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 [0xc0000a0cc0 0xc000d77200 0xc000fbf620 0xc001448f30 0xc0014f77d0 0xc002288b10 0xc0022b87b0 0xc002312120 0xc00243e720 0xc0000f1e00 0xc0001bf350 0xc0001de3f0 0xc0002bea20 0xc0002537a0 0xc00033ef60 0xc000590690 0xc000306300 0xc00031cab0 0xc00034e570 0xc00034ef30 0xc000397440 0xc0003a65d0 0xc0006e74a0 0xc000db95c0 0xc000de9e30 0xc00020f5f0 0xc0005097a0 0xc000a874a0 0xc0007618c0 0xc00077e960 0xc0001b41e0 0xc00043dbc0 0xc000d797a0 0xc0007d8f60 0xc000952450 0xc0000e0900 0xc00035a4e0 0xc0003a16e0 0xc000e79290 0xc001399e90 0xc0013afe30 0xc001545380 0xc001aeec90 0xc001b49d10 0xc001b76900 0xc002327980 0xc0009be570 0xc000d8c3f0 0xc001062e10 0xc001138ea0 0xc00140f5f0 0xc00263cf00] 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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