James O’connor’s Ecological Marxist Thought Study

The ecological environment is deteriorating worldwide,and natural resources are becoming increasingly scarce.In post-industrial societies,the enormous threat of the ecological crisis is increasingly felt.Especially since the 1960 s,environmental pollution has occurred frequently around the world,causing irreversible harm to people’s lives and property and health.As one of the latest schools of contemporary Western Marxism,ecological Marxism holds high the banner of Marxist philosophical criticism and combines Marxist theory of capitalist economic crisis with ecology theory of capitalist ecological crisis,sounding the "ecological death knell" for people to die inevitably.Make it clear that capitalism is not only economically unsustainable,but also ecologically unsustainable.James O’Connor,a famous scholar of contemporary America,as the leader of ecological Marxism,continued the theoretical framework of ecological Marxism,based on Marxist positions,viewpoints and methods,and revealed that the capitalist system is the culprit causing the ecological crisis.In the context of the spread of global ecological crisis,the failure of the socialist model in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe,and the development of the Western green movement,he absorbed and borrowed Marx’s theory on the relationship between man and nature,Polanyi’s social theory,and the Frankfurt School’s theory of ecological crisis,and gradually formed his ecological Marxist thought in the process of complex dynamic evolution in the embryonic period,the formation period and the development period.The content of O’Connor’s ecological Marxist thought includes three aspects: "historical materialism and nature","capitalism and nature",and "socialism and nature".Among them,in historical materialism and nature,O’Connor explained that there is an "ecological theory empty field" in historical materialism,and constructs a trinity of history of nature,social labor and culture in the dual dimensions of productive forces and production relations.In Capitalism and Nature,O’Connor dissects the "double contradiction" of capitalism and the "double crisis" of capitalism,revealing the impossibility of capitalist ecology.In Socialism and Nature,O’Connor reflected on the ecological problems of socialist countries,proposed that ecosocialism was feasible,and constructed a specific path for the "marriage" of ecology and socialism.O’Connor’s ecological Marxist thought still has a certain rationality in today’s unprecedented changes in the world in a hundred years,not only expanding the ecological domain of historical materialism,revealing the essence of capitalist "anti-ecology",but also exploring the theoretical field of ecological socialism.However,it should not be ignored that O’Connor’s ecological Marxist thought has obvious limitations in "reconstructing" historical materialism,criticizing the ecological crisis of capitalism,and building ecosocialism.Therefore,the study of O’Connor’s ecological Marxist thought is of great significance for the construction of ecological civilization in The new era of China.