John Bellamy Foster

Author: John Bellamy Foster

  • What Every Environmentalist Needs to Know About Capitalism

    What Every Environmentalist Needs to Know About Capitalism

    “What Every Environmentalist Needs to Know About Capitalism“, (coauthored with Fred Magdoff, Foster listed second), Monthly Review, vol. 61, no. 10 (March 2010), pp.1-30. DOI: 10.14452/MR-061-10-2010-03_1

    For those concerned with the fate of the earth, the time has come to face facts: not simply the dire reality of climate change but also the pressing need for social-system change. The failure to arrive at a world climate agreement in Copenhagen in December 2009 was not simply an abdication of world leadership, as is often suggested, but had deeper roots in the inability of the capitalist system to address the accelerating threat to life on the planet. Knowledge of the nature and limits of capitalism, and the means of transcending it, has therefore become a matter of survival. In the words of Fidel Castro in December 2009: “Until very recently, the discussion [on the future of world society] revolved around the kind of society we would have. Today, the discussion centers on whether human society will survive.”

    Translations:
    • Bangla translation by Farooque Chowdhury in Bangla Monthly Review, vol. 2, no. 3 (June 2010). Translated by Farooque Chowdhury.
    • Spanish translation by Observatorio Petrolero Sur printed by the Corporación para la Educación, el Desarrollo y la Investigación Popular – Instituto Nacional Sindical at http://www.cedins.org, June 13, 2011.
    • Galician translation by Xosé Díaz Díaz in Terra e Tempo no. 4 (2010), http://www.terraetempo.net.

     

  • István Mészáros, Pathfinder of Socialism

    István Mészáros, Pathfinder of Socialism

    “István Mészáros, Pathfinder of Socialism“, Monthly Review, vol. 61, no. 9 (February 2010), pp. 49-51. DOI: 10.14452/MR-061-09-2010-02_4

    If I were asked to sum up the significance of István Mészáros for our time, I would have to follow President Hugo Chávez of Venezuela in referring to him as the “Pathfinder of Socialism.” His work…provides a strategic vision of the building of socialism, the absence of which, for many decades, constituted one of the principal weaknesses of the anti-capitalist movement, worldwide.

     

  • The Age of Monopoly-Finance Capital

    The Age of Monopoly-Finance Capital

    “The Age of Monopoly-Finance Capital“, Monthly Review, vol. 61, no. 9 (February 2010), pp.1-13. DOI: 10.14452/MR-061-09-2010-02_1

    Three years ago, in December 2006, I wrote an article for Monthly Review entitled “Monopoly-Finance Capital.” The occasion was the anniversary of Paul Baran and Paul Sweezy’s Monopoly Capital, published four decades earlier in 1966.…The article…[discussed] “the dual reality” of stagnant growth (or stagnation) and financialization, characterizing the advanced economies in this phase of capitalism. I concluded that this pointed to two possibilities: (1) a major financial and economic crisis in the form of “global debt meltdown and debt-deflation,” and (2) a prolongation of the symbiotic stagnation-financialization relationship of monopoly-finance capital. In fact, what we have experienced in the last two years, I would argue, is each of these sequentially: the worst financial-economic crisis since the 1930s, and then the system endeavoring to right itself by returning to financialization as its normal means of countering stagnation. It is thus doubly clear today that we are in a new phase of capitalism. In what follows, I shall attempt to outline the logic of this argument, as it evolved out of the work of Baran, Sweezy, and Harry Magdoff in particular, and how it relates to our present economic and social predicament.

    Reprints:

    • Reprinted in John Barkdull, ed., Public Policy and Global Change (Cogneta, 2012)

    Translations:

     

  • Concentration and Centralization of Capital

    “Konzentration and Zentralisation des Kapitals” (Concentration and Centralization of Capital,” in Historisch-Kritisches Wörterbuch Des Marximus , 7/II ((Berlin: Argument-Verlag, 2010).

