John Bellamy Foster

Tag: Brett Clark

  • Crossing the River of Fire

    “Crossing the River of Fire: The Liberal Attack on Naomi Klein and This Changes Everything” [PDF] (coauthored with Brett Clark, Foster listed first) Monthly Review, vol. 66, no. 9 (February 2015), pp. 1-17. DOI: 10.14452/MR-066-09-2015-02_1

    Naomi Klein’s new book, This Changes Everything [argues that the source of the looming crisis from climate change] is not the planet, which operates according to natural laws, but rather the economic and social system in which we live, which treats natural limits as mere barriers to surmount. It is now doing so on a planetary scale, destroying in the process the earth as a place of human habitation.… In the age of climate change, Klein argues, a system based on ever-expanding capital accumulation and exponential economic growth is no longer compatible with human well-being and progress—or even with human survival over the long run.… In this way Klein…signals that she has now, in William Morris’s famous metaphor, crossed “the river of fire” to become a critic of capital as a system.… [This] has led to a host of liberal attacks on This Changes Everything, often couched as criticisms emanating from the left. These establishment criticisms of her work, we will demonstrate, are disingenuous, having little to do with serious confrontation with her analysis. Rather, their primary purpose is to rein in her ideas, bringing them into conformity with received opinion. If that should prove impossible, the next step is to exclude her ideas from the conversation.

    Translations:
    • Spanish translation in Noticas de Abajo, June 14, 2015.

     

  • The Planetary Emergency

    The Planetary Emergency

    “The Planetary Emergency” [PDF], (coauthored with Brett Clark, Foster listed first), Monthly Review vol. 64, no. 7 (December 2012), pp. 1-25. DOI: 10.14452/MR-064-07-2012-11_1

    Capitalism today is caught in a seemingly endless crisis, with economic stagnation and upheaval circling the globe. But while the world has been fixated on the economic problem, global environmental conditions have been rapidly worsening, confronting humanity with its ultimate crisis: one of long-term survival. The common source of both of these crises resides in the process of capital accumulation. Likewise the common solution is to be sought in a “revolutionary reconstitution of society at large,” going beyond the regime of capital.… It is still possible for humanity to avert what economist Robert Heilbroner once called “ecological Armageddon.” The means for the creation of a just and sustainable world currently exist, and are to be found lying hidden in the growing gap between what could be achieved with the resources already available to us, and what the prevailing social order allows us to accomplish. It is this latent potential for a quite different human metabolism with nature that offers the master-key to a workable ecological exit strategy.

     

  • 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 interactions between human societies and nature. Most of the contributors use the perspective of “political ecology” as a point of departure, recognizing that human relations to the environment and human social relations are not separate phenomena but inextricably intertwined. What makes this volume unique is that it sets this approach in a trans-disciplinary, global, and historical framework.

     

  • Capitalism and the Curse of Energy Efficiency

    Capitalism and the Curse of Energy Efficiency

    “Capitalism and the Curse of Energy Efficiency: The Return of the Jevons Paradox“, (coauthored with Brett Clark and Richard York, Foster listed first), Monthly Review vol. 62, no. 6 (November 2010), pp. 1-12. DOI: 10.14452/MR-062-06-2010-10_1

    The curse of energy efficiency, better known as the Jevons Paradox—the idea that increased energy (and material-resource) efficiency leads not to conservation but increased use—was first raised by William Stanley Jevons in the nineteenth century. Although forgotten for most of the twentieth century, the Jevons Paradox has been rediscovered in recent decades and stands squarely at the center of today’s environmental dispute

    Translations:
    • Spanish translation in Arquitectura Sustentable (Buenos Aires, Associación Argentina de Energias Renovables y Ambiente), http://www.arqsustentable.net/educacion_paradoja.html.

     

  • The Ecological Rift

    The Ecological Rift

    The Ecological Rift“The Ecological Rift: Capitalism’s War with the Earth,” (co-authored with Brett Clark and Richard York, Foster listed first, New York: Monthly Review Press, 2010), 544 pp.

