Joel Kovel

Joel Kovel (born 27 August 1936) is an American politician, academic, writer and eco-socialist. A practicing psychiatrist and psychoanalyst until the mid-1980s, he has lectured in psychiatry, anthropology, political science and communication studies. He has published many books on his work in psychiatry, psychoanalysis and political activism. He is a member of the Green Party of the US (GPUS). He is married with three children, three stepchildren and five grandchildren and resides in Willow, a rural district of Woodstock, Ulster County.

Early life and education
In 1936, Kovel was born in Brooklyn, New York, and spent his childhood between Brooklyn and Long Island. He first attended Yale College and then studied medicine at Columbia University, where he gained a medical degree in 1961. Following this, he studied psychiatry at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine, becoming Director of Residency Training (1977-83) and Professor of Psychiatry (1979-86) at the college. He also holds a diploma in psychoanalysis from the Downstate Medical Center Institute.

Academic career
Kovel took up a career in psychiatry and psychoanalysis until the mid-1980s, when he became disillusioned with the health care system. In addition to his work in Psychiatry, Kovel has been Adjunct Professor of Anthropology at the Graduate Faculty in the New School for Social Research; Visiting Professor of Political Science and Communications at the University of California (1986-7); Visiting Professor at San Diego State University (1990); Visiting Professor of Communication at the University of California (1993); and Alger Hiss Professor of Social Studies, Bard College between 1988 and 2003, and Distinguished Professor of Social Studies at the institution since 2003.

As a writer, Kovel has published nine books and over a hundred articles in various publications. Many of his books have been related to his work psychiatry and psychoanalysis. White Racism: A Psychohistory, released in 1972, was nominated for a National Book Award in Religion and Philosophy. His work in the psychiatric-psychoanalytic system was documented in 1981 with the publication of The Age of Desire: Case Histories of a Radical Psychoanalyst. The Radical Spirit: Essays on Psychoanalysis and Society won "Choice Outstanding Academic Book" for 1989.

Other works have focused on politics and eco-socialism, including Against the State of Nuclear Terror (1983) and 1994's Red Hunting in the Promised Land, a study of anticommunist repression in America. His most recent work, The Enemy of Nature: The End of Capitalism or The End of the World, was published in 2002. He is currently working on a book entitled Beyond Zionism.

In addition to writing books, Kovel has contributed to many journals and magazines. He is currently the Editor-in-Chief of Capitalism Nature Socialism, a quarterly journal on Eco-socialism.

Political career
Kovel became involved in political activism during the Vietnam War. He has been an active member of antinuclear and peace campaigns, Central American and Caribbean solidarity movements, the movements for democratic media and environmental campaigns. As part of his campaigning work, he lived briefly in Nicaragua in 1986 and joined the Pastors for Peace as they broke the US blockade on Cuba in their 1994 Friendshipment.

In 1990, Kovel moved into party politics by joining the Green Party of the US. Since joining, he has been the Green Party candidate for US Senator from New York. He also ran for the Green Party's Presidential nomination in 2000 but was beaten by Ralph Nader.

Beliefs
As an eco-socialist, Kovel is 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 believes that capitalist firms have to continue profit through a combination of intensive or extensive exploitation, and selling to new markets: this means that capitalism must grow indefinitely to exist, which seems impossible on a planet of finite resources.

Kovel follows Marx's theories about the contradiction between Use values and Exchange values. As he explains 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 stresses 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.

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 suggests that the capitalist system itself is self-perpetuating, fuelled by extra-human or impersonal forces. He uses 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 traces 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, in Kovel's mind, make Bhopal inevitable, it illustrates the effect market forces can have on increasing the likelihood of ecological and social problems.

Kovel has also been outspoken on issues of international relations and their relation to capitalism. He states that the 'War on Terror', between Islamist extremists and the USA, is caused by oil 'imperialism', whereby the capitalist nations require control over sources of energy, especially oil, which are necessary to continue intensive industrial growth - in the quest for control of such resources, the capitalist nations, specifically the USA, have come into conflict with the predominantly Muslim nations where oil is often found.

Strategies
Kovel's strategies for change focus on working-class involvement in the formation of eco-socialist parties or their increased involvement in existing Green Parties. He believes in building prefigurative projects around forms of production based on use values, which will provide a practical vision of a post-capitalist system. Such projects include Indymedia, open-source software, Wikipedia and many other projects developed within the anti-globalization movement.

Selected publications

 * Overcoming Zionism: Creating a Single Democratic State in Israel/Palestine, (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2007)
 * The Enemy of Nature (London: Zed Books, 2002), ISBN 1-84277-081-0.
 * 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: Free Association Books, 1989), 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.