A Study Of William Leiss' Ecological Marxism

Ecological problem is one of the most serious problems human facing today. This issue has caused widespread attention of scholars of china and western since the 1960s, and the Canadian scholar William Leiss is one of them. William Leiss' ecological Marxism,which establishes the ecology on top of the basic theory of Marxism, not only lays the foundation of Ecological Marxism, but also achieves the ecological critique shift from science and technology to capitalist system. He makes a criticism to contemporary capitalist from the point of ecological problems, focuses on constructing ecological theory from the dimension of system and emphasizes that the change of injustice capitalist system is the key to solve ecological problems. The distinct theoretical characteristics of William Leiss' ecological theory are that he deeply analyzes the impacts of natural environment affected by the" domination of nature " idea from the aspect of social consciousness criticism, improves the analysis of ecological crisis to the height of philosophical world outlook, and explores ways to solve the ecological crisis from the perspective of ethics on the basis, so as to highlight the importance of ethics in protecting the environment and to make his own theory unique.William Leiss' ecological Marxism is not groundless, but a product of reflection of the deteriorating human survival environment, which has backgrounds of the emergence of global ecological crisis and the rise of ecological movement of western developed countries. It takes the nature view, ecology view and systems theory of Marx and Engels and critical theory of Frankfurt School as its sources. The ecological theory consists of three aspects. Firstly, the concept of the domination of nature is the root of ecological crisis, William Leiss discusses the historical evolution and consequences of the concept of the domination of nature, points out that the use of science and technology is an important method of domination of nature, and concludes that the purpose of domination of nature is to satisfy the unlimited desire of human. Secondly, ecological crisis is essentially a crisis of the capitalist system. Finally, William Leiss suggests solving ecological crisis from two aspects of limiting the human desire and establishing a system, one is to limit the human desire by improving the ethics and scientific, and the other is to establish a " the conserver society " to achieve the harmony between human and nature. Although there are some limitations in the ecological Marxism theory of William Leiss, the visions and insights contained in this theory have great theoretical value nowadays when the ecological environment is deteriorating and human are facing unprecedented challenges of survival. Above all, the ecological thought has an important methodological enlightenment in the construction of socialist harmonious society of China.