John Bellamy Foster

Tag: Monthly Review

  • ‘Let Them Eat Pollution’

    “‘Let Them Eat Pollution’: Capitalist Economics and the World Environment” [PDF] (John Bellamy Foster) Monthly Review vol. 44, no. 8 (January 1993), pp.10-20. DOI: 10.14452/MR-044-08-1993-01_2

    On December 12, 1991, Lawrence Summers, chief economist of the World Bank, sent a memorandum to some of his colleagues presenting views on the environment that are doubtless widespread among orthodox economists, reflecting as they do the logic of capital accumulation, but which are seldom offered up for public scrutiny, and then almost never by an economist of Summers’ rank. This memo was later leaked to the British publication, The Economist, which published part of it on February 8, 1992, under the title “Let Them Eat Pollution.”

    Reprints:

    • Third World Resurgence, no. 34 (January 1993), pp. 7-10.
    • Johnathon Petrikin, ed., Environmental Justice (San Diego, California: Greenhaven, 1995), pp. 100-07.
    • George Gerbner, Hamid Mowlana and Herbert Schiller, ed., Invisible Crises: What Conglomerate Control of the Media Means for America and the World (Boulder, Colorado: Westview Press, 1996), pp. 221-28;
    • Amanda Konradi and Marta Schmidt, Reading Between the Lines: Toward an Understanding of Current Social Problems (Mountain View, California: Mayfield Publishing Co., 1998), pp. 491-95.
    Translations:
    • Persian translation in Paul M. Sweezy, et. al., Capitalism and the Environment (Tehran: Digar Publishing House, 2008).

     

  • Colón and Colonialism

    “Colón and Colonialism,” (John Bellamy Foster) Monthly Review, vol. 44, no. 6 (November 1992), pp. 46-48.

    A number of readers have pointed out that an egregious error was made in my introduction to the July-August issue on the Quincentennial, where it says (on page 2) that, “The nature of the encounter was a colonial one (a word derived from Colon or Columbus) …. ” This was a mistake since the Latin word “colonia” dates back to Roman times.

  • Anti-Semitism and the Legacy of Columbus

    “Anti-Semitism and the Legacy of Columbus; A Reply to Prago,” (John Bellamy Foster and Albert Prago) Monthly Review, vol. 44, no. 5 (October 1992), pp. 44-49.

    The July/August issue of MR is a superb addition to the articles (and books) which are aimed at the multi-faceted myths surrounding Columbus and his trans-Atlantic voyages. Understandably, major emphasis in the myth-destroying quincentennial literature is on Amerindians and African-Americans. Lamentably few deal with the impact of Columbus’ exploits on Jews; and none of the articles in MR remotely touched on this matter.

  • The Tendency of the Surplus to Rise, 1963–1988

    “The Tendency of the Surplus to Rise, 1963–1988” [PDF], (co-authored, second author with Michael Dawson), in John B. Davis, ed. The Economic Surplus in Advanced Economies (Brookfield, Vermont: Edward Elgar Publishing Company, 1992), pp. 42-70.

    In the increasingly universal monopoly-capitalist economy and culture of the late twentieth century, people no longer need what they want or want what they need. Wants are artificially manufactured while the most desperate needs of innumerable individuals remain unfulfilled. Although labor productivity has steadily risen, the overall efficiency and rationality of society has in many ways declined. Indeed, it is almost impossible to arrive at any other conclusion if one considers the lavish office structures in cities like New York, Dallas, Atlanta, and Los Angeles, where employees use the most technologically advanced means to “develop” yet another laundry detergent, television commercial, or leveraged buyout, while on the ground below large numbers of people lack decent housing, food, clothing, medical care, and education; if one considers automated assembly plants existing in the same social space as millions of unemployed, partially employed, “discouraged,” and poorly paid workers; or if one contemplates what it means to launch still another aircraft carrier, the total costs of which are equal to half the annual federal budget for elementary and secondary education.

    Reprints

  • Introduction

    “Introduction“, Monthly Review vol. 44, no. 3 (July 1992), pp. 1-9.

