John Bellamy Foster

Category: Other Publications

Interviews, Exchanges, etc.

  • Is Democratic Socialism the American Dream?

    “Is Democratic Socialism the American Dream?” (John Bellamy Foster), The Washington Post (2016)

    National income can be likened to a pie. If between one year and the next the pie gets bigger, everyone can have a bigger slice. But if, instead, the size of the pie stays the same, a bigger slice for some can only mean a smaller slice for others.

    This helps us understand the present dismal state of the U.S. economy and the impetus behind Bernie Sanders’s electoral campaign, which is aimed at the needs of workers and working families. For decades, U.S. economic growth has stagnated, with each succeeding decade experiencing a lower rate of growth. Under these circumstances, the rapidly increasing income of those at the top — or what Sanders likes to call the “billionaire class” — is at the expense of the income shares (slices of the pie) of those at the bottom.

  • Toward a Global Dialogue on Ecology and Marxism

    “Toward a Global Dialogue on Ecology and Marxism: A Brief Response to Chinese Scholars,” [PDF] (John Bellamy Foster) Monthly Review, vol. 64, no. 9 (February 2013), pp. 54-61.

    I would like to thank Zhihe Wang, Meijun Fan, Hui Dong, Dezhong Sun, and Lichun Li for doing so much to promote a global dialogue on ecological Marxism by summarizing some of the insights and concerns of Chinese scholars in this area, focusing in this case on my work in particular. The various questions, challenges, and critiques raised in relation to my work and that of related scholars are all, I believe, of great importance to the development of theory and practice in this area. I am therefore providing a brief set of responses to the problems raised, which I hope will be helpful in the further promotion of this global dialogue on ecology and Marxism.

  • Marx and Engels and ‘Small Is Beautiful’

    “Marx and Engels and ‘Small Is Beautiful’ & A Response,” [PDF] (Samar Bagchi, John Bellamy Foster and Fred Magdoff) Monthly Review, vol. 63, no. 9 (February 2012), pp. 52-55.

    I am a regular reader of Monthly Review. I read with interest the recent articles on ecology and Marxism…. It is true that Marx and Engels conceived that capitalism engenders a “metabolic rift” in nature and society. But both of them emphasized that the industrial growth that socialism would produce is beyond imagination under capitalism…. In the middle of the nineteenth century, it was impossible for Marx and Engels to envisage the ecological catastrophe that a constantly expanding industrial society can ensue.

  • Education and Capitalism

    “Education and Capitalism,” [PDF] (John Bellamy Foster) Monthly Review, vol. 63, no. 3 (July 2011), pp. 5-5.

    Schooling in the twenty-first century United States is not the product mainly of educational philosophies and resources—together with whatever imagination and initiative that teachers, students, parents, and communities can bring to bear. Instead, it is dominated by the changing demands of capitalist society for an increasingly stratified and regimented workforce. In the first article in this section, John Bellamy Foster analyzes the political economy of education in capitalist society; the relation of this to the evolution of U.S. schools from the early twentieth century on; and the current corporate reform movement aimed at the restructuring and privatization of education—symbolized by the Bush No Child Left Behind and the Obama Race to the Top programs.

  • Fight-Back

    “Fight-Back: Education’s Radical Future,” [PDF] (John Bellamy Foster) Monthly Review, vol. 63, no. 3 (July 2011), pp. 103-103.

    The Declaration of Independence says that we are all created equal and endowed with unalienable rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. However, these lofty ideals can be realized only through struggle. They are incompatible with the logic of capitalism, but this logic can be and has been attacked by working men and women, and victories have been won.

  • Rediscovering the History of Imperialism

    “Rediscovering the History of Imperialism: A Reply” [PDF], Monthly Review vol. 59, no. 7 (December 2007), pp.51-53.

    The Research Unit for Political Economy’s (RUPE’s) brief historical account here of the origins of the Marxist theory of imperialism constitutes a crucial corrective to common errors regarding that history. In my article, “The Imperialist World System: Paul Baran’s Political Economy of Growth After Fifty Years” (Monthly Review, May 2007), I began by pointing out that Baran’s book was an outgrowth of classical Marxist thought—the ideas of Marx, Lenin, and Luxemburg. At the same time it represented a sharp departure from the rigid orthodoxy of linear development that had come to characterize so much of socialist (as well as bourgeois) thought—often presented in terms of Horace’s phrase, quoted by Marx, “the tale is told of you.” Baran’s treatment of the imperialist world system was a startling contribution at the time that his book appeared, challenging the conventional assumptions of both the right and an increasingly calcified left.

  • The Renewing of Socialism

    “The Renewing of Socialism: An Introduction” [PDF], Monthly Review, vol. 57, no. 3 (July-August 2005), pp. 1-18.

    Translation

    • Chinese translation by Zhuang Junju, Contemporary World and Socialism (China), no. 1 (2006).
    • Translated in Monthly Review, Turkish edition, no. 1 (2006), pp. 11-30
    • Greek translation published in Monthly Review (Greek edition, Athens, 2006), pp. 7-26.

    Articles in Monthly Review often end by invoking the socialist alternative to capitalism. Readers in recent years have frequently asked us what this means. Didn’t socialism die in the twentieth century? Wasn’t it defeated by capitalism? More practically: if socialism is still being advocated what kind of socialism is it? Are we being utopian in the sense of advancing a pleasant but impossible dream?

  • Ecology, Capitalism, and the Socialization of Nature

    “Ecology, Capitalism, and the Socialization of Nature: An Interview with John Bellamy Foster” [PDF], Monthly Review vol. 56, no. 6 (November 2004), pp. 1-12.

    Originally published on-line in Aurora (Athabasca University), Interview Collection at http://aurora.icaap.org/.

    Translations

    • Chinese translation by Liu Rensheng, Contemporary World and Socialism (China), no. 6, 2005.
    • Indonesian translation in Ecology, Capitalism and the Socialization of Nature (Jakarta: Indonesian Forum for Environment (WALHI): Institute for Media Liberation and Social Sciences, 2004).

    DENNIS SORON: Many environmentalists came away from the Rio Earth Summit in 1992 with a great deal of optimism, believing that the cause of global environmental reform had finally been seriously placed on the political agenda. Today, with environmental conditions continuing to worsen and governments refusing to take effective action, it seems that little of this optimism remains. Why did the hopes spawned at Rio turn out to be so misplaced?

  • Crises: One After Another for the Life of the System

    “Crises: One After Another for the Life of the System,” Monthly Review, vol. 54, no. 6 (November 2002), pp. 47-59.

    Our disagreement with our friends, Sam Gindin and Leo Panitch, is over three interrelated issues: (1) how and why to analyze a crisis-prone capitalism, (2) the capacity of the state to manage or “contain” crises, and (3) the near-term prospects for capital accumulation. In addition there are significant divergences in empirical assessment between us related to these issues.

  • It’s Not a Postcapitalist World, Nor is it a Post-Marxist One

    “It’s Not a Postcapitalist World, Nor is it a Post-Marxist One—An Interview with John Bellamy Foster” [PDF] (John Bellamy Foster and Evrensel Kultur) Monthly Review, vol. 54, no. 5 (October 2002), pp. 42-47.

    Evrensel Kultur: Postmodernism’s advice to u s was to have doubts towards all kinds of information acquired. The “security syndrome” following September 11 has spread these doubts to daily life. In other words, the twenty-first century has begun as an age of doubts/suspicions. How does the suspiciousness of the new century differ from that of past centuries? If we take “suspicion” as a metaphor, what kind of real relations/connections can be described or hidden with this metaphor?