    Editions:

    • German edition, (Hamburg: Laika-Verlag, 2011).

    Translations:

    • Portuguese translation from Expressao Popular 2015.
    • Swedish translation of introduction available at Lalit magazine.
    • French translation of the chapter, “The Ecology of Consumption,” in Ecologie et Politique 43 (2012), pp. 109-30.

    Winner of the 2010 Gerald L. Young Book Award, bestowed by the Society for Human Ecology

    Humanity in the twenty-first century is facing what might be described as its ultimate environmental catastrophe: the destruction of the climate that has nurtured human civilization and with it the basis of life on earth as we know it. All ecosystems on the planet are now in decline. Enormous rifts have been driven through the delicate fabric of the biosphere. The economy and the earth are headed for a fateful collision—if we don’t alter course.

    In The Ecological Rift: Capitalism’s War on the Earth, environmental sociologists John Bellamy Foster, Brett Clark, and Richard York offer a radical assessment of both the problem and the solution. They argue that the source of our ecological crisis lies in the paradox of wealth in capitalist society, which expands individual riches at the expense of public wealth, including the wealth of nature. In the process, a huge ecological rift is driven between human beings and nature, undermining the conditions of sustainable existence: a rift in the metabolic relation between humanity and nature that is irreparable within capitalist society, since integral to its very laws of motion.

    Critically examining the sanguine arguments of mainstream economists and technologists, Foster, Clark, and York insist instead that fundamental changes in social relations must occur if the ecological (and social) problems presently facing us are to be transcended. Their analysis relies on the development of a deep dialectical naturalism concerned with issues of ecology and evolution and their interaction with the economy. Importantly, they offer reasons for revolutionary hope in moving beyond the regime of capital and toward a society of sustainable human development.

    Reviews:

    This book is desperately needed, because it ends any illusion that we can solve our pressing environmental crises within the same system that created them. With tweaking the system—using incremental market-based strategies—off the table, we can put our efforts into genuine, lasting solutions.

    —Annie Leonard, author and host, Story of Stuff

    Marx’s concept of ‘metabolic rift’ in the circulation of soil nutrients between countryside and town is generalized by Foster, Clark, and York to an insightful Marxist analysis of the current ecological rift between modern capitalism and the ecosystem. It is a scholarly, well-referenced, and important contribution.

    —Herman E. Daly, Professor Emeritus, School of Public Policy, University of Maryland and author, Beyond Growth

    This important book treats industrial capitalism as the globally destructive force that it is, and powerfully points the way toward, as the authors put it, ‘universal revolts against imperialism, the destruction of the planet, and the treadmill of accumulation.’ We need these revolts if we are to survive. This book is a crucial part of that struggle.

    —Derrick Jensen, author, Endgame and The Culture of Make Believe

    This timely new work promises to become a basic resource in understanding the incompatibility between capitalism and ecology, and also in arguing for the ecological dimensions of any future socialism.

    —Fredric Jameson, Professor, Duke University; author, Valences of the Dialectic

    The Ecological Rift deserves to—and needs to—become a classic in its field.

    —Simon Butler, Links International Journal of Socialist Renewal

  • The Ecology of Consumption

    “The Ecology of Consumption: A Critique of Economic Malthusianism,” [PDF], (coauthored with Brett Clark, Foster listed first), Polygraph: An International Journal of Culture and Politics, no. 22 (2010), pp. 113-32.

    Environmentalists, especially in wealthy countries, have often approached the question of environmental sustainability by stressing population and technology, while deemphasizing the middle term in the well-known IPAT (environmental Impact = Population x Affluence x Technology) formula. The reasons for this are not difficult to see. Within capitalist society, there has always been a tendency to blame anything but the economic system itself for ecological overshoot. Yet if the developing ecological crisis has taught us anything, it is that even though population growth and inappropriate technologies have played important roles in accelerating environmental degradation, the ecological rift we are now facing has its principal source in the economy.

