It is an indication of the sheer enormity of the historical challenge confronting humanity in our time that the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression, sometimes now called the Second Great Depression, is overshadowed by the larger threat of planetary catastrophe, raising the question of the long-term survival of innumerable species—including our own. An […]
Archive | Translated
The Fossil Fuels War
By John Bellamy Foster on September 1, 2013 in Articles, Other Major Scholarly Journal Articles, Translated
Only a few years ago governments, corporations, and energy analysts were fixated on the problem of “the end of cheap oil” or “peak oil,” pointing to growing shortages of conventional crude oil due to the depletion of known reserves. The International Energy Agency’s 2010 report devoted a whole section to peak oil. Some climate scientists […]
The Cultural Apparatus of Monopoly Capital
By John Bellamy Foster on August 1, 2013 in Articles, Other Major Scholarly Journal Articles, Translated
The past half-century has been dominated by the rise of media to a commanding position in the social life of most people and nations, to the point where it is banal to regard this as the “information age.”
Marx, Kalecki, and Socialist Strategy
By John Bellamy Foster on April 1, 2013 in Articles, Other Major Scholarly Journal Articles, Translated
A historical perspective on the economic stagnation afflicting the United States and the other advanced capitalist economies requires that we go back to the severe downturn of 1974–1975, which marked the end of the post-Second World War prosperity. The dominant interpretation of the mid–1970s recession was that the full employment of the earlier Keynesian era […]
Class War and Labor’s Declining Share
By John Bellamy Foster on March 1, 2013 in Articles, Other Major Scholarly Journal Articles, Translated
Given [the] background of high unemployment, lower-wage jobs, and smaller portions of the pie going to workers, it should come as no surprise that, according to the U.S. Census Bureau, nearly 50 million people in the United States live in poverty (with income in 2011 below $23,021 for a family of four) while another 50 […]
James Hansen and the Climate-Change Exit Strategy
By John Bellamy Foster on February 1, 2013 in Articles, Other Major Scholarly Journal Articles, Translated
The world at present is fast approaching a climate cliff. Science tells us that an increase in global average temperature of 2°C (3.6° F) constitutes the planetary tipping point with respect to climate change, leading to irreversible changes beyond human control. A 2°C rise is sufficient to melt a significant portion of the world’s ice […]
The Endless Crisis
The days of boom and bubble are over, and the time has come to understand the long-term economic reality. Although the Great Recession officially ended in June 2009, hopes for a new phase of rapid economic expansion were quickly dashed. Instead, growth has been slow, unemployment has remained high, wages and benefits have seen little […]
A Missing Chapter of Monopoly Capital
By John Bellamy Foster on August 1, 2012 in Articles, Other Major Scholarly Journal Articles, Translated
Monopoly Capital: An Essay on the American Economic and Social Order by Paul A. Baran and Paul M. Sweezy, published in 1966, is one of the foundational works in the development of Marxian political economy in the United States and indeed the world, and is today recognized as a classic, having generated more than four-and-a-half […]
The Endless Crisis
By John Bellamy Foster on May 1, 2012 in Articles, Other Major Scholarly Journal Articles, Translated
The Great Financial Crisis and the Great Recession began in the United States in 2007 and quickly spread across the globe, marking what appears to be a turning point in world history. Although this was followed within two years by a recovery phase, the world economy five years after the onset of the crisis is […]
The Global Stagnation and China
By John Bellamy Foster on February 1, 2012 in Articles, Other Major Scholarly Journal Articles, Translated
Five years after the Great Financial Crisis of 2007–09 began there is still no sign of a full recovery of the world economy. Consequently, concern has increasingly shifted from financial crisis and recession to slow growth or stagnation, causing some to dub the current era the Great Stagnation. Stagnation and financial crisis are now seen […]
