John Bellamy Foster

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  • Paul Marlor Sweezy 1910-

    “Paul Marlor Sweezy 1910–” in Biographical Dictionary of Dissenting Economists, edited by Philip Arestis and Malcolm Sawyer (Brookfield, Vermont: Edward Elgar Publishing, 1992, pp. 562-70. [PDF]

    Editions

    • Revised and expanded for 2000 edition.

  • The Tendency of the Surplus to Rise, 1963–1988

    “The Tendency of the Surplus to Rise, 1963–1988” [PDF], (co-authored, second author with Michael Dawson), in John B. Davis, ed. The Economic Surplus in Advanced Economies (Brookfield, Vermont: Edward Elgar Publishing Company, 1992), pp. 42-70.

    In the increasingly universal monopoly-capitalist economy and culture of the late twentieth century, people no longer need what they want or want what they need. Wants are artificially manufactured while the most desperate needs of innumerable individuals remain unfulfilled. Although labor productivity has steadily risen, the overall efficiency and rationality of society has in many ways declined. Indeed, it is almost impossible to arrive at any other conclusion if one considers the lavish office structures in cities like New York, Dallas, Atlanta, and Los Angeles, where employees use the most technologically advanced means to “develop” yet another laundry detergent, television commercial, or leveraged buyout, while on the ground below large numbers of people lack decent housing, food, clothing, medical care, and education; if one considers automated assembly plants existing in the same social space as millions of unemployed, partially employed, “discouraged,” and poorly paid workers; or if one contemplates what it means to launch still another aircraft carrier, the total costs of which are equal to half the annual federal budget for elementary and secondary education.

    Reprints

  • Paul Marlor Sweezy 1910–

    “Paul Marlor Sweezy 1910–” in Biographical Dictionary of Dissenting Economists, edited by Philip Arestis and Malcolm Sawyer (Brookfield, Vermont: Edward Elgar Publishing, 1992, pp. 562-70.

    Revised and expanded for 2000 edition.

  • Capitalism and the Ancient Forest

    “Capitalism and the Ancient Forest,” Monthly Review, vol. 43, no. 5 (October 1991), pp. 1-16. DOI: 10.14452/MR-043-05-1991-09_1

    The battle for the old growth forest of the Pacific Northwest, which gained widespread national attention with the designation of the northern spotted owl as a threatened species in June 1990, can be thought of as a complex set of social and ecological problems traceable to a single cause: the continuing failure on the part of timber capital and the federal government to see either the forest for the trees or the trees for billions of board feet of standing timber. By the late 1980s this environmental failure had reached such tragic proportions that the Pacific Northwest forest ecosystem, one of the most important natural environments on the face of the earth—encompassing many of the world’s oldest and largest trees, storing more carbon per unit area than any other terrestrial ecosystem, and supporting the largest or second largest accumulations of living matter per unit area to be found anywhere, including numerous rare and endangered species—was increasingly being threatened with annihilation.

    Translations:
    • Persian translation in Paul M. Sweezy, et. al., Capitalism and the Environment (Tehran: Digar Publishing House, 2008).

     

  • Two Ages of Waterfront Labor

    “Two Ages of Waterfront Labor,” [PDF] Labour/Le Travail, no. 26 (Fall 1990), pp. 1-9. (Review of Bruce Nelson, Workers on the Waterfront and William Finlay, Work on the Waterfront.)

    There are two crucial watersheds in the modem history of waterfront labour (1) the successful struggle, beginning with the Pacific Coast revolts of the 1930s, to set-up union-dominated hiring halls; and (2) the technological revolution in cargo handling and ship design associated with the introduction of containers in the 1960s and 70s. Bruce Nelson’s historical treatment of waterfront labour focuses on the first of these watersheds, with particular emphasis on the interactions between seamen and longshoremen during the “syndicalist renaissance” of the late 1930s. William Finlay’s sociological study is concerned with the effects of the second watershed — the technological revolution in cargo handling—on skill levels, job control and status hierarchies within the longshore labour express.

  • Marxism and the Uno School

    Marxism and the Uno School

    “Marxism and the Uno School,” (John Bellamy Foster) Monthly Review, vol. 41, no. 8 (January 1990), pp. 51-55. DOI: 10.14452/MR-041-08-1990-01_6

    Review of The Basic Theory of Capitalism: The Forms and Substance of the Capitalist Economy by Makoto Itoh.
    In an 1859 review of Marx’s Contribution to a Critique if Political Economy, Engels provided the following description of the economic method of historical materialism, frequently labeled the “logical- historical method”:

    [T]he critique of economics could .. , be exercised in two ways: historically or logically …. History moves often in leaps and bounds and in a zigzag line, and as this would have to be followed throughout, it would mean not only that a considerable amount of material of slight importance would have to be included, but also that the train of thought would frequently have to be interrupted; it would, moreover, be impossible to write the history of economy without that of bourgeois society, and the task would thus become immense, because of the absence of all preliminary studies. The logical method of approach was therefore the only suitable one. This, however, is indeed nothing but the historical method, only stripped of the historical form and diverting chance occurrences …. [W]ith this method the logical exposi- tion need by no means be confined to the purely abstract sphere. On the contra?, it requires historical illustration and continuous contact with reality.

     

  • The Spirit of ’68

    “The Spirit of ’68” (John Bellamy Foster) Monthly Review, vol. 41, no. 7 (December 1989), pp.47-54. DOI: 10.14452/MR-041-07-1989-11_7

    Review of Nineteen Sixty-Eight: A Personal Memoir by Hans Koning.

     

  • Restructuring the World Economy in a Time of Lasting Crisis

    Restructuring the World Economy in a Time of Lasting Crisis

    “Restructuring the World Economy in a Time of Lasting Crisis,” (John Bellamy Foster) Monthly Review, vol. 41, no. 1 (May 1989), pp. 46-55. DOI: 10.14452/MR-041-01-1989-05_5

    Review of Restructuring the World Economy by Joyce Kolko.

     

  • Monthly Review

    “Monthly Review,” in Encyclopedia of the American Left, edited by Mari Jo Buhle, Paul Buhle and Dan Georgakas (New York: Garland, 1989; also included in second edition published by Oxford University Press, 1998), pp. 483-85 (500 words.)

    The first comprehensive reference book on radicalism in the United States from the Civil War to the present, this work fills serious gaps in basic reference materials on American politics, labor, and culture by focusing on radicals rather than reformers. Merging previously unutilized sources such as oral history with the wealth of insight available from feminist, ethnic, racial studies and popular culture analysis as well as traditional scholarly approaches, their efforts retrieved a hitherto inaccesible history.

  • 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.