John Bellamy Foster

Category: Other Major Scholarly Journal Articles

Journal Articles (Other Major Scholarly)

  • The Plight of the U.S. Working Class

    The Plight of the U.S. Working Class

    “The Plight of the U.S. Working Class” [PDF], (coauthored with Fred Magdoff, Magdoff listed first), Monthly Review vol.65, no. 8 (January 2014), pp. 1-22. DOI: 10.14452/MR-065-08-2014-01_1

    Modern capitalism, sociologist Max Weber famously observed early in the twentieth century, is based on “the rational capitalistic organization of (formally) free labor.” But the “rationality” of the system in this sphere, as Weber was to acknowledge elsewhere, was so restrictive as to be in reality “irrational.” Despite its formal freedom, labor under capitalism was substantively unfree.… This was in accordance with the argument advanced in Karl Marx’s Capital. Since the vast majority of individuals in the capitalist system are divorced from the means of production they have no other way to survive but to sell their labor power to those who own these means, that is, the capitalist class.… The result is a strong tendency to the polarization of income and wealth in society. The more the social productivity of labor grows the more it serves to promote the wealth and power of private capital, while at the same time increasing the relative poverty and economic dependency of the workers.

     

  • Marx and the Rift in the Universal Metabolism of Nature

    Marx and the Rift in the Universal Metabolism of Nature

    “Marx and the Rift in the Universal Metabolism of Nature,” [PDF], Monthly Review, vol. 65, no. 7 (December 2013), pp. 1-19. DOI: 10.14452/MR-065-07-2013-11_1

    The rediscovery over the last decade and a half of Marx’s theory of metabolic rift has come to be seen by many on the left as offering a powerful critique of the relation between nature and contemporary capitalist society. The result has been the development of a more unified ecological world view transcending the divisions between natural and social science, and allowing us to perceive the concrete ways in which the contradictions of capital accumulation are generating ecological crises and catastrophes.… Yet, this recovery of Marx’s ecological argument has given rise to further questions and criticisms.

    Translations:

     

  • The Epochal Crisis

    The Epochal Crisis

    “The Epochal Crisis,” [PDF], Monthly Review, vol.65, no. 5 (October 2013), pp. 1-12. DOI: 10.14452/MR-065-05-2013-09_1

    It is an indication of the sheer enormity of the historical challenge confronting humanity in our time that the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression, sometimes now called the Second Great Depression, is overshadowed by the larger threat of planetary catastrophe, raising the question of the long-term survival of innumerable species—including our own. An urgent necessity for the world today is therefore to develop an understanding of the interconnections between the deepening impasse of the capitalist economy and the rapidly accelerating ecological threat—itself a by-product of capitalist development.

    Translations:
    • German-language translation Das Argument 305 (2013): 871-80.
    • Spanish language translation by Carlos Valmaseda in Mientras Tanto (May 2014)

     

  • The Fossil Fuels War

    The Fossil Fuels War

    “The Fossil Fuels War”, Monthly Review vol. 65, no. 4 (September 2013), pp. 1-14. DOI: 10.14452/MR-065-04-2013-08_1

    Only a few years ago governments, corporations, and energy analysts were fixated on the problem of “the end of cheap oil” or “peak oil,” pointing to growing shortages of conventional crude oil due to the depletion of known reserves. The International Energy Agency’s 2010 report devoted a whole section to peak oil. Some climate scientists saw the peaking of conventional crude oil as a silver-lining opportunity to stabilize the climate—provided that countries did not turn to dirtier forms of energy such as coal and “unconventional fossil fuels.”… Today all of this has changed radically with the advent of what some are calling a new energy revolution based on the production of unconventional fossil fuels. The emergence in North America—but increasingly elsewhere as well—of what is now termed the “Unconventionals Era” has meant that suddenly the world is awash in new and prospective fossil-fuel supplies.

    Translations:
    • Turkish translation in Monthly Review, Turkish edition (January 2014), pp. 133-51.
    • Swedish language edition in Röda rummet (the Red room), 2013.

