“The first rule of central banking,” economist James K. Galbraith wrote recently, is that “when the ship starts to sink, central bankers must bail like hell.” In response to a financial crisis of a magnitude not seen since the Great Depression, the Federal Reserve and other central banks, backed by their treasury departments, have been […]
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Critique of Intelligent Design
Critique of Intelligent Design is a direct reply to the criticisms of intelligent design proponents and a compelling account of the long debate between materialism and religion in the West. It provides an overview of the contemporary fight concerning nature, science, history, morality, and knowledge. Separate chapters are devoted to the design debate in antiquity, […]
The U.S. Imperial Triangle and Military Spending
By John Bellamy Foster on October 1, 2008 in Articles, Other Major Scholarly Journal Articles, Translated
The United States is unique today among major states in the degree of its reliance on military spending, and its determination to stand astride the world, militarily as well as economically. No other country in the post–Second World War world has been so globally destructive or inflicted so many war fatalities. Since 2001, acknowledged U.S. […]
The Sociology of Ecology
Environmental sociology has been divided in recent years by a debate between realists and constructionists centering on the knowledge claims of ecological science. Following a consid- eration of this debate and its relation to both environmental sociology and the “sociology of ecology,” a “realist constructionism” is advanced, taking as its concrete case the conflict in […]
Ecology
By John Bellamy Foster on July 1, 2008 in Articles, Other Major Scholarly Journal Articles, Translated
It is impossible to exaggerate the environmental problem facing humanity in the twenty-first century. Nearly fifteen years ago one of us observed: “We have only four decades left in which to gain control over our major environmental problems if we are to avoid irreversible ecological decline.” Today, with a quarter-century still remaining in this projected […]
Classical Marxism and the Second Law of Thermodynamics
Ever since Nicholas Georgescu-Roegen (1971) wrote his magnum opus, The Entropy Law and the Economic Process, the entropy law (or the second law of thermodynamics) has been viewed as a sine qua non of ecological economics. Georgescu-Roegen argued strongly that both the entropy law and the first law of thermodynamics (conservation of matter–energy) were incompatible […]
Rachel Carson’s Ecological Critique
By John Bellamy Foster on February 1, 2008 in Articles, Other Major Scholarly Journal Articles, Translated
Rachel Carson was born just over 100 years ago in 1907. Her most famous book Silent Spring, published in 1962, is often seen as marking the birth of the modern environmental movement. Although an immense amount has been written about Carson and her work, the fact that she was objectively a “woman of the left” […]
The Podolinsky Myth
The relationship between Marxism and ecology has been sullied by Martinez-Alier’s influential interpretation of Engels’s reaction to the agricultural energetics of Sergei Podolinsky. is introduction to the first English translation of Podolinsky’s 1883 Die Neue Zeit piece evaluates Martinez-Alier’s interpretation in light of the four distinct but closely related articles Podolinsky published over the years […]
The Critique of Intelligent Design
A new version of the age-old controversy between religion and science has been launched by today’s intelligent design movement. Although ostensibly concerned simply with combating Darwinism, this new creationism seeks to drive a “wedge” into the materialist view of the world, originating with the ancient Greek philosopher Epicurus and manifested in modern times by Darwin, […]
The Environmental Conditions of the Working Class: An Introduction to Selections from Fredrick Engles’ The Condition of the Working Class in England in 1844
Both urban sociology in general and urban environmental justice studies began with Frederick Engels’s seminal work The Condition of the Working Class in England in 1844. Engels provided a walking tour of the environmental conditions in the manufacturing establishments and slums of the factory towns of England, together with a similar view of London. He […]