  • Why Ecological Revolution?

    “Why Ecological Revolution?“, Monthly Review vol. 61, no. 8 (January 2010), pp. 1-19. DOI: 10.14452/MR-061-08-2010-01_1

    It is now universally recognized within science that humanity is confronting the prospect—if we do not soon change course—of a planetary ecological collapse. Not only is the global ecological crisis becoming more and more severe, with the time in which to address it fast running out, but the dominant environmental strategies are also forms of denial, demonstrably doomed to fail, judging by their own limited objectives. This tragic failure, I will argue, can be attributed to the refusal of the powers that be to address the roots of the ecological problem in capitalist production and the resulting necessity of ecological and social revolution.

    Reprints:

    Reprinted in Leslie King and Deborah McCarthy Auriffeille, ed., Environmental Sociology: From Analysis to Action, Third Edition (New York: Rowman and Littlefield, 2014), pp. 37-52.

    Translations:
    • German translation in Sozialistische Zeitung, March 2010.
    • French translation by Jean Pestieua in Études Marxistes, no. 86, 2009, 63-76.
    • Latvian translation by Ieva Zalite, Green Liberty, http://zb-zeme.lv, 2010.
    • Chinese translations in Foreign Theoretical Trends, no. 3, 2010 and at www.leftlibrary.com/foster.htm, 2010.
    • Spanish translation in Brumaria 22 (Madrid, 2010), pp. 257-70.

     

  • The Vulnerable Planet Fifteen Years Later

    “The Vulnerable Planet Fifteen Years Later“, Monthly Review vol. 61, no. 7 (December 2009), pp. 17-19. DOI: 10.14452/MR-061-07-2009-11_2

    The original intent of The Vulnerable Planet, when it was first published fifteen years ago, was to provide a brief historical materialist analysis of the development of the global ecological crisis, beginning with the early civilizations and leading up to the monopoly capitalist society of the late twentieth century. Looking back now at the book as it was originally written—and at the second edition published five years later, incorporating a few minor changes plus an afterword—I see no major point on which the analysis has proven to be substantially wrong or where it needs significant revision. Nevertheless, the last decade and a half has witnessed an acceleration of history with respect to the human relation to the environment, adding force to the concerns that the book expressed.

     

  • The Paradox of Wealth

    The Paradox of Wealth

    “The Paradox of Wealth: Capitalism and Ecological Destruction“, (coauthored with Brett Clark, Foster listed first), Monthly Review vol. 61, no. 6 (November 2009), pp. 1-18. DOI: 10.14452/MR-061-06-2009-10_1

    Today orthodox economics is reputedly being harnessed to an entirely new end: saving the planet from the ecological destruction wrought by capitalist expansion. It promises to accomplish this through the further expansion of capitalism itself, cleared of its excesses and excrescences. A growing army of self-styled “sustainable developers” argues that there is no contradiction between the unlimited accumulation of capital—the credo of economic liberalism from Adam Smith to the present—and the preservation of the earth. The system can continue to expand by creating a new “sustainable capitalism,” bringing the efficiency of the market to bear on nature and its reproduction. In reality, these visions amount to little more than a renewed strategy for profiting on planetary destruction.

    Translations:
    • Latvian translation by Ieva Zalite, Green Liberty, http://.zb-zeme.lv 2010.
    • Galician translation by Xosé Díaz Díaz in Terra e Tempo no. 4 (2010), http://www.terraetempo.net.
    • Hungarian translation in Ezmélet (Consciousness) no. 86 (Summer 2010), http://www.eszmelet.hu/.
    • Translated in Monthly Review, Turkish edition, issue 23 (Istanbul: Kalkedon Publications, June 2010).

     

  • The Midas Effect

    “The Midas Effect: A Critique of Climate Change Economics,”, (coauthored with Brett Clark and Richard York, Foster listed first), Development and Change, vol. 40, no. 6 (November 2009), pp. 1085-96. DOI: 10.1111/j.1467-7660.2009.01613.x.

