John Bellamy Foster

Category: Articles

Articles

  • ‘No Radical Change in the Model’

    ‘No Radical Change in the Model’

    “No Radical Change in the Model“, foreword to “Brazil Under Lula: An MR Survey,” Monthly Review, vol. 58, no. 9 (February 2007), pp. 15-16. DOI: 10.14452/MR-058-09-2007-02_2

    In the 2006 presidential election campaign in Brazil, President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva (known as Lula), leader of the Partido dos Trabalhadores (PT or Workers’ Party), was interviewed at length on July 11, 2006, by the Financial Times (which also interviewed Lula’s main rightist challenger Geraldo Alckmin). The interview touched on many topics but mainly concentrated on Lula’s adherence in his first term of office to the global neoliberal policies of monopoly-finance capital, particularly repayment of debt and “fiscal responsibility.” At two points in the interview the Financial Times bluntly asked whether Lula was looking toward a “radical change in the model,” i.e., whether he and his Workers’ Party intended to break with financial capital and neoliberalism in his second term of office. Lula gave them the answer they wanted: “There is no radical change in the model….What we need now, in economics and in politics, is to strengthen Brazil’s internal and external security.”

     

  • “Foreword” to István Mészáros

    “Foreword” to István Mészáros, O Desafio E O Fardo Do Temp Histórico: O Socialismo No Século XX! [The Challenge and Burden of Historical Time] (Portuguese edition, Boitempo Editorial, Sao Paulo, Brazil, 2007), pp. 13-18.

    Translation(s):
    • English version of foreword in English edition of book, (New York: Monthly Review Press, 2008).
    • Portuguese language version also printed in Le Monde Diplomatique—Brazilian edition, November 2007.
    • Included in Spanish edition: El Desafio y la Carga del Tiempo Histórico.
  • Monopoly-Finance Capital

    Monopoly-Finance Capital

    “Monopoly-Finance Capital“, Monthly Review, vol. 58, no. 7 (December 2006), pp. 1-14. DOI: 10.14452/MR-058-07-2006-11_1

    The year now ending marks the fortieth anniversary of Paul Baran and Paul Sweezy’s classic work, Monopoly Capital: An Essay on the American Economic and Social Order (Monthly Review Press, 1966). Compared to mainstream economic works of the early to mid-1960s (the most popular and influential of which were John Kenneth Galbraith’s New Industrial State and Milton Friedman’s Capitalism and Freedom), Monopoly Capital stood out not simply in its radicalism but also in its historical specificity. What Baran and Sweezy sought to explain was not capitalism as such, the fundamental account of which was to be found in Marx’s Capital, but rather a particular stage of capitalist development. Their stated goal was nothing less than to provide a brief “essay-sketch” of the monopoly stage of capitalism by examining the interaction of its basic economic tendencies, narrowly conceived, with the historical, political, and social forces that helped to shape and support them.

    Translations:
    • Chinese translation by Research Center on Marxism, Yunnan Normal University, Foreign Theoretical Trends (China), no. 3, 2007.
    • Turkish translation in http://www.sendika.org, October 16, 2008.
    • Arabic translation by Thamer Al-Saffar in Civilized Dialogue 1925, May 24, 2007, http://www.ahewar.org/debat/show.art.asp?aid=97582

     

  • The Optimism of the Heart

    The Optimism of the Heart

    “The Optimism of the Heart“, (memorial to Harry Magdoff), Monthly Review, vol. 58, no. 5 (October 2006), pp. 10-26. DOI: 10.14452/MR-058-05-2006-09_2

    The following intellectual biography of Harry Magdoff is a slightly revised and expanded version of a piece that was posted on MRzine a few days after Harry’s death on January 1, 2006. It evolved out of an earlier biography I wrote for the Biographical Dictionary of Dissenting Economists in 2000. Since the aim of this biography was to present the basic facts of Harry’s intellectual career, personal feelings and observations were largely excluded. A brief word on Harry’s character and the warm emotions he engendered within those who knew him therefore seems essential here.

    Online draft, placed on www.monthlyreview.org

    Translations:
    • Translated in Monthly Review, Turkish edition, no. 2 (2006), pp. 9-22.
    • Bangla translation included in in the Rank of the Wretched: A collection of Short Biographies of Albert Einstein, Paul M. Sweezy, and Harry Magdoff. Dhaka, Bangladesh: Shrabon Prokashoni, 2006.
    • Chinese translation by Shoutao Sun in Foreign Theory Dynamics, 3 (2006).

     

  • Aspects of Class in the United States

    Aspects of Class in the United States

    “Aspects of Class in the United States: An Introduction“, Monthly Review, vol. 58, no. 3 (July-August 2006), pp. 1-5. DOI: 10.14452/MR-058-03-2006-07_1

    If class war is continual in capitalist society, there is no doubt that in recent decades in the United States it has taken a much more virulent form. In a speech delivered at New York University in 2004 Bill Moyers pointed out that the effects of this relentless offensive by the vested interests against the rest of the society are increasingly evident. In 2005 the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal each published a series of articles focusing on class in the United States.

    Reprints:
    • Reprinted in Michael Yates, ed., More Unequal: Aspects of Class in the United States (New York: Monthly Review Press, 2007), pp. 15-18.
    Translations:
    • Translated in Monthly Review, Turkish edition, no. 9 (Istanbul: Kalkedon, 2006).

