John Bellamy Foster

Tag: PDF

  • Market Fetishism and the Attack on Social Reason

    “Market Fetishism and the Attack on Social Reason: A Comment on Hayek, Polanyi and Wainwright,” [PDF], Capitalism, Nature, Socialism, vol. 6, no. 4 (December 1995), pp. 101-107. DOI:10.1080/10455759509358654

    In an age when the rationalist tradition of the Enlightenment is under attack, it is perhaps worth recalling that the arch-conservative economist, Friedrich Hayek, the leading intellectual figure of the free market right, made one of the sharpest attacks ever to be directed at the idea that reason can play a useful role in shaping human affairs. In The Fatal Conceit: The Errors of Socialism, Hayek writes:

    The basic point of my argument — that morals, including, especially, our institutions of property, freedom, and justice, are not a creation of man’s reason but a distinct second endowment conferred on him by cultural evolution — runs counter to the main intellectual outlook of the twentieth century. The influence of rationalism has indeed been so profound and pervasive that, in general, the more intelligent an educated person is, the more likely he or she now is not only to be a rationalist, but also to hold socialist views (regardless

    of whether he or she is sufficiently doctrinal to attach to his or her views any label, including ‘socialist’). The higher we climb up the ladder of intelligence, the more we talk with intellectuals, the more likely we are to encounter socialist convictions. Rationalists tend to be intelligent and intellectual; and intelligent intellectuals tend to be socialists….One’s initial surprise at finding that intelligent people tend to be socialists diminishes when one realizes that, of course, intelligent people will tend to overvalue intelligence, and to suppose that we

    must owe all the advantages and opportunities that our civilization offers to deliberate design rather than to following traditional rules, and likewise to suppose that we can, by exercising our reason, eliminate all remaining undesired features by still more intelligent reflection, and still more appropriate design and “rational coordination” of our undertakings. This leads one to be favorably disposed to the central economic planning and control that lie at the heart of socialism.

  • Ecology and Human Freedom

    “Ecology and Human Freedom”, Monthly Review vol. 47, no. 6 (November 1995), pp. 22-31. DOI: 10.14452/MR-047-06-1995-10_3

    We live at a time when it is reasonable to speak of the possibility of complete ecological destruction, in virtually the same sense that critics of nuclear armaments have often referred to the possibility of complete nuclear destruction. Both human society and the survival of the planet as we know it are now at risk.

     

  • Rationality and Nature

    “Rationality and Nature,” [PDF], Contemporary Sociology, vol. 24, no. 6 (November 1995), pp. 784-86. (Review of Raymond Murphy, Rationality and Nature; Richard Norgaard, Development Betrayed; and Michael Redclift and Ted Benton, ed. Social Theory and the Global Environment.)

    The emergence in the 1980s and ’90s of an increasingly global approach to ecological problems-marked by the ascendance of such issues as the destruction of the ozone layer, global warming, tropical deforestation, and an annual loss of species possibly in the tens of thousands-has altered forever the relation of ecology to the social sciences. Recognizing that the entire planet is increas- ingly subject to ecological depredations and that the time available for addressing these problems is extremely short, social scientists concerned with ecological issues are becoming more aggressive in their demands for the ecological transformation of their disciplines. “Sociology,” as Raymond Murphy declares in the preface to Rationality and Nature, “has been constructed as if nature didn’t matter. It has failed to take the processes of nature into account, perceiving only the social construction of reality. Environmental problems are beginning to send shock waves through this myopic sociological structure. Sociology fabricated as if nature didn’t matter constitutes pre-ecological sociology” (p. x).

  • Nature, Technology and Society

    “Nature, Technology and Society,” [PDF], Science & Society, vol. 59, no. 2 (Summer 1995), pp. 225-28. (Review of Victor Ferkiss, Nature, Technology and Society: Cultural Roots of the Current Environmental Crisis.)

    Nature, Technology and Society is a book that promises much. Purporting to be a study of the cultural roots of todays global environmental crisis, it consists of three parts. The first deals with the history of ideas on nature and technology, beginning with Mesopotamian civilization and ending with the conservation movement in the United States at the beginning of the 20th century. The second part explores ideas on nature and technology that lie outside the mainstream Western tradition, with successive chapters on Marxism, Islam, Nazism, and “the Orient.” The third part deals with contemporary environmental perspectives in the West, including technology critics, ecofeminism, ecotheology, the Greens, and radical environmentalism.