    James Hansen, a leading US climatologist and director of NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies, warns that global climate change today constitutes a ‘planetary emergency’. Existing trends threaten to set in mo- tion irreversible climate transformations, proceeding ‘mostly under their own momentum’, thereby fundamentally transforming the conditions of life on earth.

  • Monopoly-Finance Capital and the Paradox of Accumulation

    Monopoly-Finance Capital and the Paradox of Accumulation

    “Monopoly-Finance Capital and the Paradox of Accumulation“, (coauthored with Robert W. McChesney, Foster listed first), Monthly Review vol. 61, no. 5 (October 2009), pp. 1-20.  DOI: 10.14452/MR-061-05-2009-09_1

    This month marks the eightieth anniversary of the 1929 Stock Market Crash that precipitated the Great Depression of the 1930s. Ironically, this comes at the very moment that the capitalist system is celebrating having narrowly escaped falling into a similar abyss. The financial crash and the decline in output a year ago, following the collapse of Lehman Brothers, was as steep as at the beginning of the Great Depression. “For a while,” Paul Krugman wrote in the New York Times in August, “key economic indicators — world trade, world industrial production, even stock prices—were falling as fast or faster than they did in 1929-30. But in the 1930s the trend lines kept heading down. This time, the plunge appears to be ending after just one terrible year.” Big government, through the federal bailout and stimulus, as well as the shock-absorber effects of the continued payouts of unemployment and Social Security benefits, Medicare, etc., slowed the descent and helped the economy to level off, albeit at a point well below previous output.

    Reprints:
    • Reprinted in John F. Sitton, ed., Marx Today: Selected Works and Recent Debates (New York: Palgrave-Macmillan, 2010), 185-200.
    Translations:
    • Galician translation by Xosé Díaz Díaz in Terra e Tempo (no. 2, 2010), http://www.terraetempo.net.
    • Arabic translation by Thamer Al-Saffar, Civilized Dialogue, May 24, 2010, http://www.ahewar.org.
    • Chinese transltion in Foreign Theoretical Trends,2010.
    • Turkish translations appears in Kapitalizmin Finansal Krizi, edited by Prof. Dr. Abdullah Ersoy (Ankara, Turkey: Imaj Publishing, 2011), 330pp; and in Monthly Review, Turkish edition, 26 (Istanbul: Kalkedon Publications, March 2011).
    • Bangla translation in Bangla Monthly Review, vol. 2. no. 2 (March 2010). Translation by Farooque Chowdhury.

     

  • Darwin’s Worms and the Skin of the Earth: An Introduction to Charles Darwin’s The Formation of Vegetable Mould, Through the Action of Worms, With Observations on their Habits

    “Darwin’s Worms and the Skin of the Earth: An Introduction to Charles Darwin’s The Formation of Vegetable Mould, Through the Action of Worms, With Observations on their Habits (Selections)”, (coauthored with Brett Clark and Richard York, Clark listed first), Organization and Environment, vol. 22, no. 3 (September 2009), pp. 338-50.

    Charles Darwin’s discovery of the theory of evolution by natural selection is unquestionably one of the most profound scientific achievements in history. Darwin was heavily influenced by the great geologist Charles Lyell, who developed uniformitarianism, the methodological and substantive doctrine that sought to explain all geological formations as the result of the accumulation of small events happening continually over long periods of time. In The Formation of Vegetable Mould, Through the Action of Worms, with Observations on Their Habits, Darwin—inspired by Lyell’s grand conception—focused on how worms transform the surface of the earth through their constant, everyday activities.They contribute to the formation of soil,turning it over and over,which enhances the circulation of nutrients within ecosystems.All studies of nature are indebted to Darwin for his devotion to illustrating the power of the materialist approach and for illuminating how the world works through its natural processes, including the invisible labor of worms.