On Ben Agger’s Ecological Marxism

With the development of human civilization, human society has been rapidly developed with remarkable progress in politics, materials, culture, etc. Human has started to conquer and grab the nature while enjoying the well-developed achievements of science and technology civilization, abundant material products and prosperous culture resources, due to which nature has been relentlessly damaged and the worldwide problem of how to live in harmony with nature is starting to be addressed. During the process of theoretical discussion on this problem, the school of Ecological Marxism which came into being in the 1960 s became the significant ideology. As s an emerging genre of Western Marxism, Ecological Marxism, using the critical method of Marx on capitalist, deeply analyzed and studied the ecological crisis of contemporary capitalism from the theoretical perspective of historical materialism. Ben Agger from Canada, an important representative of Ecological Marxism, is the one who formally put forward the concept of “Ecological Marxism” in Western Marxism: An Introduction and published over 10 academic monographs during his 40 years of academia career from the mid-1970 s till now. He actively absorbed the radical factors of leftist postmodernism, feminism, cultural study and other critical social theories, inherited and developed the traditions and spirits of Frankfurt school’s critical theory and thus put forward the ecological crisis theory on capitalism through analyzing the reality of development of western society with Marx’s methodology. He thought that with the development of contemporary capitalism, economic crisis had been replaced by ecological crisis which was directly induced by overproduction and consumption alienation. Starting with the consumption alienation, he explored the root cause and solutions of ecological crisis and thus put forward that the dialectic of shattered expectation formed by contradictions between the limited ecological system and people’s unlimited pursuit of economy growth was bound to bring about social reform, and the way to get rid of ecological crisis and social reform was to develop ecological socialism through decentralization and bureaucratization. Generally speaking, though there are historic limitations in Ben Agger’s Ecological Marxism Theory, it has definite rationality, theoretical significance and practical value on studying the development of society from the perspective of ecology, and has enlightening significance on the academic research in the future.This paper deeply analyzes the Ecological Marxism of Ben Agger and highlights its theoretical origin and characteristics, not only including the comprehensive, integral and systematic analysis on it, but also including the comparison and analysis of the studies between Ben Agger and other ecological Marxism scholars.This paper is consisted of six parts:As the important foundation of this paper, Chapter one is an introduction to the background and significance of the topic, research methods and objectives as well as innovation and deficiencies, mainly analyzing the currant research status of Ecological Marxism from the academic perspective in detail and coming to a conclusion, and based on which defining the concept of Ecological Marxism and its connotation.Chapter two analyzes the background and ideological origin of Ben Agger’s Ecological Marxism. In the 1960 s and 1970 s, industrial civilization of western countries was further developed, due to which the capitalist crisis was deepened and global ecological crisis was increasingly serious. Under the circumstances, the ecology movement and green political movement of capitalist countries gradually developed and laid the foundation for the emergence of Ecological Marxism. And the development of ecology, system theory and futurology became its significant supporting disciplines. The ideology origin is mainly embodied as Marx’s ideology on the relationship between human and nature and Frankfurt School’s Social Critical Theory.Chapter three elaborates Ben Agger’s theory of capitalist crisis. As one of the major contents of Ecological Marxism, Ben Agger systematically analyzed the origin of capitalist ecological crisis and discussed its essence, that is, consumption alienation is the outcome of alienated labor and the direct cause of ecological crisis. According to the development situation of society, Ben Agger replaced Marx’s theory of economic crisis with the theory of ecological crisis to analyze the root cause of ecological crisis and its deterioration, and indicated that the ecological crisis is the consequence of over-productive consumption alienation and the possibility for solving the crisis is the dialectic of shattered expectation, and based on which deeply criticized the capitalist society from the perspective of politics, economy and culture, including criticism on bureaucracy and implicit politics in politics, the capitalist economic growth pattern of grabbing the nature in economy and the capitalist consumer culture and its universality in culture.Chapter four is about the discussion on the construction of Ben Agger’s ecological socialist theoretical system. Ben Agger analyzed the production process, features and realization ideas of ecological socialism. Discussion on Agger’s ecological socialism: from the ideal ecological socialism to ecological socialism of the democratic dialogue and to the harmonious ecological socialism of Utopia. He proposed that the goal of ecological socialism is the non-dissimilation of complete liberation and the unity of process and result and he analyzed the basic features of ecological socialism from angles of economy, politics and technology. The economic feature is the realization of ecological socialist economy of steady-state economy mode; the political feature is the non-bureaucratic socialist ecological politics; the technical feature is the ecological socialist technology of individual free practice. He had a deep understanding and exploration on how to recombine developed capitalism to establish a ecological socialism. The realization of ecological socialism on this basis should include two aspects: the necessity of the combination between “Ecological Marxism” and populism; the accurate methods of the combination between “Ecological Marxism” and populism.Chapter five is about the comparative analysis on the differences of ecological Marxism theory between Ben Agger and other scholars. Compared with the ecological Marxism theory of other scholars, Ben Agger not only possessed the same cognition of human social ecology but also put forward his own ideas. The analysis on their differences begins with the relation between ecological crisis and capitalism economic crisis and the exploration of root problems of capitalism ecological crisis. Agger proposes that capitalism ecological crisis has replaced the economic crisis which has paved the way for the "ecological marxism" theory and systemically criticizes O’Connor and Forster’capitalism regarding the link between capitalist mode of production and ecological crisis. In terms of crisis resolution ways, the text compares the similarities and differences between Marcuse and Agger’ solutions, as well as between Foster and Agger’modes. It shows the position and function of Agger in the whole ecological marxism system on the basis of comparison.Chapter six evaluates Ben Agger’s Ecological Marxism and analyzes its enlightenment on contemporary social development. It elaborates the rationality and limitations of Agger’s Ecological Marxism. The rationality lies in puting forward what human really need is creative labor; rational analysis to the root cause of capitalist ecological crisis; theoretical contribution of consumption alienation and re-examinated relation between man and nature; and emphasis on the function of class consciousness in social transformation. The limitations of Agger’s Ecological Marxism embody in one-sidedness of the social contradictions of capitalism; abstract humanitarian of social reform; and utopian nature of "Zero growth" steady economic model. Finally, this article summarizes the significance of Ben Agger’s Ecological Marxism theory to the construction of socialist material civilization, spiritual civilization, political civilization and ecological civilization. The contradiction of Chinese society is different from that of capitalism. In line with the research findings of Ben Agger’s Ecological Marxism and on the basis of fully understanding the situation of China, the text puts forward improving the socialist market economy system; cultivating the spirit of the socialist cultural construction;and building a socialist ecological civilization system.