John Bellamy Foster

Tag: Monthly Review

  • The American Empire

    “The American Empire: Pax Americana or Pox Americana?,” Monthly Review, vol. 56, no. 4 (September 2004), pp. 1-4. DOI: 10.14452/MR-056-04-2004-08_1

    From the Book: Pox Americana: Exposing the American Empire

    “Editors’ Preface”

    On June 10, 1963, President John F. Kennedy delivered a commencement address at American University in Washington, D.C., in which he declared that the peace that the United States sought was “not a Pax Americana enforced on the world by American weapons of war.” His remarks were a response to criticisms of the United States advanced in a recently published Soviet text on military strategy. Kennedy dismissed the charge that “American imperialist circles” were “preparing to unleash different kinds of wars” including “preventative war.” The Soviet text, he pointed out, had stated, “The political aims of American imperialists were and still are to enslave economically and politically the European and other capitalist countries and, after the latter are transformed into obedient tools, to unify them in various military-political blocs and groups directed against the socialist countries. The main aim of all this is to achieve world domination.” In Kennedy’s words, these were “wholly baseless and incredible claims,” the work of Marxist “propagandists.” “The United States, as the world knows, will never start a war.”

    Translations:

     

  • China and Socialism

    “China and Socialism: Editors’ Foreword” [PDF], Monthly Review, vol. 56, no. 3 (July 2004), pp. 2-6.

    “Foreword” to Martin Hart-Landsberg and Paul Burkett, China and Socialism: Market Reforms and Class Struggle (New York: Monthly Review Press, 2005)

    We depart this year from our usual practice for MR’s July–August double issue. Instead of a collection of articles on a common theme, we are devoting the issue to a single manuscript—a study of China and economic development theory by Martin Hart-Landsberg and Paul Burkett that was published in book form by Monthly Review Press. Although there are numerous books on China, this one is especially worthy. It is a careful, clear, well-grounded Marxist study of how a major post-revolutionary society turned away from socialism. In addition, the current transformation in China throws light on why capitalism, by its very nature, creates poverty, inequality, and ecological destruction in the process of economic growth.

  • Kipling, the ‘White Man’s Burden,’ and U.S. Imperialism

    Kipling, the ‘White Man’s Burden,’ and U.S. Imperialism

    “Kipling, the ‘White Man’s Burden,’ and U.S. Imperialism,” (coauthored with Harry Magdoff and Robert W. McChesney listed as “by the editors”), Monthly Review vol. 55, no. 6 (November 2003), pp. 1-11. DOI: 10.14452/MR-055-06-2003-10_1

    We are living in a period in which the rhetoric of empire knows few bounds. In a special report on “America and Empire” in August, the London-based Economist magazine asked whether the United States would, in the event of “regime changes … effected peacefully” in Iran and Syria, “really be prepared to shoulder the white man’s burden across the Middle East?” The answer it gave was that this was “unlikely”—the U.S. commitment to empire did not go so far. What is significant, however, is that the question was asked at all.

    Translations:
    • Spanish translation published in Neoimperialism en la Era de la Globalización (Monthly Review—Selecciones en Castellano, 2004).

     

  • The New Age of Imperialism

    The New Age of Imperialism

    “The New Age of Imperialism,” Monthly Review vol. 55, no. 3 (July 2003), pp. 1-14. DOI: 10.14452/MR-055-03-2003-07_1

    Imperialism is meant to serve the needs of a ruling class much more than a nation. It has nothing to do with democracy. Perhaps for that reason it has often been characterized as a parasitic phenomenon-even by critics as astute as John Hobson in his 1902 classic, Imperialism: A Study. And (rom there it is unfortunately all too easy to slide into the crude notion that imperialist expansion is simply a product of powerful groups of individuals who have hijacked a nation’s foreign policy to serve their own narrow ends.

    Translations:
    • Portuguese translation in Fragmetos de Cultura in Goiânia (Brazil), vol. 13, no. 6 (Nov-December 2003), pp. 1235-53.
    • Spanish translation in Marx Ahora (Havana, Cuba), no. 17 (November 2004)
    • Turkish translation in Cosmo Politik, vol. 6 (Fall 2003), pp. 12-22.
    • Russian translation on www.left.ru

     

  • The ‘Left-Wing’ Media?

    The ‘Left-Wing’ Media?

    “The ‘Left-Wing’ Media?,” (coauthored with Robert W. McChesney, McChesney listed as first author), Monthly Review, vol. 55, no. 2 (June 2003), pp. 1-16. DOI: 10.14452/MR-055-02-2003-06_1

    If we learn nothing else from the war on Iraq and its subsequent occupation, it is that the U.S. ruling class has learned to make ideological warfare as important to its operations as military and economic warfare. A crucial component of this ideological war has been the campaign against “left-wing media bias,” with the objective of reducing or eliminating the prospect that mainstream U.S. journalism might be at all critical toward elite interests or the system set up to serve those interests. In 2001 and 2002, no less than three books purporting to demonstrate the media’s leftward tilt rested high atop the bestseller list. Such charges have already influenced media content, pushing journalists to be less critical of right-wing politics. The result has been to reinforce the corporate and rightist bias already built into the media system.

    Reprints:
    • Reprinted in abridged from in Karl Finsterbusch, ed., Taking Sides: Clashing Views on Controversial Social Issues, 13th edition (New York: McGraw-Hill, 2005), pp. 29-37.
    • Republished in expanded and revised form in Robert W. McChesney, The Problem of the Media: U.S. Communication Politics in the 21st Century. New York: Monthly Review Press, 2004, pp. 98-137.

