John Bellamy Foster

Tag: Coauthored

Has coauthors

  • 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.

  • The Tendency of the Surplus to Rise, 1963–1988

    “The Tendency of the Surplus to Rise, 1963–1988” [PDF], (co-authored, second author with Michael Dawson), in John B. Davis, ed. The Economic Surplus in Advanced Economies (Brookfield, Vermont: Edward Elgar Publishing Company, 1992), pp. 42-70.

    In the increasingly universal monopoly-capitalist economy and culture of the late twentieth century, people no longer need what they want or want what they need. Wants are artificially manufactured while the most desperate needs of innumerable individuals remain unfulfilled. Although labor productivity has steadily risen, the overall efficiency and rationality of society has in many ways declined. Indeed, it is almost impossible to arrive at any other conclusion if one considers the lavish office structures in cities like New York, Dallas, Atlanta, and Los Angeles, where employees use the most technologically advanced means to “develop” yet another laundry detergent, television commercial, or leveraged buyout, while on the ground below large numbers of people lack decent housing, food, clothing, medical care, and education; if one considers automated assembly plants existing in the same social space as millions of unemployed, partially employed, “discouraged,” and poorly paid workers; or if one contemplates what it means to launch still another aircraft carrier, the total costs of which are equal to half the annual federal budget for elementary and secondary education.

    Reprints

  • 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.

  • Sustainability and Metabolic Revolution in the Work of Henri Lefebvre

    “Sustainability and Metabolic Revolution in the Works of Henri Lefebvre” (coauthored with Brian Napoletano, Brett Clark, and Pedro Urquijo, Foster listed third) World (December 2020), pp. 300-317.

    Humanity’s present social–ecological metabolic configuration is not sustainable, and the need for a radical transformation of society to address its metabolic rifts with the rest of nature is increasingly apparent. The work of French Marxist Henri Lefebvre, one of the few thinkers to recognize the significance of Karl Marx’s theory of metabolic rift prior to its rediscovery at the end of the twentieth century, offers valuable insight into contemporary issues of sustainability. His concepts of the urban revolution, autogestion, the critique of everyday life, and total (or metabolic) revolution all relate directly to the key concerns of sustainability. Lefebvre’s work embodies a vision of radical social–ecological transformation aimed at sustainable human development, in which the human metabolic interchange with the rest of nature is to be placed under substantively rational and cooperative control by all its members, enriching everyday life. Other critical aspects of Lefebvre’s work, such as his famous concept of the production of space, his temporal rhythmanalysis, and his notion of the right to the city, all point to the existence of an open-ended research program directed at the core issues of sustainability in the twenty-first century.