Author: Joel Kovel
Publisher: Tulika
Year: 2002
Language: English
Pages: 274
ISBN/UPC (if available): 8185229805
Description
The Enemy of Nature faces the harsh but increasingly inescapable conclusion that capitalism is the driving force behind the ecological crisis, and draws the radical implication. Joel Kovel noted scholar and author, also public speaker and green campaigner indicts capitalism, with its unrelenting pressure to expand, as both inherently ecodestructive and unreformable. He argues against the reigning orthodoxy that there can be no alternative to the capitalist system, not because this orthodoxy is weak, but because submission to it is suicidal as well as unworthy of human beings.
Kovel sees capital as not just an economic system but as the present manifestation of an ancient rupture between humanity and nature. This widening of scope is given theoretical weight in the second part of the work, which develops a positive synthesis between Marxism, ecofeminism and the philosophy of nature. Then Kovel turns to what is to be done? He criticizes existing ecological politics for their evasion of capital, advances a vision of ecological production as the successor to capitalist production, and develops the principles for realizing his, as an ecosocialism, in the context of anti-globalization politics.
He sees, prefigured in present struggle, the outlines of a society of freely associated producers for whom the earth is no longer an object to be owned and exploited, but the source of intrinsic value.
The Enemy of Nature is written in the spirit of the great radical motto: Be realistic-demand the impossible! Its author dares to think the unthinkable-we have a choice: capitalist barbarism and ecocatastrophe, or the building of a society worthy of humanity and nature.
REVIEWS
Full of insights into the relationship between ecological degradation and capitalist expansion, this is a must-read for thinkers and activists.
-WALDEN BELLO
Executive Director, Focus on the Global South, Thailand
A necessary and timely book. Necessary because it openly declares capitalism as the destroyer of the earth and all eco-systems. Timely, because it appears at a moment when more and more people are beginning to lose faith in capital’s ability to solve the social and ecological crises.
-MARIA MIES
Author of Patriarchy and Accumulation on a World Scale
A challenging book, written with passion and eloquence, Rich in detail and insights, this book should be read by all those concerned about the survival of the human species.
-ISTVAN MESZAROS
Author of Beyond Capital
Contents
Preface
Introduction to the Indian edition
PART -I
THE CULPRIT
INTRODUCTION
THE ECOLOGICAL CRISIS
On human ecology and the trajectory of the ecological crisis
CAPITAL
A case study
The mystery of growth revealed
Accumulation
CAPITALISM
The Penetration of life-worlds
Speed-up, or the ever-decreasing circulation time of capital
Globalization or the establishment of a planetary regime to supervise the expansionary process
The men in charge
The indictment
PART-II
THE DOMINATION OF NATURE
ON ECOLOGIES
What is life?
On human being
Ecosystemic integrity and disintegration
CAPITAL AND THE DOMINATION OF NATURE
The pathology of a cancer upon nature
The gendered bifurcation of nature
The rise of capital
Philosophical interlude
On the deformability of capitalism
PART-III
TOWARDS ECOSOCIALIMS
INTTRODUCTION
CRITIQUE OF ACTUALLY EXISTING ECOPLOLITICS
Logics of change
Green economics
Ecophilosophies
Deep Ecology
Bioregionalism
Ecofeminism
Social ecology
Democracy, populism and fascism
PREFIGURATION
The Bruderhof
Socialism
Our Marx
Ecological production
ECOSOCIALISM
Ecological ensemble and the modeling of ecosocialist development
The ecosocialist party and its victory
A usufructuary of the earth
Some questions
Afterword
Bibliography
Index