Jonathan Hughes Ecological Productivity Theory

The occurrence and development of Ecological Marxism has profound theoretical basis and historical origins, whose problem domains and philosophical foundations are different from the traditional Marxist and Western Marxism. It has a close relationship with the Ecological Socialism. Ecological Marxism has quite a few genres, in one of which the British famous scholar--Jonathan Hughes is one of the important representatives of contemporary Ecological Marxism. In his masterpiece, Jonathan Hughes put forward a theory of ecological productive forces, which begins with "defining social in nature", and the harmonious development of man and nature must be the premise of the development of human and society. The development of the productive forces has revolutionary effect, which contains two aspects:the undermining effect and enabling effect. Neither its undermining effect nor its enabling effect links with the emergence of the ecological crisis consequentially. With the economic development and transformation of our country, it’s worth of learning from it. The three relationships between human being and nature described by Hughes have an important reference value for our country’s development of ecological civilization construction.This paper describes the Hughes theory about the ecological productive forces, and discusses its important reference values for China’s construction of ecological civilization. The first chapter describes the origin of the ecological productive forces and Hughes’defense of Marxism’s view of productive forces. In this part, the relationship between the development of ecological productive forces and are discussed in detail, clarifying the relationship between the development of ecological productive forces and the ecological damage to the environment. The second chapter discusses the difference between true and false needs and the different needs between animals and human beings, at the same time, pointing out that the needs are intrinsic motivation to promote the development of productive forces and the development of the productive forces is the real path to meet the needs. The third chapter elaborates the relationship between the two scales as a measure of social development-the development of productive force and human being. The development of the productive forces is the basis of human beings’ development and human beings’ development is the driving force, conditions, and the ultimate goal of the development of productive forces. The forth chapter points out that the eco-productive force theory not only has the theoretical value to insist and promote the development of Marxism in China, but also has reference value to solve practical problems in China.