John Bellamy Foster

Category: Other Major Scholarly Journal Articles

Journal Articles (Other Major Scholarly)

  • Imperialism and ‘Empire’

    Imperialism and ‘Empire’

    “Imperialism and ‘Empire,” Monthly Review, vol. 53, no. 7, pp. 1-9. (December, 2001) DOI: 10.14452/MR-053-07-2001-11_1

    Only a little more than a month ago at this writing, before September 11, the mass revolt against capitalist globalization that began in Seattle in November 1999 and that was still gathering force as recently as Genoa in July 2001 was exposing the contradictions of the system in a way not seen for many years. Yet the peculiar nature of this revolt was such that the concept of imperialism had been all but effaced, even within the left, by the concept of globalization, suggesting that some of the worst forms of international exploitation and rivalry had somehow abated.

    Translations:

     

  • Ecology Against Capitalism

    Ecology Against Capitalism

    “Ecology Against Capitalism,” (John Bellamy Foster) Monthly Review, vol. 53, no. 5 (October 2001), pp. 1-16. DOI: 10.14452/MR-053-05-2001-09_1

    In a 1963 talk on “The Pollution of Our Environment” Rachel Carson drew a close comparison between the reluctance of society in the late twentieth century to embrace the full implications of ecological theory and the resistance in the Victorian era to Darwin’s theory of evolution: As I look back through history I find a parallel. I ask you to recall the uproar that followed Charles Darwin’s announcement of his theories of evolution. The concept of man’s origin from pre-existing forms was hotly and emotionally denied, and the denials came not only from the lay public, but from Darwin’s peers in science. Only after many years did the concepts set forth in The Origin of Species become firmly established. Today, it would be hard to find any person of education who would deny the facts of evolution. Yet so many of us deny the obvious corollary: that man is affected by the same environmental influences that control the lives of all the many thousands of other species to which he is related by evolutionary ties (Lost Woods: The Discovered Writing of Rachel Carson, pp. 244-45).

    Translations:
    • Chinese translation in Contemporary Academic Thought Series, Shanghai Translation House, 2006.

     

  • Capitalism’s Environmental Crisis

    Capitalism’s Environmental Crisis

    “Capitalism’s Environmental Crisis—Is Technology the Answer?,”(John Bellamy Foster) Monthly Review vol. 52, no. 7 (December 2000), pp.  1-13. DOI: 10.14452/MR-052-07-2000-11_1

    The standard solution offered to the environmental problem in advanced capitalist economies is to shift technology in a more benign direction: more energy-efficient production, cars that get better mileage, replacement of fossil fuels with solar power, and recycling of resources. Other environmental reforms, such as reductions in population growth and even cuts in consumption, are often advocated as well. The magic bullet of technology, however, is by far the favorite, seeming to hold out the possibility of environmental improvement with the least effect on the smooth working of the capitalist machine. The 1997 International Kyoto Protocol on global warming, designed to limit the greenhouse-gas emissions of nations, has only reinforced this attitude, encouraging many environmental advocates in the United States (including Al Gore in his presidential campaign) to advocate technological improvement in energy efficiency as the main escape from the environmental mess.

    Reprints:
    • Published in a different version in Tokyo in Hitotsubashi Journal of Social Sciences, vol. 33, no. 1 (July 2001), pp. 143-50.
    Translations:
    • Turkish translation in Emperyalizmin Yeniden Keşfi (Istanbul, Turkey: Kalkedon Publications (January 2006).

     

  • Marx and Internationalism

    Marx and Internationalism

    “Marx and Internationalism,” Monthly Review, vol. 52, vol. no. 3, pp. 11-22. DOI: 10.14452/MR-052-03-2000-07_2

    It is not uncommon within social science today to acknowledge that Karl Marx was one of the first analysts of globalization. But what is usually forgotten, even by those who make this acknowledgment, is that Marx was also one of the first strategists of working-class internationalism, designed to respond to capitalist globalization. The two major elements governing such internationalism, in his analysis, were the critique of international exploitation and the development of a working-class movement that was both national and international in its organization. A scrutiny of Marx’s views at the time of the First International offers useful insights into the struggle to forge a new internationalism in our own day.

    Translations:
    • Turkish translation in Cosmo Politik, no. 3 (Summer 2002), pp. 168-74.

     

  • Monopoly Capital at the Turn of the Millenium

    Monopoly Capital at the Turn of the Millenium

    “Monopoly Capital at the Turn of the Millennium,” Monthly Review, vol. 51, no. 11 (April 2000), pp. 1-18. 10.14452/MR-051-11-2000-04_1

    This article is dedicated to Paul Sweezy on his 90th birthday. It is also meant as a personal expression of my conviction that Monopoly Capital (1966) by Paul Baran and Paul Sweezy, which provided a rich analysis of capital accumulation and crisis rooted in insights from Marx, Keynes, Kalecki, and Schumpeter, is still the most useful starting point from which to view the historical evolution of the United States and other advanced capitalist economies. My intention in this article is to use that general analysis to comment on some of the central empirical developments within the economy in our time—in a new millennium and under conditions of the globalization of monopoly capital.