     

  • A Warning to Africa

    A Warning to Africa

    “A Warning to Africa: The New U.S. Imperial Grand Strategy“, Monthly Review vol. 58, no. 2 (June 2006), pp.1-12. DOI: 10.14452/MR-058-02-2006-06_1

    Imperialism is constant for capitalism. But it passes through various phases as the system evolves. At present the world is experiencing a new age of imperialism marked by a U.S. grand strategy of global domination. One indication of how things have changed is that the U.S. military is now truly global in its operations with permanent bases on every continent, including Africa, where a new scramble for control is taking place focused on oil.

    Reprints:
    • Reprinted in Itinerários (Portugal), 2010. Reprinted in Pambazuka News: World Forum for Social Justice in Africa, www.pambazuka.org published by Fahamu in Oxford, U.K.
    Translations:
    • Chinese translation by Qi Jianjun, Social Sciences Abroad (China), no. 3, 2009.
    • French translation in Mondialisation.ca, March 13, 2007.
    • Arabic translation in Donia-Alwatan (Gaza-Palestine), www.alwatanvoice.com, January 15, 2007.
    • Korean translation in Monthly Review Korean Edition, no. 1 published by Philmac Publishing, Seoul Korea, May 2007, 40-57.
    • Italian version appears at Arianna Editrice.it, March 13, 2007.

     

  • The Household Debt Bubble

    The Household Debt Bubble

    “The Household Debt Bubble“, Monthly Review 58, no. 1 (May 2006), pp.1-11. DOI: 10.14452/MR-058-01-2006-05_1

    It is an inescapable truth of the capitalist economy that the uneven, class-based distribution of income is a determining factor of consumption and investment. How much is spent on consumption goods depends on the income of the working class. Workers necessarily spend all or almost all of their income on consumption. Thus for households in the bottom 60 percent of the income distribution in the United States, average personal consumption expenditures equaled or exceeded average pre-tax income in 2003; while the fifth of the population just above them used up five-sixths of their pre-tax income (most of the rest no doubt taken up by taxes) on consumption.1 In contrast, those high up on the income pyramid-the capitalist class and their relatively well-to-do hangers-on-spend a much smaller percentage of their income on personal consumption. The overwhelming proportion of the income of capitalists (which at this level has to be extended to include unrealized capital gains) is devoted to investment.

    Translations:
    • Chinese translation by Wang Shui in The Journal of Society and Science (China), 2006.

     

  • West Coast Longshore Strikes, 1923 and 1935

    “West Coast Longshore Strikes, 1923 and 1935,” The Canadian Encyclopedia (Edmonton: Hurtig, 1988), 200 words.

    West Coast Longshore Strikes, 1923 and 1935 On 8 Oct 1923 the 1400 members of the International Longshoremen’s Assn (ILA) in Vancouver struck for higher wages. The Shipping Federation imported strikebreakers, housed in the CPR ship Empress of Japan, while an armed launch and 350 armed men guarded the waterfront. The longshoremen gave up on Dec 10. Refusing further dealings with the ILA, the Shipping Federation took over the dispatch of the work force, formerly controlled by the union, and set up a company union, the Vancouver and District Waterfront Workers Assn. This evolved into a genuine union, and on 4 June 1935 became involved in the strike-lockout of 1935, resulting from union struggles to regain control of dispatch and to unite with other longshoremen in the region. The conflict led to the “Battle of the Ballentyne Pier” on June 18, when mounted police charged 1000 longshoremen. Following the imprisonment of union leaders, the strike ended on Dec 9.

  • Metabolism, Energy, and Entropy in Marx’s Critique of Political Economy: Beyond the Podolinsky Myth

    “Metabolism, Energy, and Entropy in Marx’s Critique of Political Economy: Beyond the Podolinsky Myth,” [PDF], Theory and Society, vol. 35, no. 1 (February 2006), pp. 109-56. DOI: 10.1007/s11186-006-6781-2.

    Until recently, most commentators, including ecological Marxists, have assumed that Marx’s historical materialism was only marginally ecologically sensitive at best, or even that it was explicitly anti-ecological. However, research over the last decade has demonstrated not only that Marx deemed ecological materialism essential to the critique of political economy and to investigations into socialism, but also that his treatment of the coevolution of nature and society was in many ways the most sophisticated to be put forth by any social theorist prior to the late twentieth century.

    Translations:
    • German translation in Prokla 159 (June 2010), pp. 217-40 (Part 1), (Part 2) in Prokla 160 (September 2010), pp. 417-36.
  • The New Geopolitics of Empire

    The New Geopolitics of Empire

    “The New Geopolitics of Empire,” Monthly Review, vol. 57, no. 8 (January 2006), pp.1-18. DOI: 10.14452/MR-057-08-2006-01_1

    Today’s imperial ideology proclaims that the United States is the new city on the hill, the capital of an empire dominating the globe. Yet the U.S. global empire, we are nonetheless told, is not an empire of capital; it has nothing to do with economic imperialism as classically defined by Marxists and others. The question then arises: How is this new imperial age conceived by those promoting it?

    Translations: