In the eyes of much of the world, the year 1989 has come to stand for the fall of the Berlin Wall, the demise of Soviet-type societies, and the defeat of twentieth-century socialism. However, 1989 for many others, particularly in Spanish-speaking countries, is also associated with the beginning of the Latin American revolt against neoliberal […]
Capitalism, the Absurd System
Perhaps nothing points so clearly to the alienated nature of politics in the present day United States as the fact that capitalism, the economic system that drives the society, is effectively off-limits to critical review or discussion. To the extent that capitalism is mentioned by politicians or pundits, it is regarded in hushed tones of […]
The Financial Power Elite
By John Bellamy Foster on May 1, 2010 in Articles, Other Major Scholarly Journal Articles, Translated
Has the power of financial interests in U.S. society increased? Has Wall Street’s growing clout affected the U.S. state itself? How is this connected to the present crisis? We will argue that the financialization of U.S. capitalism over the last four decades has been accompanied by a dramatic and probably long-lasting shift in the location […]
Listen Keynesians, It’s the System! Response to Palley
In an article entitled “Listen, Keynesians!,” published in January 1983 in Monthly Review, Harry Magdoff and Paul Sweezy argued that the radical break that John Maynard Keynes’s General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money (1936) represented for orthodox economics lay in the fact that “For the first time the possibility was frankly faced, indeed placed […]
Marx’s Ecology and its Historical Significance
For the early Marx the only nature relevant to the understanding of history is human nature….. Marx wisely left nature (other than human nature) alone.
Marx’s Ecology in the 21st Century
The most pressing problem confronting humanity in the 21st century is the ecological crisis. The “problem of nature” is really a problem of capital, as natural cycles are turned into broken linear processes geared to private accumulation. Important advances in ecosocialist theory illuminate the continuing importance of marx’s materialist and metabolic approach for studying the […]
The Financialization of the Capitalist Class
“The Financialization of the Capitalist Class: Monopoly-Finance Capital and the New Contradictory Relations of Ruling Class Power,” in Henry Veltmeyer, ed., Imperialism, Crisis and Class Struggle: The Enduring Verities and Contemporary Face of Capitalism—Essays in Honour of James Petras (London: Brill, 2010), pp. 163-73.
What Every Environmentalist Needs to Know About Capitalism
By John Bellamy Foster on March 1, 2010 in Articles, Other Major Scholarly Journal Articles, Translated
For those concerned with the fate of the earth, the time has come to face facts: not simply the dire reality of climate change but also the pressing need for social-system change. The failure to arrive at a world climate agreement in Copenhagen in December 2009 was not simply an abdication of world leadership, as […]
István Mészáros, Pathfinder of Socialism
If I were asked to sum up the significance of István Mészáros for our time, I would have to follow President Hugo Chávez of Venezuela in referring to him as the “Pathfinder of Socialism.” His work…provides a strategic vision of the building of socialism, the absence of which, for many decades, constituted one of the […]
The Age of Monopoly-Finance Capital
By John Bellamy Foster on February 1, 2010 in Articles, Other Major Scholarly Journal Articles, Translated
Three years ago, in December 2006, I wrote an article for Monthly Review entitled “Monopoly-Finance Capital.” The occasion was the anniversary of Paul Baran and Paul Sweezy’s Monopoly Capital, published four decades earlier in 1966.…The article…[discussed] “the dual reality” of stagnant growth (or stagnation) and financialization, characterizing the advanced economies in this phase of capitalism. […]
