It's Been Twenty Years

Since Joel Kovel told it like it was, and still is, in spades

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I've been in a state of considerable aggravation for a few days since some of the heroic voices that helped us all greatly to see through the COVID lies now have fallen prey to the same kind of bogus and mendacious expertism that launched and perpetuated that three year abomination. Three years so far, that is, since there are continuing aftershocks indicating it ain't over yet.

I'll refrain from naming them, but a few of the MAJOR names and SS writers who are our COVID heros now have written SS essays saying that they doubt that climate change is a major problem, some even talking in terms of "the climate hoax", or of “harmless” carbon dioxide. And, of course quoting people whose names they should have researched to see that BigOil is behind them (Heartland Institute, CO2 Coalition, et al.). No names here either, the jury trials are yet to come.

We have just learned the hard way, over a period of three years, that it is not wise to trust medical experts who are funded by BigPharma.

Now, are we to trust climate experts who are funded by BigOil and other over-consumption-oriented, growth forever corporations?

I've been in a couple of knock-down-drag-out commentary exchanges, pleading with people to read James Hansen's Storms of my Grandchildren, or to pay attention to a recent post by Jonathan Cook, an essay that should nail the door shut for further doubting, but hasn't.

Why action on the climate crisis is all hot air

As far as I can tell, that is because no one will take any advice and read what one recommends. One self-proclaimed know-it-all replied to me, "Hansen? Never heard of him!" after I said that arguing climate change without knowing what Hansen had to say was like arguing General Relativity without knowing who Einstein was. No cigar.

Those commentary exchanges were, of course, with the usual suspects who are mostly what Umberto Eco has called imbeciles:

Les réseaux sociaux ont donné le droit de parole à des légions d’imbéciles qui, avant, ne parlaient qu’au bar, après un verre de vin et ne causaient aucun tort à la collectivité. On les faisait taire tout de suite alors qu’aujourd’hui ils ont le même droit de parole qu’un prix Nobel. C’est l’invasion des imbéciles.

Yet a few tries to get the MAJOR names to read James Hansen or Jonathan Cook, or even claim they had already done so have also yielded

…that is, nary a peep from them.

My second SubStack post, in February 2021, was a short review of Joel Kovel's book The Enemy of Nature.

The Enemy of Nature

I had hoped it might attract some attention and worthwhile discussion, but very few peeps resulted from that either.

Now that I have a rather larger readership, I've decided to post a lengthy excerpt from the book, since none of What Kovel said has gotten stale - quite the contrary. Maybe I can interest a few to forget that 80s hit song, "We don't need no education" and spend a short episode of their remaining vacation time pondering Kovel's thesis.

Now here is a surprise, after reading this excerpt, and hopefully locating and reading a copy of the entire book, (a mere tenner at Amazon.com) one CAN fairly say that CO2 is not the major problem! Read on, Macduff:

[Excerpt posted without permission for non-profit educational purposes - don’t you dare buy me a coffee this time]

Note that the entire second edition of The Enemy of Nature has been made available online here.

Excerpt from Joel Kovel's The Enemy of Nature:

The End of Capitalism or the End of the World?

Preface

Growing numbers of' people are beginning to realize that capitalism is the uncontrollable force driving our ecological crisis, only to become frozen in their tracks by the awesome implications of the insight. Considering that the very possibility of a future revolves around this notion, I decided to take it up in a comprehensive way, to see whether it is true, and if so, how it came about, and most importantly, what we can do about it.

Here is something of how this project began. Summers in the Catskill Mountains of New York State, where I live, are usually quite pleasant. But in 1988, a fierce drought blasted the region from mid- June until well into August. As the weeks went by and the vegetation baked and the wells went dry, I began to ponder something I had recently read, to the effect that rising concentrations of gases emitted by industrial activity would trap solar radiation in the atmosphere and lead to ever-growing climatic destabilization. Although the idea had seemed remote at first, the ruin of my garden brought it alarmingly close to home. Was the drought a fluke of the weather; or, as I was coming to think, was it a tolling bell, calling us to task for a civilization gone wrong? The seared vegetation now appeared a harbinger of something quite dreadful, and a call to action. And so I set out on the path that led to this book. Thirteen years later, after much writing, teaching and organizing, after working with the Greens and running for the US Senate in 1998 and seeking their presidential nomination in 2000, and after several drafts and false starts, The Enemy of Nature is ready to be placed before the public.

