John Bellamy Foster

Tag: Coauthored

Has coauthors

  • The Global Stagnation and China

    The Global Stagnation and China

    “The Global Stagnation and China”, (coauthored with Robert W. McChesney, Foster listed first), Monthly Review, vol. 63, no 9 (February 2012), pp. 1-28. DOI: 10.14452/MR-063-09-2012-02_1

    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 as feeding into one another.… To be sure, a few emerging economies have seemingly bucked the general trend, continuing to grow rapidly—most notably China, now the world’s second largest economy after the United States. Yet, as [IMF Managing Director Christine] Lagarde warned her Chinese listeners, “Asia is not immune” to the general economic slowdown, “emerging Asia is also vulnerable to developments in the financial sector.” So sharp were the IMF’s warnings, dovetailing with widespread fears of a sharp Chinese economic slowdown, that Lagarde in late November was forced to reassure world business, declaring that stagnation was probably not imminent in China (the Bloomberg.com headline ran: “IMF Sees Chinese Economy Avoiding Stagnation.”)

    Translations:
    • Spanish translation in Marxismo Critico, November 16, 2012.
    • Italian translation in Pantarossa, October 5, 2015.

     

  • 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.

     

  • The Global Reserve Army of Labor and the New Imperialism

    “The Global Reserve Army of Labor and the New Imperialism”, (coauthored with Robert W. McChesney and R. Jamil Jonna, Foster listed first), Monthly Review, vol. 63, no. 6 (November 2011), pp. 1-31. DOI: 10.14452/MR-063-06-2011-10_1

    In the last few decades there has been an enormous shift in the capitalist economy in the direction of the globalization of production. Much of the increase in manufacturing and even services production that would have formerly taken place in the global North—as well as a portion of the North’s preexisting production—is now being offshored to the global South, where it is feeding the rapid industrialization of a handful of emerging economies. It is customary to see this shift as arising from the economic crisis of 1974–75 and the rise of neoliberalism—or as erupting in the 1980s and after, with the huge increase in the global capitalist labor force resulting from the integration of Eastern Europe and China into the world economy. Yet, the foundations of production on a global scale, we will argue, were laid in the 1950s and 1960s, and were already depicted in the work of Stephen Hymer, the foremost theorist of the multinational corporation, who died in 1974.

    Translations:
    • Turkish translation in Monthly Review, Turkish edition, no. 30 (Istanbul: Kalkedon, 2012), pp. 75-110.

     

  • The Internationalization of Monopoly Capital

    The Internationalization of Monopoly Capital

    “The Internationalization of Monopoly Capital“, (coauthored with Robert W. McChesney and R. Jamil Jonna, Foster listed first), Monthly Review, vol. 63, no. 2 (June 2011), pp 1-23. DOI: 10.14452/MR-063-02-2011-06_1

    In a 1997 article entitled “More (or Less) on Globalization,” Paul Sweezy referred to “the three most important underlying trends in the recent history of capitalism, the period beginning with the recession of 1974-75: (1) the slowing down of the overall rate of growth; (2) the worldwide proliferation of monopolistic (or oligopolistic) multinational corporations; and (3) what may be called the financialization of the capital accumulation process.”… The first and third of these three trends—economic stagnation in the rich economies and the financialization of accumulation—have been the subjects of widespread discussion since the onset of severe financial crisis in 2007-09. Yet the second underlying trend, which might be called the “internationalization of monopoly capital,” has received much less attention.… the dominant, neoliberal discourse—one that has also penetrated the left—assumes that the tendency toward monopoly has been vanquished… [In contrast,] we suggest that renewed international competition evident since the 1970s was much more limited in range than often supposed… In short, we are confronted by a system of international oligopoly.

    Translations:
    • Turkish translation in Monthly Review, Turkish edition, no. 28 (Istanbul: Kalkedon, 2011), pp. 91-118.

