The Ecological Crisis Theory Of Marcuse And Its Contemporary Value

Herbert Marcuse (1898-1979) was born in a German jewish family. As a most radical thinker of Western Marxist Frankfurt school, he was known as the "new left spiritual leader" and "father of the movement of students to revolt". He and Marx, Mao Zedong was called the "Three M" of the socialist movement. He wrote many books in all his life and his thought system was very complex, such as Technology rational criticism thought, Eros liberation theory, New revolutionary theory, New alienation theory, New consumer theory, Aesthetic theory and so on. These were all high lights of his ideas.He believed that Capitalism had already reached the stage of industrialization, and the situation of current Capitalism differed greatly with the one in the age of Marx, in the aspects of science and technology, economy, politics, etc. Through the revolution of technology and the media’s promotion, the developed industrialized society could maintain a phase of affluence, which seemingly provided people with more decent life, and the basic social contradiction of Capitalism which Marxism stressed on appeared to inexist in modern industrial society. In fact, Economic development indeed solved some urgent social contradiction, but also promote new crisis in stead. Among which, the obvious were "Ecological crisis".In this essay, the author tried to summarize and analyze the main ideas of the system of "Ecological crisis theory", and compared them with points of Marxism, in order tomaster "Ecological crisis theory" on the whole, and provide the insight on the global ecological crisis, assisting us to treat the relationship of economic development and ecological protection.His crisis theory had two forms, external and internal. Externally, resource damage and environment pollution reflected the deep social, political and systematic crisis of developed industrial society. Internally, Marcuse analyzed the underlying reasons for the cause of ecological crisis, pointing out that the alienated reality of modern technology, consumptions and people themselves led to the deterioration of ecological environment. In this respect, Marcuse proposed his new technology theory, art revolution theory etc, to solve the crisis, attempting to establish a new form of socialism to get rid the issues of ecological crisis thoroughly.The ecological crisis theory of Marcuse possesses strong vitality and profound influence. It has boosted the appearance of modern western Philosophy especially the philosophy of science and technology production, the establishment of ecological theory of Marx, the awareness of contemporary international society, the sustainable development in China and so on in a far-reaching way.