Environmental sociology must address two challenges, emanating both from without and within. The world is faced with a growing planetary rift, as planetary boundaries are being crossed. At the same time a new exemptionalism in the form of ecological modernization theory has arisen within environmental sociology, resurrecting many aspects of the human exemptionalist model characteristic […]
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 […]
Joan Acker’s Feminist Historical-Materialist Theory of Class
By John Bellamy Foster on June 1, 2012 in Comments-Short Articles-Introductions to Archival Reprints
Marxism and feminism are usually seen as divorced from each other today, following the breakup of what Heidi Hartmann famously called their “unhappy marriage.” Yet, some theorists still show the influence of both. In my view, Joan Acker is both one of the leading analysts of gender and class associated with the second wave of […]
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 […]
Weber and the Environment
In the last two decades classical sociology, notably Marx, has been mined for environmental insights in the attempt to surmount the “human exemptionalism” of post–Second World War sociology. Weber, however, has remained an enigma in this respect. This article addresses Weber’s approach to the environment, including its significance for his interpretive-causal framework and his understanding […]
Marx and Engels and ‘Small is Beautiful’- A Reply
By John Bellamy Foster on February 1, 2012 in Comments-Short Articles-Introductions to Archival Reprints
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…. […]
Marx and Engels and ‘Small Is Beautiful’
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…. […]
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 […]
Guano
“Guano: The Global Metabolic Rift and the Fertilizer Trade” (coauthored with Brett Clark, Clark listed first), in Alf Hornborg, Brett Clark, and Kenneth Hermele, ed., Ecology and Power (London: Routledge, 2012), 68-82. Power and social inequality shape patterns of land use and resource management. This book explores this relationship from different perspectives, illuminating the complexity of […]
Capitalism and the Accumulation of Catastrophe
By John Bellamy Foster on December 1, 2011 in Articles, Other Major Scholarly Journal Articles, Translated
Over the next few decades we are facing the possibility, indeed the probability, of global catastrophe on a level unprecedented in human history. The message of science is clear. As James Hansen, the foremost climate scientist in the United States, has warned, this may be “our last chance to save humanity.” In order to understand […]
