John Bellamy Foster

Category: Other Major Scholarly Journal Articles

Journal Articles (Other Major Scholarly)

  • The Endless Crisis

    The Endless Crisis

    “The Endless Crisis”, (coauthored with Robert W. McChesney, Foster listed first), Monthly Review, vol. 64, no. 1 (May 2012), pp. 1-28. DOI: 10.14452/MR-064-01-2012-05_1

    The Great Financial Crisis and the Great Recession began in the United States in 2007 and quickly spread across the globe, marking what appears to be a turning point in world history. Although this was followed within two years by a recovery phase, the world economy five years after the onset of the crisis is still in the doldrums…. The one bright spot in the world economy, from a growth standpoint, has been the seemingly unstoppable expansion of a handful of emerging economies, particularly China. Yet, the continuing stability of China is now also in question. Hence, the general consensus among informed economic observers is that the world capitalist economy is facing the threat of long-run economic stagnation (complicated by the prospect of further financial deleveraging)…. It is this issue of the stagnation of the capitalist economy, even more than that of financial crisis or recession that has now emerged as the big question worldwide.

    Translations:
    • Turkish translation in Monthly Review, Turkish edition, no. 31 (Istanbul: Kalkedon, 2012), pp. 3-36.
    • German language translation in Info-Verteiler, infoverteiler.net, June 2012.
    • Chinese translation forthcoming in Journal of Gansu Administration Institute.

     

  • The Global Stagnation and China

    The Global Stagnation and China

    “The Global Stagnation and China”, (coauthored with Robert W. McChesney, Foster listed first), Monthly Review, vol. 63, no 9 (February 2012), pp. 1-28. DOI: 10.14452/MR-063-09-2012-02_1

    Five years after the Great Financial Crisis of 2007–09 began there is still no sign of a full recovery of the world economy. Consequently, concern has increasingly shifted from financial crisis and recession to slow growth or stagnation, causing some to dub the current era the Great Stagnation. Stagnation and financial crisis are now seen as feeding into one another.… To be sure, a few emerging economies have seemingly bucked the general trend, continuing to grow rapidly—most notably China, now the world’s second largest economy after the United States. Yet, as [IMF Managing Director Christine] Lagarde warned her Chinese listeners, “Asia is not immune” to the general economic slowdown, “emerging Asia is also vulnerable to developments in the financial sector.” So sharp were the IMF’s warnings, dovetailing with widespread fears of a sharp Chinese economic slowdown, that Lagarde in late November was forced to reassure world business, declaring that stagnation was probably not imminent in China (the Bloomberg.com headline ran: “IMF Sees Chinese Economy Avoiding Stagnation.”)

    Translations:
    • Spanish translation in Marxismo Critico, November 16, 2012.
    • Italian translation in Pantarossa, October 5, 2015.

     

  • Capitalism and the Accumulation of Catastrophe

    Capitalism and the Accumulation of Catastrophe

    “Capitalism and the Accumulation of Catastrophe,”, Monthly Review, vol. 63, no. 7 (December 2011), pp. 1-17. DOI: 10.14452/MR-063-07-2011-11_1

    Over the next few decades we are facing the possibility, indeed the probability, of global catastrophe on a level unprecedented in human history. The message of science is clear. As James Hansen, the foremost climate scientist in the United States, has warned, this may be “our last chance to save humanity.” In order to understand the full nature of this threat and how it needs to be addressed, it is essential to get a historical perspective on how we got where we are, and how this is related to the current socioeconomic system, namely capitalism.

    Translations:
    • Turkish translation in Monthly Review, Turkish edition 30 (Istanbul: Kalkedon, 2012), pp. 3-22.

     

  • The Global Reserve Army of Labor and the New Imperialism

    “The Global Reserve Army of Labor and the New Imperialism”, (coauthored with Robert W. McChesney and R. Jamil Jonna, Foster listed first), Monthly Review, vol. 63, no. 6 (November 2011), pp. 1-31. DOI: 10.14452/MR-063-06-2011-10_1

    In the last few decades there has been an enormous shift in the capitalist economy in the direction of the globalization of production. Much of the increase in manufacturing and even services production that would have formerly taken place in the global North—as well as a portion of the North’s preexisting production—is now being offshored to the global South, where it is feeding the rapid industrialization of a handful of emerging economies. It is customary to see this shift as arising from the economic crisis of 1974–75 and the rise of neoliberalism—or as erupting in the 1980s and after, with the huge increase in the global capitalist labor force resulting from the integration of Eastern Europe and China into the world economy. Yet, the foundations of production on a global scale, we will argue, were laid in the 1950s and 1960s, and were already depicted in the work of Stephen Hymer, the foremost theorist of the multinational corporation, who died in 1974.

    Translations:
    • Turkish translation in Monthly Review, Turkish edition, no. 30 (Istanbul: Kalkedon, 2012), pp. 75-110.

     

  • Samir Amin at 80

    Samir Amin at 80

    “Samir Amin at 80: An Introduction and Tribute,” Monthly Review, vol. 63, no. 5 (October 2011), 1-7. DOI: 10.14452/MR-063-05-2011-09_1

    Samir Amin was born in Cairo in 1931, and studied within the French educational system in Egypt.… He is currently president of the World Forum for Alternatives.… Amin’s wide-ranging work can be most succinctly described in terms of the dual designation of The Law of Value and Historical Materialism—the title of one of his books, now in a new edition as The Law of Worldwide Value. Marx’s intellectual corpus, he notes, appears to be divided into writings on economics and writings on politics.… For Amin, this basic division of Marxist theory is not to be denied. Nevertheless, he insists that the economic laws of capitalism, summed up by the law of value, “are subordinate to the laws of historical materialism.” Economic science, while indispensable, cannot explain at the highest level of abstraction, as in mathematical equations, the full reality of capitalism and imperialism—since it cannot account either for the historical origins of the system itself, or for the nature of the class struggle.

     

  • The Ecology of Marxian Political Economy

    The Ecology of Marxian Political Economy

    “The Ecology of Marxian Political Economy“, Monthly Review, vol. 63, no. 4 (September 2011), pp. 1-16. DOI: 10.14452/MR-063-04-2011-08_1

    Discussant Project XXI Conference, Venezuelan Cultural Ministry, Caracas, March 28-31, 2011.

    It is no secret today that we are facing a planetary environmental emergency, endangering most species on the planet, including our own, and that this impending catastrophe has its roots in the capitalist economic system. Nevertheless, the extreme dangers that capitalism inherently poses to the environment are often inadequately understood, giving rise to the belief that it is possible to create a new “natural capitalism” or “climate capitalism” in which the system is turned from being the enemy of the environment into its savior. The chief problem with all such views is that they underestimate the cumulative threat to humanity and the earth arising from the existing relations of production. Indeed, the full enormity of the planetary ecological crisis, I shall contend, can only be understood from a standpoint informed by the Marxian critique of capitalism.

    Translations:
    • Portuguese language translation in Lutas Sociais, www.pucsp.b/neils, 2012;
    • Turkish translation in Monthly Review, Turkish edition, no. 29 (Istanbul: Kalkedon, 2012), pp. 49-87

     

  • Education and the Structural Crisis of Capital

    Education and the Structural Crisis of Capital

    “Education and the Structural Crisis of Capital: The U.S. Case“, Monthly Review vol. 63, no. 3 (July 2011), pp.6-37. DOI: 10.14452/MR-063-03-2011-07_3

    Today’s conservative movement for the reform of public education in the United States, and in much of the world, is based on the prevailing view that public education is in a state of emergency and in need of restructuring due to its own internal failures. In contrast, I shall argue that the decay of public education is mainly a product of externally imposed contradictions that are inherent to schooling in capitalist society, heightened in our time by conditions of economic stagnation in the mature capitalist economies, and by the effects of the conservative reform movement itself. The corporate-driven onslaught on students, teachers, and public schools—symbolized in the United States by George W. Bush’s No Child Left Behind (NCLB) legislation—is to be explained not so much by the failure of the schools themselves, but by the growing failures of the capitalist system, which now sees the privatization of public education as central to addressing its larger malaise.

    Translations:
    • Turkish translation in Monthly Review, Turkish edition, no. 29 (Istanbul: Kalkedon, 2012), pp. 49-87.

     

  • 2. Lessons from the New Corporate Schooling

    2. Lessons from the New Corporate Schooling

    “2. Lessons from the New Corporate Schooling“, Monthly Review, vol. 63, no. 3 (July 2011), pp. 64-66. DOI: 10.14452/MR-063-03-2011-07_6

    -As the articles in this section indicate, the new corporate schooling in the United States combines many of the worst aspects of capitalist schooling in a period of economic stagnation, financialization, and militarization/securitization together with a strategy of privatization of the schools. Public education is being degraded, regimented, and increasingly racially segregated—while the resulting worsening conditions in the schools are used to justify the restructuring of the entire education system.

     

  • The Internationalization of Monopoly Capital

    The Internationalization of Monopoly Capital

    “The Internationalization of Monopoly Capital“, (coauthored with Robert W. McChesney and R. Jamil Jonna, Foster listed first), Monthly Review, vol. 63, no. 2 (June 2011), pp 1-23. DOI: 10.14452/MR-063-02-2011-06_1

    In a 1997 article entitled “More (or Less) on Globalization,” Paul Sweezy referred to “the three most important underlying trends in the recent history of capitalism, the period beginning with the recession of 1974-75: (1) the slowing down of the overall rate of growth; (2) the worldwide proliferation of monopolistic (or oligopolistic) multinational corporations; and (3) what may be called the financialization of the capital accumulation process.”… The first and third of these three trends—economic stagnation in the rich economies and the financialization of accumulation—have been the subjects of widespread discussion since the onset of severe financial crisis in 2007-09. Yet the second underlying trend, which might be called the “internationalization of monopoly capital,” has received much less attention.… the dominant, neoliberal discourse—one that has also penetrated the left—assumes that the tendency toward monopoly has been vanquished… [In contrast,] we suggest that renewed international competition evident since the 1970s was much more limited in range than often supposed… In short, we are confronted by a system of international oligopoly.

    Translations:
    • Turkish translation in Monthly Review, Turkish edition, no. 28 (Istanbul: Kalkedon, 2011), pp. 91-118.

     

  • On the Laws of Capitalism

    “On the Laws of Capitalism: Insights from the Sweezy-Schumpeter Debate“, Monthly Review vol. 63, no. 1 (May 2011), pp. 1-11. DOI: 10.14452/MR-063-01-2011-05_1

    In February 2011, while I was drafting what was to become “Monopoly and Competition in Twenty-First Century Capitalism,” written with Robert W. McChesney and R. Jamil Jonna (Monthly Review, April 2011), I decided to take a look at Paul Sweezy’s copy of the original 1942 edition of Joseph Schumpeter’s Capitalism, Socialism, and Democracy, which I had in my possession. In doing so, I came across a folded, two-page document, “The Laws of Capitalism,” tucked into the pages. It was written in ink in Sweezy’s very compact handwriting. In the upper-right-hand corner, Sweezy had jotted (clearly much later) in pencil: “(A debate with J.A.S. before the Harvard Graduate Students’ Economics Club, Littauer Center, probably 1946 or 1947.)” The document consisted of a detailed outline, in full sentences, of a contribution to a debate. I immediately realized that this was Sweezy’s opening talk in the now legendary Sweezy-Schumpeter debate. Until that moment, I, along with everybody else, assumed that no detailed records of the actual talks had survived.