     

  • The Cultural Apparatus of Monopoly Capital

    “The Cultural Apparatus of Monopoly Capital: Critical Views from the 1960s—An Introduction” [PDF], (coauthored with Robert W. McChesney, Foster listed first), Monthly Review vol. 64, no. 8 (July-August 2013), pp. 1-32.

    The past half-century has been dominated by the rise of media to a commanding position in the social life of most people and nations, to the point where it is banal to regard this as the “information age.” The once-dazzling ascension of television in the 1950s and ‘60s now looks like the horse-and-buggy era when one assesses the Internet, smartphones, and the digital revolution. For social theorists of all stripes communication has moved to center stage. And for those on the left, addressing the role of communication in achieving social change and then maintaining popular rule in the face of reactionary backlash is now a primary concern.… political economists of communication, including one of us, identified themselves as in the tradition of radical political economy, but with a sophisticated appreciation of media that had escaped.… [the stellar critique of journalism produced… by Edward S. Herman and Noam Chomsky]. Paul Baran and Paul Sweezy were occasionally held up by political economists of communication as representing the sort of traditional Marxists who underappreciated the importance of media, communication, and culture.… We were never especially impressed by this criticism. To us, Monopoly Capital, and the broader political economy of Baran and Sweezy, far from ignoring communication, provided key elements for a serious study of the subject.

    Reprints:
    • Reprinted in Savaş Çoban, ed., The Media and the Left (Leiden, Netherlands: Brill, 2014), pp. 67-103;
    • Reprinted in Robert W. McChesney, Blowing the Roof Off the Twenty-First Century: Media, Politics, and the Struggle for Post-Capitalist Democracy (New York: Monthly Review Press, 2014, 188-218.
    Translations:
    • Turkish translation in Monthly Review, Turkish edition (May 2014), pp. 53-68.
  • Marx, Kalecki, and Socialist Strategy

    Marx, Kalecki, and Socialist Strategy

    “Marx, Kalecki, and Socialist Strategy”, Monthly Review vol. 64, no. 11 (April 2013), pp. 1-14. DOI: 10.14452/MR-064-11-2013-04_1

    A historical perspective on the economic stagnation afflicting the United States and the other advanced capitalist economies requires that we go back to the severe downturn of 1974–1975, which marked the end of the post-Second World War prosperity. The dominant interpretation of the mid–1970s recession was that the full employment of the earlier Keynesian era had laid the basis for the crisis by strengthening labor in relation to capital. As a number of prominent left economists, whose outlook did not differ from the mainstream in this respect, put it, the problem was a capitalist class that was “too weak” and a working class that was “too strong.” Empirically, the slump was commonly attributed to a rise in the wage share of income, squeezing profits. This has come to be known as the “profit-squeeze” theory of crisis.

    Translations:
    • Turkish translation in Monthly Review, Turkish edition (January 2014), pp. 59-77.
    • Chinese translation forthcoming in Foreign Theoretical Trends, vol. 3 (2014)
    • Spanish translation in Revista Sin Permiso, April 12, 2013, www.sinpermiso.info.

     

  • Class War and Labor’s Declining Share

    Class War and Labor’s Declining Share

    “Class War and Labor’s Declining Share”, (coauthored with Fred Magdoff; Magdoff listed first), Monthly Review vol. 64, no. 10 (March 2013), pp. 1-11. DOI: 10.14452/MR-064-10-2013-03_1

    Given [the] background of high unemployment, lower-wage jobs, and smaller portions of the pie going to workers, it should come as no surprise that, according to the U.S. Census Bureau, nearly 50 million people in the United States live in poverty (with income in 2011 below $23,021 for a family of four) while another 50 million live between the poverty level and twice the poverty level—one paycheck away from economic disaster. Thus, the poor (those in poverty or near poverty), most of whom belong to the working poor, account for approximately 100 million people, fully one-third of the entire U.S. population.… Wage repression and high unemployment are the dominant realities of our time. A vast redistribution of income—Robin Hood in reverse—is occurring that is boosting the share of income to capital, even in a stagnating economy. Is it any wonder, then, that for years on end polls have shown a majority of the population agreeing with the statement that the United States is on the wrong track and not headed in the right direction?

