John Bellamy Foster

Tag: PDF

  • 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.

     

  • Why Movements Matter

    “Why Movements Matter,” [PDF], American Journal of Sociology, vol. 108, no. 2 (September 2002), pp. 509-10. (Review of Steve Breyman, Why Movements Matter: The West German Peace Movement and U.S. Arms Control Policy.)

    In the early 1980s a trans-Atlantic antinuclear movement consisting of millions of protestors emerged seemingly out of nowhere to threaten the prerogatives of power. In Europe this took the form of massive protests against the deployment of Euromissiles—intermediate-range nuclear missiles placed on European soil. In the United States there arose the nuclear freeze movement, aimed at stopping the escalation of U.S. and Soviet nuclear weapons. It is often claimed that both wings of this trans-Atlantic antinuclear movement failed. The European antimissile movement was unable to prevent the deployment of Pershing 2 and cruise missiles in Europe. Likewise the nuclear freeze movement in the United States did not stop the Reagan administration (its main political target) from escalating its nuclear arms race with the “evil empire.”

  • 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?

     

  • Environmental Sociology and the Environmental Revolution: A 25th Anniversary Assessment

    “Environmental Sociology and the Environmental Revolution: A 25th Anniversary Assessment,” [PDF], Organization and Environment, vol. 15, no. 1 (March 2002), pp. 55-58. DOI: 10.1177/1086026602151005

    It is a great honor to be asked to respond to articles by individuals who can all be rightly considered to be founders of environmental sociology, legendary figures in the field. If I have something distinctive to add to this symposium, it mostly arises out of my own standpoint as a respresentative of what I like to think is the second wave of environmental sociology. Environmental sociology arose in the 1970s and then waned for a time in membership and influence in the early and mid 1980s. In the late 1980s, however, new interest was sparked in the field as a result of the globalization of environmental issues, with growth of world concern about the destruction of the ozone layer, global warming, and species extinction (see Dunlap, 1997, p. 28-29). At the same time, these years saw the emergence of new kinds of radical environmentalism, incorporating the environmental justice movement, ecofeminism, and ecosocialism. Environmental sociology is much more divers than it was 25 or even 10 years ago— and that fact has to be a crucial part of any quarter—century assessment. I was to reflect here, then, not only on the past but also on the future of environmental sociology— its condition of long-term health.

     

  • 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:

     

  • Marx and the Dialectic of Orgainc/Inorganic Relations

    “Marx and the Dialectic of Orgainc/Inorganic Relations: A Rejoinder to Salleh and Clark” [PDF] (coauthored with Paul Burkett, Foster listed first), Organization and Environment, vol. 14, no. 4 (December 2001), pp. 451-62. DOI: 10.1177/1086026601144006

    Our article “The Dialectic of Organic/Inorganic Relations: Marx and the Hegelian Philosophy of Nature” (Foster & Burkett, 2000) appeared in Oraganization & Environment exactly a 1 year ago. Our purpose in that article was a very specific one made very clear from the beginning. We were concerned with addressing one of the most persistent and seemingly peretrating criticisms of Marx for his supposed insensitivity to ecological issues, namely, the claim that in referring to nature as “the inorganic body of a man” in his Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1884, a work otherwise known for its ecological values, thus, sinning irredeemable against ecology and no less so against dialectics (Marx, 1974, p. 328).

  • Marx’s Ecological Saving Grace: His Materialism

    “Marx’s Ecological Saving Grace: His Materialism,” [PDF], Imprints, vol. 5, no. 2 (Winter 2000-2001), pp. 173-87. (Review of Jonathan Hughes, Ecology and Historical Materialism.)

    Criticisms of Marx for his alleged anti-environmentalist views are commonly voiced today not only by liberals and Green thinkers, but also within the eco-socialist discourse that has arisen over the last two decades. Such criticisms have been leveled, ofter with little evidence to back them up, by such diverse figures as Laszek Kolakowski, Anthony Soper and Alain Lipiets, In an article recently published in the eco-socialist journal Capitalism, Nature, Socialism, Lipietz, a leading representatives of the French regulation school, declared that Marx underestimated ‘the irreducible character of … ecological constraints’ and adopted ‘the Biblico-Christian ideology of the conquest of nature.’ At the same time he insisted that Marx tended to reduce ‘the natural history of umanity to the transformative activities of men,’ thereby ignoring nature’s own ‘ecoregulatory activities’ (a criticism first raised by Benton). Finally, Marx is faulted for claiming that ‘nature is the inorganic body of man,’ and ignoring that it is ‘just as well that of the bee or the royal eagle.’

  • 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.

     

  • William Stanley Jevons and The Coal Question

    “William Stanley Jevons and The Coal Question: An Introduction to Jevons’ ‘Of the Economy of Fuel‘,’” [PDF] (coauthored with Brett Clark, Clark listed first), Organization and Environment, vol. 14, no. 1 (March 2001), pp. 93-98. DOI: 10.1177/1086026601141005

    William Stanley Jevons (1835-1882) is best known as a British economist who was one of the pioneers of contemporary neoclassical economic analysis, with its subjective value theory rooted in marginal utility. His applied economics and theoretical insights marked new points of departure for later economist who would more fully shape the neoclassical tradition. But Jevons is also remembered as an early contributor to ecological economics and energetics as a result of his pioneering work The Coal Question (1865-1906), Which raised fundamental issues regarding energy efficiency and the economy of fuel (Martinez-Alier, 2987).