It would have been understandable to shrug off the drought as just another piece of odd weather (and, indeed, nothing that severe has occurred since). But I had for some time been disposed to take a worst-case attitude with respect to anything having to do with the powers-that-be; and since industrial activity was close to the heart of the system, so were its effects on climate drawn into the zone of my suspicion. US imperialism had got me going, initially in the context of Vietnam and later in Central America, where an agonizing struggle to defend the Nicaraguan revolution against Uncle Sam was coming to a bad end as the drought struck. The defeat had been bitter and undoubtedly contributed to my irritability, but it provided important lessons as well, chiefly as to the implacability displayed by the system once one looked below its claims of democracy and respect for human rights.

Here, far from the pieties, the effects of capital's ruthless pressure to expand are encountered. Imperialism was such a pattern, manifest politically and across nations. But this selfsame ever-expanding capital was also the superintendent and regulator of the industrial system whose exhalations were trapping solar energy. What had proved true about capital in relation to empire could be applied, therefore, to the realm of nature as well, bringing the human victims and the destabilizations of ecology under the same sign. Climate change was, in effect, another kind of imperialism. Nor was it the only noxious ecological effect of capital's relentless growth. There was also the sowing of the biosphere with organochlorines and other toxins subtle as well as crude, the wasting of the soil as a result of the Green Revolution, the prodigious species losses, the disintegration of Amazonia, and much more — spiralling, interpenetrating tentacles of a great crisis in the relationship between humanity and nature.

From this standpoint there appears a greater 'ecological crisis', of which the particular insults to ecosystems are elements. This has further implications. For human beings are part of nature, however ill at ease we may be with the role. There is therefore a human ecology as well as an ecology of forests and lakes. It follows that the larger ecological crisis would be generated by, and extend deeply into, an ecologically pathological society. Regarding the matter from this angle provided a more generous view no longer trapped in a narrow economic determinism, one could see capital not only as a material arrangement, but more deeply, as a pathological way of being cancerously lodged in the human spirit. And if it is a whole way of being that needs changing, then the essential question 'what is to be done' takes on new dimensions. Ecological politics becomes much more than managing the external environment. It takes on, rather, a frankly revolutionary aspect. And since the revolution is against the capital that is nature's enemy, the struggle for an ecologically just and rational society will be the logical successor to the socialism that agitated the last century and a half before sputtering to an ignominious end. The great question now becomes whether this 'next-epoch', ecological socialism could overcome the flaws that haunted and brought down the original version.

A big problem hanging over these ideas is that very few people take them seriously. I have been acutely aware from the beginning of this project that the above theses are at a great distance from so-called mainstream opinion. How could it be otherwise in a time of capitalist triumph, when by definition reasonable folk are led to think that just a bit of tinkering with market mechanisms will see us through our ecological difficulties? And as for socialism, why should anyone with an up-to-date mind bother thinking about such a quaint issue, much less trying to overcome its false starts?

These difficulties extend over to the fragmented and divided left side of opinion, whether this be the 'red' left that inherits the old socialist passion for the working class, or the 'green' left that stands for an emerging awareness of the ecological crisis. Socialism, though ready to entertain the idea that capital is nature's enemy, is less sure about being nature's friend. It needs to be said that most socialists, though they stand for a cleaner environment, decline to take the ecological dimension seriously. They support a strategy where the worker's state will clean up pollution, but are unwilling to follow the radical changes that an ecological point of view implies as to the character of human needs, the fate of industry, and the question of nature's intrinsic value. Meanwhile, Greens, however dedicated they may be to rethinking the latter questions, resist placing capital at the centre of the problem. Green politics tend to be populist or anarchist rather than socialist, hence Greens envision an ecologically sane future in which a suitably regulated capitalism, brought down to size and mixed with other forms, continues to regulate social production. Such was essentially the stance of Ralph Nader, whom I challenged in the 2000 presidential primary, with neither intention nor hope of winning, but only to keep the message alive that the root of the problem lies in capital itself.

