John Bellamy Foster

Tag: Monthly Review

  • Multinational Corporations and the Globalization of Monopoly Capital

    “Multinational Corporations and the Globalization of Monopoly Capital: From the 1960s to the Present” (co-authored with Intan Suwandi, Suwandi listed first), Monthly Review vol. 68, no. 3 (July-August 2016), pp. 114-31. DOI: 10.14452/MR-068-03-2016-07_9 [HTML]

    In 1964, Paul Baran and Paul Sweezy wrote an essay entitled “Notes on the Theory of Imperialism” for a festschrift in honor of the sixty-fifth birthday of the great Polish Marxist economist Michał Kalecki.… [T]he essay offered the first major analysis of multinational corporations within Marxian theory. Parts of it were incorporated into Baran and Sweezy’s Monopoly Capital in 1966, two years after Baran’s death. Yet for all that book’s depth, “Notes on the Theory of Imperialism” provided a more complete view of their argument on the growth of multinationals. In October and November 1969, Harry Magdoff and Sweezy wrote their article “Notes on the Multinational Corporation,” picking up where Baran and Sweezy had left off. That same year, Magdoff published his landmark The Age of Imperialism, which systematically extended the analysis of the U.S. economy into the international domain.… In the analyses of Baran, Sweezy, and Magdoff, as distinct from the dominant liberal perspective, the multinational corporation was the product of the very same process of concentration and centralization of capital that had created monopoly capital itself.

  • “Foreword,” to Ian Angus, Facing the Anthropocene

    “Foreword,” to Ian Angus, Facing the Anthropocene

    “Foreword,” to Ian Angus, Facing the Anthropocene (New York: Monthly Reviwe Press, 2016), 9-17.

    The Anthropocene, viewed as a new geological epoch displacing the Holocene epoch of the last 10,000 to 12,000 years, represents what has been called an “anthropogenic rift” in the history of the planet. Formally introduced into the contemporary scientific and environmental discussion by climatologist Paul Crutzen in 2000, it stands for the notion that human beings have become the primary emergent geological force affecting the future of the Earth System. Although often traced to the Industrial Revolution in the late eighteenth century, the Anthropocene is probably best seen as arising in the late 1940s and early 1950s.

     

  • Marx’s Universal Metabolism of Nature and the Frankfurt School: Dialectical Contradictions and Critical Syntheses

    “Marx’s Universal Metabolism of Nature and the Frankfurt School: Dialectical Contradictions and Critical Syntheses,” in James S. Ormrod, ed., Changing Our Environment, Changing Ourselves (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2016), p. 101-35.

    Substantially revised version published as ‘Marx’s Ecology and the Left,” Monthly Review Issue 86, no. 2 (June 2016), p. 1-25.

    The Frankfurt School, as represented especially by Max Horkheimer and Theodor Adorno’s 1944, Dialectic of Enlightenment, was noted for developing a philosophical critique of the domination of nature. Critical theorists associated with the Institute for Social Research at Frankfurt were heavily influenced by the writings of the early Karl Marx. Yet, their critique of the Enlightenment domination of nature was eventually extended to a critique of Marx himself as an Enlightenment figure, especially in relation to his mature work in Capital. This position was expressed most notably in the work of Horkheimer and Adorno’s student, Alfred Schmidt, author of The Concept of Nature in Marx (1970). Due largely to Schmidt’s book, the notion of Marx’s anti-ecological perspective came to be deeply rooted in Western Marxism. Moreover, such criticisms of Marx were closely related to questions raised regarding Fredrick Engels’s Dialectics of Nature, which was frequently said to have extended dialectical analysis improperly beyond the human-social realm. First generation ecosocialists, such as Ted Benton and Andre Gorz, furthered these criticisms, arguing that Marx and Engels had gone overboard in their alleged rejection of Malthusian natural limits.

  • Marx’s Theory of Working-Class Precariousness

    “Marx’s Theory of Working-Class Precariousness: Its Relevance Today,” (coauthored with R. Jamil Jonna, Jonna listed first) Monthly Review vol. 67, no. 11 (April 2016). DOI: 10.14452/MR-067-11-2016-04_1

    First published as “Marx’s Theory of Working-Class Precariousness—And Its Relevance Today,” Alternate Routes: A Journal of Critical Social Research 27 (2016), pp. 21-45. [PDF]

    As a concept, worker precariousness is far from new. It has a long history in socialist thought, where it was associated from the start with the concept of the reserve army of labor. Frederick Engels introduced the idea of precariousness in his treatment of the industrial reserve army in The Condition of the Working Class in England. Marx and Engels employed it in this same context in The Communist Manifesto, and it later became a key element in Marx’s analysis of the industrial reserve army in volume I of Capital.… In recent years, however, the notion of precariousness as a general condition of working-class life has been rediscovered. Yet the idea is commonly treated in the eclectic, reductionist, ahistorical fashion characteristic of today’s social sciences and humanities, disconnected from the larger theory of accumulation derived from Marx and the socialist tradition. The result is a set of scattered observations about what are seen as largely haphazard developments.… In the face of such a confusion of views—most of them merely ad hoc responses to what is presumed to be an isolated social problem—it is necessary to turn back to the classical Marxian tradition, where the issue of precariousness was first raised.

