John Bellamy Foster

Tag: PDF

  • Re-working the Work Ethic’ and ‘Democracy at Work

    “Re-working the Work Ethic’ and ‘Democracy at Work,” [PDF], Contemporary Sociology, vol. 16, no. 4 (July 1987), pp. 497-98. (Reviews of Re-working the Work Ethic by Michael Rose and Democracy at Work by Tom Schuller.)

    Although each of these books is concerned with the role of values in the workplace, one belongs to the tradition of anomie, the other of alienation. Michael Rose’s study could only have been written in the contemporary atmosphere of economic crisis and perceived break-down in values. Its purpose is to provide a critical assessment of the commonplace assertion that the current economic difficulties of Britain and the United States can be traced to a decline of the Protestant work ethic; in addition, Rose questions the closely related claims of self-proclaimed “conviction politicians” like Margaret Thatcher that working people are finally beginning to respond to the call for a restoration of Victorian values by adopting a “new realism” in their expectations about labor and its rewards.

  • The United States and the Crisis of World Finance

    The United States and the Crisis of World Finance

    “The United States and the Crisis of World Finance” (John Bellamy Foster) Monthly Review, vol. 38, no. 10 (March 1987), pp. 52-57. DOI: 10.14452/MR-038-10-1987-03_7

    Review of Casino Capitalism by Susan Strange.

     

  • Sweezy, Paul Marlor

    “Sweezy, Paul Marlor,” in The New Palgrave: A Dictionary of Economic Theory and Doctrine (New York: Stockton Press, 1987), vol. 4 (Q-Z), pp. 580-82. DOI: 10.1057/978-1-349-95121-5.

    Harvard-trained economist and co-editor of Monthly Review, Paul Sweezy was among the most influential economists and Marxist intellectuals of the 20th century. His contributions extended over six decades from the early 1930s to the early 1990s. He played a role in the development of imperfect-competition analysis and in debates surrounding the Great Depression. His Theory of Capitalist Development (1942) provided the premier exposition of Marxian economics, after Marx. Monopoly Capital (1966, with Paul Baran) was the most influential economic analysis emanating from the US New Left. With Harry Magdoff he extended this analysis into the 1970s, ’80s and early ’90s.

    Reprints

    • Reprinted in John Eatwell, Murray Milgate and Peter Newman, ed., Marxian Economics (New York: W.W. Norton, 1990), pp. 350-55. Revised, expanded and updated for second edition of New Palgrave, 2007.
  • The Working Class: Is It Dead?

    The Working Class: Is It Dead?

    “The Working Clas: Is it Dead?” (John Bellamy Foster) Monthly Review vol. 38, no. 7 (December 1986), pp.55-64. DOI: 10.14452/MR-038-07-1986-11_7

    Review of Longshoremen: Community and Resistance on the Brooklyn Waterfront by William DiFazio.

    Among those who are convinced of the need for radical social change in the advanced capitalist countries as the world nears the year 2000 there are two broad streams of thought. One of these adheres to the traditional left view that the working class is (almost by definition) the only social force capable of carrying out a genuine socialist transformation within the center of the capitalist system. Although not denying the fact that workers in the developed countries are far from revolutionary at present, those who adhere to this perspective tend to emphasize the continuing radical significance of class struggles on the job, and would find themselves in general agreement with David Montgomery’s stance that when I thought about the question of socialism, and heard people asking whether the working class was an agent for social change, I found it very hard to even relate to the question. If the working class isn’t going to change its own life and make a new world, why bother? To change one boss for another is not something i’m going to go out and put myself on the line for.

  • The Political Economy of the United States Left

    The Political Economy of the United States Left

    “The Political Economy of The United States Left,” Monthly Review, vol. 38, no. 4 (September 1986), pp. 42-50. DOI: 10.14452/MR-038-04-1986-08_5

    Review of Radical Political Economy Since the Sixties: A Sociology of Knowledge Analysis by Paul Attewell.