We live at a time when those who think in terms of alternatives to the dominant order risk exclusion from polite intellectual society. During my youth, and for generations before, a consensus existed that capitalism was embattled and that its survival was an open question. For the last twenty years or so, however, with the rise of neoliberalism and the collapse of the Soviets, the system has acquired an aura of inevitability and even immortality. It is quite remarkable to see how readily the intellectual classes go along, sheeplike, with these absurd conclusions, disregarding the well-established lessons that nothing lasts for ever, that all empires fall, and that a twenty-year ascendancy is scarcely a blink in the flux of' time. But the same mentality that went into the recently deceased dot.com mania applies to those who see capitalism as a gift from the gods, destined for immortality. One would think that a moment of doubt would be introduced into the official scenario by the screamingly obvious fact that a society predicated on endless expansion must inevitably collapse its natural base. However, thanks to a superbly effective propaganda apparatus and the intellectual defects wrought by power, such has not so far been the case.

Change, if it comes, will have to come from outside the ruling consensus. And there is evidence that just such an awakening may be taking place. Cracks have been appearing in the globalized edifice through which a new era of protest is emerging. When the World Trade Organization is forced to hold its meeting in Qatar in order to avoid disruption, or fence itself in inside the walled city of' Quebec, or when the president-elect, George W. Bush, is forced by protestors at his inauguration to slink fugitive-like along Pennsylvania Avenue in a sealed limousine, then it may fairly be said that a new spirit is in the air, and that the generation now maturing, thrown through no choice of their own into a world defined by the ecological crisis, are also beginning to rise up and take history into their own hands. The Enemy of Nature is written for them, and for all those who are beginning to recognize the need to break with the given in order to win a future.

An attitude of' dissension conditioned me to see the 1988 drought as a harbinger of an ecologically ruined society. But that was not all I brought to the task. I was also working at the time on my History and Spirit, having been stirred by the faith of' the Sandinistas, and especially their radical priests, to realize that a refusal is worthless unless coupled with affirmation, and that it takes a notion of the whole of things to gather courage to reach beyond the given. There is a wonderful saying from 1968, which should guide us in the troubled time ahead: to be realistic, one demands the impossible. So let us rise up and do so.

November 2001

The grim shadow over our future cast on September 11, 2001 occurred between the composition of The Enemy of Nature and its release, and could not be incorporated into its argument. Yet its significance is such as to call for some brief observations.

First, because much of this book was written during a period of rampant economic growth, its main theme, that of the relentless expansive pressure of capital, might seem less important given the current brutal downturn of the world economic system. However, the same basic principles hold. For the pressure itself is what counts, whether or not it succeeds in imposing growth. Capital is a crisis-ridden system, and although there is never any clean correlation between crises in the economy and those of ecology, the integrity of' ecosystems is sacrificed at either end of the economic cycle. When the economy grows, sheer quantity becomes the dominating factor; while when, as now, it heads downwards, the diminution in growth acts as a signal causing environmental safeguards to be loosened in order to restore accumulation.

Second, the crisis posed by fundamentalist terror and that posed by global ecological decay share certain basic features. As we will see in the following pages, the ecological crisis is like a nightmare in which the demons released in the progressive domination of nature on a world scale come back to haunt the master. But something of the same holds for terrorism. Fundamentalism's rebellion is often seen as being against modernity, but this only begins to matter in the context of imperialism, that is, the progressive domination of humanity on a world scale. In the species of imperialism known as globalization, the dissolution of all the old ways of being is part and parcel of forcibly imposed 'free trade'. Fundamentalisms arise within disintegrating peripheral societies as ways of restoring the integrity of ravaged communities. The project becomes irrational because of the hatred induced by powerlessness, and as it does, turns towards a pattern of terror and counter- terror in a cycle of vengeance.

The dialectics of terror and ecological disintegration are joined in the regime of oil. This constitutes, on the one hand, the chief material dynamic of the ecological crisis, and on the other, the organizing principle for imperial domination of those lands where the conflict is being fought out. Petroleum fuels industrial society, and the growth of the West is necessarily a growth in the exploitation and control of those lands where it is most strategically located. As these happen to be largely Islamic, so is the stage set for the great struggle now unfolding.

This is not the place to take up the conduct of this struggle except to say that it needs to be joined at the root of its causes. From this perspective, resolving the ecological crisis and freeing humanity from terror — including, to be sure, the terror inflicted by the superpower on its victims — are two aspects of the same process. Both require the overcoming of empire, which requires the undoing of what generates imperialism over nature and humanity. It is an illusion to think that this can be achieved without a profound restructuring of our industrial system, and, by implication, our whole way of being. The grip of imperialism, whether of oil or otherwise, cannot be broken within the terms of the current order. Hence what is required to overcome global warming and the other aspects of the ecological crisis also goes for terror. A world must be built that does not need the fossil fuel economy, a world, as is argued in what follows, beyond capital.

