts: MIT Press, 1971), 24.
7. ↩ Perry Anderson, Considerations on Western Marxism (London: Verso, 1976), 60.
8. ↩ John Bellamy Foster, The Dialectics of Ecology: Socialism and Nature (New York: Monthly Review Press, 2024), 12–41.
9. ↩ Alfred Schmidt, The Concept of Nature in Marx (London: Verso, 2014), 51, 53.
10. ↩ Norman Levine, Dialogue Within the Dialectic (London: George Allen and Unwin Ltd., 1984), 8; Norman Levine, Divergent Paths: Hegel in Marxism and Engelsism (Lanham, Maryland: Lexington Books, 2006), 90–91.
11. ↩ Zhao Jiangfei, Research on Engels’s Dialectics of Nature (Shanghai: Shanghai Academy of Social Science Press, 2024), 19–75.
12. ↩ John Bellamy Foster, Marx’s Ecology: Materialism and Nature (New York: Monthly Review Press, 2000), 59.
13. ↩ Karl Marx and Frederick Engels, Collected Works (New York: International Publishers, 1975), vol. 3, 336.
14. ↩ Marx and Engels, Collected Works, vol. 5, 40.
15. ↩ Marx and Engels, Collected Works, vol. 3, 304.
16. ↩ Marx and Engels, Collected Works, vol. 3, 297; Marx and Engels, Collected Works, vol. 25, 465.
17. ↩ Marx and Engels, Collected Works, vol. 25, 327.
18. ↩ Marx and Engels, Collected Works, vol. 26, 367–68.
19. ↩ Marx and Engels, Collected Works, vol. 25, 331.
20. ↩ Zhang Yunfei, “On Marx’s Thought Experiment of ‘Dialectics of Nature,’” Journal of Renmin University of China 32, no. 5 (September 2018): 111–21.
21. ↩ Marx and Engels, Collected Works, vol. 6, 163.
22. ↩ Marx and Engels, Collected Works, vol. 42, 385.
23. ↩ Kohei Saito, Karl Marx’s Ecosocialism: Capitalism, Nature, and the Unfinished Critique of Political Economy (New York: Monthly Review Press, 2017).
24. ↩ Marx and Engels, Collected Works, vol. 30, 63.
25. ↩ Karl Marx, Capital (London: Penguin, 1976), vol. 3, 949.
26. ↩ John Bellamy Foster, “Marx and the Rift in the Universal Metabolism of Nature,” Monthly Review 65, no. 7 (December 2013): 1–19.
27. ↩ Marx and Engels, Collected Works, vol. 25, 11.
28. ↩ Sun Zhengyu, Research on Marxist Dialectics (Beijing: Beijing Normal University Press, 2017), 85–112; Wang Qingfeng, The Idea of Dialectics (Changchun: Jining University Press, 2020), 121–37.
29. ↩ Marx and Engels, Collected Works, vol. 25, 357.
30. ↩ Marx and Engels, Collected Works, vol. 25, 491.
31. ↩ Marx and Engels, Collected Works, vol. 25, 356.
32. ↩ J. D. Bernal, Engels and Science (London: Labour Monthly Pamphlets, 1936); Richard Levins and Richard Lewontin, The Dialectical Biologist (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1985); John Bellamy Foster, The Return of Nature: Socialism and Ecology (New York: Monthly Review Press, 2020); John Bellamy Foster, “Engels’s Dialectics of Nature in the Anthropocene,” Monthly Review 72, no. 6 (November 2020): 1–17.
33. ↩ Marx and Engels, Collected Works, vol. 25, 511.
34. ↩ John Bellamy Foster, “The Return of the Dialectics of Nature: The Struggle for Freedom as Necessity,” Monthly Review 74, no. 7 (December 2022): 1–20.
35. ↩ Marx and Engels, Collected Works, vol. 25, 34.
36. ↩ Marx and Engels, Collected Works, vol. 25, 356.
37. ↩ Foster, The Dialectics of Ecology, 14.
38. ↩ Marx and Engels, Collected Works, vol. 25, 313.
39. ↩ Marx and Engels, Collected Works, vol. 25, 23; Foster, The Return of Nature, 251.
40. ↩ Marx and Engels, Collected Works, vol. 25, 363.
41. ↩ Marx and Engels, Collected Works, vol. 25, 459.
42. ↩ Marx, Capital, vol. 1, 133.
43. ↩ Marx and Engels, Collected Works, vol. 3, 276.
44. ↩ Marx and Engels, Collected Works, vol. 5, 43.
