A Study On Pepper’s Ecological Marxism

The substance of this paper is the study of Pepper’s ecological Marxism. The paper aims at to get some theory fruits about Marxism from western scholars. David Pepper is the leading members of the socialist movement in western countries. Facing of the ecological crisis, Pepper criticized the unsustainable development in Capitalist from the level of ecology, then, Pepper asked to build up eco-socialist which is green and harmony. In order to enter such society, Pepper established a new relationship between man and nature, focusing on conception and ideology that is new anthropocentrism which is a logical and sound position in eco-socialism. And Pepper affirmed to combine environmental movement to political movement, to carry out red and green alliances, then social change for eco-socialism will success at last.In accordance with the above topics, this paper presents in five chapters.Chapter one is the introduction, presenting and demonstrating the status quo of ecological Marxism on domestic and on abroad, including Pepper’s thought. And another point is to show the topic and structure of this paper.Chapter two is to put some critiques of ecological crisis. The inner contradiction of capitalist will finally doomed itself, it didn’t bring out what it had promised, that is to bring out happy and free for man, on the contrary, not only remained old economical crisis but appeared ecological crisis. The latter came directly from the dexterity of externalizing costs but internalizing returns, thus nature has been exploited and left empty for the future; and the fact that capitalist exploiting workers polarized the rich and the poor. In capitalist, alienation now is showed by false consciousness, under which man has already fallen into the abyss of compelling, excessive consumption. In order to solve the ecological crisis on domestic, ecological imperialism robbed nature and workers at abroad, even they migrated the dirty industries to other nations, which did harm to normal process of locality and damaged indigenous people, what’s more, it deepened the uneven development all of the earth. Chapter three is try to rebuild subject in eco-socialist. Capitalist have already showed its unsustainable development, but critique of it is not the end, Pepper wanted to build up a green and harmony eco-socialist society in which Man should be the Subject. But nowadays, ecocentrism have asked man to kind treat nature and other creatures, basing on the theory of "biological egalitarianism" and "intrinsic valve", for the reason, they proposed to limit the speed of man’s quickly developing in economy and technology. But Pepper announced that all creatures should be allowed to develop themselves in their own way, which is including man, there is no doubt that man ought to make advantageous situation for his living in nature through his bravery and wisdom. Besides, privileging non-human nature is ridiculous, because the word "valve" is made by man and it only has meaning to man. Considering all these aspects, Pepper advocated a new kind of anthropocentric view which is very different from the old one that is technocentrism. The latter is imposed by capitalist to master nature violently and selfishly, thus, metabolism between man and nature was destroyed as well as ecological problems facing to man. In order to avoid these problems, new anthropocentric is a humanist and eco-socialist one which cares for all creatures on the earth.Chapter four is to propose the political program for eco-socialism. Ecological movement did not have a coherent and feasible action program, it thus showed self-contradiction and vagueness, so, Pepper advanced to push more Marxist analyzing into it, while get rid of those disadvantageous elements of eco-anarchism and postmodernism that have been infused into it, and try to practice red and green alliance. There is much difference between red and green, while they also have common ground---the reality of social justice, it is legitimate from red-green debate to red-green co-operation, and only by this can avoid the standstill and pushing ecologism to eco-socialism.Chapter five is mainly to get some inspirations from Pepper’s thoughts. Pepper has inherited lots of Marxist theory, while he has got some new ideas for solving Capitalist problems. At the same time, his thought can be used to inspire eco-civilization construction in China:one side, we should continue the road of socialist which is a hopeful and bright one; on the other, we must seriously deal with the problem that facing to us during the construction.