| After the second World War,we human beings not only enjoy great material wealth,but also suffer serious environment pollution and ecological destruction. Some theorists tried their best to consolidate Marxist and Ecology together, they worked hard to re-examine the relationship between man and nature. And thus ecology Marxism came into being. James O’Connor was an outstanding representative of ecology Marxism, and he pointed out that Marxism apparently had vacancy in its theory,so it was necessary to reconstruct the classical historical materialism. He believed that only by the reconstruction of classical historical materialism, can Marxism keep pace with ages. His reconstruction was based on the category of cooperation,and he advocated that not only natural dimension but also cultural dimension should be injected into the category of productive forces and productive relationship to establish the new historical materialism of nature,culture and social labor. Meanwhile, when he criticized capitalism,he tried to re-define the conception of production conditions. And he pointed out that capitalism had two kinds of contradiction. There was not only the first contradiction of productive forces and productive relationship which had already recognized by classical historical materialism,but also the second contradiction of productive forces,productive relationship and production conditions. In his view, the first contradiction would lead to economic crisis,and the second contradiction would lead to economic and ecology crisis James O’Connor pointed out that both economic and ecology crisis were determined by the essence of capitalism, so these two kinds of crisis could not be solved when it was still in capitalist society. In his point, ecology and Marxism were actually complementary, so he believed that ecological Marxism is the only right way to solve economic and ecology crisis which could not be solved by capitalism.James O’Connor believed that ecological Marxism was superior than any other theory. And the reason was that in this society production would be always organized according to people’s real needs instead of profits.Based on the reconstruction of historical materialism, James O’Connor proposed a new way which was called ecological socialism. By this way he wanted to develop a harmonious relationship between human beings and nature. Essentially speaking, James O’Connor didn’t have a deep understanding of the rich meaning of Marx’s historical materialism. Limited by era, it was true that Marx didn’t put out a systemic theory of ecology, but we could not look down upon all his attention about nature. In fact the theory of productive forces was the core of Marx’s historical materialism. The theory of productive forces not only included systemic social productive forces thoughts which were agreed by most theorists,but also abundant ideas of nature productive forces. So James O’Connor did not catch the profound meaning in Marx’s classical historical materialism. And also most of his theory was based on the incorrect second hand research. So this was a very important reason why James O’Connor misunderstood Marx’s view of nature. When O’Connor reconstructed classical historical materialism,he overly exaggerated the effect of nature and culture. As a result, he digested the foundation of classical historical materialism to a certain extent. The classical historical materialism insisted that it was material which determined consciousness,and it was productive forces which determined productive relationship. So this misunderstanding led him to a wrong way of eclecticism and diverse determinism.What’s more, James O’Connor pinned his hope on local governments and international organizations to make his ecology socialism come true. However his ecology socialism was lack of basic organization and development system. Obviously this ecology socialism was some kind of utopian. On the other side,we should also notice that James O’Connor’s theory had some positive significance. His theory not only enriched the essence of Marxism, but also helped Marxism keep pace with time. From the dimension of productive forces, classical Marxism predicted that capitalism finally would perish. However James O’Connor created another dimension of ecology to criticize capitalism. As a result, James O’Connor broadened the horizon of Marxism which was a great contribution.In fact, socialist society was also facing serious ecological problems. Limited by poor productive forces and cruel international environment, we China ignored the protection of environment. Actually the ecological crisis had extremely bad effect on the development of men’s health and development. There haven’t been ready-made ways for the construction of socialism. So we went wrong during the development of economy. Some cities and district of China had no consciousness of environment protecting for most of them were concentrated on economy development. The essence of socialism showed that we human beings should keep a relationship between men and nature. So we should learn from the theories which are useful for us to build socialist ecological civilization. |
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