No Greater Responsibility for Intellectuals
Audio version read by George Atherton – Right-click to download
Beaten down by the great defeats of utopian and social ideals, few today even bother to think about the kinds of society that could replace the present one, and most of that speculation is within a green paradigm limited by an insufficient appreciation of the regime of capital and of the depths needed for real change. Instead, Greens tend to imagine an orderly extension of community accompanied by the use of instruments that have been specifically created to keep the present system going, such as parliamentary elections and various tax policies. Such measures make transformative sense, however, only if seen as prefigurations of something more radical – something by definition not immediately on the horizon.
The first two steps on that path are clearly laid out and are within the reach of every conscientious person. These are that people ruthlessly criticize the capitalist system “from top to bottom,” and that they include in this a consistent attack on the widespread belief that there can be no alternative to it. If one believes that capital is not only basically unjust but radically unsustainable as well, the prime obligation is to spread the news.
The belief that there can be no alternative to capital is ubiquitous – and no wonder, given how wonderfully convenient the idea is to the ruling ideology. That, however, does not keep it from being nonsense and a failure of vision and political will. Nothing lasts forever and what is humanly made can theoretically be unmade. Of course it could be the case that the job of changing it is too hard and capital is as far as humanity can go, in which instance we must simply accept our fate stoically and try to palliate the results. But we don’t know this and cannot know this. There is no proving it one way or the other and only inertia, fear of change or opportunism can explain the belief in so shabby an idea as that there can be no alternative to capital for organizing society.
At some point the realization will dawn that all the sound ideas for, say, regulating the chemical industries or preserving forest ecosystems or doing something serious about species-extinctions or global warming or whatever point of ecosystem disintegration is of concern are not going to be realized by appealing to local changes in themselves or to the Democratic Party, to the Environmental Protection Agency, to the courts, to the foundations, to ecophilosophies or to changes in consciousness. For the overriding reason is that we are living under a regime that controls both the state and the economy and that regime will have to be overcome at its root if we are to save the future.
Relentless criticism can delegitimize the system and release people into struggle. And as struggle develops, victories that are no more than incremental on their own terms – stopping a meeting of the IMF, stirring hopes with a campaign such as Ralph Nader’s in 2000 – can have a symbolic effect far greater than their external result and can constitute points of rupture with capital. This rupture is not a set of facts added to our knowledge of the world but a change in our relation to the world. Its effects are dynamic, not incremental, and like all genuine insights it changes the balance of forces and can propagate very swiftly. Thus the release from inertia can trigger a rapid cascade of changes, so that it could be said that the forces pressing toward radical change need not be linear and incremental, but can be exponential. In this way, conscientious and radical criticism of the given, even in advance of blueprints for an alternative, can be a material force because it can seize the mind of the masses of the people. There is no greater responsibility for intellectuals.
From Joel Kovel’s Enemy of Nature: The End of Capitalism or the End of the World? Joel Kovel is the editor of Capitalism Nature Socialism, a journal of ecosocialism.
22 comments on the article “No Greater Responsibility for Intellectuals”
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Anonymous
To the guy who recommended the "Zeitgeist Movement". That is a trap funded by these elitist psycho's and not the answer. That is where they've always planned to push you anyways.
The "zeitgeist movement" is just a rehashing of Hitler's idol, occultist H.P. Blavatsky, Lovecraft, even Aleister Crowley's teachings. Thats right, the possessed "Beast" himself. Funny how everything started going haywire after he died in 1948, isn't it? Not to mention Alice Bailey, who americanized her idol, Blavatsky's, vision. Then we had Jack Parsons who even Von Brunn stated was the man who really started NASA and JPL and was well known to be Crowley's apprentice as well as regularly participate in ritual majik in Pasadena, Ca. still today's home for JPL.