     

  • The Opt Out Revolt

    The Opt Out Revolt

    In the United States today, the age of monopoly-finance capital and neoliberal politics, all aspects of social life are being financialized at breakneck speed, while the economy as a whole and employment remain lackluster. Financial flows of whatever kind are converted into “securitized” assets to be leveraged by Wall Street speculators. The data of private communications are mined. Health care is converted into a realm of super profits. Public water and electric facilities are sold to the highest bidder. The political system is turned into an open-air auction. Even pollution is treated as a market.… At the center of this juggernaut is elementary and secondary education, which receives over $550 billion in annual public spending, equal to the GDP of Belgium, ranked twenty-fifth worldwide in national income. The new copyrighted Common Core State Standards, and the accompanying standardized tests run by two multi-state consortia in conjunction with testing companies, are “high stakes” not merely for schools, teachers, and students, but also for the vested interests of capital.

  • Marxism and Ecology

    Marxism and Ecology: Common Fonts on a Great Transition,” Monthly Review, vol. 67, no. 7 (Deember 2015), pp. 1-13. DOI: 10.14452/MR-067-07-2015-11_1
    This article was originally published (along with comments on it by nine other authors, including MR contributors David Barkin, Hannah Holleman, and Fred Magdoff) on the Great Transition Initiative website in October 2015: http://greattransition.org/publication/marxism-and-ecology.
    To link Marxism and ecological transition may seem at first like trying to bridge two entirely different movements and discourses, each with its own history and logic: one having mainly to do with class relations, the other with the relation between humans and the environment. However, historically socialism has influenced the development of ecological thought and practice, while ecology has informed socialist thought and practice. Since the nineteenth century, the relationship between the two has been complex, interdependent, and dialectical.
    Versions and Publishers:
    • Earlier version published online by the Great Transition Initiative, October 19, 2015, 5800 words, greattransition.org. Published along with comments of 750-1000 words by majors scholars, part of the Great Transition Network, and with a response to the comments by the author.
    Translations:
    • Portuguese-language translation forthcoming in O Comuneiro (2016). Portugues-language version also forthcoming in Lutas Sociais (Sao Paulo, 2016).
    • German translation forthcoming in Analyse & Kritik (2016).

     

  • The Great Capitalist Climacteric

    “The Great Capitalist Climacteric: Marxism and “System Change Not Climate Change,” Monthly Review, vol. 67, no. 6 (November 2015), pp. 1-18.
    DOI:10.14452

    This article is from a keynote address presented at Manifesta in Ostend, Belgium on September 19, 2015. This year’s Manifesta was organized around the theme of climate change in preparation for the COP21 climate negotiations (and protests) in Paris in December 2015.

    Humanity today is confronted with what might be called the Great Capitalist Climacteric. In the standard definition, a climacteric (from the Greek klimaktēr or rung on the ladder) is a period of critical transition or a turning point in the life of an individual or a whole society. From a social standpoint, it raises issues of historical transformation in the face of changing conditions.

  • The New Imperialism of Globalized Monopoly-Finance Capital

    “The New Imperialism of Globalized Monopoly-Finace Capital,” Monthly Review vol. 67, no. 3 (July-August 2015), pp. 1-22.
    DOI: 10.14452/MR-067-03-2015-07_1

    It is now a universal belief on the left that the world has entered a new imperialist phase.… The challenge for Marxian theories of the imperialist world system in our times is to capture the full depth and breadth of the classical accounts, while also addressing the historical specificity of the current global economy. It will be argued in this introduction (in line with the present issue as a whole) that what is widely referred to as neoliberal globalization in the twenty-first century is in fact a historical product of the shift to global monopoly-finance capital or what Samir Amin calls the imperialism of “generalized-monopoly capitalism.”

  • Late Soviet Ecology and the Planetary Crisis

    “Late Soviet Ecology and the Planetary Crisis,” [PDF] Monthly Review vol.67, no. 2, pp. 1-20.
    DOI: 10.14452/MR-067-02-2015-06_1

    Soviet ecology presents us with an extraordinary set of historical ironies. On the one hand, the USSR in the 1930s and ’40s violently purged many of its leading ecological thinkers and seriously degraded its environment in the quest for rapid industrial expansion. The end result has often been described as a kind of “ecocide,” symbolized by the Chernobyl nuclear accident, the assault on Lake Baikal, and the drying up of the Aral Sea, as well as extremely high levels of air and water pollution. On the other hand, the Soviet Union developed some of the world’s most dialectical contributions to ecology, revolutionizing science in fields such as climatology, while also introducing pioneering forms of conservation. Aside from its famous zapovedniki, or nature reserves for scientific research, it sought to preserve and even to expand its forests.

     

  • Chávez and the Communal State

    Chávez and the Communal State

    “Chávez and the Communal State: On the Transition to Socialism in Venezuela,” Monthly Review vol. 66, no. 11 (April 2015), pp.1-17. DOI: 10.14452/MR-067-02-2015-06_1 [HTML]

    On October 20, 2012, less than two weeks after being reelected to his fourth term as Venezuelan president and only months before his death, Hugo Chávez delivered his crucial El Golpe de Timón (“Strike at the Helm”) speech to the first meeting of his ministers in the new revolutionary cycle. Chávez surprised even some of his strongest supporters by his insistence on the need for changes at the top in order to promote an immediate leap forward in the creation of what is referred to as “the communal state.” This was to accelerate the shift of power to the population that had begun with the formation of the communal councils (groupings of families involved in self-governance projects—in densely populated urban areas, 200–400 families; in rural areas, 50–100 families). The main aim in the new revolutionary cycle, he insisted, was to speed up the registration of communes, the key structure of the communal state.