Joel Kovel

This article's lead section may be too short to adequately summarize the key points. Please consider expanding the lead to provide an accessible overview of all important aspects of the article. (September 2019)

Joel Kovel
Kovel in 2009
Born	Joel Stephen Kovel (1936-08-27)August 27, 1936 Brooklyn, New York City, New York, U.S.
Died	April 30, 2018(2018-04-30) (aged 81) New York City, New York, U.S.
Occupation	Physician, scholar, human rights activist, writer
Website
joelkovel.com (archived)

Joel Stephen Kovel (August 27, 1936 – April 30, 2018) was an American psychiatrist, scholar, human rights activist, and author known as a founder of eco-socialism.^[1][2][3] Kovel became a psychoanalyst, but he abandoned psychoanalysis in 1985.

Kovel was born on August 27, 1936, in

In 1986, Kovel abandoned the field of psychiatry.^[1] From 1986 to 1987, he was a visiting professor of Political Science and Communications, University of California, San Diego. He also held short-term positions as a Visiting Lecturer at San Diego State University in the spring of 1990 and another visiting professor position at UCSD in Winter 1993.^[4]

In 1988, Kovel was appointed Alger Hiss Chair of Social Studies, a non-tenured position, at Bard College. In February 2009, he was informed that his position would not be renewed after the contract ended on June 20, 2009, and that he would be moved to emeritus status at that time.^[8] Kovel argued in a letter sent to the faculty of Bard College that his contract was not renewed due to his political views.^[9] He reiterated his argument in a statement posted on his official website that the "termination of service is prejudicial and motivated neither by intellectual nor pedagogic considerations, but by political values, principally stemming from differences between myself and the Bard administration on the issue of Zionism".^[8] The college president Leon Botstein responded in a letter sent directly to Kovel by arguing that his termination was not political but part of a larger move by Bard to reduce part-time faculty. Botstein stated: "To take what is self-evidently a result of economic constraint and turn it into a trumped-up case of prejudice and political victimization insults not only your intelligence but the intelligence of your readers."^[9] While Kovel called his dismissal illegitimate and vowed to fight the decision, he left Bard permanently per the university's decision in 2009.^[2]

Kovel became involved in political activism in the 1960s as a result of the

By the late 1980s, he became involved with the environmental movement. He then had a brief career with the Green Party of the United States, under which he ran for the U.S. Senate in 1998 and "sought the party's presidential nomination in Denver in 2000."^[2][3][4]

Kovel was an advisory editor of

Kovel married Virginia Ryan, a nurse, with whom he had a daughter and a son before they divorced. He then married DeeDee Halleck, with whom he had a daughter.^[1]

Kovel died age 81 on April 30, 2018, in New York City from pneumonia and autoimmune encephalitis.^[1][2][3]

This section relies largely or entirely on a single source. Relevant discussion may be found on the talk page. Please help improve this article by introducing citations to additional sources. Find sources: "Joel Kovel" – news · newspapers · books · scholar · JSTOR (May 2019)

In 2001, Kovel and

As eco-socialists disagree with the elite theories of capitalism, which tend to label a specific class or social group as conspirators who construct a system that satisfies their greed and personal desires, Kovel suggested that the capitalist system itself is self-perpetuating, fuelled by extra-human or impersonal forces. He used the Bhopal Union-Carbide industrial disaster as an example. Many anti-corporation observers would blame the avarice of those at the top of many multi-national corporations. Conversely, Kovel traced systemic impulses. Union Carbide were experiencing a decrease in sales that led to falling profits which, due to stock market conditions, translated into a drop in share values. The depreciation of share value made many shareholders sell their stock, weakening the company, and leading to cost-cutting measures that eroded the safety procedures and mechanisms at the Bhopal site. Though this did not make Bhopal inevitable in Kovel's mind, it showed the effect market forces can have on increasing the likelihood of ecological and social problems.^[13]

Kovel followed Marx's theories about the contradiction between use values and exchange values. As he wrote in The Enemy of Nature, within a market economy goods are not produced to meet needs but are produced to be exchanged for money that we then use to acquire other goods. As we have to keep selling in order to keep buying, we must persuade others to buy our goods just to ensure our survival, which leads to the production of goods with no previous use that can be sold to sustain our ability to buy other goods. Kovel stressed that this contradiction has reached a destructive extent, where certain essential activities, such as caring for relatives full-time and basic subsistence, are unrewarded, while unnecessary economic activities earn certain individuals huge fortunes.^[13]

Capitalist expansion was seen by Kovel as being "hand in glove" with "corrupt and subservient client states" that repress dissent against the system, governed by

Kovel criticized the "defeatism" of voluntarism in some local forms of environmentalism that do not connect. He suggested that they can be "drawn off into individualism" or co-opted to the demands of capitalism, as in the case of certain recycling projects, where citizens are "induced to provide free labor" to waste management industries who are involved in the "capitalization of nature". He labelled the notion of voluntarism "ecopolitics without struggle".^[13]