But all this goes over 99% of the populations heads unfortunately. The rest are just too lazy to research it and discover what I'm saying is 100% fact. Americans have been brainwashed into having the attention span of a flea compared to when I was growing up in the '70's. Those who want a short cut instead of a few books...you can start on fact-checking alone by checking out the DIY Youtube documentaries of Chris White, Keith Thompson, Elliot Nesch, & eeven Jim Wilhelmsen. Many of these people because of the occult subject matter are going to be coming from a religious angle. Don't let that sway you from the facts. There's a doc called "Zeitgeist Refuted- Final Cut". Thompson's is "Aquarius; Age of Evil" , Wilhelmsen's is "Nazi New Age Deception".
Anonymous
To the guy who recommended the "Zeitgeist Movement". That is a trap funded by these elitist psycho's and not the answer. That is where they've always planned to push you anyways.
The "zeitgeist movement" is just a rehashing of Hitler's idol, occultist H.P. Blavatsky, Lovecraft, even Aleister Crowley's teachings. Thats right, the possessed "Beast" himself. Funny how everything started going haywire after he died in 1948, isn't it? Not to mention Alice Bailey, who americanized her idol, Blavatsky's, vision. Then we had Jack Parsons who even Von Brunn stated was the man who really started NASA and JPL and was well known to be Crowley's apprentice as well as regularly participate in ritual majik in Pasadena, Ca. still today's home for JPL.
But all this goes over 99% of the populations heads unfortunately. The rest are just too lazy to research it and discover what I'm saying is 100% fact. Americans have been brainwashed into having the attention span of a flea compared to when I was growing up in the '70's. Those who want a short cut instead of a few books...you can start on fact-checking alone by checking out the DIY Youtube documentaries of Chris White, Keith Thompson, Elliot Nesch, & eeven Jim Wilhelmsen. Many of these people because of the occult subject matter are going to be coming from a religious angle. Don't let that sway you from the facts. There's a doc called "Zeitgeist Refuted- Final Cut". Thompson's is "Aquarius; Age of Evil" , Wilhelmsen's is "Nazi New Age Deception".
Anonymous
Until we concoct a way to provide at the very least, enough sustainable resources to provide people with everything they need - then eventually what they want, a monetarily based economy will always emerge in one form or another.
It is how this system is governed that is important. Socialism is simply a transition to a more stable model, like Communism. With the computational power, elite middle class, and new online social structures of the future, we should have no problem balancing an economy by focusing on a micro and macro level.
Allowing social Darwinism to shape society, is not only risky, but the definition of amoral. All systems lead toward entropy when left unattended. Control is needed - but labels, such as communism, and socialism - have such negative associations that their definitions skew and then alter completely.
Democracy, for example, can be the act of electing citizens to certain positions of competency in government, but need not reward them with regulatory power. Active citizenry can vote on issues, and participate, if they so wish, in actual policy - within limits. Safe guards can be put into place that restrict those with capital from places of office.
There are literally hundreds of thousands of qualified individuals who could lead a country , but usually the most ruthless, polarized, and popular candidate wins. Why not demand a leader be a genius? Why not ask him or her to defer to experts in fields at all times as not elected by the public, but universities?
Democracy is frightening. The brightest of us build toys ( albeit - to make the occasional medical advances ) to distract the slower pack members. We entertain one another, sometimes beautifully so, but usually not. Some of us, with capital, personality disorders, and luck then spend our lives hopelessly trying to construct whatever twisted compromises we will allow.
The solution is simple. Create legislature. Enact laws.
Our slave cast lives in China. This is still a feudal system, wear-by those with rule those without. Nothing has changed in the span of thousands of years of human society. We just rename the same old things.
Do you know that if those third world workers couldn't work for pennies a day to make shit we don't need, to impress people we don't know, they would die. And the peasants in middle ages, they would starve and die without their Lords. They didn't own land to grow food, or own forests to hunt.
Control will happen. Those who rally against it, are those with it. This is because they would like to maintain it, at all costs. It is funny how people commonly ask how Democracy effects us. But what about everyone else?
Control will happen. But would you rather have an elect few in control based solely upon their circumstance, left to govern always tempted to work in their own self interest? These people have something to loose, something that doesn't belong to them, and that they don't deserve, I don't blame them - they should not want for change.
Control will happen. Should those who have control be qualified by competency instead of popularity? Should they relinquish all self interest by policy instead of choice?
More control is needed.
