“The Meaning of Work in a Sustainable Society,” Monthly Review vol. 69, no. 4 (September 2017), pp. 1-14. DOI: 10.14452/MR-069-04-2017-08_1 [HTML] The idea of total liberation from work, in its one-sidedness and incompleteness, is ultimately incompatible with a genuinely sustainable society. The real promise of a system of labor beyond capitalism rests not so much […]
Archive | Other Major Scholarly Journal Articles
Journal Articles (Other Major Scholarly)
Revolution and Counterrevolution, 1917-2017
“Revolution and Counterrevolution, 1917-2017,” Monthly Review vol. 69, no. 3 (July-August 2017), pp. 1-13. DOI: 10.14452/MR-069-03-2017-07_1 [HTML] If counterrevolution ultimately triumphed over the revolutionary waves of the twentieth century, how are we to understand this, and what does it mean for the future of world revolution? The answer requires a survey of the whole history […]
This Is Not Populism
“This Is Not Populism,” Monthly Review vol. 69, no. 2 (June 2017), pp. 1-24. DOI: 10.14452/MR-069-02-2017-06_1 [HTML] Since Trump’s election, mainstream commentary has generally avoided the question of fascism or neofascism, preferring instead to apply the vaguer, safer notion of “populism.” In today’s political context, however, it is crucial to understand not only how the […]
Neofascism in the White House
“Neofascism in the White House,” Monthly Review vol. 68, no. 11 (April 2017), pp. 1-30. DOI: 10.14452/MR-068-11-2017-04_1 [HTML] Not only a new administration, but a new ideology has now taken up residence at the White House: neofascism. It resembles in certain ways the classical fascism of Italy and Germany in the 1920s and ’30s, but […]
Trump and Climate Catastrophe
The alarm bells are ringing. The climate-change denialism of the Trump administration, coupled with its goal of maximizing fossil-fuel extraction and consumption at all costs, constitutes, in the words of Noam Chomsky, “almost a death knell for the human species.” As noted climatologist Michael E. Mann has declared, “I fear that this may be game […]
Marx as a Food Theorist
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
Marx’s Theory of Working-Class Precariousness
By John Bellamy Foster on April 1, 2016 in Articles, Journal Articles (Refereed), Other Major Scholarly Journal Articles
Worker Precariousness has become a major issue globally. Much of this, however, is divorced from the central role that this concept played in Marx’s critique of political economy. This article traces the notion of precarious labor back to its classical roots in historical materialism, including Marx’s general law of accumulation and his reserve army of […]
