John Bellamy Foster

Tag: PDF

  • Introduction to John Evelyn’s Fumifugium

    “Introduction to John Evelyn’s Fumifugium,” [PDF], Organization and Environment, vol. 12, no. 2 (June 1999), pp. 184-86.

    John Evelyn (1620-1706) is perhaps best known today as one of the greatest diarist of the 17th-century England. He is also remembered, however, as one the figures behind the formation of the Royal Society of London in 1662 and the greatest proponent of conservation in his age. In his Sylva, Or a Discourse of Forest-Trees and the Propagation of Timber in His Majesties Dominions (1664), the first official publication of the Royal Society (a work that went through four editions in Evelyn’s lifetime), he complained of the “prodigious havoc” wreaked on the English forests by the demands of shipping, glasswork, iron furnaces, and the like. He observed,

    This devaluation is now become so Epidemical, that unless some favorable expedient offer it self, and a way be seriously, and speedily resolv’d upon, for the future repair of this important defect, one of the most glorious, and considerable Bulwarks of this Nation, will, within a short time be totally wanting to it. (Evelyn,1664, pp. 1-2)

  • Is Overcompetition the Problem?

    Is Overcompetition the Problem?

    “Is Overcompetition the Problem?,” [PDF] (John Bellamy Foster) Monthly Review vol. 51, no. 2 (June 1999), pp. 28-37. DOI: 10.14452/MR-051-02-1999-06_5

    Review of The Economics of Global Turbulence: A Special Report on the World Economy, 1950-98 by Robert Brenner.

    It is tempting perhaps to attribute all the problems of capitalism to excessive competition. After all, capitalism is generally presented within contemporary ideology as a system which is nothing more than a set of competitive relations governed by the market. Is it not possible then that the economic contradictions of capitalism, and indeed the present world crisis, can be explained in terms of the globalization of competition which now knows no bounds, and is undermining all fixed positions, resulting in a kind of free fall? This seems to be the view of the distinguished Marxist historian and social theorist Robert Brenner in his ambitious attempt to account for the present global economic turbulence.

     

  • Contradictions in the Universalization of Capitalism

    Contradictions in the Universalization of Capitalism

    “Contradictions in the Universalization of Capitalism,” Monthly Review, vol. 50, no. 11 (April 1999), pp. 29-39. DOI: 10.14452/MR-050-11-1999-04_3

    A central, perhaps the central, idea of economic liberalism has always been that a market society organized on the basis of individual self-interest is the natural state of humankind, and that such a society is bound to prosper—through an almost providential invisible hand—provided that no external barriers stand in its way. In this view all of human history is nothing more than the gradual freeing up of market relations—the release of the universal and rational forms of society only waiting to be let loose. “In most accounts of capitalism,” Ellen Meiksins Wood has critically observed, “there really is no beginning. Capitalism seems always to be there, somewhere; and it only needs to be released from its chains—for instance, from the fetters of feudalism—to be allowed to grow and mature.”

     

  • Rebuilding Marxism

    Rebuilding Marxism

    “Rebuilding Marxism,” (John Bellamy Foster) Monthly Review vol. 50, no. 10 (March 1999), pp. 38-45. DOI: 10.14452/MR-050-10-1999-03_4

    Review of Reinventing Marxism by Howard Sherman.

     

  • A Classic of Our Time

    “A Classic of Our Time: Labor and Monopoly Capital After a Quarter-Century,” Monthly Review, vol. 50, no. 8 (January 1999), pp. 12-18. DOI: 10.14452/MR-050-08-1999-01_2

    Three years ago, on the occasion of its silver anniversary, Contemporary Sociology, the American Sociological Association’s book review journal, published a special section on the ten most influential books of the previous twenty-five years. Each book chosen for this honor by Contemporary Sociology‘s editorial board was reassessed by a notable figure in the field. One of the books selected was Harry Braverman’s Labor and Monopoly Capital. The sociologist who wrote on Braverman’s book was Michael Burawoy.

