An Analysis Of ’Ecological Marxism’ Thought Of James O’Connor

Since the outbreak of the Industrial Revolution marked by the creation of steam engines,all kinds of professional technologies have gradually emerged and been widely used.The world economy is in rapid growth.With the creation and popularization of all kinds of professional technologies,the ecological environment suffers a serious destruction.The problems of shortage of resources,energy insufficiency,water loss and soil erosion and greenhouse effect,etc.emerge one after another,which seriously affect the daily life of human beings.Therefore,the most urgent problem today is how to protect the environment where we rely on for survival.James O’Connor is a neoMarxist economist of the United States with a doctorate.His book Natural Causes laid a solid foundation for the progress of ecological Marxist theory and exerted a significant impact on the development of western Marxist ecology.In this paper,the author will combine Marx’s view of practice with history and carry out an in-depth study and exploration into O’Connor’s theory.First of all,the author analyzed and sorted out the social and historical background,as well as theoretical background for the emergence of O’Connor’s ecological Marxism,thereby demonstrating that the emergence of O’Connor’s ideology was an inevitable outcome of history and laid a foundation for the ecological development of the future society.Secondly,the author analyzed the main content of O’Connor’s ecological Marxism in a deeper way.From the perspective of ecology,historical materialism was reconstructed and it was shown that the “nature” dimension was absent in historical materialism,the “nature” and “culture” dimensions can refine and supplement the productive forces and relations of production in the first contradiction.On this basis,the author introduced the relationship among “culture,nature and social labor” in order to deepen historical materialism.After that,the contemporary capitalist society was criticized from the perspective of ecology and the reasons for criticism were expounded on,namely,because the dual contradiction of capitalist society fueled ecological crisis,and the phenomenon of capital accumulation of capitalist society triggered a dual crisis.However,the joint development and uneven development of capitalist society also prompted the ecological crisis to deteriorate further.For this reason,O’Connor conceived socialism from the perspective of ecology in order to endow it with an ecological significance.Hence,this paper focused on analyzing the ecological problems of traditional socialist countries and capitalist societies,finding out their similarities and differences and making a comprehensive analysis thereof,to help the socialist society walk better on the road of “ecology”.Based on this,O’Connor also systematically came up with an ideal appeal for the development of ecological socialism,that is,to enable “distributive justice” to be replaced by “productive justice” and further make new social movements contain a more well-established view of ecological development.Finally,the author verified the theoretical contribution of O’Connor’s ecological Marxism,that is,he expanded the ecological vision of historical materialism and broadened the critical domain for capitalist reality.At the same time,the author also verified that his ecological Marxism had certain limitations in theory.To be specific,he ignored the defects of historical materialist theory and the utopian nature of the concept of ecological socialism.His understandings of Marx’s and Engels’ ecological ideology were also,to a certain extent,one-sided.When verifying the theoretical contribution of O’Connor’s ecological Marxism,the author mainly established a correct ecological thought of respecting nature from his ideology,advanced it in economic development in an ecological way and practiced a new development idea in the way of green lifestyle in human life.Therefore,to further study O’Connor’s ecological Marxism is of great significance for the construction of ecological civilization and harmonious socialist society in China and the realization of the sustainable survival and development of human beings.