The Way Out

Is there a Way Out of the trap of Capitalism? Can we get there from here? It is somewhat of a requirement for an author that when he frames a problem, he should supply a possible solution to that problem. Joel Kovel does that, but before taking a look at the exit strategy he proposes, a few more salient points from Chapter 5, “On Ecologies”, below. I am anticipating that the excerpts I have provided here will suffice to convince the reader that Kovel’s Way Out is not only possible, not only believable, but required without further delay. Will that happen? I leave that question as an exercise for the reader after he has digested all that Kovel has to say.

Excerpt from The Enemy of Nature:

To say that capital is ecodestructive is to claim that, under its regime, large swathes of the natural world are becoming undone. However troubling, this is straightforward enough. But we have also said in a number of places that it is “anti-ecological,” which is not quite the same thing. The latter term introduces a new notion, that the word, ecology, signifies something to be valued in our relationship within nature, and that capital does not simply degrade one portion of nature or another, but violates the whole sense of the universe.

[...]

All living beings have internal and external relations of parts to wholes. This quality, that life must exist in relation to other life and to nature as a whole if it is to contend with the Second Law [of Thermodynamics], defines the notion of ecosystem, and on a far deeper level than that of a mere collection of bodies. Ecosystems constitute places of “putting together.” They are the sites where creatures interact in ways potentially conducive to their emergence and sustenance. Ecosystems are the loci of nature’s formativity, active ensembles where being comes into existence. Ecology in the larger sense is the discourse of such ensembles, and is built into the fabric of terrestrial life, from the infinitesimal microorganism to the ecosystems now being destabilized.

Life emerges on this planet – we may set aside the question of alternate life on other planets – owing to a fortuitous set of circumstances within the range of cosmic possibility. Here nature originates life, which then, through struggle and in its ecosystemic places, proceeds to evolve. But evolution is conditioned at every step by the flux of ecosystems. Life’s own activity, played out in ecosystems (along with other natural influences, e.g. meteorites, solar flares, etc.) is what prods living beings along, changing the terms of the struggle for existence and leading to evolutionary development. Ecology, therefore, is integrally tied to evolution – one may say that any given ecosystem is a synchronic slice through evolutionary time. Life is defined anti-entropically, insofar as its chief feature is the sustenance and creation of form. Living systems display degrees of order incomprehensible to the crude mind. Whether we look at the obvious proportions and symmetries of organisms or, more impressively still, the fine molecular structure wherein each atom seems to be positioned as in a tiny workshop, it would seem that life not only disobeys but positively flouts the Second Law. This is exactly what the struggle for existence is about. Dead, the corpse of a once-alive creature very quickly falls into line with the principle of rising entropy. The work of life, and the intricate dance of energy and form that goes into it, is essentially an enterprise to stave off and reverse the Second Law. Far from refuting the Second Law, then, life affirms its power by struggling against it.

The struggle of life against entropy does not deny the Second Law, because living creatures are anything but closed systems. Whether they convert ambient sunlight into usable form through photosynthesis in the plant kingdom, or eat the products of this activity in the substance of animals, life is constantly taking in low-entropy energy to sustain its form. A considerable degree of evolved biochemical activity consists of the capacity of living beings to capture energy in small packets, principally of high-energy phosphate bonds, so that the fine structure of life’s work-shop can proceed. Here, in the astounding nano-factories of the cell, the principle permitting the emergence of life in the first place is institutionalized: reactants are held together, energy is transformed into small and usable amounts, and the whole tiny architecture is repeated trillions of times over, as life builds and propagates itself.