     

  • What Every Environmentalist Needs to Know About Capitalism

    What Every Environmentalist Needs to Know About Capitalism

    What Every Environmentalist Needs to Know About Capitalism: A Citizen’s Guide to Capitalism and the Environment“What Every Environmentalist Needs to Know About Capitalism: A Citizen’s Guide to Capitalism and the Environment,” (co-authored with Fred Magdoff, Magdoff listed first, New York: Monthly Review Press, 2011), 187 pp.

    There is a growing consensus that the planet is heading toward environmental catastrophe: climate change, ocean acidification, ozone depletion, global freshwater use, loss of biodiversity, and chemical pollution all threaten our future unless we act. What is less clear is how humanity should respond. The contemporary environmental movement is the site of many competing plans and prescriptions, and composed of a diverse set of actors, from militant activists to corporate chief executives.

    This short, readable book is a sharply argued manifesto for those environmentalists who reject schemes of “green capitalism” or piecemeal reform. Environmental and economic scholars Magdoff and Foster contend that the struggle to reverse ecological degradation requires a firm grasp of economic reality. Going further, they argue that efforts to reform capitalism along environmental lines or rely solely on new technology to avert catastrophe misses the point. The main cause of the looming environmental disaster is the driving logic of the system itself, and those in power—no matter how “green”—are incapable of making the changes that are necessary.

    What Every Environmentalist Needs To Know about Capitalism tackles the two largest issues of our time, the ecological crisis and the faltering capitalist economy, in a way that is thorough, accessible, and sure to provoke debate in the environmental movement.

    Reviews:

    I’m not sure who needs to read this relentlessly persuasive book more: environmentalists who imagine we can solve the ecological crisis without confronting capitalism, or leftists who have yet to recognize the ecological crisis as the highest expression of the capitalist threat. How about both, and then some. Indispensable.

    —Naomi Klein, author, The Shock Doctrine

    As we journey through the early stages of the end of the industrial mind an ecological world view awaits us on the horizon. We have no map, but rather a wildly oscillating compass needle. These two bold grown-ups, old hands at hard thinking, are steadying the needle. This book properly pondered will reveal that capitalism is the product of abstract thought whose particularity is to propel us to the edge of humanity’s version of a Petri dish.

    —Wes Jackson, President, The Land Institute

    With the debate about environmental collapse so dominated by technological, population, and market-based solutions, this book is a powerful antidote. Only by addressing global capitalism can we hope to avert catastrophe. Magdoff and Foster have written an up-to-date, accessible, and comprehensive account of a grim situation, yet manage to inspire the reader with their call for an ‘ecological revolution,’ already in process in parts of the world. An essential book for classroom use, to give to friends who need to learn more about what’s happening to the planet, or for the nightstand as a continual reminder of what’s really important.

    —Juliet Schor, author, True Wealth: How and Why Millions of Americans are Creating a Time-Rich, Ecologically-Light, Small-Scale, High-Satisfaction Economy

    A superb introduction to an essential conversation about capitalism’s ability to coexist with environmental progress. Magdoff and Foster do an excellent job of addressing the important issues at stake in this debate.

    —Michael T. Klare, author, Rising Powers, Shrinking Planet: The New Geopolitics of Energy

    Environmental destruction isn’t caused by ignorance or mistaken policies: it is the inevitable result of a social and economic system that puts profit before people and must constantly expand to survive. In this short and clearly written book, Magdoff and Foster explain why that is, why there can be no permanent solution to the environmental crisis so long as capitalism continues, and why greens and socialists must join forces to make an ecological revolution. Every socialist should buy two copies: one to read and learn from, and another to give to a friend who wants to go beyond environmental concern to effective action.

    —Ian Angus, editor, Climate and Capitalism

    Translations:
    • Turkish translation by Original Aksakal, Trails Publishing (2014).
    • German translation, Hamburg: Laika-Verlag, 2012.

