John Bellamy Foster

Tag: Monthly Review

  • Free Market Democracy and Global Hegemony

    Free Market Democracy and Global Hegemony

    “Free Market Democracy and Global Hegemony,” (John Bellamy Foster) Monthly Review, vol. 49, no. 4 (September 1997), pp.51-64. DOI: 10.14452/MR-049-04-1997-08_5

    Review of Promoting Polyarchy: Globalization, U.S. Intervention, and Hegemony by William I. Robinson.

    Neoliberalism is usually thought of as a purely economic philosophy, stemming from the work of the arch-conservative economist Friedrich hayek and other twentieth century economist (particularly those associated with the University of Chicago), and involving an attempt to construct a much more complete justification for a pure, self-regulating market economy than could be found in the work of Adam Smith himself. Yet, neoliberalism—it is important to understand—also has its politcal component in the dominant model of liberal democracy, termed “polyarchy” by one of its leading proponents, Robert Dahl.

     

  • Virtual Capitalism

    “Virtual Capitalism: The Political Economy of the Information Highway,” (co-authored with Michael Dawson, Foster listed second), Monthly Review vol. 48, no. 3 (July 1996), pp. 40-58. DOI: 10.14452/MR-048-03-1996-07_3

    One of the great technological myths of our time is that the entire system of organized capitalism dating back to the Industrial Revolution (and even earlier), is being displaced by a new age of “the electronic republic” rooted in the technology of the Information Revolution.

    Translations:
    • Translated and published in German as “Virtueller Kapitalismus: Die Politische Ökonomie der Datenautobahn,” Supplement der Zeitschrift Sozialismus, December 1996, pp. 12-20.

     

  • For a Zapatista Style Postmodernist Perspective

    “For a Zapatista Style Postmodernist Perspective; Marxism and Postmodernism: A Reply to Roger Burbach; On Hobsbawm’s Pessimism: A Reply to Justin Rosenberg,” (Roger Burbach, Ellen Meiksins Wood, John Bellamy Foster and David Englestein) Monthly Review, vol. 47, no. 10 (March 1996), pp. 34-48.

    The left is on the brink of collapse. It has very little influence in the arena of mass politics while fewer and fewer people are interested in Marxist journals, books, and intellectual discourses. In 1982 Michael Ryan, in a book written to find common ground between Marxism and postmodernism, noted that “millions have been killed because they were Marxists; no one will be obliged to die because s/he is a deconstructionist.”

  • Ecology and Human Freedom

    “Ecology and Human Freedom”, Monthly Review vol. 47, no. 6 (November 1995), pp. 22-31. DOI: 10.14452/MR-047-06-1995-10_3

    We live at a time when it is reasonable to speak of the possibility of complete ecological destruction, in virtually the same sense that critics of nuclear armaments have often referred to the possibility of complete nuclear destruction. Both human society and the survival of the planet as we know it are now at risk.

     

  • Marx and the Environment

    “Marx and the Environment”, Monthly Review vol. 47, no. 3 (July 1995), pp. 108-123. DOI: 10.14452/MR-047-03-1995-07_8

    It has become fashionable in recent years, in the words of one critic, to identify the growth of ecological consciousness with “the current postmodernist interrogation of the metanarrative of the Enlightenment.” Green thinking, we are frequently told, is distinguished by its postmodern, post-Enlightenment perspective. Nowhere is this fashion more evident than in certain criticisms directed at Marx and Engels. Historical materialism, beginning with the work of its two founders, is often said to be one of the main means by which the Baconian notion of the mastery of nature was transmitted to the modern world. The prevalence of this interpretation is indicated by its frequent appearance within the analysis of the left itself. “While Marx and Engels displayed an extraordinary understanding of and sensitivity toward the ‘ecological’ costs of capitalism,” socialist ecofeminist Carolyn Merchant writes, “… they nevertheless bought into the Enlightenment’s myth of progress via the domination of nature.”

