A Study On O'Connor's "Ecological Critical Theory"

In the 1960s, the West's "green political movement" had a huge impact worldwidely. Meanwhile, ecological Marxism was born in this environment and grew up a new important genre of the contemporary Western Marxism. It sought for an intersection of Marxism and research of ecological issues (and subsequent ecological revolution) Since then, rethinking and studying Marxism and Ecology. O'Connor, the ecological Marxist of North America, improved the conceptual thought of Marxism on the ecological environment and established his own "eco-critical theory." It is significant for perceiving the nature of his theory and building ecological civilization of China to study and analyze the background for the formation of O'Connor's theory and the pros and cons of his theory.O'Connor restructured historical materialism by injecting "natural" and "cultural" factors go into it. On this theoretical basis, he amended the three capitalist production conditions brought by Karl Marx, and put forward "eco-criticism". It is recognized that there are severe economic crises incurred by capitalism periodically and O'Connor was convinced that the capitalist system and capitalist production would cause ecological calamity to the environment either. Therefore, Capitalism entices double crises, ecological and economic. At the same time. O'Connor illustrated that there is an extra contradictory (the second one) between ecological environment and productive forces and relationship of production in addition to the first contradictory between productive forces and relationship of capitalism would turn into the dominant one generally in capitalist society. O'Connor thus concluded that capitalist society is not ecologically sustainable and he combined ecology and socialism to conceive his own theory, eco-socialism. He regarded the eco-socialism as the way to solve ecological crises in capitalism.O'Connor's theory highlights the prominent effect of historical materialism on research of ecological and cultural evolution and imposes critique from a new ecological perspective on the capitalist system. He also gave birth to a new form of green socialism. In addition, from a philosophical point of view. O'Connor's theory exists three theoretical limits:to reconstruct of historical materialism metaphysically, to exaggerate the importance of the second contradictory and to provide some hypotheses of eco-socialism irrelevant to reality. However, combined with the present situations in China, his theory can still be acted as a kind of guideline. It can push us to implement the measures of environmental protection according to his "green consumption ". It is helpful for us to thoroughly apply the Scientific Outlook on Development and build sustainable developing socialism with Chinese characteristics.