Introduction

In 1970, growing fears for the integrity of the planetary ecology gave rise to a new politics. On 22 April, the first 'Earth Day' was announced, since to become an annual event of re- dedication to the preservation and enhancement of the environment. Remarkably, the newly aroused citizens became joined by certain members of the elites, who, organized into a group called 'The Club of Rome,' even dared to announce a theme never before entertained by persons of power, which appeared as the title of their 1972 manifesto, 'The Limits to Growth'. Thirty years later, Earth Day 2000 featured a colloquy, between Leonardo di Caprio and President Bill Clinton, with much fine talk about saving nature. The anniversary also provided a convenient vantage point for surveying the results of' three decades of 'limiting growth'. Thus, at the dawn of a new millennium, one could observe that:

• human population had increased from 3.7 billion to 6 billion (62%);

• oil consumption had increased from 46 million barrels a day to 73 million;

• natural gas extraction had increased from 34 trillion cubic feet per year to 95 trillion;

• coal extraction had gone from 2.2 billion metric tonnes to 3.8 billion; the global motor vehicle population had almost tripled, from 246 million to 730 million

• air traffic had increased by a factor of six;

• the rate at which trees are consumed to make paper had doubled, to 200 million metric tons per year;

• human carbon emissions had increased from 3.9 million metric tons annually to an estimated 6.4 million—this despite the additional impetus to cut back caused by an awareness of global warming, which was not perceived to be a factor in 1970 ;

• as for this warming, average temperature increased by 1 degree Fahrenheit — a disarmingly small number that, being unevenly distributed, translates into chaotic weather events (seven of the ten most destructive storms in recorded history having occurred in the last decade), and an unpredictable and uncontrollable cascade of ecological trauma — including now the melting of the North Pole during the summer of' 2000, for the first time in 50 million years, and signs of the disappearance of the 'snows of' Kilimanjaro' the year following;

• species were vanishing at a rate that has not occurred in 65 million years;

• fish were being taken at twice the rate as in 1970;

• 40 per cent of agricultural soils had been degraded; half of the forests had disappeared;

• half of the wetlands had been filled or drained;

• one-half of US coastal waters were unfit for fishing or swimming;

• despite concerted effort to bring to bay the emissions of ozone-depleting substances, the Antarctic ozone hole was the largest ever in 2000, some three times the, size of' the continental United States; meanwhile, 2000 tons of the substances that cause it continue to be emitted every day; and

• 7.3 billion tons of pollutants were released in the United States during 1999,

Most of these tendencies are accelerating. And they all are manifestations what is proclaimed by every responsible and authoritative source to be the best of news, namely, that the world gross economic product has increased in the 30 years since the enunciation of the 'Limits to Growth' by almost 250 per cent, from 16 to 39 trillion dollars.

We need to add human costs to the picture, for during this phase of unparalleled prosperity:

• Third World debt increased by a factor of eight;

• the gap between rich and poor nations, according to the United Nations, went from a factor Of 3:1 in 1820, to 35:1 in 1950; 44:1 in 1973—at the beginning of the environmentally sensitive era—to 72:1, roughly two-thirds of the way through it, and no one would deny that this shocking ratio has increased since;

• between 1990 and 1998, per capita income declined in 50 countries. One—Russia—has undergone the most catastrophic set of developments ever witnessed in a nation not invaded in war, with such declines in life expectancy and rises in birth defects that the country will be depopulated in a century or so if the rate continues;

• 1.2 million women under the age of 18 enter the global sex trade each year; and

• 100 million children are homeless and sleep on the streets.

There is, of course, much more. But my purpose is not to bludgeon the reader with statistics, only to make a point that is there for every sentient person to see, yet is continually, both ignored and misunderstood. Let me put it plainly.

As the world, or to be more exact, the Western, industrial world, has leapt into a prosperity unimaginable to prior generations, it has prepared for itself a calamity far more unimaginable still. The present world system in effect has had three decades to limit its growth, and it has failed so abjectly that even the idea of limiting growth has been banished from official discourse. Further, it has been proved decisively that the internal logic of the present system translates 'growth' into increasing wealth for the few and increasing misery for the many. We must begin our inquiry, therefore, with the chilling fact that 'growth' so conceived means the destruction of the natural foundation of civilization. If the world were a living organism, then any sensible observer would conclude that this 'growth' is a cancer that, if not somehow treated, means the destruction of human society and even raises the question of the extinction of our species. A simple extrapolation tells us as much, once we learn that the growth is uncontrollable. The details are important and interesting, but less so than the chief conclusion — that irresistible growth, and the evident fact that this growth destabilizes and breaks down the natural ground necessary for human existence, means, in the plainest terms, that we are doomed under the present social order, and that we had better change it as soon as possible if we are to survive.

