Coming
Soon!
From Common Courage Press
Recent
Stories
June
13, 2003
David
Vest
Bush
Roadmap to What?
Ron Jacobs
The Iranian Revolution, Reloaded?
John
Chuckman
The Man Who Wasn't There
Jason Leopold
Six Months Before War White House Silenced Critics of WMD Intelligence
Michael
Leon
Missing Weapons, Shrinking Bush and the Media
Negar Azimi
Ashcroft's Cruel Version of America
Saul
Landau
Shiite Happens
Hammond
Guthrie
Then and Now
Steve
Perry
Bush's Wars
Web Log 6/13
June
12, 2003
Gary
Leupp
The Intel-gate Row in Britain: a Chronology
Ahmad Faruqui
The Tragic Legacy of the Six Day
War
Wayne
Madsen
Unfit for Office: Time for Rumsfeld to Resign
Laura Carlsen
Hunger and Security
Tarif
Abboushi
Warm and Fuzzy in Aqaba
Ray
McGovern
Deceived into War: Reflections of
a Former CIA Analyst
Steve
Perry
Bush's Wars
Web Log 6/12
June
11, 2003
Jeffrey
St. Clair
Attack of the Hog Killers: Why the
Generals Hate the A-10
Elaine
Cassel
Meet Michael Chertoff: Ashcroft's
Top Gremlin
David Lindorff
The Republican Drive to Eliminate Overtime Pay
Tom
Gorman
Greens, the Antiwar Movement and 2004
Alfredo
Castro
Colombia: The Most Dangerous Place
on Earth for Trade Unionists
Nnimo
Bassey and Lawrence Bohlen
Bush Must Stop Telling Us What to
Eat!
Julie Hilden
Spike Lee v. Spike TV
CounterPunch
Wire
Blair Bros. Change Jobs!
Eric
Hobsbawm
The Empire Expands, Wider and Still
Wider
Steve
Perry
DHS: As Big
a Planning Snafu as Iraq?
June
10, 2003
Benjamin
Shepard
A Season in the Anti-War Movement
Chris
Floyd
Bush Family Lies About Iraq and Nazi
Germany
Wayne
Madsen
Weaponsgate
Jason Leopold
Powell's Denials Ring Hollow
Richard
Lichtman
Whining, Whimpering Leftists Confront the Logic of American World
Domination
Ray
Close
A CIA Analyst on Why the Lies About
WMD Matter
Hammond
Guthrie
Banking on Saddam?
Steve
Perry
Bush's Wars
Web Log 6/10
June
9, 2003
Alex
Coolman
Male Rape in US Prisons
Elaine
Cassel
Ashcroft is Coming!
Lee
Sustar
Is Iran Next?
Agustin
Velloso
Equatorial Guinea: Few Rich, Many
Poor
Gila
Svirsky
Some Lives Are Worth Less Than Others
Dr. Gerry
Lower
Human Worth in Bush's America
Michael
S. Ladah
A True Liberation
Ishmael Reed
Iraqi Slaughter, Mayhem and Plunder
Steve
Perry
How to Beat Bush, part 1
June
7 / 8, 2003
Alexander
Cockburn
The Terrible Truth
Jeffrey
St. Clair
Going Critical: Bush's War on Endangered Species
Joanne
Mariner
Ashcrofts Sides with Torturers
Steven
Sherman
A Different Theory of Everything
Ron Jacobs
Sports, Politics and the 60s
M.
Shahid Alam
Pauperizing the Periphery
Amelia
Peltz
If This is the Road, I'd Rather be Lost
Shelton
Hull
Another Powell, Another Capitulation
Binoy Kampmark
Nuclear Deterrence and North Korea
Ben
Tripp
A Fish Story
Sen. Robert
Byrd
Where is the Outrage?
Robin
Philpot
Congo Distortions
Julie Hilden
Murder and the Matrix
Laura
Flanders
An Interview with Isabel Allende
David Lindorff
The Last Byline
Adam
Engel
Talk Dirty Scary Monsters
Poets'
Basement
Kearney, Reiss, Guthrie, Albert and Hamod
June
6, 2003
Elaine
Cassel
Ashcroft the Insatiable
David
Krieger
The Big Lie
Ramzy
Baroud
Sharon and the Myth of the Peacemakers
Anthony
Gancarski
Sharansky: "Crucifixion is a Privilege"
Sam
Hamod
His Own Little Country
Sean Carter
Why Indict Martha Stewart and Not Ken Lay?
David
Lindorff
Cracks in the Consensus
Stew Albert
Ari's Great Set
Steve
Perry
Greens and
Moore in 04? No
June
5, 2003
Jeffrey
St. Clair
Pools of Fire: The Looming Nuclear
Nightmare in the Woods of North Carolina
Imraan
Siddiqi
Ann Coulter's Foul Mouth
Michael
Leon
Clinton, Reno & Waco: Remember What They've Done
Robert
Jensen
Texas Pledge Law Undermines Democracy
Ann Harrison
Rosenthal is Free, But the Fight isn't Over
Paul
Dean
How You Can Be Deliriously Happy in the Age of Bush
Gary Leupp
When Spooks Speak Out
Website
of the Day
Evidence in Black and White?
