John Bellamy Foster

Author: John Bellamy Foster

  • The Renewing of Socialism

    “The Renewing of Socialism: An Introduction” [PDF], Monthly Review, vol. 57, no. 3 (July-August 2005), pp. 1-18.

    Translation

    • Chinese translation by Zhuang Junju, Contemporary World and Socialism (China), no. 1 (2006).
    • Translated in Monthly Review, Turkish edition, no. 1 (2006), pp. 11-30
    • Greek translation published in Monthly Review (Greek edition, Athens, 2006), pp. 7-26.

    Articles in Monthly Review often end by invoking the socialist alternative to capitalism. Readers in recent years have frequently asked us what this means. Didn’t socialism die in the twentieth century? Wasn’t it defeated by capitalism? More practically: if socialism is still being advocated what kind of socialism is it? Are we being utopian in the sense of advancing a pleasant but impossible dream?

  • The End of Rational Capitalism

    The End of Rational Capitalism

    “The End of Rational Capitalism,” Monthly Review, vol. 56, no. 10 (March 2005), pp. 1-13. DOI: 10.14452/MR-056-10-2005-03_1

    The twentieth century’s dominant myth was that of a “rational capitalism.” The two economists who did the most to promote this idea were John Maynard Keynes and Joseph Schumpeter. Both were responding to the great historical crisis of capitalism manifested in the First World War, the Great Depression, and the Second World War. In the wake of the greatest set of horrors the world had ever seen, accompanied also by the rise of an alternative, contending system in the Soviet Union, it was necessary for capitalism following the Second World War to reestablish itself ideologically as well as materially. In terms of the ideological requirement, the two economists who accomplished this most effectively were Keynes and Schumpeter—not simply because they epitomized the best in bourgeois economic ideology, but also because they were the leading representatives of bourgeois economic science. What they set out in their analyses were the requirements of a rational capitalism and at least the hope that these requirements would be achieved.

    Translations:

     

  • The Treadmill of Production: Extension, Refinement and Critique

    ”The Treadmill of Production: Extension, Refinement and Critique,” [PDF] (coauthored with Richard York, York listed first – special issue on ‘the treadmill of production, part II’), Organization and Environment, vol. 18, no. 1 (March 2005), pp. 5-6. DOI: 10.1177/1086026604270325

    Philosopher of science Imre Lakatos (1978) argued that the key to evaluating merit in the sciences lies in the distinction between progressive and degenerative research programs. A research program is progressive if its theoretical growth anticipates its empirical growth (i.e., if it predicts novel facts with some frequency rather than merely explaining facts discovered by rival research pro- grams). In contrast, degenerative research programs are those whose theoretical development lags behind their empirical development. Needless to say, a research program may switch between these two states at different periods in time. This part of the special issue is focused on Schnaiberg’s (1980) “Treadmill of Production” (ToP), in environmental sociology and presents articles that implicitly explore the extent to which the (ToP) research program has been progressive and has the potential to be progressive in the coming years by providing novel insights into emerging phenomena. Whether the program ultimately proves to be progressive or degenera- tive remains to be seen, but it is indisputable that the (ToP) is one of the leading theoretical perspectives in environmental sociology and is at the center of most major contemporary debates in the subdiscipline.

     

  • The Treadmill of Accumulation

    “The Treadmill of Accumulation: Schnaiberg’s Environment and Marxian Political Economy,” [PDF], Organization and Environment, vol. 18, no. 1 (March 2005), pp. 7-18. DOI:10.1177/1086026604270442

    Allan Schnaiberg’s “treadmill of production” model has formed the single most influential framework of analysis within environmental sociology in the United States. Schnaiberg’s work is often characterized as “neo-Marxist,” but its actual relation to Marxian political economy has been left obscure. The following article examines Marx’s treatment of the treadmill as the crudest historical expression of the capitalist mode of production; the roots of Schnaiberg’s analysis in Baran and Sweezy’s conception of monopoly capital and Gabriel Kolko’s conception of political capitalism; the later divergence of the treadmill theory and Marxian political economy; the disappearance of the explicit critique of capitalism in the joint work of Schnaiberg and Kenneth Alan Gould; and the reconvergence of these traditions in the current phase of environmental sociology characterized by the debate with ecological modernization. The treadmill model demonstrates that the choice between barbarism and civilization is not simply a question of the organization of the human relations within society but also a question of the organization of the human relation to the environment.

