The Enemy of Nature
The End of Capitalism or the End of the World?
Kovel, Joel
Publisher: Zed Books
Year First Published: {19712 The Enemy of Nature ENEMY OF NATURE The End of Capitalism or the End of the World? Kovel, Joel Zed Books We live in and from nature, but the way we have evolved of doing this is about to destroy you. Capitalism and its by-products -- imperialism, war, neoliberal globalization, racism, poverty, and the destruction of community -- are all playing a part in the destruction of our ecosystem. 2002 2007 329pp BC19712s-EnemyofNature.jpg B Book 978-1-84277-871-5 HC79.E5K68 2007 333.7 John Kovel is a Professor of Social Studies at Bard College and has been actively involved in green politics. The title of his book, The Enemy of Nature: The end of capitalism or the end of the world?, is enough to make the reader realise that the author considers capitalism, and its by-products, to be nature's (and man's) worst enemy and that he feels that a world with capitalism cannot exist for long. He argues against the claim that a better environment can be achieved through the current Western way of being.
<br>
<br>Divided into three parts -- "The culprit," "The domination of nature," and "Paths to ecosocialism" -- the book deals with three major aspects of this theory. The first section explores whether this theory is true by defining the ecological crisis and by discussing what capital is and how it affects the ecosystem. The second part of the book brings the concept of capitalism out of an economic context and into an ecological one. Capital is regarded as "a whole way of being" that "has to be radically transformed if the ecological crisis is to be overcome". The last section deals with the question of what has been done, and what must be done, to deal with this problem. The book is therefore a political, economic and scientific discussion, not limited to any one aspect of the ecological crisis.
<br>
<br>[Abstract by Nabeeha Chaudhary]
<br>
<br>
<br>
<br>Excerpts:
<br>
<br>Corporations are as much the object of globalization as its subject. As we have seen in the instance of Bhopal, the corporation is itself moved by the gigantic force field of capital in which it is suspended, and is given life to the extent that it fosters accumulation. And for another, states play a role in the accumulation of capital which is just as fundamental as that of the corporation - only imagine what would happen if the process were entirely turned over to the latter, with no governmental process to regulate and enforce.
<br>
<br>...
<br>
<br>global capitalism exists along a continuum extending from the dignified chairman of the Federal Reserve Bank to the most vicious Russian mobster and Colombian drug lord. All are mandated by the great force field and under its spell.
<br>
<br>...
<br>
<br>For if capital were natural, why has it only occupied the last 500 years of a record that goes back for hundreds of thousands? More to the point, why did it have to be imposed through violence wherever it set down its rule? And most importantly, why does it have to be continually maintained through violence, and continuously reimposed on each generation through an enormous apparatus of indoctrination?
<br>
<br>...
<br>
<br>Industrialization is not an independent force, the, but the hammer with which nature is smashed for the sake of capital. Industrial logging destroys forests; industrial fishing destroys fisheries' industrial chemistry makes Frankenfood; industrial use of fossil fuels creates the greenhouse effect, and so forth - all for the sake of value-expansion.
<br>
<br>...
<br>
<br>The history of capital may be viewed as a never-ended battle to take over collective and organic relationship and replace these with commodity relationships, which is to say, to create private property by destroying the Commons, and to embed this in the accumulation of capital.
<br>
<br>...
