John Bellamy Foster

Author: John Bellamy Foster

  • The Financialization of Capital and the Crisis

    The Financialization of Capital and the Crisis

    “The Financialization of Capital and the Crisis“, Monthly Review vol. 59, no. 11 (April 2008), pp. 1-19. DOI: 10.14452/MR-059-11-2008-04_1

    With the benefit of hindsight, few now doubt that the housing bubble that induced most of the recent growth of the U.S. economy was bound to burst or that a general financial crisis and a global economic slowdown were to be the unavoidable results. Warning signs were evident for years to all of those not taken in by the new financial alchemy of high-risk debt management, and not blinded, as was much of the corporate world, by huge speculative profits. This can be seen in a series of articles that appeared in this space: “The Household Debt Bubble” (May 2006), “The Explosion of Debt and Speculation” (November 2006), “Monopoly-Finance Capital” (December 2006), and “The Financialization of Capitalism” (April 2007).

    Translations:
    • Polish translation in Le Monde Diplomatique, Polish Edition (July 2008), http://monde-diplomatique.pl/LMD29/.
    • Chinese translation Wu Wei in Marxism and Reality (China), no. 4, 2008.
    • Turkish translation by Özkan Özgur, http:///www.toplumsalbilinc.org, October 22, 2008.
    • Portuguese translation in Resistir.info, http://resistir.info, 2008.
    • Spanish translation in Sin Permiso, issue 4 (December 2008).

     

  • Classical Marxism and the Second Law of Thermodynamics

    “Classical Marxism and the Second Law of Thermodynamics: Marx/Engels, the Heat Death of the Universe Theory, and the Origins of Ecological Economics” [PDF], (coauthored with Paul Burkett, Foster listed first), Organization and Environment, vol. 21, no. 1 (March 2008), pp. 1-35.  DOI: 10.1177/1086026607313580

    Ever since Nicholas Georgescu-Roegen (1971) wrote his magnum opus, The Entropy Law and the Economic Process, the entropy law (or the second law of thermodynamics) has been viewed as a sine qua non of ecological economics. Georgescu-Roegen argued strongly that both the entropy law and the first law of thermodynamics (conservation of matter–energy) were incompatible with ortho- dox neoclassical economics. The relation of ecological economics to Marxian economics, however, was much more ambiguous. Attempts to explore the history of ecological–economic ideas, following Georgescu-Roegen’s contributions, immediately brought to the fore the close relationship between those thinkers who had pioneered in ecological–economic thinking and classical Marxism.

  • Rachel Carson’s Ecological Critique

    Rachel Carson’s Ecological Critique

    “Rachel Carson’s Ecological Critique“, (coauthored with Brett Clark, Foster listed first), Monthly Review vol. 59, no. 9 (February 2008), pp. 1-17. DOI: 10.14452/MR-059-09-2008-02_1

    Rachel Carson was born just over 100 years ago in 1907. Her most famous book Silent Spring, published in 1962, is often seen as marking the birth of the modern environmental movement. Although an immense amount has been written about Carson and her work, the fact that she was objectively a “woman of the left” has often been downplayed. Today the rapidly accelerating planetary ecological crisis, which she more than anyone else alerted us to, calls for an exploration of the full critical nature of her thought and its relation to the larger revolt within science with which she was associated.

    Translations:
    • Bangla translation in Bangla Monthly Review, no. 3 (July 2008).
    • Translated by Protiva Mondol; Turkish translation in Monthly Review, Turkish edition, no. 19 (Istanbul: Kalkedon, 2008), pp. 165-82

     

  • The Podolinsky Myth

    “The Podolinsky Myth: An Obituary Introduction to ‘Human Labour and Unity of Force‘,” (co-authored by John Foster and Paul Burkett,  by Sergei Podolinsky, Historical Materialism, Volume 16, Issue 1, pages 115 – 161, (2008) DOI: 10.1163/156920608X276323

    The relationship between Marxism and ecology has been sullied by Martinez-Alier’s influential interpretation of Engels’s reaction to the agricultural energetics of Sergei Podolinsky. is introduction to the first English translation of Podolinsky’s 1883 Die Neue Zeit piece evaluates Martinez-Alier’s interpretation in light of the four distinct but closely related articles Podolinsky published over the years 1880–3. is evaluation also emphasises the important but previously underrated role of energy analysis in Marx’s Capital. Engels’s criticisms of Podolinsky are found to be quite justified from both political-economy and ecological perspectives. From the standpoint of Marx and Engels’s metabolic and class-relational approach to production, Podolinsky’s attempt to reduce use-value to energy is fraught with problems. Podolinsky’s energy reductionism does not even come close to representing an alternative value analysis – let alone a groundbreaking perspective on ecological history – as was suggested by Martinez-Alier. Far from Marx and Engels’s vision of communism as an ecologically sustainable and coevolutionary human development, Podolinsky’s conception of human labor as an energy accumulation machine seems to uncritically mimic the standpoint of the capitalist interested in using nature only to extract as much energy throughput (work) as possible from the labour-power (potential work) of the worker.

  • The Critique of Intelligent Design

    “The Critique of Intelligent Design: Epicurus, Marx, Darwin and Freud and the Materialist Defense of Science,” [PDF], (coauthored with Brett Clark and Richard York, Foster listed second), Theory and Society, vol. 36 (December 2007), pp. 515. DOI: 10.1007/s11186-007-9046-9.