Through it all, the net entropic pattern remains very much in line with the Second Law: insofar as life can be put in the position of a (relatively) closed system, it will increase the entropy of the totality comprised by itself and its surround. For the earth as a whole, it is not so clear. It is very likely the case that life’s capacity to draw down the energy of the sun (and to a lesser extent, that of more immediately gravitational sources like tides and geothermal hot spots) has so overriden the constraints of closed systems as to have produced, at least until quite recently, when the ecological crisis has reversed the pattern, an actual decrease of entropy on the planet. At least, that is the way I would regard the “Gaia” principle, according to which the earth itself is a super-organism, with the capacity to self-regulate and even to exhibit signs of a kind of consciousness.¹⁰ It would seem to be the case that whatever Gaian tendencies are evinced by the global ecosystem are manifestations of the cumulative effects of evolution upon the planet, made possible by the genius of life to subject the globe to its ordering effects. In this scheme, the “closed” system is the earth + space, with respect to which the overall increase in entropy is accounted for by harmless re-radiation of degraded solar energy into the latter. Meanwhile, organic evolution achieved for the earth as a whole what the life process does for individual beings, namely, an increase in order and dynamic form.

If ecology is the readout of life’s formal organization at any point in time, then evolution is its forward temporal motion. Therefore, the ecological state of things at any moment is like a snapshot of evolution about to happen. This should not be interpreted, however, as a teleologically ordered process, pulled from beyond by God – or, in the more ideologically understood sense, that evolution awaits its fulfillment in an equilibrium under the guidance of the current ruling class or master race. The notion of formativeness in nature requires, rather, a more dynamic reading. For if ecology were ever in a steady state, then there would be no pressure to evolve, and nothing of the beauty and intricacy of living form. It is lack, and conflict, and the ceaseless interaction between living beings and their surround, that condition the evolution of life. Equilibrium as such is not a property of life, while generally speaking, those functions within which a kind of balance obtains are better thought of as a metastable equipoising, i.e. the “holding together” of elements in creative formation. Heraclitus seized the root of things when he posited ceaseless motion, with its absencing and presencing, as the way of the universe.¹¹

Therefore, when we talk of the “stability” of ecosystems, we do not imply a static condition, or even one of simple equilibrium. We mean, rather, a state of being with an irreducible indeterminacy, within which one might say, “life goes on-ward”: evolving new (though not “higher”) species, and introducing those formal shapes and dynamic processes into the ecosphere that comprise its work on earth. Since it is in the nature of ecosystems to move and evolve, we do better to evoke their integrity than their stability. The notion of integrity includes stability as a rate of change and emergence compatible with the working of any ecosystem. Even at its “climax,” the forest continues to evolve. At the physiological level, the immune system is stable if it is capable of changing by introducing new antibodies to meet new contingencies. Ditto for the circulatory system, which has to keep maintaining its existent vessels, and extending new ones into traumatized areas.

To speak of the integrity of something means recognizing that it exists as the integral of its parts. In a word, it is a Whole. Preserving ecological integrity is a matter, therefore, of preserving Wholes, and fostering their emergence and development. I say, fostering, meaning that in the human world we have a choice as to whether to do this or not – a choice that depends in part on whether we value the integrity of ecosystems. As to why we should do, one might say that our own survival depends on it, but also and necessarily, because to value this way means to fulfill our own nature, to find its integrity as well. The ordering effects of life on earth are not merely a matter of overcoming entropy. They also result in those entities and patterns that we find beautiful – and this sense of beauty is no indulgence, but the participation in that nature from which being arises. If we wonder at the beauty and elegance of nature, then, we are nature appreciating itself, and our wonderment is part of the form of nature itself. We have the choice as to whether to try to foster the continuance of life. By choosing “no,” that is, choosing to continue on with the way of life that leads to ecological disintegration, we are also choosing against ourselves. And this leads us to ask, just who we are.

[end of excerpt]

..........Please read that last paragraph again. From this point on, there can be no doubt that we, individually and collectively, are at a tipping point. Since we now know what the score is, we have no choice but the attempt to win the contest against our foe, The Enemy of Nature. Soon it will be the planet itself that solves the problem, and that “solution” will not be kind to us.