    Reprints:
    • Reprinted in John F. Sitton, ed., Marx Today: Selected Works and Recent Debates (New York: Palgrave-Macmillan, 2010), 229-40.
    • Reprinted in Bob Jessop and Russell Wheatley, ed., Marx’s Social and Political Thought, volume 8(London: Taylor and Francis, 1999), 44-56.
    Translations:
    • Translated and published in German as “Marx, der Produktivismus und die Ökologie,” Sozialistische Zeitung, vol. 11, no. 13 (June 27, 1996), pp. 14-19.
    • Spanish translation by Renán Vega Cantor, 1998.

     

  • Global Ecology and the Common Good

    “Global Ecology and the Common Good”, Monthly Review vol. 46, no. 9 (February 1995), pp. 1-10. DOI: 10.14452/MR-046-09-1995-02_1

    Over the course of the twentieth century human population has increased more than threefold and gross world product perhaps twentyfold. Such expansion has placed increasing pressure on the ecology of the planet. Everywhere we look—in the atmosphere, oceans, watersheds, forests, soil, etc.—it is now clear that rapid ecological decline is setting in.

    Reprints:
    • Kevin Danaher, ed., Corporations are Gonna Eat Your Mama: Globalization and the Downsizing of the American Dream (Monroe, Maine: Common Courage Press, 1996), pp. 133-41.
    • William F. Grover and Joseph G. Peschek, ed., Voices of Dissent: Critical Readings in American Politics (New York: Addison-Wesley, 1999, 2003), pp. 33-37.
    Translations:
    • Persian translation in Paul M. Sweezy, et. al., Capitalism and the Environment (Tehran: Digar Publishing House, 2008).

     

  • “Introduction to Special Issue Commemorating the Twentieth Anniversary of Harry Braverman’s Labor and Monopoly Capital”

    “Introduction to Special Issue Commemorating the Twentieth Anniversary of Harry Braverman’s Labor and Monopoly Capital,” Monthly Review, vol. 46, no. 6 (November 1994), pp. 1-13. DOI: 10.14452/MR-046-06-1994-10_1

    It is a measure of the influence of Harry Braverman and radical labor process analysts generally that only two decades after the publication of Labor and Monopoly Capital: The Degradation of Work in the Twentieth Century (1974) it is difficult to recall the absolute confidence with which the orthodox view of work relations was espoused in the early post-Second World War years. At that time the preeminent interpretation of work in modern society was the one presented by Clark Kerr, John Dunlop, and others in a book entitled Industrialism and Industrial Man (1960).

    Translations:
    • Portugese translation in Revista Principios 43 (1996).

     

  • Multiculturalism and the American Revolution of 1776

    Multiculturalism and the American Revolution of 1776

    “The Balance of Injustice and the War for Independence; Multiculturalism and the American Revolution of 1776: A Response to David Lyons,” Monthly Review vol. 45, no. 11 (April 1994), pp. 27-37. DOI: 10.14452/MR-045-11-1994-04_2

    Many Americans of European ancestry, like me, now see the European colonization of the Western Hemisphere as invasion, conquest, and genocide. Many have grave misgivings about the constitutional settlement that protected trade in slaves, committed government to helping slave catchers, and gave extra votes in Congress to slave owners. The moral perceptions that underlie those reappraisals oblige us to go further. There is good reason to question whether the American Revolution—the British colonies’ fight for freedom from the Crown—was morally justifiable.

     

  • A Terrible Omission

    “A Terrible Omission,” (John Bellamy Foster) Monthly Review, vol. 45, no. 7 (December 1993), pp.61-64. DOI: 10.14452/MR-045-07-1993-11_8

    Review of Marx’s Capital: A Student Edition, By C.J. Arthur.

     

  • Introduction to a Symposium on The Ethical Dimensions of Marxist Thought

    “Introduction to a Symposium on The Ethical Dimensions of Marxist Thought,” (John Bellamy Foster) Monthly Review, vol. 45, no. 2 (June 1993), pp.8-16.

    In the decade before his death Raymond Williams frequently referred to the need for “resources for a journey of hope” that would enable socialists to continue the “shared search” for human emancipation in spite of all the obstacles posed by the reality of capitalism and of the first attempts to create socialism. In Cornel West’s Ethical Dimensions of Marxist Thought (New York: Monthly Review Press, 1991) constitutes such a resource of hope. It is an attempt to reclaim the cause of morality for progressive thought by following Marx himself (at his best) in radically historicizing moral questions.