     

  • Ecology

    “Ecology,” 1999 in Encyclopedia of Historians and Historical Writing, edited by Kelly Boyd (London: Fitzroy Dearborn, 1999), 1000 words.

  • Mathus’ Essay on Population at Age 200

    “Mathus’ Essay on Population at Age 200: A Marxian View,” Monthly Review, vol. 50, no. 7 (December 1998), pp. 1-18. DOI: 10.14452/MR-050-07-1998-11_1

    Since it was first published 200 years ago in 1798, no other single work has constituted such a bastion of bourgeois thought as Thomas Malthus’ Essay on the Principle of Population. No other work was more hated by the English working class, nor so strongly criticized by Marx and Engels. Although the Malthusian principle of population in its classical form was largely vanquished intellectually by the mid-nineteenth century, it continued to reemerge in new forms. In the late nineteenth century it took on new life as a result of the Darwinian revolution and the rise of social Darwinism. And in the late twentieth century Malthusianism reemerged once again in the form of neo-Malthusian ecology.

     

  • Introduction to the Hungry for Profit Issue

    Introduction to the Hungry for Profit Issue

    “Introduction to the Hungry for Profit Issue,” [PDF] (John Bellamy Foster, Fred Magdoff and Frederick H. Buttel) Monthly Review, vol. 50, no. 3 (July 1998), pp. 1-13. DOI: 10.14452/MR-050-03-1998-07_1

    The conventional view that agriculture was displaced by industry in two stages—by the industrial revolution in the late ninteenth century, and as a result of the rise of the agribusiness system in the mid-twentieth century—has left many observers of the contemporary political economy with the impression that to deal with agriculture is essentially to focus on political-economic history rather than contemporary political economy. Nothing could be further from the truth. The purpose of this special issue of MR is to help compensate for the neglect that agriculture has often suffered in political-economic literature of the late twentieth century. In so doing we will continue with a line of argument that was introduced in MR more than a decade ago in the July-August 1986 special issue Science, Technology, and Capitalism, edited by Steffie Woolhandler and David Himmelstein, which included landmark essays on U.S. agriculture and agricultural research by Richard Lewontin and Jean-Pierre Berlan.

     

  • Liebig, Marx and the Depletion of the Natural Fertility of the Soil

    “Liebig, Marx and the Depletion of the Natural Fertility of the Soil: Implications for Sustainable Agriculture,” (co-authored with Fred Magdoff, Foster listed first), Monthly Review vol. 50, no. 3 (July 1998), pp. 32-45. DOI: 10.14452/MR-050-03-1998-07_3

    During the period 1830-1870 the depletion of the natural fertility of the soil through the loss of soil nutrients was the central ecological concern of capitalist society in both Europe and North America (only comparable to concerns over the loss of forests, the growing pollution of the cities, and the Malthusian specter of overpopulation). This period saw the growth of “guano imperialism” as nations scoured the globe for natural fertilizers; the emergence of modem soil science; the gradual introduction of synthetic fertilizers; and the formation of radical proposal for the development of a sustainable agriculture, aimed ultimately at the elimination of the antagonism between town and country.

     

  • Science in a Skeptical Age

    Science in a Skeptical Age

    “Science in a Skeptical Age,” Monthly Review, vol. 50, no. 2 (June 1998), pp. 39-52.

    Review of; Science and the Retreat From Reason by John Gillott and Manjit Kumar.
    DOI: 10.14452/MR-050-02-1998-06_4

    We live in a skeptical age. All of the basic concepts of the Enlightenment, including progress, science and reason are now under attack. At the center of this skepticism lie persistent doubts about science itself, emanating both from within and from without the scientific community. Recent titles by scientists give an idea of the extent of the crisis in confidence within science: Science: The End of the Frontier? (1991) by Nobel prize winner Leon Lederman; The End of Certainty (1996) by Nobel laureate Ilya Prigogine; and The End of Science (1996) by Scientific American writer John Horgan.