  • On the Laws of Capitalism

    “On the Laws of Capitalism: Insights from the Sweezy-Schumpeter Debate“, Monthly Review vol. 63, no. 1 (May 2011), pp. 1-11. DOI: 10.14452/MR-063-01-2011-05_1

    In February 2011, while I was drafting what was to become “Monopoly and Competition in Twenty-First Century Capitalism,” written with Robert W. McChesney and R. Jamil Jonna (Monthly Review, April 2011), I decided to take a look at Paul Sweezy’s copy of the original 1942 edition of Joseph Schumpeter’s Capitalism, Socialism, and Democracy, which I had in my possession. In doing so, I came across a folded, two-page document, “The Laws of Capitalism,” tucked into the pages. It was written in ink in Sweezy’s very compact handwriting. In the upper-right-hand corner, Sweezy had jotted (clearly much later) in pencil: “(A debate with J.A.S. before the Harvard Graduate Students’ Economics Club, Littauer Center, probably 1946 or 1947.)” The document consisted of a detailed outline, in full sentences, of a contribution to a debate. I immediately realized that this was Sweezy’s opening talk in the now legendary Sweezy-Schumpeter debate. Until that moment, I, along with everybody else, assumed that no detailed records of the actual talks had survived.

     

  • Monopoly and Competition in the 21st Century

    Monopoly and Competition in the 21st Century

    “Monopoly and Competition in the 21st Century“, (coauthored with Robert W. McChesney and R. Jamil Jonna, Foster listed first), Monthly Review vol. 62, no. 11 (April 2011), pp. 1-39. DOI: 10.14452/MR-062-11-2011-04_1

    A striking paradox animates political economy in our times. On the one hand, mainstream economics and much of left economics discuss our era as one of intense and increased competition among businesses, now on a global scale. It is a matter so self-evident as no longer to require empirical verification or scholarly examination. On the other hand, wherever one looks, it seems that nearly every industry is concentrated into fewer and fewer hands. Formerly competitive sectors like retail are now the province of enormous monopolistic chains, massive economic fortunes are being assembled into the hands of a few mega-billionaires sitting atop vast empires, and the new firms and industries spawned by the digital revolution have quickly gravitated to monopoly status. In short, monopoly power is ascendant as never before.

    Translations:
    • Chinese translation in Foreign Theoretical Trends (published in two parts), 2011).
    • Korean translation in The Breath of Life in the Landscape June 2014).]

     

  • The Internet’s Unholy Marriage to Capitalism

    The Internet’s Unholy Marriage to Capitalism

    “The Internet’s Unholy Marriage to Capitalism“, (coauthored with Robert W. McChesney, Foster listed first), Monthly Review vol. 62, no. 10 (March 2011), pp. 1-30. DOI: 10.14452/MR-062-10-2011-03_1

    The United States and the world are now a good two decades into the Internet revolution, or what was once called the information age. The past generation has seen a blizzard of mind-boggling developments in communication, ranging from the World Wide Web and broadband, to ubiquitous cell phones that are quickly becoming high-powered wireless computers in their own right.… The full impact of the Internet revolution will only become apparent in the future, as more technological change is on the horizon that can barely be imagined and hardly anticipated. But enough time has transpired, and institutions and practices have been developed, that an assessment of the digital era is possible, as well as a sense of its likely trajectory into the future.

    Translations:
    • Bangla language edition in Bangla Monthly Review, September 2012.
    • Turkish translation in Monthly Review, Turkish edition, no. 28 (Istanbul: Kalkedon), pp. 57-89.

     

  • Advertising and the Genius of Commercial Propaganda

    “Advertising and the Genius of Commercial Propaganda” (coauthored with Robert W. McChesney, Inger L. Stole, and Hannah Holleman, Foster listed third), in Gerald Sussman, ed., The Propaganda Society: Promotional Culture and Politics in Global Context (New York: Peter Lang, 2011), 27-44.

  • 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.