Ecology: AGAINST Capitalism/FOR Socialism --2 BOOK REVIEWS--

[Chris Brady <cdbrady@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

I thought I should pass these two book reviews along for comrades
interested in this line of march.
The reviewer seems familiar with the issues.
They are off the Amazon sites for the two books.


Ecology Against Capitalism
by John Bellamy Foster

An Ecology without Capitalism?
Reviewed by Walter R. Sheasby, June 5, 2002

In this new book John Bellamy Foster has assembled a great deal of
evidence (in a dozen chapters written and published over the last
decade) that the earth's ecology is incompatible with capitalism. But is
there an alternative?

Foster says: "A shift toward a broad movement for ecological conversion
and the creation of a sustainable society also means that that the
partnership between the state and the capitalist class, which has always
formed the most important linchpin of the capitalist system, must be
loosened by degrees, as part of an overall social and environmental
revolution. This partnership must be replaced, in the process of a
radical transformation of the society, by a new partnership between
democratized state power and popular power" (p. 132).

Reading just that far, one might conclude that such a loosening by
degrees could be achieved within the two-party system in the United
States or in other regimes where voters choose between conservatives and
liberals. Certainly many environmental progressives (if that's not a
contradiction) have opted to work within the existing political duopoly.

But the Ralph Nader campaigns of 1996 and 2000, and the concomitant rise
of the Green Party, presage a different direction. It is one, however,
which will require both a deeper and more ecological understanding of
the incompatibility of ecosystems with a profit system, and a more
radical politics than the market-regulation offered by the Green Party
platform and Citizen Nader's narrower planks.

Foster goes on to say: "Such a shift requires revolutionary change that
must be more than simply a rejection of capitalist methods of
accumulation and their effects on people and the environment. Socialism
-- as a positive, not just a negative, alternative to capitalism --
remains essential to the conversion process, because its broad
commitment to worldwide egalitarian change reflects an understanding of
'how the needs of the various communities can be fit together in a way
that leaves nobody out, and that also satisfies global environmental
requirements'."

In his major opus, Marx's Ecology (2000), Foster showed Marx's
development of an ecological perspective that drew from the latest
natural science discoveries. These included the discovery of the micro
metabolic cycles by the cell theorists, Theodor Schwann and Matthias
Schleiden, which Marx linked with the discovery of the grand metabolic
cycles of earth and sky by the agrochemist Justus von Liebig. To this
one would have to add the influence on Marx of Karl Fraas, an important
figure in forest ecology neglected by Foster and most scholars in this
country.

Marx's resulting awareness of the ecological care necessary to plan a
sustainable socialism was ignored, however, by the Soviet Union under
Stalin, as Foster showed, despite profound contributions by scientists
like Vladimir I. Vernadsky, whose 1924 book, The Biosphere (1998), has
become an internationally-recognized classic of ecology. Critical
radicals today, and particularly those in the ecosocialism paradigm,
reject the lack of democracy and bureaucratic centralism of such
regimes, which played a key role in the adoption of policies that
degraded the environment.

Nevertheless, Foster argues, "Within a socialist framework, the sources
of the largest-scale and most severe environmental destruction could be
dealt with head-on, in a way that has already shown itself to be beyond
the capacity -- not to say against the interests -- of capital."

Foster acknowledges a range of collaborators and rivals in the crafting
of his new book. Most important is Paul Burkett, whose  Marx and Nature:
A Red and Green Perspective (1999) finally clarified the distinction
between the human use of nature and the exploitation of the exchange
value of commodities. Foster also cites James O'Connor, author of
Natural Causes (1998)as showing that "While there are many variations in
economic growth theory, all presuppose that capitalism cannot stand
still...that it must 'accumulate or die,' in Marx's words" (p. 80).

Although Foster's new book appeared at the same time as Joel Kovel's The
Enemy of Nature (2002), which has the same basic theme, the books are
quite different. Foster's collection of articles is intended to deal
with specifics, it is "an attempt to intervene directly in contemporary
political-economic debates on capitalism and the environment..." (p. 7).
Kovel's book is actually an intervention into eco-politics and provides
a sustained exploration of Ecosocialism as compared and contrasted with
Deep Ecology, Bioregionalism, Anarchist Social Ecology, and particularly
with Populism and variants of small-business capitalism.

