Ecological materialism, of which ecological Marxism is the most developed version, is often seen as having its origins almost entirely within Western thought. But if that is so, how do we explain the fact that ecological Marxism has been embraced as readily (or indeed more readily) in the East as in the West, leaping over cultural, historical, and linguistic barriers? The answer is that there is a much more complex dialectical relation between East and West in relation to materialist dialectics and critical ecology than has been generally supposed, one that stretches back over millennia.

Materialist and dialectical conceptions of nature and history do not start with Karl Marx. The roots of an “organic naturalism” and “scientific humanism,” according to the great Marxist scientist and Sinologist, Joseph Needham (Citation1954, Citation1956, Citation1971), author of Science and Civilization in China, can be traced to the sixth to third centuries BCE both in ancient Greece, beginning with the pre-Socratics and extending to the Hellenistic philosophers, and in ancient China, with the emergence of Daoist and Confucian philosophers during the Warring States Period of the Zhou Dynasty (Needham Citation1969, 27, 97; Bala Citation2020, 62–63).

In Within the Four Seas: The Dialogue of East and West in 1969, Needham noted the absolute alacrity with which “dialectical materialism” was taken up in China during the Chinese Revolution and how this was treated as a great mystery in the West. Nevertheless, the mystery, he contended, did not extend to the East itself. He wrote: “I can almost imagine Chinese scholars” confronted with Marxian materialist dialectics, “saying to themselves ‘How astonishing: this is very like our own philosophia perennis integrated with modern science at last come home to us’” (Needham Citation1969, 66–68; emphasis original). The Marxian materialist dialectic with its deep-seated ecological critique rooted in ancient Epicurean materialism was so closely akin, in Needham’s view, to Chinese Daoist and Confucian philosophies as to create a strong acceptance of Marxian philosophical views in China, particularly since China’s own perennial philosophy was in this roundabout way integrated with modern science. If Daoism was a naturalist philosophy, Confucianism was associated, Needham wrote, with “a passion for social justice” (Needham Citation1969, 93).

The Needham convergence thesis—or simply Needham thesis—as I am calling it here, was thus that Marxist materialist dialectics had a special affinity for Chinese organic naturalism as represented especially by Daoism, which was like the ancient Epicureanism that lay at the foundations of Marx’s own materialist conception of nature. Like other Marxist scientists and cultural figures associated with what has been called the “second foundation of Marxism,” in Britain in the mid-twentieth century, Needham saw Epicureanism as providing many of the initial theoretical principles on which Marxism as a critical-materialist philosophy was based.Footnote2 It was these common roots of organic materialism in East and West, but which in the case of Marxism was integrated with modern science, that explained dialectical materialism’s profound impact in China.

The Needham thesis, as presented here, can also throw light on the spurious proposition, recently put forward by cultural theorist Jeremy Lent, author of The Patterning Instinct, that the Chinese conception of ecological civilization is derived entirely from China’s own traditional philosophy, rather than Marxism (Lent Citation2018; Foster Citation2022). Lent’s argument fails to acknowledge that the concept of ecological civilization was first introduced by Marxist environmental thinkers in the Soviet Union in its closing decades and immediately adopted by Chinese thinkers where it was to have a larger impact (Foster Citation2022; Ursula Citation1983). For environmental philosophers and scientists in post-revolutionary societies, familiar with dialectical materialism, it was natural to see the answer to ecological problems as demanding a new ecological civilization constituting a necessary evolutionary development of socialism itself. This was further propelled in China by the fact, according to Needham, that China had avoided the characteristic disassociation in the realm of thought that had dominated in the West through the identical opposites of abstract idealism/theology and mechanistic materialism. Marxism was itself thus more readily appropriated in China since embedded within dialectical materialism was a form of organic naturalism, resembling the materialist philosophical roots still retained in traditional Chinese philosophy.

The Needham thesis may seem obscure at first, since relying on an Epicurean Marxist interpretation of the origins of historical materialism, and at the same time connecting this to a radical interpretation of Chinese science and civilization over the millennia that is unfamiliar, and which may appear in Western eyes to be exaggerated. This disconnect, I believe, has to do with the well-known alienation of the Western Marxist tradition from both science and materialism, coupled with a deep Eurocentrism that has affected Marxism in the West, related to its systematic downplaying of imperialism.Footnote4 All of this suggests that Needham thesis, which sees dialectical materialism as having roots in materialist and ecological ideas that arose separately with quite different histories in East and West, leading to a special affinity for Marxism in China, is well worth discussing in our time of planetary crisis, given the need for the reunification of humanity on more eco-revolutionary terms. However, addressing the ancient philosophies underlying ecological materialism in both East and West, and the relation of this to the development of ecological Marxism today requires that we strive to overcome the Eurocentric barriers that stand in the way of the emergence of the ecology of praxis on a planetary scale.

Editor: Zhong Yao、Deng Panyi

From: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/21598282.2023.2207/（2023-6-23）