    Translations:
    • French translation in Écologie & Politique, no. 43 (2011), pp. 109-30.

  • The Dialectic of Social and Ecological Metabolism

    “The Dialectic of Social and Ecological Metabolism: Marx, Mészáros, and the Absolute Limits of Capital” (coauthored with Brett Clark, Clark listed first), Socialism and Democracy, (2010), 12 pp. DOI:10.1080/08854300.2010.481447

    One of the most remarkable aspects of Marxist scholarship in recent decades has been the recovery and development of Marx’s argument on social and ecological metabolism, which was crucial to his metabolic terms. As he wrote in Capital: “Labour is … a process between man and nature, a process by which man … mediates, regulates and controls the metabolism between himself and nature.” Such and conception was two-sided. It captured both the social character of labor, associated with such metabolic reproduction, and its ecological character, requiring a continuing, dialectical relation to nature.

    Translations:
    • Original Portuguese language version, based on conference paper, published in Margem Esquerda: Ensaios Marxistas, no. 14 (2010), pp. 21-29.

  • Marx’s Ecology in the 21st Century

    “Marx’s Ecology in the 21st Century”(coauthored with Brett Clark, Clark listed first), World Review of Political Economy, vol. 1, no. 1 (March 2010), pp. 142-56. JSTOR: 41931871.

    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 dialectical interchange between humans and nature and the creation of ecological rifts within ecosystems. Additionally, Marx’s ecology serves as a foundation for understanding environmental degradation, given his critique of capital as a whole and his focus on the contradiction between use value and exchange value (which facilitates the expansion of private riches at the expense of public wealth, i.e., the Lauderdale Paradox). In stark contrast to the market mechanisms proposed to address the ecological crisis, which place profit above protecting nature, Marx’s ecology stresses the necessity of establishing a social order that sustains the conditions of life for future generations.

    Translations:
    • Chinese translation by Sun Yaoliang in Marxism and Reality, 2010.
  • The Paradox of Wealth

    The Paradox of Wealth

    “The Paradox of Wealth: Capitalism and Ecological Destruction“, (coauthored with Brett Clark, Foster listed first), Monthly Review vol. 61, no. 6 (November 2009), pp. 1-18. DOI: 10.14452/MR-061-06-2009-10_1

    Today orthodox economics is reputedly being harnessed to an entirely new end: saving the planet from the ecological destruction wrought by capitalist expansion. It promises to accomplish this through the further expansion of capitalism itself, cleared of its excesses and excrescences. A growing army of self-styled “sustainable developers” argues that there is no contradiction between the unlimited accumulation of capital—the credo of economic liberalism from Adam Smith to the present—and the preservation of the earth. The system can continue to expand by creating a new “sustainable capitalism,” bringing the efficiency of the market to bear on nature and its reproduction. In reality, these visions amount to little more than a renewed strategy for profiting on planetary destruction.

    Translations:
    • Latvian translation by Ieva Zalite, Green Liberty, http://.zb-zeme.lv 2010.
    • Galician translation by Xosé Díaz Díaz in Terra e Tempo no. 4 (2010), http://www.terraetempo.net.
    • Hungarian translation in Ezmélet (Consciousness) no. 86 (Summer 2010), http://www.eszmelet.hu/.
    • Translated in Monthly Review, Turkish edition, issue 23 (Istanbul: Kalkedon Publications, June 2010).

     

  • The Midas Effect

    “The Midas Effect: A Critique of Climate Change Economics,”, (coauthored with Brett Clark and Richard York, Foster listed first), Development and Change, vol. 40, no. 6 (November 2009), pp. 1085-96. DOI: 10.1111/j.1467-7660.2009.01613.x.

    James Hansen, a leading US climatologist and director of NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies, warns that global climate change today constitutes a ‘planetary emergency’. Existing trends threaten to set in mo- tion irreversible climate transformations, proceeding ‘mostly under their own momentum’, thereby fundamentally transforming the conditions of life on earth.