  • Empire of Barbarism

    Empire of Barbarism

    “Empire of Barbarism,” coauthored with Brett Clark (Foster listed first), Monthly Review vol. 56, no. 7 (December 2004), pp. 1-15. DOI: 10.14452/MR-056-07-2004-11_1

    “A new age of barbarism is upon us.” These were the opening words of an editorial in the September 20, 2004, issue of Business Week clearly designed to stoke the flames of anti-terrorist hysteria. Pointing to the murder of schoolchildren in Russia, women and children killed on buses in Israel, the beheading of American, Turkish, and Nepalese workers in Iraq, and the killing of hundreds on a Spanish commuter train and hundreds more in Bali, Business Week declared: “America, Europe, Israel, Egypt, Pakistan, and governments everywhere are under attack by Islamic extremists. These terrorists have but one demand—the destruction of modern secular society.” Western civilization was portrayed as standing in opposition to the barbarians, who desire to destroy what is assumed to be the pinnacle of social evolution.

    Translations:
    • Original published version appeared in Portuguese translation in Commnicações, vol. 1, Civilização ou Barbárie (Serpa, Portugal: Encontro Internacional, September 2004), pp. 46-53.
    • German translation in Utopiekreativ: Diskussion Sozialistischer Alternativen, June 2005, vol. 176, 491-503;
    • Spanish translation in Marx Ahora (Cuba), no. 19 (2005), 7-19.
    • Polish translation in Rewolucja, no. 4, 2006.
    • Translated in Monthly Review, Turkish edition, no. 9 (Istanbul: Kalkedon, 2006).
    • Japanese translation, February 1, 2005, at http://www.ne.jp/asahi/institute/association/old/newsletter/20050201/article_2.htm.

     

  • Ecology, Capitalism, and the Socialization of Nature

    “Ecology, Capitalism, and the Socialization of Nature: An Interview with John Bellamy Foster” [PDF], Monthly Review vol. 56, no. 6 (November 2004), pp. 1-12.

    Originally published on-line in Aurora (Athabasca University), Interview Collection at http://aurora.icaap.org/.

    Translations

    • Chinese translation by Liu Rensheng, Contemporary World and Socialism (China), no. 6, 2005.
    • Indonesian translation in Ecology, Capitalism and the Socialization of Nature (Jakarta: Indonesian Forum for Environment (WALHI): Institute for Media Liberation and Social Sciences, 2004).

    DENNIS SORON: Many environmentalists came away from the Rio Earth Summit in 1992 with a great deal of optimism, believing that the cause of global environmental reform had finally been seriously placed on the political agenda. Today, with environmental conditions continuing to worsen and governments refusing to take effective action, it seems that little of this optimism remains. Why did the hopes spawned at Rio turn out to be so misplaced?

  • The Commitment of an Intellectual

    The Commitment of an Intellectual

    “The Commitment of an Intellectual: Paul M. Sweezy (1910-2004),” Monthly Review, vol. 56, no. 5 (October 2004), pp. 5-39. DOI: 10.14452/MR-056-05-2004-09_2

    Original draft placed on the Monthly Review web page in March of 2004, shortly after Sweezy’s death.

    The following brief intellectual biography of Paul Sweezy was drafted in September 2003 shortly before I saw Paul for the last time. It conveys many of the basic facts of his life. But as with all biographies of leading intellectuals it fails to capture the brilliance of his work, which must be experienced directly through his own writings. Nor is the warmth of Paul’s character adequately conveyed here. A short personal note is therefore needed. What was so surprising about Paul was his seemingly endless generosity and humanity. Paul gave freely of himself to all of those seeking his political and intellectual guidance. But a few, such as myself, were particularly blessed in that they experienced this on a deeper, more intense level. For decades Paul was concerned that Monthly Review not perish as had so many socialist institutions and publications in the past. He recognized early on that the continuance of the magazine and the tradition that it represented required the deliberate cultivation of new generations of socialist intellectuals. I was fortunate to be singled out while still quite young as one of those. For decades Paul wrote me letter after letter—no letter that I wrote to him ever went unanswered—sharing his knowledge, intellectual brilliance, and personal warmth. It was an immense, indescribable gift.