One wants to scream out this brutal and plain truth, which should be on the masthead of every newspaper and the station-identification of every media outlet, the leading issue before Congress and all governmental organizations, the focus of every congregation and the centrepiece of every curriculum at all levels of education ... but is nothing of the kind. Yes, endless attention is paid to the crisis, a great deal of it useful, some of it trivial, and some plainly harmful. But where is the serious, systematic reflection of the brutal truth — that humanity is in the hands of a suicidal regime, which scarcely anyone thinks it either possible or desirable to fundamentally change. Where is the rational dissection of this system's assault on nature, and the derivation of a plan to really change it — not to regulate this or that, or to resort to prayer or inward change, but actually to address the cancer and lay out the lineaments of a cure?

I should hope, here. In any case, that is my goal, and if what I have to say is not true in every detail, or even sadly, mistaken, at least it can serve to push the debate about fundamentals along.

I have no quarrel with many of the virtuous and sensible environmental schemes put forward these days. My quarrel is only with the judgement that holds that piecemeal reforms are all that is needed. My grievance is against the attitude that refuses to look at the problem as a whole and to contemplate radical change. For if the argument laid out above has even the slightest claim on plausibility, and it deserves repetition that the mass of evidence is such as to place the burden of proof on those who would deny it — then its implications need to be spun out without regard for how unfashionable or unsettling these may be. If there is no effective discourse on the logic of the system's growth, and the world now sits blandly, in smug denial, or even uneasily in morbid contemplation, taking the word of greenwashers and conmen of all kinds instead of facing the ecological crisis squarely, then a work is needed that strives just for such a discourse. I have written The Enemy of Nature, therefore, not because there is a lack of address to our environmental woes, but because scarcely any of the innumerable works devoted to the subject develop the following implications from what has been sketched out above:

• That the 'reigning system' in question is capitalism, the dynamism of which, capital, is a strange beast indeed, not at all accessible to common sense, and extending far beyond its usual economic implications.

• That the 'growth' in question is essentially capital expressing its inner most being.

• That this is incorrigible; thus to seriously limit capital's expansion throws the system into deep crisis. For capital, it must always be 'Grow or Die!' It follows that capital cannot be reformed: it either rules and destroys us, or is destroyed, so that we may have a lease on life.

• That these implications demand of us that we rethink the question of revolution, now generally thought of as lying quietly in the dustbin of history. I would argue, instead, that capital's combined ecodestructivity and incorrigibility forces open the prospect of a total revolution, which I would call ecosocialist, related to but distinct from the socialisms of the past century.

• That it is incumbent upon us to imagine the contours of such a revolution and spell them out, notwithstanding the currently miserable state of radical forces.

Now it may be that the times are changing. Perhaps the long downturn of resistance is coming to a close, because capital, having achieved globalization, can no longer rein in the contradictions stemming from its domination of nature and humanity, so that people everywhere break loose from the system. There are great signs to this effect, chiefly in the worldwide outbreak of demonstrations taken against the unholy trinity of global capital — the IMF, the World Bank and the WTO.

Although The Enemy of Nature was begun well before the events in Seattle shook the world in 1999, it is, I believe, responsive to the same historical forces. It asks of those protesting globalization to consider where the logic of their actions points. How, in other words, do we go beyond the first stages of confronting the system? In what sense can the regime of capital be checked, if it can no more stop its unrelenting expansion than a man can voluntarily stop breathing? Are we ready to think through capital's overthrow and its replacement with a new kind of society based on a new kind of production? Are we ready, spurred by a dawning awareness that this crisis cannot be resolved within the existing system, to rethink this system in all its aspects, and really change it? These broad questions, and some of the innumerable issues arising from them, are addressed in the chapters to come.

