John Bellamy Foster

Tag: Monthly Review

  • The Fetish of Fordism

    The Fetish of Fordism

    “The Fetish of Fordism”, Monthly Review vol. 39, no. 10 (March 1988), pp. 14-33. DOI: 10.14452/MR-039-10-1988-03_2

    It may seem strange that Henry Ford, an automobile manufacturer during the early decades of the twentieth century who died in 1947, should suddenly become a major source of contention among those interested in analyzing the contemporary crisis of the U.S. economy. The last few years, however, have seen a vast expansion of the Ford legend, particularly by thinkers working within the left, who have elaborated a whole new mythology of “Fordism,” intended to sum up the political, economic, and cultural development of twentieth-century monopoly capitalism. Nowhere is this fetish of Ford and the ism now attached to his name more obvious than in Michael Harrington’s latest book, The Next Left (New York: Henry Holt, 1986).

    Translations:
    • Translated and published in German as “Fordismus als Fetish,” Prokla (Zeitschrift fur Politische Okonomie und Sozialistiche Politik), no. 76 (September 1989), pp. 71-85.

     

  • The United States and the Crisis of World Finance

    The United States and the Crisis of World Finance

    “The United States and the Crisis of World Finance” (John Bellamy Foster) Monthly Review, vol. 38, no. 10 (March 1987), pp. 52-57. DOI: 10.14452/MR-038-10-1987-03_7

    Review of Casino Capitalism by Susan Strange.

     

  • The Working Class: Is It Dead?

    The Working Class: Is It Dead?

    “The Working Clas: Is it Dead?” (John Bellamy Foster) Monthly Review vol. 38, no. 7 (December 1986), pp.55-64. DOI: 10.14452/MR-038-07-1986-11_7

    Review of Longshoremen: Community and Resistance on the Brooklyn Waterfront by William DiFazio.

    Among those who are convinced of the need for radical social change in the advanced capitalist countries as the world nears the year 2000 there are two broad streams of thought. One of these adheres to the traditional left view that the working class is (almost by definition) the only social force capable of carrying out a genuine socialist transformation within the center of the capitalist system. Although not denying the fact that workers in the developed countries are far from revolutionary at present, those who adhere to this perspective tend to emphasize the continuing radical significance of class struggles on the job, and would find themselves in general agreement with David Montgomery’s stance that when I thought about the question of socialism, and heard people asking whether the working class was an agent for social change, I found it very hard to even relate to the question. If the working class isn’t going to change its own life and make a new world, why bother? To change one boss for another is not something i’m going to go out and put myself on the line for.

  • A Turn to Reality

    A Turn to Reality

    “A Turn to Reality,” (John Bellamy Foster) Monthly Review, vol. 38, no. 5 (October 1986), pp. 56-64. DOI: 10.14452/MR-038-05-1986-09_7

    Review of Economics Without Equilibrium by Nicholas Kaldor.

    It would be impossible to discover a much greater gap between what poses as a modern scientific tradition and the underlying reality that it purports to explain than that which is currently dis- closed by neoclassical economics. Indeed, “within today’s standard economic theory, which is commonly called the neoclassical synthesis,” as Hyman Minsky has observed in his new book, Stabilizing an Unstable Economy, “the question ‘why is our economy so unstable?’ is … a nonsense question. Standard economic theory not only does not lead to an explanation of instability as a system attribute, it really does not recognize that endogenous instability is a problem that a satisfactory theory must explain.”

     

  • The Political Economy of the United States Left

    The Political Economy of the United States Left

    “The Political Economy of The United States Left,” Monthly Review, vol. 38, no. 4 (September 1986), pp. 42-50. DOI: 10.14452/MR-038-04-1986-08_5

    Review of Radical Political Economy Since the Sixties: A Sociology of Knowledge Analysis by Paul Attewell.

    Twenty years ago, when Monopoly Capital by Baran and Sweezy first appeared, there were only a handful of Marxian political economists in the U.S. But the escalating invasion of Vietnam, the popular resistance movement that grew up in response, and the worsening conditions of economic crisis that came with the winding down of the war changed all of that. By the mid-1970s radical political economy had grown into a vast and sprawling multi-disciplinary effort, cutting across the boundaries of economics, political science, sociology and history. Yet such rapid growth was not without its contradictions. Indeed, in the 1980s it seems clear that the “new political economy” of the U.S. left is torn by contradictory developments, while showing comparatively few signs at present of further development through contradiction.

     

  • Is Monopoly Capitalism An Illusion?

    “Is Monopoly Capitalism An Illusion?”, Monthly Review vol. 33, no. 4 (September 1981), pp. 36-47. DOI: 10.14452/MR-033-04-1981-08_3

    The theory of capitalism’s monopoly stage has had such a long and distinguished history that one could be excused for thinking of it as an established and non-controversial component of Marxian political economy. Indeed, the “neo-Marxian” theory of secular stagnation which developed out of the analysis of monopoly capital—notably, in the work of Micha Kalecki, Josef Steindl, and Baran and Sweezy—seems to have its direct confirmation in the current crisis of American and world capitalism. Quite recently, some of the “free-thinkers” among liberal economists, such as Lester Thurow, John Kenneth Galbraith, and Robert Heilbroner, have somewhat reluctantly added their voices to the diagnosis that capitalism is facing the possibility of long-term economic stagnation (which is also seen as posing a major theoretical crisis for establishment economics). Yet, at a time when nearly all of the conclusions of monopoly capital theory are finding dramatic support in the winds of historical change, the very notion of monopoly capitalism, and the entire Marxian heritage associated with it, is increasingly being “struck down from the rear” by radical theorists who claim to be more orthodox than Engels or Lenin.