John Bellamy Foster

Category: Other Publications

Interviews, Exchanges, etc.

  • Introduction to the Hungry for Profit Issue

    Introduction to the Hungry for Profit Issue

    “Introduction to the Hungry for Profit Issue,” [PDF] (John Bellamy Foster, Fred Magdoff and Frederick H. Buttel) Monthly Review, vol. 50, no. 3 (July 1998), pp. 1-13. DOI: 10.14452/MR-050-03-1998-07_1

    The conventional view that agriculture was displaced by industry in two stages—by the industrial revolution in the late ninteenth century, and as a result of the rise of the agribusiness system in the mid-twentieth century—has left many observers of the contemporary political economy with the impression that to deal with agriculture is essentially to focus on political-economic history rather than contemporary political economy. Nothing could be further from the truth. The purpose of this special issue of MR is to help compensate for the neglect that agriculture has often suffered in political-economic literature of the late twentieth century. In so doing we will continue with a line of argument that was introduced in MR more than a decade ago in the July-August 1986 special issue Science, Technology, and Capitalism, edited by Steffie Woolhandler and David Himmelstein, which included landmark essays on U.S. agriculture and agricultural research by Richard Lewontin and Jean-Pierre Berlan.

     

  • For a Zapatista Style Postmodernist Perspective

    “For a Zapatista Style Postmodernist Perspective; Marxism and Postmodernism: A Reply to Roger Burbach; On Hobsbawm’s Pessimism: A Reply to Justin Rosenberg,” (Roger Burbach, Ellen Meiksins Wood, John Bellamy Foster and David Englestein) Monthly Review, vol. 47, no. 10 (March 1996), pp. 34-48.

    The left is on the brink of collapse. It has very little influence in the arena of mass politics while fewer and fewer people are interested in Marxist journals, books, and intellectual discourses. In 1982 Michael Ryan, in a book written to find common ground between Marxism and postmodernism, noted that “millions have been killed because they were Marxists; no one will be obliged to die because s/he is a deconstructionist.”

  • Introduction to a Symposium on The Ethical Dimensions of Marxist Thought

    “Introduction to a Symposium on The Ethical Dimensions of Marxist Thought,” (John Bellamy Foster) Monthly Review, vol. 45, no. 2 (June 1993), pp.8-16.

    In the decade before his death Raymond Williams frequently referred to the need for “resources for a journey of hope” that would enable socialists to continue the “shared search” for human emancipation in spite of all the obstacles posed by the reality of capitalism and of the first attempts to create socialism. In Cornel West’s Ethical Dimensions of Marxist Thought (New York: Monthly Review Press, 1991) constitutes such a resource of hope. It is an attempt to reclaim the cause of morality for progressive thought by following Marx himself (at his best) in radically historicizing moral questions.

  • Colón and Colonialism

    “Colón and Colonialism,” (John Bellamy Foster) Monthly Review, vol. 44, no. 6 (November 1992), pp. 46-48.

    A number of readers have pointed out that an egregious error was made in my introduction to the July-August issue on the Quincentennial, where it says (on page 2) that, “The nature of the encounter was a colonial one (a word derived from Colon or Columbus) …. ” This was a mistake since the Latin word “colonia” dates back to Roman times.

  • Anti-Semitism and the Legacy of Columbus

    “Anti-Semitism and the Legacy of Columbus; A Reply to Prago,” (John Bellamy Foster and Albert Prago) Monthly Review, vol. 44, no. 5 (October 1992), pp. 44-49.

    The July/August issue of MR is a superb addition to the articles (and books) which are aimed at the multi-faceted myths surrounding Columbus and his trans-Atlantic voyages. Understandably, major emphasis in the myth-destroying quincentennial literature is on Amerindians and African-Americans. Lamentably few deal with the impact of Columbus’ exploits on Jews; and none of the articles in MR remotely touched on this matter.

  • Fascism in Iraq

    “Fascism in Iraq; Imperialism and the Tyranny of Saddam Hussein,” (John Bellamy Foster and Thomas F. Mayer) Monthly Review, vol. 43, no. 6 (November 1991), pp. 33-42.

    In his article, “Imperialism and the Gulf War” (MR, April 1991), Tom Mayer makes the following statement: In order to make Saddam Hussein a suitable target for unlimited violence, all positive achievements of his government are ignored. We hear almost nothing about the growth of literacy in Iraq, the increased availability of housing, women’s rights, religious freedom, improved transportation facilities, lack of government corruption, or the fact that Iraq invests far more of its oil revenues internally than other Arab states of the Persian Gulf. We hear very little about several reasonable-sounding Iraqi proposals seeking to avoid war. And the U.S. left, repelled by the tyranny of the Hussein regime and burdened with a guilty conscience from its blindness to the infamies of “actually existing socialism,” remains largely silent on these issues.