The work is divided into three parts. In the first, 'The Culprit', we indict capital as what will be called the 'efficient cause' of the ecological crisis. But first, this crisis itself needs to be defined, and that is what the next chapter sets out to do, chiefly by introducing certain ecological notions through which the scale of the crisis can be addressed, and by raising the question of causality. The third chapter, 'Capital', lays out the main terms of the indictment, beginning with a case study of the Bhopal disaster, and proceeding to a discussion of what capital is, and how it afflicts ecosystems intensively, by degrading the basis of its production, and extensively, through ruthless expansion. The next chapter, 'Capitalism', follows up on this by considering the specific form of society built around and for the production of capital. The modes of' capital's expansion are explored, along with the qualities of its social relations and the character of its ruling class, and, decisively, the question of its adaptability. For if capitalism cannot alter its fundamental ecological course, then the case for radical transformation is established.

All of which is, needless to say, a grand challenge. The ecological crisis is intellectually difficult and horrific to contemplate, while its outcome must always remain beyond the realm of positive proof. Furthermore, the line of' reasoning pursued here entails extremely difficult and unfamiliar political choices. Even though people may accept it in a cursory way, its awful dimensions make resistance to the practical implications inevitable. The argument developed here would be, for many, akin to learning that a trusted and admired guardian, one, moreover, who retains a great deal of power over life—is in actuality a cold blooded killer who has to be put down if' one is to survive. Not an easy conclusion to draw, and not an easy path to take, however essential it may be. But that is my problem, and if I believed in prayer, I would pray that my powers were adequate to the task.

In Part II, 'The Domination of' Nature', we leave the direct prosecution of the case to establish its wider ground. This is necessary for a number of reasons, but chiefly to avoid a narrow economistic interpretation. In the first of these chapters, the fifth overall, I set out to ground the argument more deeply in the philosophy of nature and human nature. This is entailed in the shift from a merely environmental approach to one that is genuinely ecological, for which purpose it is necessary to talk in terms of human ecosystems and in the human fittedness for ecosystems — that is, human nature. If the goal of our effort is to build a free society in harmony with nature, then we need to appreciate how capital violates both nature at large and human nature — and need to understand as well how we can restore a more integral relation with nature. These ideas are pursued further in Chapter 6., which takes them up in a historical framework and in relation to other varieties of ecophilosophy. We see here that capital stands at the end of a whole set of estrangements from nature, and integrates them into itself. Far from being a merely economic arrangement, then, capital is the culmination of an ancient lesion between humanity and nature, expressed in the notion of the 'domination of nature'. It follows that capital is a whole way of being, and not merely a set of institutions. It is therefore this way of being that has to be radically transformed if' the ecological crisis is to be overcome — even though its transforming must necessarily pass through a bringing down of the 'economic capital' and its enforcer, the capitalist state. We conclude the chapter with some philosophical reflections, including a compact statement of the role played by the elusive notion of the 'dialectic'.

Then, in Part III, 'Towards Ecosocialism', we turn to the question of' 'what is to be done'? Now the argument becomes political, and, because we are so far removed these days from transforming society, to a blend of Utopian and critical thinking. We begin with a survey of existing ecopolitics in Chapter 7, to see what has been done to mend our relation to nature, and to assay its potential for uprooting capital. One aspect of' this critique is entirely conventional, if' generally under-appreciated. We emphasize, that capital stems from the separation of' our productive power from the possibilities of its realization. It is, at heart, the imprisonment of labour and the stunting of' human capacities — capacities that need full and free development in an ecologically sound society. Therefore all existing ecopolitics have to be judged by the standard of' how they succeed in freeing labour, which is to say, our transformative power. The chapter ranges widely, from the relatively well established pathways to those relegated to the margins, and it generally finds the existing strategies wanting. It concludes with a discussion of an insufficiently appreciated danger: that ecological movements may become reactionary, or even fascistic.

