John Bellamy Foster

Tag: Monthly Review (Portuguese)

  • The Sales Effort and Monopoly Capital

    The Sales Effort and Monopoly Capital

    “The Sales Effort and Monopoly Capital“, (coauthored with Robert W. McChesney, Inger L. Stole, and Hannah Holleman, Foster listed second), Monthly Review vol. 60, no. 11 (April 2009), pp. 1-23. DOI: 10.14452/MR-060-11-2009-04_1

    On the eightieth anniversary of the 1929 Stock Market Crash that led to the Great Depression, the United States is once again caught in a Great Financial Crisis and deep downturn of an order of magnitude comparable to the 1930s. At the center of this crisis is plunging consumer spending, caused by the destruction of household finance as a result of decades of wage stagnation and the piling up of debt. Consumer spending in today’s economy, dominated by giant firms, is significantly dependent on the sales effort, i.e., marketing as a whole, with advertising as its most conspicuous form. But the sales effort is also ebbing in the crisis, contributing to the general decline. So integral is the sales effort to the regime of monopoly capital that one cannot be understood without the other.

    Translations:
    • Portuguese translation in Monthly Review, Portuguese-Language Edition, April 2009.
    • Translated in Monthly Review, Turkish edition, no. 26 (Istanbul: Kalkedon, March 2011).

     

  • A Failed System

    A Failed System

    “A Failed System: The World Crisis of Capitalist Globalization and its Impact on China“, Monthly Review vol. 60, no. 10 (March 2009), pp. 1-23. DOI: 10.14452/MR-060-10-2009-03_1

    In referring in my title here to “A Failed System” I do not of course mean that capitalism as a system is in any sense at an end. Rather I mean by “failed system” a global economic and social order that increasingly exhibits a fatal contradiction between reality and reason—to the point, in our time, where it threatens not only human welfare but also the continuation of most sentient forms of life on the planet. Three critical contradictions make up the contemporary world crisis emanating from capitalist development: (1) the current Great Financial Crisis and stagnation/depression; (2) the growing threat of planetary ecological collapse; and (3) the emergence of global imperial instability associated with shifting world hegemony and the struggle for resources. Such structural weaknesses of the system, as Joseph Schumpeter might have said, are the product of capitalism’s past successes, but they raise catastrophic problems and failures in the present nonetheless. How we choose to act today in response to this failed system is therefore the most critical question that humanity has ever faced.

    Translations:
    • Chinese translation by Dong Hui, Philosophical Trends (China), no. 5, 2009; separate Chinese translation by Wu Wei and Liu Shuai, Marxism and Reality (China), no. 3, 2009.
    • Portuguese translation in Monthly Review, Portuguese-Language Edition (Brazil), no. 11, 2009;
    • Spanish translations in Monthly Review, Selecciones en Castellano, no. 10 (2009), and Blog De Um Sem-Mídia, Domingo, March 29, 2009.
    • Bangla translation in Bangla Monthly Review, vol. 1, no. 4 (September 2009). Translated by Nilanjan Dutt.

     

  • Ecology

    Ecology

    “Ecology: The Moment of Truth—An Introduction“, (coauthored with Brett Clark and Richard York, Foster listed first), Monthly Review, vol. 60, no. 3 (July 2008), pp. 1-11. DOI: 10.14452/MR-060-03-2008-07_1

    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 time line, it appears to have been too optimistic. Available evidence now strongly suggests that under a regime of business as usual we could be facing an irrevocable “tipping point” with respect to climate change within a mere decade. Other crises such as species extinction (percentages of bird, mammal, and fish species “vulnerable or in immediate danger of extinction” are “now measured in double digits”);3 the rapid depletion of the oceans’ bounty; desertification; deforestation; air pollution; water shortages/pollution; soil degradation; the imminent peaking of world oil production (creating new geopolitical tensions); and a chronic world food crisis—all point to the fact that the planet as we know it and its ecosystems are stretched to the breaking point. The moment of truth for the earth and human civilization has arrived.

    Translations:
    • Spanish translation in Biblioteca Virtual Umegalfa, February 2014
    • Chinese translation by Dong Hui, in Seeking Truth (China), no. 5, 2009
    • Portuguese translation in Monthly Review, Portuguese-Language Edition (Brazil), July 2009.

     

  • Peak Oil and Energy Imperialism

    Peak Oil and Energy Imperialism

    “Peak Oil and Energy Imperialism“, Monthly Review vol.60, no. 3 (July 2008), pp. 12-33. DOI: 10.14452/MR-060-03-2008-07_2

    The rise in overt militarism and imperialism at the outset of the twenty-first century can plausibly be attributed largely to attempts by the dominant interests of the world economy to gain control over diminishing world oil supplies. Beginning in 1998 a series of strategic energy initiatives were launched in national security circles in the United States in response to: (1) the crossing of the 50 percent threshold in U.S. importation of foreign oil; (2) the disappearance of spare world oil production capacity; (3) concentration of an increasing percentage of all remaining conventional oil resources in the Persian Gulf; and (4) looming fears of peak oil.

    Translations:
    • Chinese translation by Mao Jiaqiang and Xing Yingli, Foreign Theoretical Trends (China), no. 12, 2008.
    • Norwegian translation in Ødeleggelsens Økonomi (Tidsskrifter Rødt!, 2008), 75-99.
    • Portuguese translation in Monthly Review, Portuguese-Language Edition (Brazil), July 2009.
    • Bangla translation in Bangla Monthly Review, vol. 1, no. 1 (December 2008).
    • Translated by Farooque Chowdhury; Turkish translation in Monthly Review, Turkish edition, no. 19 (Istanbul: Kalkedon, 2008).

     

  • Sweezy in Perspective

    Sweezy in Perspective

    “Sweezy in Perspective“, Monthly Review vol. 60, no. 1 (May 2008), pp. 45-49. DOI: 10.14452/MR-060-01-2008-05_4

    Paul M. Sweezy was, in the words of his contemporary John Kenneth Galbraith, “the most distinguished of present-day American Marxists.” A Harvard-trained economist, his writings spanned some seven decades from the early 1930s to the closing years of the twentieth century. For more than half a century he was coeditor of Monthly Review, subtitled An Independent Socialist Magazine, which he founded along with Leo Huberman in 1949. Although first and foremost an economist, Sweezy was also a social scientist in a much broader sense. His impact on political science, sociology, history, and other disciplines was profound. He took the entire globe as his field of analysis, helping to enlarge our understanding of imperialism and of the necessity of revolution, particularly in the third world.

    Translations:
    • Portuguese translation of this piece published in Monthly Review, Portuguese-Language Edition, 2008.