224 Communities and Social Capital
find themselves, that is, their material conditions in relation to the materiality of
human existence.
In order to explore materialist ecofeminism as a perspective, it is necessary to
bring together the green perspective on human–nature relations and a materialist
feminist perspective on sex/gender relations. In this sense materialist ecofeminism
is more sympathetic to deep ecology than other radical ecological perspectives such
as social ecology or ecosocialism (Pepper, 1993). Getting the relations between
humans right will not resolve the ecological imbalance because the source of much
of the conflict between humans is the unacknowledged problem of immanence.
Although both Bookchin and Marx explored the dialectical nature of the relation-
ship between hu(man)ity and the natural world, other aspects of their work have
prioritized hu(man)ity at the expense of non-human nature. Bookchin (1995) has
called for the ‘re-enchanting’ of hu(man)ity as the focus of social and natural
agency, and the later Marx and Marxism have focused upon the social construction
of nature. More recently, however, Marx’s green credentials have been reclaimed or
asserted (Benton, 1996). From the following it is clear that Marx saw hu(man)ity
as both embodied and embedded within its natural ‘body’:
Species-life, both for man and for animals, consists physically in the fact that man, like
animals lives from inorganic nature... Man lives from nature, i.e. nature is his body, and
he must maintain a continuing dialogue with it if he is not to die ... for man is part of
nature... Communism as fully developed naturalism, equals humanism, and as fully
developed humanism equals naturalism: it is the genuine resolution of the conflict
between man and nature. (Marx 1844/1975, pp327, 348, italics in the original)As I have argued more fully elsewhere (Mellor, 1992b, 1997b), Marx’s theory does
contain the basis for a deep materialist analysis, but for ecofeminism the more
immediate and contemporary statement of hu(man)ity’s relationship with the nat-
ural world has been developed by deep ecology.
Deep Materialism and Deep Ecology
Deep ecology contributes to deep materialism through its aim of re-evaluating the
relationship between hu(man)ity and non-human nature. The problem is how is
this to be achieved? What would motivate hu(man)ity (or those parts of it with the
power to make fundamental decisions) to change its stance towards non-human
nature? Obviously a changed ethic would achieve this aim, but I see this as the goal
rather than the means. The weakness of ethical approaches is the question of polit-
ical agency. Ethical approaches are by their nature idealist (and idealistic) and
require a metatheory of the motor of social change, which Marx provides in his
materialist challenge to idealism. Do ideas change social structures and relations or
do changing structures produce new ideas? Obviously it is a bit of both, and the