Can The Leopard Change Its Spots?

Can The Leopard Change Its Spots?

In an era of media-spun promises of American-wrought liberty, economic growth and an "it-ain't-so-bad-after-all" variety of anti-environmentalism, Joel Kovel's TheEnemy of Nature is a much needed counterpoint, an important attempt at truth-telling. His largely marginalized eco-political argument—that the ills of capitalisms and the ecological crisis are inextricably linked—is maybe not novel, but certainly worth repeating—and hearing.

The book's fundamental argument is as follows: There is a growing amount of evidence for an accelerating deterioration of the Earth's ecology. These deleterious changes are reaching global proportions and are likely to undermine the integrity of ecosystems and thus the very basis of life on Earth. The ultimate underlying cause for this ecodestruction is the now solely remaining economic system—capitalism—whose nature and goal is to grow and expand ad infinitum. Given this "cancerous" nature of the capitalist logic—carried out on the backs of workers turned into commodity—the system is fundamentally non-reformable and must be replaced if an ecologically viable foundation and human life with dignity is to be regained. The alternative is an essentially socialist society, whose members practice radical democracy, and value—above all—integrity of the ecological life world.

To make this argument, Kovel covers a lot of ground: instances of the environmental crisis, the prototypical industrial "accident" turned into ecological and human disaster, the false promises of capitalism, the nature of life and the question of human nature. He also reviews the fundamentals of Marxism, green and red philosophies, economies and reform movements less ambitious than his, the failures of "actually realized socialism," and an odd garden variety of small enclaves of more or less successful evasions from the "capitalist force field." That takes no small breath on behalf of the reader. Assuming good will— it also takes considerable willingness to swallow sweeping scientific generalities and shortcuts through ecological complexities that occasionally amount to inaccuracies, as well as narrow, mono-causal historical explanations, and essentialist, sometimes unfair characterizations of philosophical and social movements. This, unfortunately, will create enemies where dialogue would be needed instead.

Thus, The Enemy of Nature falls short as an accurate scientific account, as a reliable history, and as a fair philosophical treatise. But is it at least good polemics? I choose three criteria to evaluate this question. First, does Kovel make a convincing case against the status quo and—if unchanged—its inevitable doomed trajectory? I tend to agree with his basic argument about the cancerous, ecodestructive, and exploitative nature of capitalism. What is far less convincing is that capitalism is non-reformable but socialism is, even though the alternative—ecosocialism—is as fundamentally different from the theoretical origins and the actually realized socialisms as it is from the actually realized market economy. The ultimate difference, after all, between the historically experienced and the envisioned future is a particular intentionality in people that shields them against the consumerist, profit-hungry, expansive tendencies fostered by the capitalist system (p.194). If that is so, then Kovel is right that the new will be radically different from the old, but he maybe overshoots his case that the leopard can't change its spots.

The second criterion is whether his alternative vision, and the getting-there, are convincing. His ecosocialism is an internally consistent, logical derivative of all that he argues is wrong with capitalism. Pretty much every social ailment gets resolved and accounted for—from the exploitation of women to population growth to capital punishment to ecologically destructive behavior. But what about the transition to that society?! To be fair, who really can imagine a transformation (whether slow or revolutionary) of such magnitude? Kovel deserves credit for a fair amount of specificity regarding needed institutional changes, but he also displays a strange ambivalence about...