<br>
<br>Capital is more than happy to enlist mainstream enviros as partners in the management of nature. Big environmental groups offer capital a threefold convenience: as legitimation, reminding the world that the system works; as control over popular dissent, a kind of sponge that sucks up and contains the ecological anxiety in the general population; and as rationalization, a useful governor to introduce some control and protect the system from its own worst tendencies, while ensuring the orderly flow of profits. CX8235 1 true true false CX8235.htm [0xc0001840f0 0xc000e49860 0xc000f73dd0 0xc00146c1e0 0xc001518bd0 0xc001baf230 0xc001bdeed0 0xc001c3a870 0xc0000cf560 0xc0001d2fc0 0xc000252600 0xc000265710 0xc0003678c0 0xc0000eef60 0xc0003269c0 0xc001dca330 0xc0003152c0 0xc00032ba70 0xc000363530 0xc000363ef0 0xc0003c05d0 0xc0003c1770 0xc0006e2930 0xc000679710 0xc000727f80 0xc00024ce10 0xc000517620 0xc0000a6270 0xc0000a7e60 0xc0000f5740 0xc000259d40 0xc0004ffb30 0xc000cbcab0 0xc000a5c4e0 0xc000ba7b60 0xc000408780 0xc0006c2690 0xc0007218c0 0xc001299410 0xc001502390 0xc001636780 0xc001753f80 0xc001a69ef0 0xc001ebcfc0 0xc001ebdb90 0xc0024d27b0 0xc000d137d0 0xc001009a70 0xc001266630 0xc0013266f0 0xc0016e10b0 0xc002788060] Cx}
Year Published: 2007
Pages: 329pp ISBN: 978-1-84277-871-5
Library of Congress Number: HC79.E5K68 2007 Dewey: 333.7
Resource Type: Book
Cx Number: CX8235
We live in and from nature, but the way we have evolved of doing this is about to destroy you. Capitalism and its by-products -- imperialism, war, neoliberal globalization, racism, poverty, and the destruction of community -- are all playing a part in the destruction of our ecosystem.
Abstract:
John Kovel is a Professor of Social Studies at Bard College and has been actively involved in green politics. The title of his book, The Enemy of Nature: The end of capitalism or the end of the world?, is enough to make the reader realise that the author considers capitalism, and its by-products, to be nature's (and man's) worst enemy and that he feels that a world with capitalism cannot exist for long. He argues against the claim that a better environment can be achieved through the current Western way of being.
Divided into three parts -- "The culprit," "The domination of nature," and "Paths to ecosocialism" -- the book deals with three major aspects of this theory. The first section explores whether this theory is true by defining the ecological crisis and by discussing what capital is and how it affects the ecosystem. The second part of the book brings the concept of capitalism out of an economic context and into an ecological one. Capital is regarded as "a whole way of being" that "has to be radically transformed if the ecological crisis is to be overcome". The last section deals with the question of what has been done, and what must be done, to deal with this problem. The book is therefore a political, economic and scientific discussion, not limited to any one aspect of the ecological crisis.
[Abstract by Nabeeha Chaudhary]
Excerpts:
Corporations are as much the object of globalization as its subject. As we have seen in the instance of Bhopal, the corporation is itself moved by the gigantic force field of capital in which it is suspended, and is given life to the extent that it fosters accumulation. And for another, states play a role in the accumulation of capital which is just as fundamental as that of the corporation - only imagine what would happen if the process were entirely turned over to the latter, with no governmental process to regulate and enforce.
...
global capitalism exists along a continuum extending from the dignified chairman of the Federal Reserve Bank to the most vicious Russian mobster and Colombian drug lord. All are mandated by the great force field and under its spell.
...
For if capital were natural, why has it only occupied the last 500 years of a record that goes back for hundreds of thousands? More to the point, why did it have to be imposed through violence wherever it set down its rule? And most importantly, why does it have to be continually maintained through violence, and continuously reimposed on each generation through an enormous apparatus of indoctrination?
...
Industrialization is not an independent force, the, but the hammer with which nature is smashed for the sake of capital. Industrial logging destroys forests; industrial fishing destroys fisheries' industrial chemistry makes Frankenfood; industrial use of fossil fuels creates the greenhouse effect, and so forth - all for the sake of value-expansion.
...
The history of capital may be viewed as a never-ended battle to take over collective and organic relationship and replace these with commodity relationships, which is to say, to create private property by destroying the Commons, and to embed this in the accumulation of capital.
...
Capital is more than happy to enlist mainstream enviros as partners in the management of nature. Big environmental groups offer capital a threefold convenience: as legitimation, reminding the world that the system works; as control over popular dissent, a kind of sponge that sucks up and contains the ecological anxiety in the general population; and as rationalization, a useful governor to introduce some control and protect the system from its own worst tendencies, while ensuring the orderly flow of profits.
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