John Bellamy Foster

Tag: Monthly Review

  • The Rediscovery of Imperialism

    The Rediscovery of Imperialism

    “The Rediscovery of Imperialism: Introduction” to Harry Madoff, Essays on Imperialism and Globalization,” Monthly Review vol. 54, no. 6 (November 2002), pp. 1-16. DOI: 10.14452/MR-054-06-2002-10_1

    The concept of “imperialism” was considered outside the acceptable range of political discourse within the ruling circles of the capitalist world for most of the twentieth century. Reference to “imperialism” during the Vietnam War, no matter how realistic, was almost always a sign that the writer was on the left side of the political spectrum. In a 1971 foreword to the U.S. edition of Pierre Jalée’s Imperialism in the Seventies Harry Magdoff noted, “As a rule, polite academic scholars prefer not to use the term ‘imperialism.’ They find it distasteful and unscientific.”

    Translations:
    • Turkish translation in Cosmo Politik, no. 6 (Winter 2002), pp. 16-25.
    • Spanish translation at Correntroig, July 6, 2008. Translation by Fernando Lizárraga.

     

  • It’s Not a Postcapitalist World, Nor is it a Post-Marxist One

    “It’s Not a Postcapitalist World, Nor is it a Post-Marxist One—An Interview with John Bellamy Foster” [PDF] (John Bellamy Foster and Evrensel Kultur) Monthly Review, vol. 54, no. 5 (October 2002), pp. 42-47.

    Evrensel Kultur: Postmodernism’s advice to u s was to have doubts towards all kinds of information acquired. The “security syndrome” following September 11 has spread these doubts to daily life. In other words, the twenty-first century has begun as an age of doubts/suspicions. How does the suspiciousness of the new century differ from that of past centuries? If we take “suspicion” as a metaphor, what kind of real relations/connections can be described or hidden with this metaphor?

  • Capitalism and Ecology

    Capitalism and Ecology

    “Capitalism and Ecology: The Nature of the Contradiction,” Monthly Review vol. 54, no. 4 (September 2002), pp. 6-16. DOI: 10.14452/MR-054-04-2002-08_2

    The social relation of capital, as we all know, is a contradictory one. These contradictions, though stemming from capitalism’s internal laws of motion, extend out to phenomena that are usually conceived as external to the system, threatening the integrity of the entire biosphere and everything within it as a result of capital’s relentless expansion. How to understand capitalism’s ecological contradictions has therefore become a subject of heated debate among socialists. Two crucial issues in this debate are: (1) must ecological crisis lead to economic crisis under capitalism?, and (2) to what extent is there an ecological contradiction at the heart of capitalist society?

     

  • Monopoly Capital and the New Globalization

    Monopoly Capital and the New Globalization

    “Monopoly Capital and the New Globalization,” Monthly Review, vol 53, no. 8 (January 2002), pp. 1-7. DOI: 10.14452/MR-053-08-2002-01_1

    We live at a time when capitalism has become more extreme, and is more than ever presenting itself as a force of nature, which demands such extremes. Globalization—the spread of the self-regulating market to every niche and cranny of the globe—is portrayed by its mainly establishment proponents as a process that is unfolding from everywhere at once with no center and no discernible power structure. As the New York Times claimed in its July 7, 2001 issue, repeating now fashionable notions, today’s global reality is one of “a fluid, infinitely expanding and highly organized system that encompasses the world’s entire population,” but which lacks any privileged positions or “place of power.”

    Reprints:
    • Also appeared as a chapter in Doug Dowd, Understanding Capitalism (London: Pluto Press, 2002).
    • Spanish edition, Entender el Capitalismo (Barcelona: Bellaterra, 2003). 
    Translations:
    • Chinese translation by Xgui Chen in Foreign Theory Dynamics, 6 (2003).

     

  • Imperialism and ‘Empire’

    Imperialism and ‘Empire’

    “Imperialism and ‘Empire,” Monthly Review, vol. 53, no. 7, pp. 1-9. (December, 2001) DOI: 10.14452/MR-053-07-2001-11_1

    Only a little more than a month ago at this writing, before September 11, the mass revolt against capitalist globalization that began in Seattle in November 1999 and that was still gathering force as recently as Genoa in July 2001 was exposing the contradictions of the system in a way not seen for many years. Yet the peculiar nature of this revolt was such that the concept of imperialism had been all but effaced, even within the left, by the concept of globalization, suggesting that some of the worst forms of international exploitation and rivalry had somehow abated.

