John Bellamy Foster

Category: Articles

Articles

  • Marxism and the Uno School

    Marxism and the Uno School

    “Marxism and the Uno School,” (John Bellamy Foster) Monthly Review, vol. 41, no. 8 (January 1990), pp. 51-55. DOI: 10.14452/MR-041-08-1990-01_6

    Review of The Basic Theory of Capitalism: The Forms and Substance of the Capitalist Economy by Makoto Itoh.
    In an 1859 review of Marx’s Contribution to a Critique if Political Economy, Engels provided the following description of the economic method of historical materialism, frequently labeled the “logical- historical method”:

    [T]he critique of economics could .. , be exercised in two ways: historically or logically …. History moves often in leaps and bounds and in a zigzag line, and as this would have to be followed throughout, it would mean not only that a considerable amount of material of slight importance would have to be included, but also that the train of thought would frequently have to be interrupted; it would, moreover, be impossible to write the history of economy without that of bourgeois society, and the task would thus become immense, because of the absence of all preliminary studies. The logical method of approach was therefore the only suitable one. This, however, is indeed nothing but the historical method, only stripped of the historical form and diverting chance occurrences …. [W]ith this method the logical exposi- tion need by no means be confined to the purely abstract sphere. On the contra?, it requires historical illustration and continuous contact with reality.

     

  • The Spirit of ’68

    “The Spirit of ’68” (John Bellamy Foster) Monthly Review, vol. 41, no. 7 (December 1989), pp.47-54. DOI: 10.14452/MR-041-07-1989-11_7

    Review of Nineteen Sixty-Eight: A Personal Memoir by Hans Koning.

     

  • Restructuring the World Economy in a Time of Lasting Crisis

    Restructuring the World Economy in a Time of Lasting Crisis

    “Restructuring the World Economy in a Time of Lasting Crisis,” (John Bellamy Foster) Monthly Review, vol. 41, no. 1 (May 1989), pp. 46-55. DOI: 10.14452/MR-041-01-1989-05_5

    Review of Restructuring the World Economy by Joyce Kolko.

     

  • The Uncoupling of the World Order

    “The Uncoupling of the World Order: A Survey of Global Crisis Theories,” in Mark Gottdiener and Nikos Kominos, ed. Capitalist Development and Crisis Theory: Accumulation, Regulation and Spatial Restructuring (London: Macmillan Press, 1989), pp. 99-122.

    In every discussion of the current global crisis one single fact eclipses all others – the demise of undisputed US hegemony within the world hierarchy of nation states. Despite differing al political persuasions, there seems to be widespread agreement among social scientists that it is only in this context that the chief threats of our time – namely, the heightened conflict between centre and periphery, the international debt crisis, and the drift toward world war – can be properly understood and surmounted.

  • Monthly Review

    “Monthly Review,” in Encyclopedia of the American Left, edited by Mari Jo Buhle, Paul Buhle and Dan Georgakas (New York: Garland, 1989; also included in second edition published by Oxford University Press, 1998), pp. 483-85 (500 words.)

    The first comprehensive reference book on radicalism in the United States from the Civil War to the present, this work fills serious gaps in basic reference materials on American politics, labor, and culture by focusing on radicals rather than reformers. Merging previously unutilized sources such as oral history with the wealth of insight available from feminist, ethnic, racial studies and popular culture analysis as well as traditional scholarly approaches, their efforts retrieved a hitherto inaccesible history.

  • The Fetish of Fordism

    The Fetish of Fordism

    “The Fetish of Fordism”, Monthly Review vol. 39, no. 10 (March 1988), pp. 14-33. DOI: 10.14452/MR-039-10-1988-03_2

    It may seem strange that Henry Ford, an automobile manufacturer during the early decades of the twentieth century who died in 1947, should suddenly become a major source of contention among those interested in analyzing the contemporary crisis of the U.S. economy. The last few years, however, have seen a vast expansion of the Ford legend, particularly by thinkers working within the left, who have elaborated a whole new mythology of “Fordism,” intended to sum up the political, economic, and cultural development of twentieth-century monopoly capitalism. Nowhere is this fetish of Ford and the ism now attached to his name more obvious than in Michael Harrington’s latest book, The Next Left (New York: Henry Holt, 1986).