    Translations:
    • Turkish translation in Monthly Review, Turkish edition (October 2013), pp. 29- 41.

     

  • James Hansen and the Climate-Change Exit Strategy

    James Hansen and the Climate-Change Exit Strategy

    “James Hansen and the Climate-Change Exit Strategy,”, Monthly Review, vol. 64, no. 9 (February 2013) pp. 1-19. DOI: 10.14452/MR-064-09-2013-02_1

    The world at present is fast approaching a climate cliff. Science tells us that an increase in global average temperature of 2°C (3.6° F) constitutes the planetary tipping point with respect to climate change, leading to irreversible changes beyond human control. A 2°C rise is sufficient to melt a significant portion of the world’s ice due to feedbacks that will hasten the melting. It will thus set the course to an ice-free world. Sea level will rise. Numerous islands will be threatened along with coastal regions throughout the globe. Extreme weather events (droughts, storms, floods) will be far more common. The paleoclimatic record shows that an increase in global average temperature of several degrees means that 50 percent or more of all species—plants and animals—will be driven to extinction. Global food crops will be negatively affected.

    Translations:
    • Turkish translation in Monthly Review, Turkish edition, no. 33 Istanbul: Kalkedon, 2013).
    • Norwegian translation in Vardøger no. 35 (May 2015): 98-116;

     

  • The Planetary Emergency

    The Planetary Emergency

    “The Planetary Emergency” [PDF], (coauthored with Brett Clark, Foster listed first), Monthly Review vol. 64, no. 7 (December 2012), pp. 1-25. DOI: 10.14452/MR-064-07-2012-11_1

    Capitalism today is caught in a seemingly endless crisis, with economic stagnation and upheaval circling the globe. But while the world has been fixated on the economic problem, global environmental conditions have been rapidly worsening, confronting humanity with its ultimate crisis: one of long-term survival. The common source of both of these crises resides in the process of capital accumulation. Likewise the common solution is to be sought in a “revolutionary reconstitution of society at large,” going beyond the regime of capital.… It is still possible for humanity to avert what economist Robert Heilbroner once called “ecological Armageddon.” The means for the creation of a just and sustainable world currently exist, and are to be found lying hidden in the growing gap between what could be achieved with the resources already available to us, and what the prevailing social order allows us to accomplish. It is this latent potential for a quite different human metabolism with nature that offers the master-key to a workable ecological exit strategy.

     

  • A Missing Chapter of Monopoly Capital

    A Missing Chapter of Monopoly Capital

    “A Missing Chapter of Monopoly Capital: An Introduction to Baran and Sweezy’s ‘Some Theoretical Implications‘,” Monthly Review, vol. 64, no. 3 (July-August 2012), pp. 3-23.
    DOI: 10.14452/MR-064-03-2012-07_2

    Monopoly Capital: An Essay on the American Economic and Social Order by Paul A. Baran and Paul M. Sweezy, published in 1966, is one of the foundational works in the development of Marxian political economy in the United States and indeed the world, and is today recognized as a classic, having generated more than four-and-a-half decades of research and debate. The completion of the book, however, was deeply affected by Baran’s death, on March 26, 1964, two years before the final manuscript was prepared. Although all of the chapters were drafted in at least rough form and had been discussed a number of times the authors had not mutually worked out to their complete satisfaction certain crucial problems. Consequently, two chapters were left out of the final work.… What happened to these two missing chapters—“Some Implications for Economic Theory” and presumably “On the Quality of Monopoly Capitalist Society—II”—remained for many years a mystery.

    Translations:
    • Turkish translation in Monthly Review, Turkish edition, no. 32 (Istanbul: Kalkedon, 2013, pp. 123-46.