Hot Stories
CounterPunch
Wire
WMD: Who Said What When
Cindy
Corrie
A Mother's Day Talk: the Daughter
I Can't Hear From
Elaine
Cassel
Civil Liberties
Watch
Michel
Guerrin
Embedded Photographer Says: "I
Saw Marines Kill Civilians"
Uzma
Aslam Khan
The Unbearably Grim Aftermath of War:
What America Says Does Not Go
Paul de Rooij
Arrogant
Propaganda
Gore Vidal
The
Erosion of the American Dream
Francis Boyle
Impeach
Bush: A Draft Resolution
Click Here
for More Stories.
|
June
14, 2003
Nature's Coming Revolution
A
Review of Joel Kovel's The Enemy of Nature
By TED DACE
The Enemy of Nature: The End of Capitalism or
the End of the World?
by Joel Kovel
Zed Books
For Joel Kovel the revolution is only a matter
of time. Marx was right: Capitalism cannot help but prepare the
stew in which it will roast. But the old man got one thing wrong.
The ultimate antagonist of capital is not labor but nature. If
Marx made a fetish of capital's propensity to generate too much
wealth to be profitably re-invested, Kovel does the same in regard
to planetary ecosystem crackup. Instead of periodic economic
downturn catapulting the proletariat into History, it's the shattering
of life-essential natural processes that's destined to set off
socialist (make that ecosocialist) revolution.
Professor Kovel, who ran to the left
of Ralph Nader for the Green Party nod in 2000, wastes no time
making the case that capitalism, by its very nature, cannot help
but destroy the integrity and well-being of what we call "nature."
No need for yet another inventory of disturbances in the environment,
our  bodies, and our psychic balance. The
enemy of nature is not oil or pesticides or factories or bulldozers
but capital, "that ubiquitous, all-powerful and greatly
misunderstood dynamo that drives our society."
While traditionally the marketplace is
a means of exchanging goods for money so as to purchase other
goods, under capitalism it becomes a way of accumulating money.
Reversing the natural order, the merchant starts off with money
and buys the product of someone else's labor, then turns around
and sells it at a markup. As long as the laborer is poor and
the buyer rich, the trader makes a profit.
What gives a commodity value is not what
we do with it, like using bricks to build houses or shoes to
walk home in, but the price it commands in trade. In contrast
to "use value," a quality that belongs to any given
item intrinsically, "exchange value" is an abstraction
that must be expressed quantitatively. When you buy a pair of
shoes--or better yet, a thousand pairs--only to sell them for
profit, their entire value is a number.
As the basis of economics becomes the
trade itself and not the tangible thing exchanged, money is transformed
into an all-consuming monster. No longer bound up with the limitations
of actual land, people, and resources, it springs to life, an
abstraction with a will of its own. "Pure quantity,"
says Kovel, "can swell infinitely without reference to the
external world."
There lies the source of our ecological
crisis.
Despite its reputation as the very acme
of rational economic exchange, capitalism follows its own imperatives,
quite apart from the needs of humans and ecosystems. In its compulsion
to grow and multiply, capital "constantly tries to violate"
whatever limit is set before it. Success means only one thing:
surpassing yesterday's mark. No matter how big the beast gets,
to cease growing further is to die. Yet the one thing we know
for sure is that it can't grow forever. Sooner or later abstraction
runs up against reality.
So, is capitalism setting the stage for
ecosocialist uprising? "If the argument that capital is
incorrigibly ecodestructive and expansive proves to be true,
then it is only a question of time before the issues raised here
achieve explosive urgency." True enough, but that doesn't
mean the Revolution is just over the horizon. What Kovel overlooks
is the likelihood that worsening environmental conditions will
exacerbate the scarcity that already pits us against each other.
While the rich compete to survive as rich people, the poor compete
to survive, period. If it's the money-driven struggle of all-against-all
that's pushing us, inexorably, to the edge of the cliff, shouldn't
we expect rising insecurity and the resulting intensification
of this struggle to push us right over the edge? Precisely when,
between now and doomsday, do the masses finally revolt?
As Kovel himself points out, capitalists
are perfectly willing to perpetuate eco-destabilization as long
as they successfully insulate themselves and perhaps even profit
from the meltdown all around them. He cites an article in London's
Guardian Weekly purporting to show a shift in elite opinion since
the early 70s, when the Club of Rome called for "limits
to growth." These days, digging our own grave is the ultimate
business opportunity.
Taking Kovel to task in the September,
2002 issue of Monthly Review, John Bellamy Foster noted, "We
should not underestimate capitalism's capacity to accumulate
in the midst of the most blatant ecological destruction, to profit
from environmental degradation... and to continue to destroy
the earth to the point of no return--both for human society and
for most of the world's living species."
Times are tough? How about a liquidation
sale? Like Marx before him, Kovel finds a silver lining where
none exists. There's just no pulling the socialist rabbit out
of the capitalist hat.
Ted Dace
has written for Skeptic, Z Magazine, Make Room for Dada, and
the Anderson Valley Advertiser. He can be reached at: edace@earthlink.net
Yesterday's Features
David
Vest
Bush
Roadmap to What?
Ron Jacobs
The Iranian Revolution, Reloaded?
John
Chuckman
The Man Who Wasn't There
Jason Leopold
Six Months Before War White House Silenced Critics of WMD Intelligence
Michael
Leon
Missing Weapons, Shrinking Bush and the Media
Negar Azimi
Ashcroft's Cruel Version of America
Saul
Landau
Shiite Happens
Hammond
Guthrie
Then and Now
Steve
Perry
Bush's Wars
Web Log 6/13
Keep CounterPunch
Alive:
Make
a Tax-Deductible Donation Today Online!
home / subscribe
/ about us / books
/ archives / search
/ links /
|