Having surveyed what is, we turn in the last two chapters to what could be. In the eighth chapter, 'Prefiguration', the general question of what it takes to break loose from capital is addressed. This requires an excursion into the Marxist notion of 'use-value', as that particular point of the economic system open to ecological transformation, and another excursion into the tangled history of socialism, as the record of those efforts that tried —and essentially failed — to liberate labour in the past century, Finally, the chapter turns to the crucial matter of ecological production as such, using for this purpose a synthesis with ecofeminism, a doctrine that connects the liberation of gender to that of' nature. We conclude with the observation that the key points of activity are 'prefigurative', in that they contain within themselves the germ of transformation; and 'interstitial', in that they are widely dispersed in capitalist society. In the final chapter, 'Ecosocialism', we attempt a mapping from the present scattered and enfeebled condition of resistance to the transformation of capitalism itself' The term ecosocialism refers to a society that is recognizably socialist, in that the producers have been reunited with the means of production in a robust efflorescence of democracy; and also recognizably ecological, in that the 'limits to growth' are finally respected, and nature is recognized as having intrinsic value and not simply cared for, and thereby allowed to resume its inherently formative path. This imagining of ecosocialism does not represent a kind of god-like aspiration to tightly predict the future, but is an effort to show that we can, and had better begin to, think in terms of fundamental alternatives to death-dealing capital. To this effect, a number of pertinent questions are addressed, and the whole effort is rounded off with a brief and speculative reflection.

Some last points before taking up the argument. I expect some criticism for not giving sufficient weight to the population question in what follows. At no point, for example, does overpopulation appear among the chief candidates for the mantle of prime or efficient cause of the ecological crisis. This is not, however, because I discount the problem of population, which is most grave, but because I do see it as having a secondary dynamic — not secondary in importance, but in the sense of' being determined by other features of the system. I remain a deeply committed adversary to the recurrent neo-Malthusianism that holds that if only the lower classes would stop their wanton breeding, all will be well; and I hold that human beings have ample power to regulate population so long as they have power over the terms of their social existence. To me, giving people that power is the main point, for which purpose we need a world where there are no more lower classes, and where all people are in control of their lives.

The Enemy of Nature need make no apologies for moving within the Marxist tradition, and for adhering to fundamental tenets of socialism such as the necessity of emancipating labour. But its approach is not that of traditional Marxism. What Marx bequeathed was a method and a point of view that require fidelity to the particular forms of a given historical epoch, and the transforming of its own vision as history evolves. Since Marxism emerged a century before the ecological crisis matured, we would expect its received form to be both incomplete and flawed when grappling with a society, such as ours, in advanced ecosystemic decay. Marxism needs, therefore, to become more fully ecological in realizing its potential to speak for nature as well as humanity. In practice, this means replacing capitalist with ecologically sound socialist production through a restoration of use-values open to nature's intrinsic value.

I expect, too, that some will find the views of The Enemy of Nature too one-sided. It will be said that there is a hatred of capitalism here that leads to minimization of all its splendid achievements and underestimation of its prodigious recuperative powers. Well, it is true that I hate capitalism and would want others to do so as well. Indeed, I hope that this animus has granted me the will to pursue a difficult truth to a transformative end. In any case, if the views expressed here seem harsh and unbalanced, I can say only that there are no end of opportunities to hear hosannas to the greatness of Lord Capital and obtain, as they say, a more nuanced view. Nor is hatred of capital the same, I hasten to add, as hating capitalists, though there are many of these who should be treated as common criminals, and all should be dispossessed of the instrument that corrupts their soul and destroys the natural ground of civilization. This latter group includes myself, along with millions of others who have been tossed by life into the capitalist pot (in my case, for example, by pension funds in the form of tradeable securities; in all cases by holding a bank account or using a credit card). One of the system's marvels is how it makes all feel complicit in its machinations — or rather, tries to and usually succeeds. But it needn't succeed, and one way of preventing it from doing so is to realize that in fighting for an ecologically sane society beyond capital, we are struggling not just to survive, but, more fundamentally, to build a better world and a better life upon it for all creatures.

[end of excerpt]

I would have to disagree with Kovel when he says,

"Change, if it comes, will have to come from outside the ruling consensus."

Sooooner or later, however, perhaps after a few spectacular bankruptcies that should have already happened in 2008, the insiders will start a stampede for the exit that by that time, may well be blocked fire exits. The possibility that, once the momentum has been ignited, the great mass of affected citizens might join the fray and bring capitalism to an abrupt halt also exists, but it is impossible to see how that might happen lacking other major catalytic events.

Awhile back on SubStack I wrote,

I have been reading Giants: The Global Power Elite by Peter Phillips. An excellent review of the book by Robert J. Burrowes was recently published by the ICH website and merits a careful reading by both we commoners and members of the Elite. Here is a short excerpt from Burrowes' review:

So what are the implications of this state of affairs? Phillips responds unequivocally: ‘This concentration of protected wealth leads to a crisis of humanity, whereby poverty, war, starvation, mass alienation, media propaganda, and environmental devastation are reaching a species-level threat. We realize that humankind is in danger of possible extinction’.

