Joel Kovel

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. Kovel became a psychoanalyst, but he abandoned psychoanalysis in 1985.

Background Kovel was born on August 27, 1936, in Brooklyn, New York. His parents, immigrant Jews, were Louis Kovel (an accountant known for the "Kovel Rule") and Rose Farber. He attended Baldwin Senior High School (New York) in Baldwin, Nassau County, New York. In 1957, he received his B.S. summa cum laude from Yale University. In 1961, he received his M.D. from the Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons and in 1977 was a graduate of the Psychoanalytic Institute, Downstate Medical Center Institute, Brooklyn, New York.

Career Academic From 1977 until 1983, he was Director of Residency Training, Department of Psychiatry, Albert Einstein College of Medicine, where he was also Professor of Psychiatry from 1979 to 1986. From 1980 to 1985, he was an adjunct professor of anthropology at the New School for Social Research, as well as a frequent contributor to Dialectical Anthropology, a journal founded by his colleague Stanley Diamond. Much of his work during this period focused on Marxism and Sigmund Freud. Kovel argued in a letter sent to the faculty of Bard College that his contract was not renewed due to his political views. 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". He would eventually abandon medicine, psychiatry, and psychoanalysis in 1985. He also worked in defense of the Sandinista Revolution in Nicaragua.

Personal life and death 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.

Critique of capitalist expansion and globalization Kovel was anti-capitalist and anti-globalization, seeing globalization as a force driven by capitalism; in turn, the rapid economic growth encouraged by globalization causes acute ecological crises. He believed that capitalist firms have to continue to generate profit through a combination of continually intensifying exploitation and selling to new markets, meaning that capitalism must grow indefinitely to exist, which seems impossible on a planet of finite resources.

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. has been critiqued by Kovel, who feared that the "vagueness" of the area will lead to conflict and further boundaries between communities. Kovel believes that, in Joseph Stalin's "revolution from above" and mass terror in response to the early 1930s economic crisis, Trotsky's writings "were given official imprimatur", despite the fact that Trotsky himself was eventually purged, as Stalinism attacked "the very notion of ecology ... in addition to ecologies". Kovel added that Stalin "would win the gold medal for enmity to nature", and that, in the face of massive environmental degradation, the inflexible Soviet bureaucracy became increasingly inefficient and unable to emulate capitalist accumulation, leading to a "vicious cycle" that led to its collapse. He further posited that class struggle is "internationalized in the face of globalization", as evidenced by a wave of strikes across the Global South in the first half of the year 2000; he wrote that "labor's most cherished values are already immanently ecocentric", and thought that these universalizing tendencies must lead to the formation of "a consciously 'Ecosocialist Party'" that is neither like a parliamentary or vanguardist party. Kovel advocated a form of political party "grounded in communities of resistance", where delegates from these communities form the core of the party's activists, and these delegates and the "open and transparent" assembly they form are subject to recall and regular rotation of members. He held up the Zapatista Army of National Liberation (EZLN) and the Gaviotas movement as examples of such communities, which "are produced outside capitalist circuits" and show that "there can be no single way valid for all peoples". Nonetheless, he also believed in connecting these movements, stating that "ecosocialism will be international or it will be nothing" and hoping that the Ecosocialist Party can retain the autonomy of local communities while supporting them materially. With an ever-expanding party, Kovel hoped that "defections" by capitalists will occur, leading eventually to the armed forces and police who, in joining the revolution, will signify that "the turning point is reached". 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.

Overcoming Zionism controversy

In June 2008, the University of Michigan Press severed ties with the British independent publishing firm Pluto Press, for which it served as the American distributor. The decision came after a series of events tied to the distribution of Kovel's 2007 book Overcoming Zionism, which argued that "the creation of Israel was a mistake and urges adoption of the "one state" solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in which Israelis and Palestinians would form a new country, without a Jewish character." In a 2007 interview on Democracy Now!, Kovel said: I feel that the notion of Zionism, as that there is this kind of destiny of the Jewish people to have their own state, is just a wrong idea. And it's an idea that requires signing on to imperialism. It means signing on to ethnic cleansing. It means—despite everything that has been said about it, it means basically becoming a racist situation, where you're oppressing an indigenous population and depriving them of their right to existence, and then thinking that somehow you can go ahead and have a decent life on that basis. And you can't, in my view. And I join hands with those people who feel that the time has come to basically think of Israel in the same category as South Africa, as a state that just has gone wrong and needs replacement. The executive board of the University of Michigan Press said in a statement that though it "has deep reservations about Overcoming Zionism, it would be a blow against free speech to remove the book from distribution on that basis. We conclude that we should not fail to honor our distribution agreement based on our reservations about the content of a single book. Such a course raises both First Amendment issues and concerns about the appearance of censorship. As members of the university community dedicated to academic freedom and open debate among differing views, the Executive Board stands firmly for freedom of expression, and against even the appearance of censorship. In this instance, both legal and value considerations lead us to the decision to resume distribution of the book." At the same time, the University of Michigan Press also stated that "had the manuscript gone through the standard review process used by the University of Michigan Press, the board would not have recommended publication. But the arrangement with Pluto Press is for distribution only; the UM Press never intended to review individually every title published by Pluto (or any other press for which it holds distribution rights). By resuming distribution, the board in no way endorses the content of the book."

Selected publications Kovel's book White Racism (1970) received a nomination for the National Book Award. His works include A Complete Guide to Therapy (1979), The Age of Desire (1982), Against the State of Nuclear Terror (1982), In Nicaragua (1986), The Radical Spirit: Essays on Psychoanalysis and Society (1988), History and Spirit (1991), Red Hunting in the Promised Land (1994), The Enemy of Nature (2002), and Overcoming Zionism (2007). He was the editor-in-chief of Capitalism, Nature, Socialism. His last work, published in 2017, was a memoir entitled The Lost Traveller's Dream.

Overcoming Zionism: Creating a Single Democratic State in Israel/Palestine (Pluto Press, February 2007). The Enemy of Nature: The End of Capitalism or the End of the World? 1st edition, (London: Zed Books, 2002), , 2nd edition, (London: Zed Books, 2007), ; Red Hunting in the Promised Land (New York: Basic Books, 1994). History and Spirit (Boston: Beacon Press, 1991). The Radical Spirit: Essays on Psychoanalysis and Society (London: Free Association Books, 1989). In Nicaragua (New York: Columbia University Press, 1989). White Racism: A Psychohistory (New York: Columbia University Press, 1984). Against the State of Nuclear Terror (Boston: South End Press, 1984). The Age of Desire: Case Histories of a Radical Psychoanalyst (New York: Pantheon, 1981). A Complete Guide to Therapy (New York: Pantheon, 1976). "Therapy in Late Capitalism". Telos 30 (Winter 1976–1977). (New York: Telos Press).