If Foster's new book is focused on what needs to be undone in an
ecological and economic conversion, Kovel's is much more a manual of
what needs to be done to build the alternative to capitalism. The books
actually complement each other, and both are essential tools for the
ecological activist and the open-minded citizen.


The Enemy of Nature: The End of Capitalism or the End of the World
by Joel Kovel

The Eco-socialist Idea - from William Morris to Joel Kovel
Reviewed by Walter R. Sheasby ,May 21, 2002

"I feel sure," William Morris told his fellow socialists gathered at
Kelmscott House in 1884, "that the time will come when people will find
it difficult to believe that a rich community such as ours, having such
command over external Nature, could have submitted to live with a mean,
shabby, dirty life as we do." One hundred eighteen years ago Morris was
imagining a time "when no one was allowed to injure the public by
defiling the natural beauty of the earth."

As Joel Kovel spells out in this book, we are further from that goal
today than when the dedicated radical penned his novel of the future,
News from Nowhere, perhaps the first ecosocialist vision. The world
today is far shabbier and the public injured far more than when Morris
wrote, and Kovel is dealing with a level of ecodestruction many
magnitudes worse. In fact, given the trajectory he outlines, the
biosphere itself, not simply the appearance of the human habitat, is
what is threatened: "Put more formally, the current stage of history can
be characterized by structural forces that systematically degrade and
finally exceed the buffering capacity of nature with respect to human
production, thereby setting into motion an unpredictable yet interacting
and expanding set of ecosystemic breakdowns."

Kovel's task in The Enemy of Nature is to "understand the social
dynamics of the crisis, and to see whether anything can be done about
them" (p. 21). Part of that task involves learning the empirical
dimensions of the ecological crisis, and how the various perils and
problems that come to public attention in a very fragmentary way are
actually part of one process of ecodestruction with one cancerous
dynamic driving it: the Grow or Die logic of capital accumulation.
Another aspect of this work is the articulation of the ecosocialist idea
in a way that has only been forshadowed in the past. Like William
Morris, Joel Kovel is a close student of Karl Marx's 1867 classic,
Capital: A Critique of Political Economy.  Morris desired to be also a
"practical socialist" and not "a mere railer against 'progress'."
Likewise, Kovel is an active leader within Green politics, even to the
point of seeking the Party's Presidential nomination in 2000. And as
Morris struggled against Fabianism as an inadequate theory of change,
Kovel does battle against Populism, the idea that the system can be
reformed without disturbing the drive for profit and accumulation.

Kovel, however, also brings to the ecosocialist project a long and
distinguished career as a psychoanalyst and psychiatrist who has made a
close study of racism, greed, and other aspects of human alienation. He
is no stranger to the natural sciences and is especially well-versed in
the life sciences that inform the vast field of ecology.

His theoretical depth makes Kovel an excellent critic of many of the
fashionable currents that claim a following in the movement, such as
Deep Ecology, Bioregionalism, and Natural Capitalism. But he is a fair
judge of these rival forms of ecopolitics, and he is careful to avoid
any hint of sectarian or dogmatic thinking.  The Greens, like other left
movements, have been afflicted with sectarianism, sometimes reaching the
point of refusing to work together. Kovel, however, is part of a Green
alliance that functions more like a caucus within the movement and the
party than as a rival.

Kovel has been a Professor of Social Studies at Bard College in
Annandale, New York, since 1988. He is a prolific writer and is
associated with the journal Capitalism, Nature, Socialism founded by
Santa Cruz economist James O'Connor.  Through that journal and
conferences and internet discussions he has been working to bring
activists and writers together, and he recently published an
Ecosocialist Manifesto signed by a number of others who agree with
William Morris that a "Great Change" in the way we treat 'nature' is
long overdue.

In the system of commodity production, Morris once said, people had
tried to make 'nature' their slave, "since they thought 'nature' was
something outside them." In liberating nature, we are, of course,
freeing ourselves.



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