CHAPTER 22 An Ecologically Friendly Civilization is an Essential Goal of Chinese Socialism

The 17th CCP National Congress solemnly raised the great banner of social- ism with Chinese characteristics and distinctly laid out the strategic task of constructing ecological civilization in front of the entire party and nation. So, what kind of relationship at bottom does socialism with Chinese character- istics share with the construction of ecological civilization? Did the 17th CCP National Congress accidentally write this new concept of ecological civiliza- tion into the congressional political report while formulating socialism with Chinese characteristics? We think that if you want to truly clarify the great significance of contemporary China’s construction of ecological civilization, you must first clarify its intrinsic relationship to socialism with Chinese char- acteristics, which is to say, you must first clearly understand that constructing ecological civilization expresses the essence of socialism with Chinese charac- teristics. And, an important path to understanding the intrinsic link between building ecological civilization and socialism with Chinese characteristics is doing so through the medium of relevant theories from ecological Marxism. While ecological Marxists argue that the capitalist mode of production is the main source of the ecological crisis, they also repeatedly state that only the socialist mode of production can possibly allow human beings to get out of the ecological crisis. Inspired by the ecological Marxist account of the necessary connection between socialism and ecological civilization, we explain below why building ecological civilization expresses the essence of socialism with Chinese characteristics.

Creating Environmental Standards for Chinese Socialism

When people talk about socialism with Chinese characteristics, they often only focus on the Chinese characteristics part, but in fact Chinese characteristics is said here in the sense of a distinguishing particularity, while socialism is said here in the sense of a general commonality, and the distinguishing particular- ity of Chinese characteristics cannot be separated from the common essence of socialism. Although talking about socialism in abstraction from the Chinese characteristics part runs the risk of repeating the mistake of viewing socialism

© koninklijke brill nv, leiden, ���7 | doi ��.��63/9789004356009_027 546 CHAPTER 22 as an unchanging model and dogmatic textbook theory, talking about the Chinese characteristics part in abstraction from socialism runs the risk of com- mitting the mistake of turning socialism with Chinese characteristics into cap- italism with Chinese characteristics. When discussing socialism with Chinese characteristics, the party’s 17th congress appropriately insisted that socialism with Chinese characteristics must adhere to the basic principles of scientific socialism. Now that socialism with Chinese characteristics adheres to the basic principles of scientific socialism, the essential characteristics and core values of socialism that Marxism reveals are also precisely the essential characteris- tics and core values of socialism with Chinese characteristics. And, we must place the construction of ecological civilization at the core of the construction of socialism to be precisely in accordance with the essential characteristics and core values of socialism which Marxism reveals. We did not realize this before, which only shows that our understanding of the essential character- istics and core values of socialism is very superficial, but now that we clearly write ecological civilization onto the great banner of socialism with Chinese characteristics, this shows that we have had a new breakthrough in raising our understanding of the essential characteristics and core values of socialism to an entirely new level. Humankind already had the capitalist system by Marx’s time. Why did Marx still demand people to surpass this system and establish the socialist system? Obviously in Marx’s view, the latter and the former are two completely dif- ferent systems, and the latter is far superior to the former. This superiority is mainly reflected in the prospect that the latter will lead human beings to a more human way of life. Some people think of Marxism as a philosophy which insists that the main driving force of the human being is material benefit and the desire to continuously increase one’s own material welfare and make ma- terial life increasingly more comfortable. Based on this understanding, they also assert that Marxism critiques and overthrows capitalism solely in order to economically improve the working class, and Marxism wants to abolish private property solely in order to enable the workers to obtain the things that the capitalists now possess. This is also to say, Marxism’s starting point in replac- ing the capitalist system with socialism is: that way of life under the capitalist system where human beings belong to things cannot be fully achieved, and that another social system, namely the socialist system, must be established to fully achieve that way of life. Actually, this way of understanding the goal of Marxism is superficial, because the goal of Marxism is precisely is to make human beings break the chains of economic determinism, make human be- ings fully recover their own humanity, and make human beings live in uni- fied, harmonious relationships with their partners and the natural world; this