    Twenty years ago, when Monopoly Capital by Baran and Sweezy first appeared, there were only a handful of Marxian political economists in the U.S. But the escalating invasion of Vietnam, the popular resistance movement that grew up in response, and the worsening conditions of economic crisis that came with the winding down of the war changed all of that. By the mid-1970s radical political economy had grown into a vast and sprawling multi-disciplinary effort, cutting across the boundaries of economics, political science, sociology and history. Yet such rapid growth was not without its contradictions. Indeed, in the 1980s it seems clear that the “new political economy” of the U.S. left is torn by contradictory developments, while showing comparatively few signs at present of further development through contradiction.

     

  • Marxian Economics and the State

    “Marxian Economics and the State,” Science & Society, vol. XLVI, no. 3 (Fall 1982), pp. 257-283.

    How can we account for the somewhat paradoxical fact that certain socialist models of the capitalist economy are often thought to be prone to political degeneration? In essence, there are four divisions among Marxist on the subject of crisis: (1) the falling rate of profit school, (2) disproportionality theory, (3) underconsumptionism, and (4) profit squeeze analysis. All but the first of these have been classified, at one time or another, as vulnerable to reformist contamination. This ceases to be puzzling once one discovers that each of the last three approaches has some resemblance to a distinct strand within establishment economics.

    Reprints:

  • Is Monopoly Capitalism An Illusion?

    “Is Monopoly Capitalism An Illusion?”, Monthly Review vol. 33, no. 4 (September 1981), pp. 36-47. DOI: 10.14452/MR-033-04-1981-08_3

    The theory of capitalism’s monopoly stage has had such a long and distinguished history that one could be excused for thinking of it as an established and non-controversial component of Marxian political economy. Indeed, the “neo-Marxian” theory of secular stagnation which developed out of the analysis of monopoly capital—notably, in the work of Micha Kalecki, Josef Steindl, and Baran and Sweezy—seems to have its direct confirmation in the current crisis of American and world capitalism. Quite recently, some of the “free-thinkers” among liberal economists, such as Lester Thurow, John Kenneth Galbraith, and Robert Heilbroner, have somewhat reluctantly added their voices to the diagnosis that capitalism is facing the possibility of long-term economic stagnation (which is also seen as posing a major theoretical crisis for establishment economics). Yet, at a time when nearly all of the conclusions of monopoly capital theory are finding dramatic support in the winds of historical change, the very notion of monopoly capitalism, and the entire Marxian heritage associated with it, is increasingly being “struck down from the rear” by radical theorists who claim to be more orthodox than Engels or Lenin.

     

  • Sustainability and Metabolic Revolution in the Work of Henri Lefebvre

    “Sustainability and Metabolic Revolution in the Works of Henri Lefebvre” (coauthored with Brian Napoletano, Brett Clark, and Pedro Urquijo, Foster listed third) World (December 2020), pp. 300-317.

    Humanity’s present social–ecological metabolic configuration is not sustainable, and the need for a radical transformation of society to address its metabolic rifts with the rest of nature is increasingly apparent. The work of French Marxist Henri Lefebvre, one of the few thinkers to recognize the significance of Karl Marx’s theory of metabolic rift prior to its rediscovery at the end of the twentieth century, offers valuable insight into contemporary issues of sustainability. His concepts of the urban revolution, autogestion, the critique of everyday life, and total (or metabolic) revolution all relate directly to the key concerns of sustainability. Lefebvre’s work embodies a vision of radical social–ecological transformation aimed at sustainable human development, in which the human metabolic interchange with the rest of nature is to be placed under substantively rational and cooperative control by all its members, enriching everyday life. Other critical aspects of Lefebvre’s work, such as his famous concept of the production of space, his temporal rhythmanalysis, and his notion of the right to the city, all point to the existence of an open-ended research program directed at the core issues of sustainability in the twenty-first century.