    Translations:
    • Turkish translation of early version in iktisat dergisi (August 2004), pp. 22-40.
    • Persian translation of early version in Ketaab-e-Bar-rassi-haa-ye Ejtema’i (Journal of Social Reviews), November 2004 (publisher: Baztabnegar).
    • Bengali translation included in In the Rank of the Wretched: A collection of Short Biographies of Albert Einstein, Paul M. Sweezy, and Harry Magdoff. (Dhaka, Bangladesh: Shrabon Prokashoni, 2006).
    • Chinese translation by Xi Cai in Foreign Theory Dynamics, 6 (2003).

     

  • Political Economy and the Environmental Crisis: Introduction to Special Issue

    “Political Economy and the Environmental Crisis: Introduction to Special Issue” [PDF] (co-authored with Richard York, Foster listed first—special issue on the treadmill of production, part I), vol. 17, no. 3 (September 2004), pp. 293-95. DOI: 10.1177/1086026604268016

    According to Frederick Buell (2003) in his book ‘From Apocalypse to Way of Life‘, perceptions of environmental crisis in the 1960s and 1970s were both narrower in scope and more apocalyptic (usually Malthusian) in tone than those of today. Rather than diminishing, the problem of the environment has only expanded in the years since Rachel Carson’s ‘Silent Spring‘, was published. Severe environmental crisis is no longer foreign to us—not some future to be feared and avoided so much as a present in which we are living. It has become a structural reality of modern life and accepted as such, even normalized. If anything, a certain fatalism has emerged. It is now increasingly understood by environmental sociologists and many others that global ecological degradation is at the core of the development of modern (particularly capitalist) forms of production and is inescapable as long as those relations of production remain unaltered. Proba- bly the earliest analyst to articulate such a structural view through a fully developed political-economic theory of environmental degradation under corporate capitalism was Allan Schnaiberg (1980) in his magnum opus, ‘The Environment: From Surplus to Scarcity‘. It was here that Schnaiberg introduced the important concept of the treadmill of production—the topic taken up in this special issue. Schnaiberg rejected all apocalyptic notions, believing that something could be done if social relations could be radically transformed, yet his indictment of our present system of production for its degradation of the environment was all the more damning as a result.

  • The American Empire

    “The American Empire: Pax Americana or Pox Americana?,” Monthly Review, vol. 56, no. 4 (September 2004), pp. 1-4. DOI: 10.14452/MR-056-04-2004-08_1

    From the Book: Pox Americana: Exposing the American Empire

    “Editors’ Preface”

    On June 10, 1963, President John F. Kennedy delivered a commencement address at American University in Washington, D.C., in which he declared that the peace that the United States sought was “not a Pax Americana enforced on the world by American weapons of war.” His remarks were a response to criticisms of the United States advanced in a recently published Soviet text on military strategy. Kennedy dismissed the charge that “American imperialist circles” were “preparing to unleash different kinds of wars” including “preventative war.” The Soviet text, he pointed out, had stated, “The political aims of American imperialists were and still are to enslave economically and politically the European and other capitalist countries and, after the latter are transformed into obedient tools, to unify them in various military-political blocs and groups directed against the socialist countries. The main aim of all this is to achieve world domination.” In Kennedy’s words, these were “wholly baseless and incredible claims,” the work of Marxist “propagandists.” “The United States, as the world knows, will never start a war.”

    Translations:

     

  • Pox Americana

    Pox Americana

    Buy at Monthly Review Press

    “Pox Americana: Exposing the American Empire,” co-edited with Robert W. McChesney (Foster listed first) (New York: Monthly Review Press/London: Pluto Press, 2004), 192 pp.

    This volume brings together the work of leading Marxist analysts of imperialism to examine the burning question of our time—the nature and prospects of the U.S. imperial project currently being given shape by war and occupation in the Middle East.

    Notes/Reprints

    • Revised and expanded version of July-August 2003 special issue of Monthly Review with new material. (Contains an article co-authored by Foster and a preface and another article co-authored by Foster).
    • “Editors’ Preface” reprinted in Monthly Review, vol. 56, no. 4 (September 2004), pp. 1-4—under the title “The American Empire: Pax Americana or Pox Americana?”

    Translations