Anonymous
Until we concoct a way to provide at the very least, enough sustainable resources to provide people with everything they need - then eventually what they want, a monetarily based economy will always emerge in one form or another.
It is how this system is governed that is important. Socialism is simply a transition to a more stable model, like Communism. With the computational power, elite middle class, and new online social structures of the future, we should have no problem balancing an economy by focusing on a micro and macro level.
Allowing social Darwinism to shape society, is not only risky, but the definition of amoral. All systems lead toward entropy when left unattended. Control is needed - but labels, such as communism, and socialism - have such negative associations that their definitions skew and then alter completely.
Democracy, for example, can be the act of electing citizens to certain positions of competency in government, but need not reward them with regulatory power. Active citizenry can vote on issues, and participate, if they so wish, in actual policy - within limits. Safe guards can be put into place that restrict those with capital from places of office.
There are literally hundreds of thousands of qualified individuals who could lead a country , but usually the most ruthless, polarized, and popular candidate wins. Why not demand a leader be a genius? Why not ask him or her to defer to experts in fields at all times as not elected by the public, but universities?
Democracy is frightening. The brightest of us build toys ( albeit - to make the occasional medical advances ) to distract the slower pack members. We entertain one another, sometimes beautifully so, but usually not. Some of us, with capital, personality disorders, and luck then spend our lives hopelessly trying to construct whatever twisted compromises we will allow.
The solution is simple. Create legislature. Enact laws.
Our slave cast lives in China. This is still a feudal system, wear-by those with rule those without. Nothing has changed in the span of thousands of years of human society. We just rename the same old things.
Do you know that if those third world workers couldn't work for pennies a day to make shit we don't need, to impress people we don't know, they would die. And the peasants in middle ages, they would starve and die without their Lords. They didn't own land to grow food, or own forests to hunt.
Control will happen. Those who rally against it, are those with it. This is because they would like to maintain it, at all costs. It is funny how people commonly ask how Democracy effects us. But what about everyone else?
Control will happen. But would you rather have an elect few in control based solely upon their circumstance, left to govern always tempted to work in their own self interest? These people have something to loose, something that doesn't belong to them, and that they don't deserve, I don't blame them - they should not want for change.
Control will happen. Should those who have control be qualified by competency instead of popularity? Should they relinquish all self interest by policy instead of choice?
More control is needed.
Anonymous
yeah..like you say Socialism is simply a transition to a more stable model, like Communism
Anonymous
yeah..like you say Socialism is simply a transition to a more stable model, like Communism
Rimshaun Nordor
Dear Joel Kovel,
You nailed it. 100% I agree and all naturally driven life on this planet agrees with you. Its in our instinct, to, by any means necessary return to nature. Sacrificing what is necessary to sacrifice and to move closer to nature with every action. It is the seed that gets planted in society's consciousness that really matters. The seed I speak of is of course, the necessity of this sacred planet and it's perpetuation of Life. Most high blessings to you, and to all who move towards living symbiotically with and in nature.
Planetary awakening.
Rimshaun Nordor
Dear Joel Kovel,
You nailed it. 100% I agree and all naturally driven life on this planet agrees with you. Its in our instinct, to, by any means necessary return to nature. Sacrificing what is necessary to sacrifice and to move closer to nature with every action. It is the seed that gets planted in society's consciousness that really matters. The seed I speak of is of course, the necessity of this sacred planet and it's perpetuation of Life. Most high blessings to you, and to all who move towards living symbiotically with and in nature.
Planetary awakening.
Alyson
Well-written. Reminds me a quote:
The dogmas of the quiet past, are inadequate to the stormy present. The occasion is piled high with difficulty, and we must rise with the occasion. As our case is new, so we must think anew, and act anew. We must disenthrall ourselves, and then we shall save our country. ~ Abraham Lincoln
Alyson
Well-written. Reminds me a quote:
The dogmas of the quiet past, are inadequate to the stormy present. The occasion is piled high with difficulty, and we must rise with the occasion. As our case is new, so we must think anew, and act anew. We must disenthrall ourselves, and then we shall save our country. ~ Abraham Lincoln
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