In current ecological thought, many philosophies with rather different ontologies compete. Where should we put ecosocialism? In this paper I argue that ecosocialism is following the lead of romanticism exactly because, like romanticism, it distinguishes nature from the realm of society and thus is able to appreciate it, whereas the highflying anti-dualism of recent new materialist thought has to be read as a return to reactionary modernism exactly in its efforts to nihilate the ontological dignity of nature.