John Bellamy Foster

Author: John Bellamy Foster

  • Foreword to the Summer Issue

    “Foreword to the Summer Issue,” [PDF] (John Bellamy Foster) Monthly Review, vol. 62, no. 3 (July 2010), pp. i-xviii.

    In the eyes of much of the world, the year 1989 has come to stand for the fall of the Berlin Wall, the demise of Soviet-type societies, and the defeat of twentieth-century socialism. However, 1989 for many others, particularly in Spanish-speaking countries, is also associated with the beginning of the Latin American revolt against neoliberal shock therapy and the emergence in the years that followed of a “socialism for the 21st century.” This revolutionary turning point in Latin American (and world) history is known as the Caracazo or Sacudón (heavy riot), which erupted in Caracas, Venezuela on February 27, 1989, and quickly became “by far the most massive and severely repressed riot in the history of Latin America.”

  • Capitalism, the Absurd System

    Capitalism, the Absurd System

    “Capitalism, the Absurd System: A View from the United States“, (coauthored with Robert W. McChesney, McChesney listed first), Monthly Review vol. 62, no. 2 (June 2010), pp. 1-16. DOI: 10.14452/MR-062-02-2010-06_1

    Perhaps nothing points so clearly to the alienated nature of politics in the present day United States as the fact that capitalism, the economic system that drives the society, is effectively off-limits to critical review or discussion. To the extent that capitalism is mentioned by politicians or pundits, it is regarded in hushed tones of reverence for the genius of the market, its unquestioned efficiency, and its providential authority. One might quibble with a corrupt and greedy CEO or a regrettable loss of jobs, but the superiority and necessity of capitalism—or, more likely, its euphemism, the so-called “free market system”—is simply beyond debate or even consideration. There are, of course, those who believe that the system needs more regulation and that there is room for all sorts of fine-tuning. Nevertheless, there is no questioning of the basics.

     

  • The Financial Power Elite

    The Financial Power Elite

    “The Financial Power Elite“, (coauthored with Hannah Holleman, Foster listed first), Monthly Review vol. 62, no. 1 (May 2010), pp. 1-19. DOI: 10.14452/MR-062-01-2010-05_1

    Has the power of financial interests in U.S. society increased? Has Wall Street’s growing clout affected the U.S. state itself? How is this connected to the present crisis? We will argue that the financialization of U.S. capitalism over the last four decades has been accompanied by a dramatic and probably long-lasting shift in the location of the capitalist class, a growing proportion of which now derives its wealth from finance as opposed to production. This growing dominance of finance can be seen today in the inner corridors of state power.

    Translations:

     

  • Listen Keynesians, It’s the System! Response to Palley

    Listen Keynesians, It’s the System! Response to Palley

    “Listen Keynesians, It’s the System! Response to Palley” (John Bellamy Foster and Robert W. McChesney) Monthly Review 61, no. 11 (April 2010), pp.44-56. DOI: 10.14452/MR-061-11-2010-04_3

    In an article entitled “Listen, Keynesians!,” published in January 1983 in Monthly Review, Harry Magdoff and Paul Sweezy argued that the radical break that John Maynard Keynes’s General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money (1936) represented for orthodox economics lay in the fact that “For the first time the possibility was frankly faced, indeed placed at the very center of the analysis, that breakdowns of the accumulation process, the heart and soul of economic growth, might be built into the system and non-self correcting.”… In November 1982, only two months before the publication of “Listen, Keynesians!,” Magdoff and Sweezy had pointed out in “Financial Instability: Where Will it All End?” that the question as to whether a major financial crisis (on the scale of 1929) could propel the economy into a deep downturn, approaching the scale of the Great Depression of the 1930s, was still an open one. They were responding here to Hyman Minsky, a proud Keynesian (albeit with socialist leanings), “whose views,” they claimed, were “especially worthy of attention precisely because over the years he has been the American economist who has done more than any other to focus on the crucially important destabilizing role of the financial system in advanced capitalist countries.”

     

  • Marx’s Ecology and its Historical Significance

    “Marx’s Ecology and its Historical Significance,” in Michael Redclift and Graham Woodgate, ed., International Handbook of Environmental Sociology, second edition (Northampton, MA: Edward Elgar, 2010), 106-20.

    (Revised, updated, and expanded version “Marx’s Ecology in Historical Perspective.”)

    John Bellamy Foster Introduction For the early Marx the only nature relevant to the understanding of history is human nature . . . Marx wisely left nature (other than human nature) alone. Lichtheim (1961: 245) Although Lichtheim was not a Marxist, his view here did not differ from the general outlook of Western Marxism at the time he was writing. Yet this same outlook would be regarded by most informed observers on the Left today as laughable. After decades of explorations of Marx’s contributions to ecological discussions and publication of his scientific–technical notebooks, it is no longer a question of whether Marx addressed nature, and did so throughout his life, but whether he can be said to have developed an understanding of the nature–society dialectic that constitutes a crucial starting point for understanding the ecological crisis of capitalist society.

    Due to mounting evidence, Marx’s ecological contributions are increasingly acknowledged. Yet not everyone is convinced of their historical significance. A great many analysts, including some self-styled ecosocialists, persist in arguing that such insights were marginal to his work, that he never freed himself from ‘Prometheanism’ (a term usually meant to refer to an extreme commitment to industrialization at any cost), and that he did not leave a significant ecological legacy that carried forward into later socialist thought or that had any relation to the subsequent development of ecology. In a recent discussion in the journal Capitalism, Nature, Socialism, a number of authors argued that Marx could not have contributed anything of…

  • Marx’s Ecology in the 21st Century

    “Marx’s Ecology in the 21st Century”(coauthored with Brett Clark, Clark listed first), World Review of Political Economy, vol. 1, no. 1 (March 2010), pp. 142-56. JSTOR: 41931871.

    The most pressing problem confronting humanity in the 21st century is the ecological crisis. The “problem of nature” is really a problem of capital, as natural cycles are turned into broken linear processes geared to private accumulation. Important advances in ecosocialist theory illuminate the continuing importance of marx’s materialist and metabolic approach for studying the dialectical interchange between humans and nature and the creation of ecological rifts within ecosystems. Additionally, Marx’s ecology serves as a foundation for understanding environmental degradation, given his critique of capital as a whole and his focus on the contradiction between use value and exchange value (which facilitates the expansion of private riches at the expense of public wealth, i.e., the Lauderdale Paradox). In stark contrast to the market mechanisms proposed to address the ecological crisis, which place profit above protecting nature, Marx’s ecology stresses the necessity of establishing a social order that sustains the conditions of life for future generations.

    Translations:
    • Chinese translation by Sun Yaoliang in Marxism and Reality, 2010.

  • The Financialization of the Capitalist Class

    “The Financialization of the Capitalist Class: Monopoly-Finance Capital and the New Contradictory Relations of Ruling Class Power,” in Henry Veltmeyer, ed., Imperialism, Crisis and Class Struggle: The Enduring Verities and Contemporary Face of Capitalism—Essays in Honour of James Petras (London: Brill, 2010), pp. 163-73.

  • 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: