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 […]
Archive | Other Major Scholarly Journal Articles
Journal Articles (Other Major Scholarly)
On the Laws of Capitalism
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 […]
Monopoly and Competition in the 21st Century
By John Bellamy Foster on April 1, 2011 in Articles, Other Major Scholarly Journal Articles, Translated
A striking paradox animates political economy in our times. On the one hand, mainstream economics and much of left economics discuss our era as one of intense and increased competition among businesses, now on a global scale. It is a matter so self-evident as no longer to require empirical verification or scholarly examination. On the […]
The Internet’s Unholy Marriage to Capitalism
By John Bellamy Foster on March 1, 2011 in Articles, Other Major Scholarly Journal Articles, Translated
The United States and the world are now a good two decades into the Internet revolution, or what was once called the information age. The past generation has seen a blizzard of mind-boggling developments in communication, ranging from the World Wide Web and broadband, to ubiquitous cell phones that are quickly becoming high-powered wireless computers […]
Capitalism and Degrowth
By John Bellamy Foster on January 1, 2011 in Articles, Other Major Scholarly Journal Articles, Translated
[A]lmost four decades after the Club of Rome raised the issue of “the limits to growth,” the economic growth idol of modern society is once again facing a formidable challenge. What is known as “degrowth economics,” associated with the work of Serge Latouche in particular, emerged as a major European intellectual movement in 2008 with […]
Capitalism and the Curse of Energy Efficiency
By John Bellamy Foster on November 1, 2010 in Articles, Other Major Scholarly Journal Articles, Translated
The curse of energy efficiency, better known as the Jevons Paradox—the idea that increased energy (and material-resource) efficiency leads not to conservation but increased use—was first raised by William Stanley Jevons in the nineteenth century. Although forgotten for most of the twentieth century, the Jevons Paradox has been rediscovered in recent decades and stands squarely […]
The Financialization of Accumulation
By John Bellamy Foster on October 1, 2010 in Articles, Other Major Scholarly Journal Articles, Translated
In 1997, in his last published article, Paul Sweezy referred to “the financialization of the capital accumulation process” as one of the three main economic tendencies at the turn of the century (the other two were the growth of monopoly power and stagnation). Those familiar with economic theory will realize that the phrase was meant […]
The Ecology of Consumption
By John Bellamy Foster on September 1, 2010 in Articles, Other Major Scholarly Journal Articles, Translated
Environmentalists, especially in wealthy countries, have often approached the question of environmental sustainability by stressing population and technology, while deemphasizing the middle term in the well-known IPAT (environmental Impact = Population x Affluence x Technology) formula. The reasons for this are not difficult to see. Within capitalist society, there has always been a tendency to […]
Capitalism, the Absurd System
Perhaps nothing points so clearly to the alienated nature of politics in the present day United States as the fact that capitalism, the economic system that drives the society, is effectively off-limits to critical review or discussion. To the extent that capitalism is mentioned by politicians or pundits, it is regarded in hushed tones of […]
The Financial Power Elite
By John Bellamy Foster on May 1, 2010 in Articles, Other Major Scholarly Journal Articles, Translated
Has the power of financial interests in U.S. society increased? Has Wall Street’s growing clout affected the U.S. state itself? How is this connected to the present crisis? We will argue that the financialization of U.S. capitalism over the last four decades has been accompanied by a dramatic and probably long-lasting shift in the location […]
