Study On The Ecosocialist Thought Of Joel Kovel

Jove Kovel is an important representative of American ecosocialism but rarely known by people in China. In2001and2009, he composed and published the Declaration of Ecosocialism and Declaration of Belem Ecosocialism together with Michael LOwy. In2002, Jove Kovel pointed out sharply in his classic green work The Enemy of Nature:the end of capitalism or the end of the world? that "capital is the enemy of nature". Then he predicted "free association of producers " as the blueprint of ecosocialism by analyzing the ideological roots of "domination of nature" profoundly. This paper aims to explore Jove Kovel’s revolutionary ecosocialist ideas inside his works by illustrating his ecocriticism on capital systemically, which is food for us to conduct academic exchanges with western ecosocialist, lower barriers, develop human thoughts, respond to the issue of the epoch and build a conservation culture together.This paper, which follows Marxist methodology basic principles, consists of seven chapters in rigorous logic:The first chapter mainly discusses the life course of Joel Kovel’s ecosocialism and its theoretical sources. This part introduces Joel Kovel’s academic career and political career comprehensively, and explains the theoretical sources of Joel Kovel’s ecosocialism:Marxism, natural philosophy, eco-feminism and ontology accurately. Moreover, this part also reviews O’Connor and Foster influence on Kovel and their relations.The second chapter is about Joel Kovel’s ideological criticism on capitalist ecological politics. Through investigating the double dimension phenomena:global ecological crisis and social breakdown, and analyzing the enemy of nature and human’s executioner:capital, and revealing capital’s anti-ecological core and capitalism’ cancerous growth, this part bears an Marxist scientific conclusion:the capitalist world system is historically collapsing. The third chapter introduces Joel Kovel’s thoughts on the domination of nature. This part mainly explores the ecology and human nature, the gendered bifurcation of nature, and the domination of capital as well as nature.The forth chapter deals with Joel Kovel’s thought on the criticism of eco-politics. This part follows his threefold criticism on green economics like the new Adam Smith doctrine and community economics, on deep ecology, bioregionalism, eco-feminism and on democracy, populism and fascism.The fifth chapter illustrates Joel Kovel’s thoughts on the ecosocialist path. In detail, the criticism of traditional socilism, the introduction of the general model of ecosociali st transformation, four instances and patterns of eco-socialist mobilization, the foundation of the ecosocialist party are included.The sixth chapter is Joel Kovel’s predication on ecosocialism.The main viewpoints in this part are:the case analysis of Bruderhof, the prediction of use value dominates exchange value and ecocentric production in ecosocialism, the elaboration of principles to build ecosocialist society, and so on.The seventh chapter assesses the historical contributions and contemporary values of Joel Kovel’s ecosocialist ideology. His historical contributions are:the profound criticism on capitalism, the systematic construction of a revolutionary type of ecosocialist theory and further development of Marxism. His theoretical limitations are:the explanation of the basic contradiction of capitalism distracts from the Marxist point, the predication on ecosocialism is something of a green utopia, the imagination of ecosocialist path may be infeasible. Finally, his contemporary values lie in understanding the relationship between human and nature scientifically, bringing the advantages of socialism into full play to create a beautiful China and building a society in which human and nature can develop harmoniously.