    Translations:
    • Translated into Norwegian and published in Røde Fane, no. 4 (2000), pp. 32-38.
    • Hungarian translation in Ezmélet (Consciousness) vol. 12 no. 47 (Autumn 2000), pp. 96-112.
    • Greek translation in Socialist Ecology (November 2011).

     

  • Remarks on Paul Sweezy on the Occasion of his Receipt of the Veblen-Commons Award

    Remarks on Paul Sweezy on the Occasion of his Receipt of the Veblen-Commons Award

    “Remarks on Paul Sweezy on the Occasion of his Receipt of the Veblen-Commons Award,” Monthly Review, vol. 51, no. 4, (September 1999) pp. 39-44 DOI: 10.14452/MR-051-04-1999-08_4

    I would like to quote at length from Paul Samuelson, who wrote a piece exactly thirty years ago for Newsweek magazine about a time thirty years before that “when giants walked the earth and Harvard Yard”: When Diaghilev revived his ballet company he had the original Bakst sets redone in even more vivid colors, explaining, “so they would be as brilliant as people remember them.” Recent events on college campuses have recalled to my inward eye one of the great happenings of my own lifetime.

    Reprints:
    • Reprinted from Journal of Economic Issues, vol. 33, no. 2 (June 1999), pp. 223-28.

     

  • Contradictions in the Universalization of Capitalism

    Contradictions in the Universalization of Capitalism

    “Contradictions in the Universalization of Capitalism,” Monthly Review, vol. 50, no. 11 (April 1999), pp. 29-39. DOI: 10.14452/MR-050-11-1999-04_3

    A central, perhaps the central, idea of economic liberalism has always been that a market society organized on the basis of individual self-interest is the natural state of humankind, and that such a society is bound to prosper—through an almost providential invisible hand—provided that no external barriers stand in its way. In this view all of human history is nothing more than the gradual freeing up of market relations—the release of the universal and rational forms of society only waiting to be let loose. “In most accounts of capitalism,” Ellen Meiksins Wood has critically observed, “there really is no beginning. Capitalism seems always to be there, somewhere; and it only needs to be released from its chains—for instance, from the fetters of feudalism—to be allowed to grow and mature.”

     

  • A Classic of Our Time

    “A Classic of Our Time: Labor and Monopoly Capital After a Quarter-Century,” Monthly Review, vol. 50, no. 8 (January 1999), pp. 12-18. DOI: 10.14452/MR-050-08-1999-01_2

    Three years ago, on the occasion of its silver anniversary, Contemporary Sociology, the American Sociological Association’s book review journal, published a special section on the ten most influential books of the previous twenty-five years. Each book chosen for this honor by Contemporary Sociology‘s editorial board was reassessed by a notable figure in the field. One of the books selected was Harry Braverman’s Labor and Monopoly Capital. The sociologist who wrote on Braverman’s book was Michael Burawoy.

     

  • Mathus’ Essay on Population at Age 200

    “Mathus’ Essay on Population at Age 200: A Marxian View,” Monthly Review, vol. 50, no. 7 (December 1998), pp. 1-18. DOI: 10.14452/MR-050-07-1998-11_1

    Since it was first published 200 years ago in 1798, no other single work has constituted such a bastion of bourgeois thought as Thomas Malthus’ Essay on the Principle of Population. No other work was more hated by the English working class, nor so strongly criticized by Marx and Engels. Although the Malthusian principle of population in its classical form was largely vanquished intellectually by the mid-nineteenth century, it continued to reemerge in new forms. In the late nineteenth century it took on new life as a result of the Darwinian revolution and the rise of social Darwinism. And in the late twentieth century Malthusianism reemerged once again in the form of neo-Malthusian ecology.

     

  • Liebig, Marx and the Depletion of the Natural Fertility of the Soil

    “Liebig, Marx and the Depletion of the Natural Fertility of the Soil: Implications for Sustainable Agriculture,” (co-authored with Fred Magdoff, Foster listed first), Monthly Review vol. 50, no. 3 (July 1998), pp. 32-45. DOI: 10.14452/MR-050-03-1998-07_3

    During the period 1830-1870 the depletion of the natural fertility of the soil through the loss of soil nutrients was the central ecological concern of capitalist society in both Europe and North America (only comparable to concerns over the loss of forests, the growing pollution of the cities, and the Malthusian specter of overpopulation). This period saw the growth of “guano imperialism” as nations scoured the globe for natural fertilizers; the emergence of modem soil science; the gradual introduction of synthetic fertilizers; and the formation of radical proposal for the development of a sustainable agriculture, aimed ultimately at the elimination of the antagonism between town and country.