    “The discovery of America and that of a passage to the East Indies by the Cape of Good Hope,” Adam Smith wrote in 1776 in his Wealth of Nations, the book that more than any other was to mark the birth of liberal political economy, “are the two greatest and most important events recorded in the history of mankind.”

  • Fascism in Iraq

    “Fascism in Iraq; Imperialism and the Tyranny of Saddam Hussein,” (John Bellamy Foster and Thomas F. Mayer) Monthly Review, vol. 43, no. 6 (November 1991), pp. 33-42.

    In his article, “Imperialism and the Gulf War” (MR, April 1991), Tom Mayer makes the following statement: In order to make Saddam Hussein a suitable target for unlimited violence, all positive achievements of his government are ignored. We hear almost nothing about the growth of literacy in Iraq, the increased availability of housing, women’s rights, religious freedom, improved transportation facilities, lack of government corruption, or the fact that Iraq invests far more of its oil revenues internally than other Arab states of the Persian Gulf. We hear very little about several reasonable-sounding Iraqi proposals seeking to avoid war. And the U.S. left, repelled by the tyranny of the Hussein regime and burdened with a guilty conscience from its blindness to the infamies of “actually existing socialism,” remains largely silent on these issues.

  • Capitalism and the Ancient Forest

    “Capitalism and the Ancient Forest,” Monthly Review, vol. 43, no. 5 (October 1991), pp. 1-16. DOI: 10.14452/MR-043-05-1991-09_1

    The battle for the old growth forest of the Pacific Northwest, which gained widespread national attention with the designation of the northern spotted owl as a threatened species in June 1990, can be thought of as a complex set of social and ecological problems traceable to a single cause: the continuing failure on the part of timber capital and the federal government to see either the forest for the trees or the trees for billions of board feet of standing timber. By the late 1980s this environmental failure had reached such tragic proportions that the Pacific Northwest forest ecosystem, one of the most important natural environments on the face of the earth—encompassing many of the world’s oldest and largest trees, storing more carbon per unit area than any other terrestrial ecosystem, and supporting the largest or second largest accumulations of living matter per unit area to be found anywhere, including numerous rare and endangered species—was increasingly being threatened with annihilation.

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

     

  • Marxism and the Uno School

    Marxism and the Uno School

    “Marxism and the Uno School,” (John Bellamy Foster) Monthly Review, vol. 41, no. 8 (January 1990), pp. 51-55. DOI: 10.14452/MR-041-08-1990-01_6

    Review of The Basic Theory of Capitalism: The Forms and Substance of the Capitalist Economy by Makoto Itoh.
    In an 1859 review of Marx’s Contribution to a Critique if Political Economy, Engels provided the following description of the economic method of historical materialism, frequently labeled the “logical- historical method”:

    [T]he critique of economics could .. , be exercised in two ways: historically or logically …. History moves often in leaps and bounds and in a zigzag line, and as this would have to be followed throughout, it would mean not only that a considerable amount of material of slight importance would have to be included, but also that the train of thought would frequently have to be interrupted; it would, moreover, be impossible to write the history of economy without that of bourgeois society, and the task would thus become immense, because of the absence of all preliminary studies. The logical method of approach was therefore the only suitable one. This, however, is indeed nothing but the historical method, only stripped of the historical form and diverting chance occurrences …. [W]ith this method the logical exposi- tion need by no means be confined to the purely abstract sphere. On the contra?, it requires historical illustration and continuous contact with reality.

     

  • The Spirit of ’68

    “The Spirit of ’68” (John Bellamy Foster) Monthly Review, vol. 41, no. 7 (December 1989), pp.47-54. DOI: 10.14452/MR-041-07-1989-11_7

    Review of Nineteen Sixty-Eight: A Personal Memoir by Hans Koning.

     

  • Restructuring the World Economy in a Time of Lasting Crisis

    Restructuring the World Economy in a Time of Lasting Crisis

    “Restructuring the World Economy in a Time of Lasting Crisis,” (John Bellamy Foster) Monthly Review, vol. 41, no. 1 (May 1989), pp. 46-55. DOI: 10.14452/MR-041-01-1989-05_5

    Review of Restructuring the World Economy by Joyce Kolko.