Kovel wrote that "events in nature are reciprocal and multi-determined" and can not be predictably "fixed"; socially, technologies cannot solve social problems because they are not "mechanical". He posits an analysis, developed from Marx, that patterns of production and social organisation are more important than the forms of technology used within a given configuration of society. Under capitalism, he suggested that technology "has been the sine qua non of growth", believing that even in a world with hypothetical "free energy" the effect would be to lower the cost of

Kovel thought that eco-socialists must reject at a fundamental level what he called "ecological economics" or the "ecological wing of mainstream economics" for being "uninterested in social transformation". He further rejected the neo-Smithian school, who believe in Adam Smith's vision of "a capitalism of small producers, freely exchanging with each other", which is self-regulating and competitive. The school is represented by thinkers like David Korten who believe in "regulated markets" checked by government and civil society; for Kovel, they do not provide a critique of the expansive nature of capitalism away from localized production and ignore "questions of class, gender, race or any other category of domination". Kovel also criticized their "fairy-tale" view of history, which refers to the abuse of "natural capital" by the materialism of the Scientific Revolution, an assumption that, in Kovel's eyes, seems to suggest that "nature had toiled to put the gift of capital into human hands" rather than capitalism being a product of social relations in human history.^[13]

Other forms of

Bioregionalism, a philosophy developed by writers like Kirkpatrick Sale who believe in the self-sufficiency of "appropriate bioregional boundaries" drawn up by inhabitants of "an area",^[15] has been critiqued by Kovel, who feared that the "vagueness" of the area will lead to conflict and further boundaries between communities.^[13] While Sale cites the bioregional living of Native Americans,^[15] Kovel commented that such ideas are impossible to translate to populations of modern proportions, and evidences the fact that Native Americans held land in commons, rather than private property; for eco-socialists, bioregionalism provides no understanding of what is needed to transform society, and what the inevitable "response of the capitalist state" would be to people constructing bioregionalism.^[13]

Kovel also attacked the problems of self-sufficiency. Where Sale believes in self-sufficient regions "each developing the energy of its peculiar ecology", such as "wood in the northwest [US]",^[15] Kovel asked "how on earth" these can be made sufficient for regional needs, and commented the environmental damage of converting Seattle into a "forest-destroying and smoke-spewing wood-burning" city. Kovel also questioned Sale's insistence on bioregions that do "not require connections with the outside, but within strict limits", and whether this precludes journeys to visit family members and other forms of travel.^[13]

Kovel acknowledged the importance of "the gendered bifurcation of nature" and supported the emancipation of gender as it "is at the root of patriarchy and class". Nevertheless, while he believed that "any path out of capitalism must also be eco-feminist", he criticized types of

For Kovel, the main prefigurative steps "are that people ruthlessly criticize the capitalist system ... and that they include in this a consistent attack on the widespread belief that there can be no alternative to it", which will then "deligitimate the system and release people into struggle". Kovel justified this by stating that "radical criticism of the given ... can be a material force", even without an alternative, "because it can seize the mind of the masses of people", leading to "dynamic" and "exponential", rather than "incremental" and "linear", victories that spread rapidly. He advocated the expansion of the dialectical eco-socialist potential of groups through sustaining the confrontation and internal cohesion of human ecosystems, leading to an "activation" of potentials in others that will "spread across the whole social field" as "a new set of orienting principles" that define an ideology or "'party-life' formation".^[13]

In the short-term, Kovel advocated activities that have the "promise of breaking down the commodity form". This includes organizing labor, which is a "reconfiguring of the use-value of labor power"; forming

The Jewish-born Kovel "experiencd in his later years what he called a Christian spiritual conversion"[1] and was baptized.^[2]

Kovel believed that examples like the

Kovel used the term "eco-socialist revolution" to describe the transition to an eco-socialist world society. In the immediate socio-political transition, he believed that four groups will emerge from the revolution: revolutionaries, those "whose productive activity is directly compatible with ecological production" (such as nurses, schoolteachers, librarians, independent farmers and many other examples), those "whose pre-revolutionary practice was given over to capital" (including the bourgeoisie, advertising executives and more) and "the workers whose activity added surplus value to capitalist commodities". In terms of political organisation, he advocated an "interim assembly" made up of the revolutionaries that can "devise incentives to make sure that vital functions are maintained" (such as short-term continuation of "differential remuneration" for labor), "handle the redistribution of social roles and assets", convene "in widespread locations", and send delegates to regional, state, national and international organisations, where every level has an "executive council" that is rotated and can be recalled. From there, he wrote that "productive communities" will "form the political as well as economic unit of society" and "organize others" to make a transition to eco-socialist production; he added that people will be allowed to be members of any community they choose with "associate membership" of others, such as a doctor having main membership of healthcare communities as a doctor and associate membership of child-rearing communities as a father. In Kovel's eyes, each locality would require one community that administered the areas of jurisdiction through an elected assembly. High-level assemblies would have additional "supervisory" roles over localities to monitor the development of ecosystemic integrity, and administer "society-wide services" like transport in "state-like functions", before the interim assembly can transfer responsibilities to "the level of the society as a whole through appropriate and democratically responsive committees".^[13]

