Theory Of O' Connor's "Ecological Marxism" Achievements And Analysis

As Alvin Toffler says, it is no exaggeration to say there hasn't been a kind of civilization which can create such a thing that not only could destroy a city but also ruin the whole earth. Looking around the world, human beings have been at the crossroads of modern industrial civilization, which driven by modern technological revolution and globalization, brings to us on the one hand great material well-being and on the other hand global ecological problems and crisis, resulting in various serious issues directly threat human existence. This makes the Theory of "Ecological Marxism" a hot spot in academic research in modern philosophy, arising more and more concern among people.Theory of "Ecological Marxism", originating in 1960s and 1970s, has a worldwide impact both in academic research and political ideas about ecological problems. This paper mainly discusses the Ecological Marxism theory of O'Connor, a famous ecologist in North American. The research begins from exploring background of the theory, and then explores its theoretical contents and achievements, analysis its value and practical significance, and demonstrates its theoretical limitations in the last part. There're five sections in this paper.The first part is foreword. It analyzes the existing study achievements of O'Connor's theory about Ecological Marxism.The second part expounds the historical background and theoretical basis of O'Connor's Ecological Marxism. The creation of O'Connor's ecological Marxist theory has its own social background. On the one hand, the crisis of western capitalism and the global ecological problem make people have to face and study ecological problems. On the other hand, because of the rising of ecological movement and the Green revolution, O'Connor sees hope for social change. He makes building a socialist ecology system as his main task, whose purpose is to forward socialism to "green society", by stressing that only Ecological Socialism can truly replace Capitalism. The theoretical basis of O'Connor are as below: the theory of west Marxism;the theory of ecological science and systems science.The third Part discusses the core of O'Connor ecology Marxism. Where O'Connor's theory is different from the theory of early ecological Marxists (Levin Lewis and Agger) is that he does not negate any of Marx's theory rashly. By studying the absence of "natural" in Marx's historical theory, also called theory of the empty field , he re-interprets the concept of nature, trying to give natural a meaning including history and culture, make a new understanding of the relationship between the natural, cultural , and social labor and establish his own Ecological Marxist Theory. He also establishes a theory of second contradiction centering the concept production conditions . From this, he analysis the process of crisis of capital accumulation, reveals the relationship among the accumulation of capital, the ecological crisis and economic crisis, making a conclusion that the capitalist production is unsustainable ecologically. He combines socialist with ecological and the green movement in the theory and achieves an ecological society which is production of eco-justice-oriented. The forth part explains the theoretical contributions and limitations of O'Conner's ecological Marxism theory.The last part is concluding remark. By studying O'Connor' theory, we come to a conclusion that it obliged to rebuild the relationship between human and nature and achieve the harmony between the two. it is important to study O'Conner's ecological Marxism for it is meaningful for us to research global ecological issues, to enrich and develop Marxism's theories, to establish correct ecological ideal, to set up ecological civilization and to construct a harmonious society.