  • Marx and the Environment

    “Marx and the Environment”, Monthly Review vol. 47, no. 3 (July 1995), pp. 108-123. DOI: 10.14452/MR-047-03-1995-07_8

    It has become fashionable in recent years, in the words of one critic, to identify the growth of ecological consciousness with “the current postmodernist interrogation of the metanarrative of the Enlightenment.” Green thinking, we are frequently told, is distinguished by its postmodern, post-Enlightenment perspective. Nowhere is this fashion more evident than in certain criticisms directed at Marx and Engels. Historical materialism, beginning with the work of its two founders, is often said to be one of the main means by which the Baconian notion of the mastery of nature was transmitted to the modern world. The prevalence of this interpretation is indicated by its frequent appearance within the analysis of the left itself. “While Marx and Engels displayed an extraordinary understanding of and sensitivity toward the ‘ecological’ costs of capitalism,” socialist ecofeminist Carolyn Merchant writes, “… they nevertheless bought into the Enlightenment’s myth of progress via the domination of nature.”

    Reprints:
    • Reprinted in John F. Sitton, ed., Marx Today: Selected Works and Recent Debates (New York: Palgrave-Macmillan, 2010), 229-40.
    • Reprinted in Bob Jessop and Russell Wheatley, ed., Marx’s Social and Political Thought, volume 8(London: Taylor and Francis, 1999), 44-56.
    Translations:
    • Translated and published in German as “Marx, der Produktivismus und die Ökologie,” Sozialistische Zeitung, vol. 11, no. 13 (June 27, 1996), pp. 14-19.
    • Spanish translation by Renán Vega Cantor, 1998.

     

  • Global Ecology and the Common Good

    “Global Ecology and the Common Good”, Monthly Review vol. 46, no. 9 (February 1995), pp. 1-10. DOI: 10.14452/MR-046-09-1995-02_1

    Over the course of the twentieth century human population has increased more than threefold and gross world product perhaps twentyfold. Such expansion has placed increasing pressure on the ecology of the planet. Everywhere we look—in the atmosphere, oceans, watersheds, forests, soil, etc.—it is now clear that rapid ecological decline is setting in.

    Reprints:
    • Kevin Danaher, ed., Corporations are Gonna Eat Your Mama: Globalization and the Downsizing of the American Dream (Monroe, Maine: Common Courage Press, 1996), pp. 133-41.
    • William F. Grover and Joseph G. Peschek, ed., Voices of Dissent: Critical Readings in American Politics (New York: Addison-Wesley, 1999, 2003), pp. 33-37.
    Translations:
    • Persian translation in Paul M. Sweezy, et. al., Capitalism and the Environment (Tehran: Digar Publishing House, 2008).

     

  • Is There an Allocation Problem?: A Comment on Murray Smith’s Analysis of the Falling Profit Rate

    “Is There an Allocation Problem?: A Comment on Murray Smith’s Analysis of the Falling Profit Rate,” [PDF], (co-authored with Michael Dawson, Foster listed first), Science & Society, vol. 58, no. 3 (Fall 1994), pp. 315-24.

    In the Fall 1993 issue of Science & Society the editors observed that Murray Smith’s articles on the falling rate of profit, which formed the opening contribution to that issue, constituted an important new study that “should be compared with the work of [Thomas] Weisskopf, [Edward] Wolff and [Fred] Moseley’- all of whom have carried his empirical results not so much with the work of these radical economists (two of whom he never mentioned) as with the traditional thought that he classified as ‘underconsumptionist,” associated with the work of Paul Baran, Paul Sweezy, Joseph Phillips, Harry Magdoff, and the present authors. Indeed, Smith contended that a recent statistical assessment of the economic surplus that we authored (Dawson and foster, 1991; Dawson and Foster 1992) contradicted the main theoretical thrust of the tradition we represent, demonstrating that “the (profitability) crises of the 1970’s and 1980’s cannot be adequately explained on the basis of an underconsumptionist mode of analysis” (Smith, 1993, 282).

  • Multiculturalism and the American Revolution of 1776

    Multiculturalism and the American Revolution of 1776

    “The Balance of Injustice and the War for Independence; Multiculturalism and the American Revolution of 1776: A Response to David Lyons,” Monthly Review vol. 45, no. 11 (April 1994), pp. 27-37. DOI: 10.14452/MR-045-11-1994-04_2

    Many Americans of European ancestry, like me, now see the European colonization of the Western Hemisphere as invasion, conquest, and genocide. Many have grave misgivings about the constitutional settlement that protected trade in slaves, committed government to helping slave catchers, and gave extra votes in Congress to slave owners. The moral perceptions that underlie those reappraisals oblige us to go further. There is good reason to question whether the American Revolution—the British colonies’ fight for freedom from the Crown—was morally justifiable.

     

  • A Terrible Omission

    “A Terrible Omission,” (John Bellamy Foster) Monthly Review, vol. 45, no. 7 (December 1993), pp.61-64. DOI: 10.14452/MR-045-07-1993-11_8

    Review of Marx’s Capital: A Student Edition, By C.J. Arthur.

     

  • ‘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).