For Kovel, part of the eco-socialist transition is the reforming money to retain its use in "enabling exchanges", while reducing its functions as "a commodity in its own right" and "repository of value". He argued for directing money to "enhancement of use-values" through a "subsidization of use-values" that "preserves the functioning core of the economy while gaining time and space for rebuilding it". Internationally, he believed in the immediate cessation of speculation in currencies ("breaking down the function of money as commodity, and redirecting funds on use-values"), the cancellation of the debt of the Global South ("breaking the back of the value function" of money), and the redirecting the "vast reservoir of mainly phony value" to reparations and "ecologically sound development". He suggested the end of military aid and other forms of support to "comprador elites in the South" will eventually "lead to their collapse".^[13]

In terms of

In the course on an eco-socialist revolution, Kovel advocated the "rapid conversion to ecosocialist production" for all enterprises, followed by "restoring ecosystemic integrity to the workplace" through steps like workers ownership. He believed that the new enterprises can build "socially developed plans" of production for societal needs, such as efficient light-rail transport components. At the same time, Kovel argued for the transformation of essential but under capitalism non-productive labor, such as child care, into productive labor, "thereby giving reproductive labour a status equivalent to productive labour". During such a transition, he believed that income should be guaranteed and that money will still be used under "new conditions of value ... according to use and to the degree to which ecosystem integrity is developed and advanced by any particular production". Within this structure, Kovel said that markets will become unnecessary, although "market phenomena" in personal exchanges and other small instances might be adopted, and communities and elected assemblies will democratically decide on the allocation of resources.[13]

Kovel stated that the focus on "production" does not mean that there will be an increase in production and labor under eco-socialism. He thought that the emancipation of labor and the realization of use-value will allow "the spheres of work and culture to be reintegrated". He cited the example of

Kovel highlighted the fact that Marx mentioned the idea when he stated that human beings are no more than the planet's "usufructaries, and, like boni patres familias, they must hand it down to succeeding generations in an improved condition".[18] Kovel took on this reading, saying that in an eco-socialist society "everyone will have ... rights of use and ownership over those means of production necessary to express the creativity of human nature", namely "a place of one's own" to decorate to personal taste, some personal possessions, the body and its attendant sexual and reproductive rights; however, Kovel saw property as "self-contradictory" because individuals emerge "in a tissue of social relations" and "nested circles", with the self at the centre and extended circles where "issues of sharing arise from early childhood on". He believed that "the full self is enhanced more by giving than by taking" and that eco-socialism is realized when material possessions weigh "lightly" upon the self, and restoration of use-value allows things to be taken "concretely and sensuously" but "lightly, since things are enjoyed for themselves and not as buttresses for a shaky ego". For Kovel, this reversed what Marxists see as the commodity fetishism and atomization of individuals through the "unappeasable craving" for "having and excluding others from having" under capitalism. Under eco-socialism, he believed that enhancement of use-value will lead to differentiated ownership between the individual and the collective, where there are "distinct limits on the amount of property individuals control" and no-one can take control of resources that "would permit the alienation of means of production from another". He hoped that the "hubris" of the notion of "ownership of the planet" will be replaced with usufruct.^[13]

Kovel wrote that "violence is the rupturing of ecosystems" and is therefore "deeply contrary to ecosocialist values". He believed that revolutionary movements must prepare for post-revolutionary violence from counter-revolutionary sources by "prior development of the democratic sphere" within the movement because "to the degree that people are capable of self-government, so will they turn away from violence and retribution" for "a self-governed people cannot be pushed around by any alien government". In Kovel's view, it is essential that the revolution "takes place in" or spreads quickly to the United States, which "is capital's gendarme and will crush any serious threat", and that revolutionaries reject the

• Overcoming Zionism: Creating a Single Democratic State in Israel/Palestine (Pluto Press, February 2007),
  ISBN 0-7453-2569-6
  .
• The Enemy of Nature: The End of Capitalism or the End of the World? 1st edition, (London: Zed Books, 2002),
  ISBN 1-84277-871-4
  ;
• Red Hunting in the Promised Land (New York: Basic Books, 1994),
  ISBN 0-465-00364-8
  .
• History and Spirit (Boston: Beacon Press, 1991),
  ISBN 0-8070-2916-5
  .
• The Radical Spirit: Essays on Psychoanalysis and Society (London:
  ISBN 0-946960-57-7
  .
• In Nicaragua (New York: Columbia University Press, 1989),
  ISBN 0-946960-90-9
  .
• White Racism: A Psychohistory (New York: Columbia University Press, 1984),
  ISBN 0-231-05797-0
  .
• Against the State of Nuclear Terror (Boston: South End Press, 1984),
  ISBN 0-89608-220-2
  .
• The Age of Desire: Case Histories of a Radical Psychoanalyst (New York: Pantheon, 1981),
  ISBN 0-394-50818-1
  .
• A Complete Guide to Therapy (New York: Pantheon, 1976),
  ISBN 0-394-48992-6
  .
• "Therapy in Late Capitalism". Telos 30 (Winter 1976–1977). (New York: Telos Press).