45. ↩ Marx and Engels, Collected Works, vol. 28, 95.
46. ↩ Marx and Engels, Collected Works, vol. 28, 95; Marx and Engels, Collected Works, vol. 3, 172.
47. ↩ Marx, Capital, vol. 1, 103.
48. ↩ Marx and Engels, Collected Works, vol. 25, 461.
49. ↩ Marx and Engels, Collected Works, vol. 25, 460–61.
50. ↩ Marx and Engels, Collected Works, vol. 3, 298.
51. ↩ Marx and Engels, Collected Works, vol. 3, 143.
52. ↩ Marx and Engels, Collected Works, vol. 14, 655.
53. ↩ John Bellamy Foster, “The New Irrationalism,” Monthly Review 74, no. 9 (February 2023): 1–24.
54. ↩ Ian Angus, The War Against the Commons: Dispossession and Resistance in the Making of Capitalism (New York: Monthly Review Press, 2023).
55. ↩ Marx and Engels, Collected Works, vol. 30, 17.
56. ↩ John Bellamy Foster, Ecology Against Capitalism (New York: Monthly Review Press, 2002), 37.
57. ↩ V. I. Lenin, Collected Works, vol. 17, 39.
58. ↩ Marx and Engels, Collected Works, vol. 25, 331.
59. ↩ Ulrich Brand and Markus Wissen, The Limits to Capitalist Nature: Theorizing and Overcoming the Imperial Mode of Living (London: Rowman & Littlefield International Ltd., 2018), 71–84.
60. ↩ Victor Wallis, Red-Green Revolution: The Politics and Technology of Ecosocialism (Toronto: Political Animal Press, 2018), 160–84.
61. ↩ Foster, The Dialectics of Ecology, 104–57; John Bellamy Foster and Brett Clark, The Robbery of Nature (New York: Monthly Review Press, 2020), 102.
62. ↩ Marx and Engels, Collected Works, vol. 3, 424, 296.
63. ↩ Arran Gare, “Barbarity, Civilization and Decadence: Meeting the Challenge of Creating an Ecological Civilization,” Chromatikon 5 (2009): 167–89.
64. ↩ Marx and Engels, Collected Works, vol. 3, 478.
65. ↩ Fred Magdoff, “Ecological Civilization,” Monthly Review 62, no. 8 (January 2011): 1–25; Fred Magdoff, “Harmony and Ecological Civilization: Beyond the Capitalist Alienation of Nature,” Monthly Review 61, no. 2 (June 2012): 1–9.
66. ↩ Qingzhi Huan, “Socialist Eco-Civilization and Social-Ecological Transformation,” Capitalism Nature Socialism 27, no. 2 (June 2016): 51–63; John Bellamy Foster, “Some Preliminary Theses on the Concept of Eco-Civilization,” Monthly Review 76, no. 8 (January 2025): 40–43.
67. ↩ He Mingzhi, “Environmental Protection for the People Is a Key Aspect of the Socialist Purpose of Production,” Inquiry into Economic Issues, no. 2 (1980): 69–71; He Shuqin, “A Brief Discussion of the Dialectical Relationship Between the Development of Production and Environmental Protection,” Academic Journal of Zhongzhou, no. 3 (1981): 66–70.
68. ↩ Zhao Xinshan, “Ecology and Literary Arts,” Dushu, no. 4 (1983): 110–11.
69. ↩ Chen Yiwen, “Marxist Ecology in China: From Marx’s Ecology to Socialist Eco-Civilization Theory,” Monthly Review 76, no. 5 (October 2023): 32–46.
70. ↩ Qingzhi Huan, Series on Socialist Eco-civilization Two (Beijing: China Forestry Publishing House, 2024).
71. ↩ Xi Jinping quoted in China Media Project, “Green Waters and Green Mountains,” April 16, 2021.
72. ↩ Xi Jinping, The Governance of China (Beijing: Foreign Languages Press, 2014), vol. 3, 435, 419, 420.
73. ↩ Xi Jinping, Selected Readings from the Works of Xi Jinping, vol. 1 (Beijing: Foreign Language Press, 2024), 22–23.
74. ↩ “Xi Stresses Building Beautiful China, Advancing Modernization Featuring Harmony between Humanity and Nature,” China Daily, July 19, 2023.
75. ↩ Xi, Selected Readings, vol. 1, 51.
76. ↩ Xi, The Governance of China, vol. 4, 171, 199, 243–44, 349.
77. ↩ Marx and Engels, Collected Works, vol. 28, 337.
78. ↩ Xi, The Governance of China, vol. 4, 418, 426.