    Translations:

     

  • Ecology Against Capitalism

    Ecology Against Capitalism

    “Ecology Against Capitalism,” (John Bellamy Foster) Monthly Review, vol. 53, no. 5 (October 2001), pp. 1-16. DOI: 10.14452/MR-053-05-2001-09_1

    In a 1963 talk on “The Pollution of Our Environment” Rachel Carson drew a close comparison between the reluctance of society in the late twentieth century to embrace the full implications of ecological theory and the resistance in the Victorian era to Darwin’s theory of evolution: As I look back through history I find a parallel. I ask you to recall the uproar that followed Charles Darwin’s announcement of his theories of evolution. The concept of man’s origin from pre-existing forms was hotly and emotionally denied, and the denials came not only from the lay public, but from Darwin’s peers in science. Only after many years did the concepts set forth in The Origin of Species become firmly established. Today, it would be hard to find any person of education who would deny the facts of evolution. Yet so many of us deny the obvious corollary: that man is affected by the same environmental influences that control the lives of all the many thousands of other species to which he is related by evolutionary ties (Lost Woods: The Discovered Writing of Rachel Carson, pp. 244-45).

    Translations:
    • Chinese translation in Contemporary Academic Thought Series, Shanghai Translation House, 2006.

     

  • Capitalism’s Environmental Crisis

    Capitalism’s Environmental Crisis

    “Capitalism’s Environmental Crisis—Is Technology the Answer?,”(John Bellamy Foster) Monthly Review vol. 52, no. 7 (December 2000), pp.  1-13. DOI: 10.14452/MR-052-07-2000-11_1

    The standard solution offered to the environmental problem in advanced capitalist economies is to shift technology in a more benign direction: more energy-efficient production, cars that get better mileage, replacement of fossil fuels with solar power, and recycling of resources. Other environmental reforms, such as reductions in population growth and even cuts in consumption, are often advocated as well. The magic bullet of technology, however, is by far the favorite, seeming to hold out the possibility of environmental improvement with the least effect on the smooth working of the capitalist machine. The 1997 International Kyoto Protocol on global warming, designed to limit the greenhouse-gas emissions of nations, has only reinforced this attitude, encouraging many environmental advocates in the United States (including Al Gore in his presidential campaign) to advocate technological improvement in energy efficiency as the main escape from the environmental mess.

    Reprints:
    • Published in a different version in Tokyo in Hitotsubashi Journal of Social Sciences, vol. 33, no. 1 (July 2001), pp. 143-50.
    Translations:
    • Turkish translation in Emperyalizmin Yeniden Keşfi (Istanbul, Turkey: Kalkedon Publications (January 2006).

     

  • Marx’s Ecological Value Analysis

    Marx’s Ecological Value Analysis

    “Marx’s Ecological Value A,” [PDF], (John Bellamy Foster) Monthly Review vol. 52, no. 4 (September 2000), pp. 39-47. DOI: 10.14452/MR-052-04-2000-08_4

    Review of: Paul Burkett, Marx and Nature: A Red and Green Perspective (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1999), 312 pp., $45, hardcover.

    If there is a single charge that has served to unify all criticism of Marx in recent decades, it is the charge of “Prometheanism.” Although Marx’s admiration for Aeschylus’ Prometheus Bound and his attraction to Prometheus as a revolutionary figure of Greek mythology has long been known, the accusation that Marx’s work contained at its heart a “Promethean motif,” and that this constituted the principal weakness of his entire analysis, seems to have derived its contemporary influence mainly from Leszek Kolakowski’s Main Currents of Marxism. The first volume of this work was drafted in Polish in 1968 and appeared in English in 1978.

     

  • Marx and Internationalism

    Marx and Internationalism

    “Marx and Internationalism,” Monthly Review, vol. 52, vol. no. 3, pp. 11-22. DOI: 10.14452/MR-052-03-2000-07_2

    It is not uncommon within social science today to acknowledge that Karl Marx was one of the first analysts of globalization. But what is usually forgotten, even by those who make this acknowledgment, is that Marx was also one of the first strategists of working-class internationalism, designed to respond to capitalist globalization. The two major elements governing such internationalism, in his analysis, were the critique of international exploitation and the development of a working-class movement that was both national and international in its organization. A scrutiny of Marx’s views at the time of the First International offers useful insights into the struggle to forge a new internationalism in our own day.

    Translations:
    • Turkish translation in Cosmo Politik, no. 3 (Summer 2002), pp. 168-74.

     

  • Monopoly Capital at the Turn of the Millenium

    Monopoly Capital at the Turn of the Millenium

    “Monopoly Capital at the Turn of the Millennium,” Monthly Review, vol. 51, no. 11 (April 2000), pp. 1-18. 10.14452/MR-051-11-2000-04_1

    This article is dedicated to Paul Sweezy on his 90th birthday. It is also meant as a personal expression of my conviction that Monopoly Capital (1966) by Paul Baran and Paul Sweezy, which provided a rich analysis of capital accumulation and crisis rooted in insights from Marx, Keynes, Kalecki, and Schumpeter, is still the most useful starting point from which to view the historical evolution of the United States and other advanced capitalist economies. My intention in this article is to use that general analysis to comment on some of the central empirical developments within the economy in our time—in a new millennium and under conditions of the globalization of monopoly capital.

    Translations:
    • Translated into Norwegian and published in Røde Fane, no. 4 (2000), pp. 32-38.
    • Hungarian translation in Ezmélet (Consciousness) vol. 12 no. 47 (Autumn 2000), pp. 96-112.
    • Greek translation in Socialist Ecology (November 2011).