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Author Archive | John Bellamy Foster

Imperial America and War

On November 11, 2000, Richard Haass—a member of the National Security Council and special assistant to the president under the elder Bush, soon to be appointed director of policy planning in the State Department of newly elected President George W. Bush—delivered a paper in Atlanta entitled “Imperial America.” For the United States to succeed at […]

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Imperialism Without Colonies

In the decades after 1945, as colonial possessions became independent states, it was widely-believed that imperialism as a historical phenomenon was coming to an end. The six essays collected in this volume demonstrate that a new form of imperialism was, in fact, taking shape—an imperialism defined not by colonial rule but by the global capitalist […]

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The Commercial Tidal Wave

For a long time now it has been widely understood within economics that under the capitalism of giant firms, corporations no longer compete primarily through price competition. They engage instead in what economists call “monopolistic competition.” This consists chiefly of attempts to create monopoly positions for a particular brand, making it possible for corporations to […]

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Crises: One After Another for the Life of the System

Our disagreement with our friends, Sam Gindin and Leo Panitch, is over three interrelated issues: (1) how and why to analyze a crisis-prone capitalism, (2) the capacity of the state to manage or “contain” crises, and (3) the near-term prospects for capital accumulation. In addition there are significant divergences in empirical assessment between us related […]

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The Rediscovery of Imperialism

The concept of “imperialism” was considered outside the acceptable range of political discourse within the ruling circles of the capitalist world for most of the twentieth century. Reference to “imperialism” during the Vietnam War, no matter how realistic, was almost always a sign that the writer was on the left side of the political spectrum. […]

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It’s Not a Postcapitalist World, Nor is it a Post-Marxist One

Evrensel Kultur: Postmodernism’s advice to us was to have doubts towards all kinds of information acquired. The “security syndrome” following September 11 has spread these doubts to daily life. In other words, the twenty-first century has begun as an age of doubts/suspicions. How does the suspiciousness of the new century differ from that of past […]

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Helen Keller and the Touch of Nature: An Introduction to Keller’s The World I live In

Mark Twain asserted that Helen Keller (1880-1968) was immortal—fellow to Caesar, Homer, and Shakespeare—and would “be as famous a thousand years from now as she is to-day” (Twain, 1924, Vol. 2, p. 297). Elementary school teachers have told the story of Keller’s childhood for more than a hundred years, whereas her activist and intellectual developments […]

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