John Bellamy Foster

Category: Articles

Articles

  • Ecological Imperialism and the Global Metabolic Rift

    “Ecological Imperialism and the Global Metabolic Rift: Unequal Exchange and the Guano/Nitrates Trade,” (coauthored with Brett Clark (Clark listed first), International Journal of Comparative Sociology, vol. 50, no. 3-4 (2009), pp. 311-34.
    DOI: 10.1177/0020715209105144

    The concept of ecological imperialism is seemingly unavoidable in our time. Obvious cases are all around us. One is the invasion and occupation of Iraq, which is at least partly over oil. Instances of ecological imperialism do not, however, stop with Iraq. Whether it is the renewed scramble for Africa, the flooding of the global commons with carbon dioxide, or biopiracy aimed at Third World germplasm, ecological imperialism is operating within a global economy predicated on accumulation. While the appropriation of resources from distant lands has taken place throughout human history, the origins and ongoing growth of capitalism are dependent upon further ecological exploitation and ecological unequal exchange.

  • Financial Implosion and Stagnation

    Financial Implosion and Stagnation

    “Financial Implosion and Stagnation; Back to the Real Economy“, (coauthored with Fred Magdoff, Foster listed first), Monthly Review vol. 60, no. 7 (December 2008), pp. 1-29. DOI: 10.14452/MR-060-07-2008-11_1

    “The first rule of central banking,” economist James K. Galbraith wrote recently, is that “when the ship starts to sink, central bankers must bail like hell.” In response to a financial crisis of a magnitude not seen since the Great Depression, the Federal Reserve and other central banks, backed by their treasury departments, have been “bailing like hell” for more than a year. Beginning in July 2007 when the collapse of two Bear Stearns hedge funds that had speculated heavily in mortgage-backed securities signaled the onset of a major credit crunch, the Federal Reserve Board and the U.S. Treasury Department have pulled out all the stops as finance has imploded. They have flooded the financial sector with hundreds of billions of dollars and have promised to pour in trillions more if necessary—operating on a scale and with an array of tools that is unprecedented.

    Reprints:
    • Reprinted in Michael Chossudovsky and Andrew Gavin Marshall, ed., The Global Economic Crisis: The Great Depression of the XXI Century (Montreal: Global Research, 2010), pp. 72-101.
    Translations:
    • German translation published as a Supplement der Zeitschrift Sozialismus, no. 2, 2009 (separate pamphlet).
    • Spanish translation in Monthly Review, Selecciones en Castellano, no. 10 (2009), 37-70.
    • Italian translation by Elisabett Horvat, in Quale Stato (Anthologia Della Crisi Globale), no. 1-2 (January-June 2009), http://www.fpcgil.it.
    • Portuguese translation in Monthly Review, Portuguese-Language Edition, no. 8, 2008.
    • Turkish translation appears in Kapitalizmin Finansal Krizi, edited by Prof. Dr. Abdullah Ersoy (Ankara, Turkey: Imaj Publishing, 2011), 330 pp.

     

  • Ecology and the Transition from Capitalism to Socialism

    Ecology and the Transition from Capitalism to Socialism

    “Ecology and the Transition from Capitalism to Socialism“, Monthly Review vol. 60, no. 6 (November 2008), pp.1-12. DOI: 10.14452/MR-060-06-2008-10_1

    The transition from capitalism to socialism is the most difficult problem of socialist theory and practice. To add to this the question of ecology might therefore be seen as unnecessarily complicating an already intractable issue. I shall argue here, however, that the human relation to nature lies at the heart of the transition to socialism. An ecological perspective is pivotal to our understanding of capitalism’s limits, the failures of the early socialist experiments, and the overall struggle for egalitarian and sustainable human development.

    Reprints:
    • Reprinted in abridged form, Briarpatch magazine, 2009.
    Translations:

     

  • The U.S. Imperial Triangle and Military Spending

    The U.S. Imperial Triangle and Military Spending

    “The U.S. Imperial Triangle and Military Spending“, (coauthored with Hannah Holleman and Robert W. McChesney, Foster listed first), Monthly Review, vol. 60, no. 5 (October 2008), pp. 1-19. DOI: 10.14452/MR-060-05-2008-09_1

    Note: due to an unfortunate error in the publication of the Turkish edition, in which the bylines of two different articles were confused, the authors are mistakenly listed as Richard York, Brett Clark, and John Bellamy Foster.