    A new version of the age-old controversy between religion and science has been launched by today’s intelligent design movement. Although ostensibly concerned simply with combating Darwinism, this new creationism seeks to drive a “wedge” into the materialist view of the world, originating with the ancient Greek philosopher Epicurus and manifested in modern times by Darwin, Marx, and Freud.

  • Rediscovering the History of Imperialism

    “Rediscovering the History of Imperialism: A Reply” [PDF], Monthly Review vol. 59, no. 7 (December 2007), pp.51-53.

    The Research Unit for Political Economy’s (RUPE’s) brief historical account here of the origins of the Marxist theory of imperialism constitutes a crucial corrective to common errors regarding that history. In my article, “The Imperialist World System: Paul Baran’s Political Economy of Growth After Fifty Years” (Monthly Review, May 2007), I began by pointing out that Baran’s book was an outgrowth of classical Marxist thought—the ideas of Marx, Lenin, and Luxemburg. At the same time it represented a sharp departure from the rigid orthodoxy of linear development that had come to characterize so much of socialist (as well as bourgeois) thought—often presented in terms of Horace’s phrase, quoted by Marx, “the tale is told of you.” Baran’s treatment of the imperialist world system was a startling contribution at the time that his book appeared, challenging the conventional assumptions of both the right and an increasingly calcified left.

  • A New Stage in Capitalism’s War on the Planet

    A New Stage in Capitalism’s War on the Planet

    “A New Stage in Capitalism’s War on the Planet“, Monthly Review vol. 59, no. 6 (November 2007), pp. 53-54. DOI: 10.14452/MR-059-06-2007-10_7

    The introduction to this book, the last part to be completed, was sent to the printer in New York City only days before the attacks on the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001, and was first published in October 2001 in Monthly Review. Since then the world has witnessed a continuing war by the United States for control of the oil-rich Middle East and an acceleration of the global ecological crisis—symbolized above all by global warming. The opening years of the twenty-first century can therefore be viewed as marking a new stage in the war of capitalism on the planet.

     

  • The Latin American Revolt

    The Latin American Revolt

    “The Latin American Revolt: An Introduction“, Monthly Review vol. 59, no. 3 (July 2007), pp. 1-8. DOI: 10.14452/MR-059-03-2007-07_1

    The revolt against U.S. hegemony in Latin America in the opening years of the twenty-first century constitutes nothing less than a new historical moment. Latin America, to quote Noam Chomsky, is “reasserting its independence” in an attempt to free itself from centuries of imperialist domination. The gravity of this threat to U.S. power is increasingly drawing the attention of Washington. Julia Sweig, Latin American program director at the Council on Foreign Relations, argues that the twenty-first century is likely to be known as the “Anti-American Century,” marking a growing intolerance of the “waning” U.S. empire. Outweighing even the resistance to the U.S. war machine in Iraq in this respect, Sweig suggests, is the political realignment to the left in Latin America, which, in destabilizing U.S. rule in the Americas, offers a “prophetic microcosm” of what can be expected worldwide.

    Translations:
    • Spanish translation in America Latina en Movimiento, Barcelona.
    • Translated in Monthly Review, Turkish edition, no. 16 (Istanbul: Kalkedon, 2007).
    • Bangla translation in Bangla Monthly Review, no. 4 (September-November 2007. Translated by Protiva Mondol.

     

  • Nature, Technology and the Sacred

    “Nature, Technology and the Sacred,” [PDF], American Journal of Sociology, vol. 112, no. 6 (May 2007). (Review of Bronislaw Szerszynski, Nature, Technology and the Sacred), pp. 1937–1939. DOI: 10.1086/519706.

    The classical sociologists, including Marx, Weber, and Durkheim, all argued that society was experiencing a rapid secularization, arising from the Enlightenment, industrialization, and capitalism. While Marx famously argued that under capitalism “all that is holy is profaned,” Weber just as famously referred to the “disenchantment of nature” associated with formal rationalization. Although by no means the first work to question this secularization thesis, Nature, Technology and the Sacred does so to a degree perhaps unequaled by any other analysis.

  • The Imperialist World System

    The Imperialist World System

    “The Imperialist World System: Paul Baran’s Political Economy of Growth After Fifty Years“, Monthly Review vol. 59, no. 1 (May 2007), pp. 1-16. DOI: 10.14452/MR-059-01-2007-05_1

    The concept of the imperialist world system in today predominant sense of the extreme economic exploitation of periphery by center, creating a widening gap between rich and poor countries, was largely absent from the classical Marxist critique of capitalism. Rather this view had its genesis in the 1950s, especially with the publication fifty years ago of Paul Baran’s Political Economy of Growth. Baran’s work helped inspire Marxist dependency and world system theories. But it was the new way of looking at imperialism that was the core of Baran’s contribution. A half-century later it is important to ask: What was this new approach and how did it differ from then prevailing notions? What further changes in our understanding of imperialism are now necessary in response to changed historical conditions since the mid-twentieth century?

    Translations:
    • Translated in Monthly Review, Turkish edition (Istanbul: Kalkedon, August 2007.