Food has become a core contradiction of contemporary capitalism. Discussions of the economics and sociology of food and food regimes seem to be everywhere today, with some of the most important contributions made by Marxian theorists. Amid plentiful food production, hunger remains a chronic problem, and food security is now a pressing concern for many […]
Author Archive | John Bellamy Foster
Marxism and the Dialectics of Ecology
By John Bellamy Foster on October 1, 2016 in Articles, Other Major Scholarly Journal Articles, Translated
The recovery of the ecological-materialist foundations of Karl Marx’s thought, as embodied in his theory of metabolic rift, is redefining both Marxism and ecology in our time, reintegrating the critique of capital with critical natural science. This may seem astonishing to those who were reared on the view that Marx’s ideas were simply a synthesis […]
“Foreword” to English translation of Marta Harnecker, “Latin America and Twenty-First Century Socialism”
“Foreword” to English translation of Marta Harnecker, “Latin America and Twenty-First Century Socialism” (originally published as a book in Spanish), Monthly Review, vol. 62, no. 3 (July-August 2010), iii-xvii. Translation(s): Bangla translation in Bangla Monthly Review, vol. 3, no. 1 (December 2010). Translated by Ashish Lahiri.]
The Anthropocene Crisis
The Anthropocene, viewed as a new geological epoch displacing the Holocene epoch of the last 10,000 to 12,000 years, represents what has been called an “anthropogenic rift” in the history of the planet.2 Formally introduced into the contemporary scientific and environmental discussion by climatologist Paul Crutzen in 2000, it stands for the notion that human […]
Multinational Corporations and the Globalization of Monopoly Capital
“Multinational Corporations and the Globalization of Monopoly Capital: From the 1960s to the Present” (co-authored with Intan Suwandi, Suwandi listed first), Monthly Review vol. 68, no. 3 (July-August 2016), pp. 114-31. DOI: 10.14452/MR-068-03-2016-07_9 [HTML] In 1964, Paul Baran and Paul Sweezy wrote an essay entitled “Notes on the Theory of Imperialism” for a festschrift in […]
Marxism in the Anthropocene: Dialectical Rifts on the Left
Natural scientists have pointed to the Anthropocene as a new geological epoch, with the precise dating not yet decided, but often traced to the Great Acceleration of the human impact on the environment since 1945. Thus understood, the Anthropocene largely coincides with the rise of the modern environmental movement and corresponds to the age of […]
“Foreword,” to Ian Angus, Facing the Anthropocene
The Anthropocene, viewed as a new geological epoch displacing the Holocene epoch of the last 10,000 to 12,000 years, represents what has been called an “anthropogenic rift” in the history of the planet. Formally introduced into the contemporary scientific and environmental discussion by climatologist Paul Crutzen in 2000, it stands for the notion that human […]
Marx’s Universal Metabolism of Nature and the Frankfurt School: Dialectical Contradictions and Critical Syntheses
The Frankfurt School, as represented especially by Max Horkheimer and Theodor Adorno’s 1944, Dialectic of Enlightenment, was noted for developing a philosophical critique of the domination of nature. Critical theorists associated with the Institute for Social Research at Frankfurt were heavily influenced by the writings of the early Karl Marx. Yet, their critique of the Enlightenment […]
Marx’s Ecology and the Left
One of the lasting contributions of the Frankfurt School of social theorists, represented especially by Max Horkheimer and Theodor Adorno’s 1944 Dialectic of Enlightenment, was the development of a philosophical critique of the domination of nature. Critical theorists associated with the Institute for Social Research at Frankfurt were deeply influenced by the early writings of […]
Nature
“Nature,” wrote Raymond Williams in Keywords, “is perhaps the most complex word in the language.” It is derived from the Latin natura, as exemplified by Lucretius’s great didactic poem De rerum natura (On the Nature of Things) from the first century BCE. The word “nature” has three primary, interrelated meanings: (1) the intrinsic properties or […]
