O'Connor's Ecological Marxism

"Ecological Marxism" has many schools. An American scholar James·O'Connor is currently an important representative of Ecological Marxism. O'Connor's "ecological Marxism" came with its own unique social background. He pointed out the ecology must be built on the basis of Marxism. At the same time, Marxism had to modify their theories so that it can accommodate ecological point of view. O'Connor constructed his "ecological Marxism "from Marx's "theory of the empty field" such as the existence, ecological problems and other motivations.The main idea in O'Connor's "ecological Marxism" theory is:Using a natural transformation of cultural values and natural and cultural transformation of the traditional theory of the productive forces and production relations as the starting point to bring a new understanding of the relationship between the natural, cultural and social labor, and then propose reconstruction of historical materialism. O'Connor, from the second contradiction of capitalism (i.e. the contradiction between capitalist relations of production and their production conditions), focused on study of the capitalist productive forces and production relations of production and the contradiction between their relevant conditions, as well as the economic crisis and ecological crisis resulting from lack of capital production. He stressed the anti-ecological nature of the capitalist system and no ecological sustainability in capitalist production. With regard to economic and ecological crisis in a capitalist society, he combined socialist's green thinking with the ecological movement organically to achieve a productive eco-justice-oriented system of Marxist ideas.O'Connor's "ecological Marxism" theory is attributable to its unique insight, while there are inherent limitations:the nature of metaphysics in Reconstruction of historical materialism; non-thoroughness in crisis theory of capitalism; eco-utopian vision of socialism.Objectively speaking, O'Connor's "ecological Marxism" theory still has a certain amount of theoretical innovation and the reality of a strong critical function. It has important theoretical and practical significance for us today to promote the development of contemporary Marxism and understand the contemporary capitalist society in the developing vision. At the same time, it is also of great importance for us to explore and choose socialist development models and the roads.