JOEL KOVEL , Alger Hiss Professor of Social Studies at Bard College in Annandale, New York, is best known as the Green Party's candidate in the 2000 elections for nomination as US president. Among other things, he speaks of eco-socialism, ecological integrity, the Kyoto Protocol and greens in the US in conversation with PRATAP PANDEY
Read a review of Joel Kovel's book THE ENEMY OF NATURE
What is eco-socialism?
The world -- the future of humanity and many other species -- is at great risk today, and the efficient cause of this is the accumulation of capital. Capitalism is ecologically destructive. Also, it is unreformable. So it has to be replaced with a revolution.
However, socialist movements over the last century have not been associated with ecological rationality. So we need to create a new form of socialism.
You say capitalist production and ecological integrity exist in absolute contradiction. What is 'ecological integrity'?
Nature gives rise to forms through the development of ecosystems. If the elements of an ecosystem -- an ecosystem can be a forest, or a family, or a classroom -- are held together, although different, they will interact with each other and give rise to new forms.
Human consciousness would be part of this.
Yes. You recognise the connection between yourself and the other. There is a difference, and yet a connection is maintained.
So implicit in 'ecological integrity' is a being that is inherently interactive...
Interactive, integrated, and formative.
And this being is, historically speaking, precisely the entity being ecologically alienated.
The generic term I give to that is splitting. Capital adds a specific dimension to splitting. Capital is the interposition of exchange value, or monetisation of things. It also introduces processes in which that value term is constantly expanding. When you do that, you introduce an element that dissolves the connection between things.
How would eco-socialism entail transformation?
I insist ecological transformation requires supersession of capitalism. In the most fundamental sense, capital is alienated wage labour and grows out of a separation between productive human beings and the means of their production. That in itself is what puts apart the human world from nature. Ecologically speaking, human beings can integrate in ecosystems only if they can freely produce. So that imposes a socialist goal.
When we say the capitalist market rules, we mean that people are socialised, forced, coerced to respond to exchange-value signals, and say "the hell with use-value signals". But exchange-value signals can be weakened by use-value ones.
The moment of eco-socialism introduces another dimension of struggle alongside others. It does not replace the struggle of labour to overcome exploitation. The struggle can also be waged over the sustenance of ecological integrity.
September 11, for you, is symptomatic of ecological crisis.
I am not certain of what triggered 09/11, but there is a good chance the Bush administration allowed it to happen. For two reasons: oil and a legitimation crisis.
The Bush administration came into power illegally, by a coup d'tat. It came into power with a mandate to ruthlessly force accumulation, and to tighten up on ecological controls, most of all to strengthen us control over energy sources. They want to control oil and natural gas in the Caspian Sea, control the richest and last major unexploited area on earth. The us installed the Taliban because they thought it would bring order to that area, just as they thought Israel would bring order to the East Mediterranean.
A lot of people have high hopes about treaties like the Kyoto Protocol. How do you see these developments?
I think it would be a good thing for the nations of the world to build on the Kyoto Protocol. You want Kyoto because you want to arouse and enrage the world citizenry.
A lot of Third World policy is reformulated today according to the demands of transnational institutions, such as the World Trade Organisation (WTO). How do you envisage a country resisting such institutions?
Greater degrees of internal autonomy, and of linkage with like-minded countries. I don't think any country can detach itself from the financial system unless it also changes itself internally. That involves ecological transformation. It involves changes in needs. The whole world needs to develop, in order to survive, a subsistence perspective.
You were a Green Party presidential candidate in the 2000 elections. Tell us a little about the Green Party.
The Green Party is developing in the us , and has quite a long way to go. Most greens in the us today are what you call 'populist'. We build ecological integrity in our backyard, so to speak.
But I think green politics is very valuable as a way of making people practitioners of democratic processes. There are many ways of understanding what went wrong with the socialist revolutions of the last century, but one way is to recognise that these revolutions took place in societies where people had no experience of governing themselves. Eco-socialism would, therefore, want to build a citizenry that can govern itself.
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