     

  • Imperial America and War

    Imperial America and War

    “Imperial America and War,” Monthly Review vol. 55, no. 1 (May 2003), pp. 1-10. DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.14452/MR-055-01-2003-05_1

    On November 11, 2000, Richard Haass—a member of the National Security Council and special assistant to the president under the elder Bush, soon to be appointed director of policy planning in the State Department of newly elected President George W. Bush—delivered a paper in Atlanta entitled “Imperial America.” For the United States to succeed at its objective of global preeminence, he declared, it would be necessary for Americans to “re-conceive their role from a traditional nation-state to an imperial power.” Haass eschewed the term “imperialist” in describing America’s role, preferring “imperial,” since the former connoted “exploitation, normally for commercial ends,” and “territorial control.”

    Reprints:
    • Reprinted in Pratyush Chandra, Anuradha Ghosh and Ravi Kumar, The Politics of Imperialism and Counterstrategies. Delhi: Aakar Books, 2004, pp. 25-36.
    Translations:
    • French translation published in À L’ Encontre, no.12 (2003), pp. 35-39;
    • Spanish translation published in Monthly Review—Selecciones en castellano, no. 1 (May 2004).
    • Russian translation on www.left.ru.
    • German translation in AG Friedenforschung, http://www.unikassel.de/fb5/frieden/regionen/USA/foster.html.

     

  • What Recovery?

    What Recovery?

    “What Recovery?,” (coauthored with Harry Magdoff and Robert W. McChesney, listed as “by the editors” Monthly Review vol. 54, no. 11 (April 2003), pp. 1-16. DOI: 10.14452/MR-054-11-2003-04_1

    Only a few years ago it was widely suggested that the capitalist economy had entered a new economic era. The rapid economic growth experienced during the brief period of the late 1990s, we were told, would become virtually endless, spurred on by rising productivity led by high technology and the New Economy. The circumstances that now confront us following the bursting of the speculative bubble could not be more different. The country is once again mired in economic stagnation. In the present “recovery”—if indeed we can call it that—new jobs remain few and far between. Of the four sources of demand that create economic activity—personal consumption, business investment, government spending, and net exports—it is mainly consumption, backed by increasing debt, that is currently keeping the economy from slipping deeper into stagnation. Indeed, many business leaders and economists fear the return of recession—referred to as the likelihood of a “double dip.” Behind this fear lies excess capacity in almost every industry, the absence of new growth stimuli, slow growth or recession in most of the rest of the world, and the aftereffects of the bursting of the speculative stock market bubble. All of this suggests that there is more at stake than the traditional business cycle. At the very least, there is reason to expect the continuation of the tendency of stagnation.

     

  • The Commercial Tidal Wave

    The Commercial Tidal Wave

    “The Commercial Tidal Wave,” (coauthored with Robert W. McChesney, McChesney listed as first author), Monthly Review vol. 54, no. 10 (March 2003), pp. 1-16. DOI: 10.14452/MR-054-10-2003-03_1

    For a long time now it has been widely understood within economics that under the capitalism of giant firms, corporations no longer compete primarily through price competition. They engage instead in what economists call “monopolistic competition.” This consists chiefly of attempts to create monopoly positions for a particular brand, making it possible for corporations to charge more for the branded product while also expanding their market share. Competition is most intense in what Thorstein Veblen called the “production of salable appearances,” involving advertising, frequent model changes, branding of products, and the like. Once this logic takes over in twentieth and now twenty-first century capitalism it is seemingly unstoppable. All human needs, relationships and fears, the deepest recesses of the human psyche, become mere means for the expansion of the commodity universe under the force of modem marketing. With the rise to prominence of modem marketing, commercialism—the translation of human relations into commodity relations—although a phenomenon intrinsic to capitalism, has expanded exponentially.

    Reprints:
    • Republished in expanded and revised form in Robert W. McChesney, The Problem of the Media: U.S. Communication Politics in the 21st Century. New York: Monthly Review Press, 2004, pp. 138-74.

     

  • A Planetary Defeat

    A Planetary Defeat

    “A Planetary Defeat: The Failure of Global Environmental Reform,” Monthly Review, vol. 54, no. 8 (January 2003), pp.1-9. DOI: 10.14452/MR-054-08-2003-01_1

    The first Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil in 1992 generated hopes that the world would at long last address its global ecological problems and introduce a process of sustainable development. Now, with a second summit being held ten years later in Johannesburg, that dream has to a large extent faded. Even the principal supporters of this process have made it clear that they do not expect much to be achieved as a result of the Johannesburg summit, which is likely to go down in history as an absolute failure. We need to ask ourselves why.

    Translations:
    • Persian translation in Paul M. Sweezy, et. al., Capitalism and the Environment (Tehran: Digar Publishing House, 2008).

     

  • Crises: One After Another for the Life of the System

    “Crises: One After Another for the Life of the System,” Monthly Review, vol. 54, no. 6 (November 2002), pp. 47-59.

    Our disagreement with our friends, Sam Gindin and Leo Panitch, is over three interrelated issues: (1) how and why to analyze a crisis-prone capitalism, (2) the capacity of the state to manage or “contain” crises, and (3) the near-term prospects for capital accumulation. In addition there are significant divergences in empirical assessment between us related to these issues.