William Morris’s celebrated utopian romance News from Nowhere or An Epoch of Rest (1890) constituted his most singular attempt to present a revolutionary ideal aimed at inspiring a ‘movement towards Socialism’ in his day. Centering on the overcoming of human alienation in relation to the three primary forms of the division of labour—social production, town […]
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The Long Ecological Revolution
“The Long Ecological Revolution,” Monthly Review vol. 69, no. 6 (November 2017), pp. 1-19. DOI: 10.14452/MR-069-06-2017-10_1 [HTML] From an ecological perspective, the Anthropocene marks the need for a more creative, constructive, and coevolutionary relation to the earth. In ecosocialist theory, this demands the reconstitution of society at large—over decades and centuries. However, given the threat […]
The Meaning of Work in a Sustainable Society
“The Meaning of Work in a Sustainable Society,” Monthly Review vol. 69, no. 4 (September 2017), pp. 1-14. DOI: 10.14452/MR-069-04-2017-08_1 [HTML] The idea of total liberation from work, in its one-sidedness and incompleteness, is ultimately incompatible with a genuinely sustainable society. The real promise of a system of labor beyond capitalism rests not so much […]
Revolution and Counterrevolution, 1917-2017
“Revolution and Counterrevolution, 1917-2017,” Monthly Review vol. 69, no. 3 (July-August 2017), pp. 1-13. DOI: 10.14452/MR-069-03-2017-07_1 [HTML] If counterrevolution ultimately triumphed over the revolutionary waves of the twentieth century, how are we to understand this, and what does it mean for the future of world revolution? The answer requires a survey of the whole history […]
The Earth-System Emergency and Ecological Civilization: A Marxian View
The Holocene epoch in geological history of the last 10,000–12,000 years has given way to a new geological epoch which natural scientists are calling the Anthropocene, marked by humanity’s emergence as the main driver of change in the Earth system as a whole, threatening the future of civilization, a majority of ecosystems on the planet, […]
This Is Not Populism
“This Is Not Populism,” Monthly Review vol. 69, no. 2 (June 2017), pp. 1-24. DOI: 10.14452/MR-069-02-2017-06_1 [HTML] Since Trump’s election, mainstream commentary has generally avoided the question of fascism or neofascism, preferring instead to apply the vaguer, safer notion of “populism.” In today’s political context, however, it is crucial to understand not only how the […]
Neofascism in the White House
“Neofascism in the White House,” Monthly Review vol. 68, no. 11 (April 2017), pp. 1-30. DOI: 10.14452/MR-068-11-2017-04_1 [HTML] Not only a new administration, but a new ideology has now taken up residence at the White House: neofascism. It resembles in certain ways the classical fascism of Italy and Germany in the 1920s and ’30s, but […]
Trump and Climate Catastrophe
The alarm bells are ringing. The climate-change denialism of the Trump administration, coupled with its goal of maximizing fossil-fuel extraction and consumption at all costs, constitutes, in the words of Noam Chomsky, “almost a death knell for the human species.” As noted climatologist Michael E. Mann has declared, “I fear that this may be game […]
Marx as a Food Theorist
Food has become a core contradiction of contemporary capitalism. Discussions of the economics and sociology of food and food regimes seem to be everywhere today, with some of the most important contributions made by Marxian theorists. Amid plentiful food production, hunger remains a chronic problem, and food security is now a pressing concern for many […]
Marxism and the Dialectics of Ecology
By John Bellamy Foster on October 1, 2016 in Articles, Other Major Scholarly Journal Articles, Translated
The recovery of the ecological-materialist foundations of Karl Marx’s thought, as embodied in his theory of metabolic rift, is redefining both Marxism and ecology in our time, reintegrating the critique of capital with critical natural science. This may seem astonishing to those who were reared on the view that Marx’s ideas were simply a synthesis […]