    Translations:
    • Translated and published in German as “Fordismus als Fetish,” Prokla (Zeitschrift fur Politische Okonomie und Sozialistiche Politik), no. 76 (September 1989), pp. 71-85.

     

  • Re-working the Work Ethic’ and ‘Democracy at Work

    “Re-working the Work Ethic’ and ‘Democracy at Work,” [PDF], Contemporary Sociology, vol. 16, no. 4 (July 1987), pp. 497-98. (Reviews of Re-working the Work Ethic by Michael Rose and Democracy at Work by Tom Schuller.)

    Although each of these books is concerned with the role of values in the workplace, one belongs to the tradition of anomie, the other of alienation. Michael Rose’s study could only have been written in the contemporary atmosphere of economic crisis and perceived break-down in values. Its purpose is to provide a critical assessment of the commonplace assertion that the current economic difficulties of Britain and the United States can be traced to a decline of the Protestant work ethic; in addition, Rose questions the closely related claims of self-proclaimed “conviction politicians” like Margaret Thatcher that working people are finally beginning to respond to the call for a restoration of Victorian values by adopting a “new realism” in their expectations about labor and its rewards.

  • The United States and the Crisis of World Finance

    The United States and the Crisis of World Finance

    “The United States and the Crisis of World Finance” (John Bellamy Foster) Monthly Review, vol. 38, no. 10 (March 1987), pp. 52-57. DOI: 10.14452/MR-038-10-1987-03_7

    Review of Casino Capitalism by Susan Strange.

     

  • Sweezy, Paul Marlor

    “Sweezy, Paul Marlor,” in The New Palgrave: A Dictionary of Economic Theory and Doctrine (New York: Stockton Press, 1987), vol. 4 (Q-Z), pp. 580-82. DOI: 10.1057/978-1-349-95121-5.

    Harvard-trained economist and co-editor of Monthly Review, Paul Sweezy was among the most influential economists and Marxist intellectuals of the 20th century. His contributions extended over six decades from the early 1930s to the early 1990s. He played a role in the development of imperfect-competition analysis and in debates surrounding the Great Depression. His Theory of Capitalist Development (1942) provided the premier exposition of Marxian economics, after Marx. Monopoly Capital (1966, with Paul Baran) was the most influential economic analysis emanating from the US New Left. With Harry Magdoff he extended this analysis into the 1970s, ’80s and early ’90s.

    Reprints

    • Reprinted in John Eatwell, Murray Milgate and Peter Newman, ed., Marxian Economics (New York: W.W. Norton, 1990), pp. 350-55. Revised, expanded and updated for second edition of New Palgrave, 2007.
  • The Working Class: Is It Dead?

    The Working Class: Is It Dead?

    “The Working Clas: Is it Dead?” (John Bellamy Foster) Monthly Review vol. 38, no. 7 (December 1986), pp.55-64. DOI: 10.14452/MR-038-07-1986-11_7

    Review of Longshoremen: Community and Resistance on the Brooklyn Waterfront by William DiFazio.

    Among those who are convinced of the need for radical social change in the advanced capitalist countries as the world nears the year 2000 there are two broad streams of thought. One of these adheres to the traditional left view that the working class is (almost by definition) the only social force capable of carrying out a genuine socialist transformation within the center of the capitalist system. Although not denying the fact that workers in the developed countries are far from revolutionary at present, those who adhere to this perspective tend to emphasize the continuing radical significance of class struggles on the job, and would find themselves in general agreement with David Montgomery’s stance that when I thought about the question of socialism, and heard people asking whether the working class was an agent for social change, I found it very hard to even relate to the question. If the working class isn’t going to change its own life and make a new world, why bother? To change one boss for another is not something i’m going to go out and put myself on the line for.