    The United States is unique today among major states in the degree of its reliance on military spending, and its determination to stand astride the world, militarily as well as economically. No other country in the post–Second World War world has been so globally destructive or inflicted so many war fatalities. Since 2001, acknowledged U.S. national defense spending has increased by almost 60 percent in real dollar terms to a level in 2007 of $553 billion. This is higher than at any point since the Second World War (though lower than previous decades as a percentage of GDP). Based on such official figures, the United States is reported by the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) as accounting for 45 percent of world military expenditures. Yet, so gargantuan and labyrinthine are U.S. military expenditures that the above grossly understates their true magnitude, which, as we shall see below, reached $1 trillion in 2007.

    Translations:
    • Bangla translation in Natun Diganta (a Bangla quarterly from Dhaka), July-September 2009.
    • Translated by Farooque Chowdhury. Turkish translation in Monthly Review, Turkish edition (Istanbul: Kalkeodon), no. 22, pp. 7-28.

     

  • Marx’s Critique of Heaven and Earth

    Marx’s Critique of Heaven and Earth

    “Marx’s Critique of Heaven and Earth“, Monthly Review vol. 60, no. 5 (October 2008), pp. 22-42. DOI: 10.14452/MR-060-05-2008-09_3

    In recent years the intelligent design movement, or creationism in a more subtle guise, has expanded the attack on the teaching of evolution in U.S. public schools, while promoting an ambitious “Wedge strategy” aimed at transforming both science and culture throughout society. As explained in our book Critique of Intelligent Design: Materialism versus Creationism from Antiquity to the Present (Monthly Review Press, 2008), this has reignited a 2,500-year debate between materialism and creationism, science and design. The argument from design (the attempt to discern evidence of design in nature, thereby the existence of a Designer) can be dated back to Socrates in the fifth century BCE. While the opposing materialist view (that the world is explained in terms of itself, by reference to material conditions, natural laws, and contingent, emergent phenomena, and not by the invocation of the supernatural) to which Socrates was responding also dates back to the fifth century BCE in the writings of the atomists Leucippus and Democritus. The latter perspective was developed philosophically into a full-fledged critique of design by Epicurus in the third century BCE, which later influenced the scientific revolution of the seventeenth century.

    Translations:
    • Turkish translation in Monthly Review, Turkish edition, no. 22 (Istanbul: Kalkedon), pp. 109-32.

     

  • The Sociology of Ecology

    “The Sociology of Ecology: Ecological Organicism versus Ecosystem Ecology in the Social Construction of Ecological Science, 1926-1935” [PDF], (coauthored with Brett Clark (Foster listed first), Organization & Environment, vol. 21, no. 3 (September 2008), pp. 311-52. DOI: 10.1177/1086026608321632

    Environmental sociology has been divided in recent years by a debate between realists and constructionists centering on the knowledge claims of ecological science. Following a consid- eration of this debate and its relation to both environmental sociology and the “sociology of ecology,” a “realist constructionism” is advanced, taking as its concrete case the conflict in the 1920s and 1930s between Jan Christian Smuts’s organicist ecology and Arthur Tansley’s ecosystem ecology. A central analytical issue (derived from Marx and Engels) is the “double transfer” of ideas from society to nature and back again and how this was manifested in the early 20th-century ecology in the form of a justification for ecological racism/apartheid.

  • Ecology

    Ecology

    “Ecology: The Moment of Truth—An Introduction“, (coauthored with Brett Clark and Richard York, Foster listed first), Monthly Review, vol. 60, no. 3 (July 2008), pp. 1-11. DOI: 10.14452/MR-060-03-2008-07_1

    It is impossible to exaggerate the environmental problem facing humanity in the twenty-first century. Nearly fifteen years ago one of us observed: “We have only four decades left in which to gain control over our major environmental problems if we are to avoid irreversible ecological decline.” Today, with a quarter-century still remaining in this projected time line, it appears to have been too optimistic. Available evidence now strongly suggests that under a regime of business as usual we could be facing an irrevocable “tipping point” with respect to climate change within a mere decade. Other crises such as species extinction (percentages of bird, mammal, and fish species “vulnerable or in immediate danger of extinction” are “now measured in double digits”);3 the rapid depletion of the oceans’ bounty; desertification; deforestation; air pollution; water shortages/pollution; soil degradation; the imminent peaking of world oil production (creating new geopolitical tensions); and a chronic world food crisis—all point to the fact that the planet as we know it and its ecosystems are stretched to the breaking point. The moment of truth for the earth and human civilization has arrived.

    Translations:
    • Spanish translation in Biblioteca Virtual Umegalfa, February 2014
    • Chinese translation by Dong Hui, in Seeking Truth (China), no. 5, 2009
    • Portuguese translation in Monthly Review, Portuguese-Language Edition (Brazil), July 2009.

     

  • Peak Oil and Energy Imperialism

    Peak Oil and Energy Imperialism

    “Peak Oil and Energy Imperialism“, Monthly Review vol.60, no. 3 (July 2008), pp. 12-33. DOI: 10.14452/MR-060-03-2008-07_2

    The rise in overt militarism and imperialism at the outset of the twenty-first century can plausibly be attributed largely to attempts by the dominant interests of the world economy to gain control over diminishing world oil supplies. Beginning in 1998 a series of strategic energy initiatives were launched in national security circles in the United States in response to: (1) the crossing of the 50 percent threshold in U.S. importation of foreign oil; (2) the disappearance of spare world oil production capacity; (3) concentration of an increasing percentage of all remaining conventional oil resources in the Persian Gulf; and (4) looming fears of peak oil.

    Translations:
    • Chinese translation by Mao Jiaqiang and Xing Yingli, Foreign Theoretical Trends (China), no. 12, 2008.
    • Norwegian translation in Ødeleggelsens Økonomi (Tidsskrifter Rødt!, 2008), 75-99.
    • Portuguese translation in Monthly Review, Portuguese-Language Edition (Brazil), July 2009.
    • Bangla translation in Bangla Monthly Review, vol. 1, no. 1 (December 2008).
    • Translated by Farooque Chowdhury; Turkish translation in Monthly Review, Turkish edition, no. 19 (Istanbul: Kalkedon, 2008).

     

  • Sweezy in Perspective

    Sweezy in Perspective

    “Sweezy in Perspective“, Monthly Review vol. 60, no. 1 (May 2008), pp. 45-49. DOI: 10.14452/MR-060-01-2008-05_4

    Paul M. Sweezy was, in the words of his contemporary John Kenneth Galbraith, “the most distinguished of present-day American Marxists.” A Harvard-trained economist, his writings spanned some seven decades from the early 1930s to the closing years of the twentieth century. For more than half a century he was coeditor of Monthly Review, subtitled An Independent Socialist Magazine, which he founded along with Leo Huberman in 1949. Although first and foremost an economist, Sweezy was also a social scientist in a much broader sense. His impact on political science, sociology, history, and other disciplines was profound. He took the entire globe as his field of analysis, helping to enlarge our understanding of imperialism and of the necessity of revolution, particularly in the third world.

    Translations:
    • Portuguese translation of this piece published in Monthly Review, Portuguese-Language Edition, 2008.

     

  • “Foreword” to Paul M. Sweezy, Globalization is Nothing New; Selected Essays

    “Foreword” to Paul M. Sweezy, Globalization is Nothing New; Selected Essays in Bengali (Dhaka, Bangladesh: Shrabon Prokoshani, 2008).

    English version published as “Sweezy in Perspective,” Monthly Review, vol. 60, no. 1 (May 2008), pp. 45-49.

    Translation(s):
    • Portuguese translation of this piece published in Monthly Review, Portuguese-Language Edition, 2008.