He goes on to state that the Global Power Elite is probably the only entity ‘capable of correcting this condition without major civil unrest, war, and chaos’ and elaborates an important aim of his book: to raise awareness of the importance of systemic change and the redistribution of wealth among both the book’s general readers but also the elite, ‘in the hope that they can begin the process of saving humanity.’ The book’s postscript is ‘A Letter to the Global Power Elite’, co-signed by Phillips and 90 others, beseeching the elite to act accordingly.

‘It is no longer acceptable for you to believe that you can manage capitalism to grow its way out of the gross inequalities we all now face. The environment cannot accept more pollution and waste, and civil unrest is everywhere inevitable at some point. Humanity needs you to step up and insure that trickle-down becomes a river of resources that reaches every child, every family, and all human beings. We urge you to use your power and make the needed changes for humanity’s survival.’

I would wholeheartedly agree with Burroughs, however, when he doubts that such an appeal will have any measurable effect:

As I read Phillips’ insightful and candid account of elite behavior in this regard, I am reminded, yet again, that the global Power Elite is extraordinarily violent and utterly insane: content to kill people in vast numbers (whether through starvation or military violence) and destroy the biosphere for profit, with zero sense of humanity’s now limited future... For this reason I do not share his faith in moral appeals to the elite, as articulated in the letter in his postscript. It is fine to make the appeal but history offers no evidence to suggest that there will be any significant response. The death and destruction inflicted by elites is highly profitable, centuries-old and ongoing. It will take powerful, strategically-focused nonviolent campaigns (or societal collapse) to compel the necessary changes in elite behavior.

And I also have doubts that any group, or any campaign outside of the Elite itself will be allowed to materialize. If there is to be revolution, a revolution of awakening, it will necessarily have to sprout from insiders, maybe just a few as with the revolutionaries of the 60s, who then will convince—one by one, if necessary—his cohort of insiders to wake up and “find ways in which to detect the whole of reality in the one illusory part which our self-centered consciousness permits us to see.” —Aldous Huxley

Insiders, Elites, remember my warning! You own the most, and therefore have the most to lose by continuing on your present course! You WILL lose EVERYTHING. Go ahead and ignore my warning, but don't piss-and-moan when you can't find any cooks or butlers to wait on you in your far-north hideaway, or, for that matter, find any food. We commoners will all be long gone so your laments will fall on dead ears.

[....]

The second part of The Port Huron Statement remains a template for what needs to be done next: Under the heading “What is Needed?” are exceptionally well thought out and highly detailed recommendations on such issues as: Universal controlled disarmament; The task of world industrialization; America must abolish its political party stalemate; Institutions and practices which stifle dissent should be abolished, and the promotion of peaceful dissent should be actively promoted; Corporations must be made publicly responsible; It is not possible to believe that true democracy can exist where a minority utterly controls enormous wealth and power; The influence of corporate elites on foreign policy is neither reliable nor democratic; The allocation of resources must be based on social needs; How should public vs. private domain be determined?; How should technological advances be introduced into a society?

Many recommendations are given also concerning mental health institutions and prisons, education, agricultural policies, the civil rights struggle...

The United States’ principal goal should be creating a world where hunger, poverty, disease, ignorance, violence, and exploitation are replaced as central features by abundance, reason, love, and international cooperation. To many this will seem the product of juvenile hallucination: but we insist it is a more realistic goal than is a world of nuclear stalemate. Some will say this is a hope beyond all bounds: but it is far better to us to have positive vision than a “hard headed” resignation. Some will sympathize, but claim it is impossible: if so, then, we, not Fate, are the responsible ones, for we have the means at our disposal. We should not give up the attempt for fear of failure.

About the only thing that has changed significantly is that The Port Huron Statement's recommendations and goals are today much more than just the right thing to do: they are necessary for survival. The Global Power Elite that in the 1960s ridiculed the Statement's goals as “the product of juvenile hallucination” is today the same clique but with new faces, but there is a new development:

They too are threatened with the results of their own policies. Has there ever been a more spectacular case of fabulous castles built on...sand?

Rats on a ship destined to sink are said to divine the future, and abandon their habitat en masse in port before sailing. But I wonder if they stand around nervously as the ship prepares to cast off, waiting to see who will make the first move before collectively rushing for the exits?

We must learn to live together as brothers or perish together as fools.

— Martin Luther King Jr.