John Bellamy Foster

Tag: PDF

  • The Environmental Conditions of the Working Class: An Introduction to Selections from Fredrick Engles’ The Condition of the Working Class in England in 1844

    “The Environmental Conditions of the Working Class: An Introduction to Selections from Frederick Engels’ The Condition of the Working Class in England in 1844,” (coauthored with Brett Clark, Clark listed first), Organization & Environment, vol. 19, no. 3 (September 2006), pp. 375-88. DOI: 10.1177/1086026606292483

    Both urban sociology in general and urban environmental justice studies began with Frederick Engels’s seminal work “The Condition of the Working Class in England in 1844“. Engels provided a walking tour of the environmental conditions in the manufacturing establishments and slums of the factory towns of England, together with a similar view of London. He addressed conditions of widespread pollution and helped lay the grounds for the development of social epidemiology. He connected this to his “Outlines of a Critique of Political Economy” that influenced his even more famous collaborator Karl Marx. For Engels, “The Condition of the Working Class in England in 1844″ was to be the first of a series of connected analyses of ecology that stretched through more than half a century and included “The Housing Question” and “Dialectics of Nature,” making him one of the most important but underappreciated contributors to the development of environmental thought.

  • Aspects of Class in the United States

    Aspects of Class in the United States

    “Aspects of Class in the United States: An Introduction“, Monthly Review, vol. 58, no. 3 (July-August 2006), pp. 1-5. DOI: 10.14452/MR-058-03-2006-07_1

    If class war is continual in capitalist society, there is no doubt that in recent decades in the United States it has taken a much more virulent form. In a speech delivered at New York University in 2004 Bill Moyers pointed out that the effects of this relentless offensive by the vested interests against the rest of the society are increasingly evident. In 2005 the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal each published a series of articles focusing on class in the United States.

    Reprints:
    • Reprinted in Michael Yates, ed., More Unequal: Aspects of Class in the United States (New York: Monthly Review Press, 2007), pp. 15-18.
    Translations:
    • Translated in Monthly Review, Turkish edition, no. 9 (Istanbul: Kalkedon, 2006).

     

  • A Warning to Africa

    A Warning to Africa

    “A Warning to Africa: The New U.S. Imperial Grand Strategy“, Monthly Review vol. 58, no. 2 (June 2006), pp.1-12. DOI: 10.14452/MR-058-02-2006-06_1

    Imperialism is constant for capitalism. But it passes through various phases as the system evolves. At present the world is experiencing a new age of imperialism marked by a U.S. grand strategy of global domination. One indication of how things have changed is that the U.S. military is now truly global in its operations with permanent bases on every continent, including Africa, where a new scramble for control is taking place focused on oil.

    Reprints:
    • Reprinted in Itinerários (Portugal), 2010. Reprinted in Pambazuka News: World Forum for Social Justice in Africa, www.pambazuka.org published by Fahamu in Oxford, U.K.
    Translations:
    • Chinese translation by Qi Jianjun, Social Sciences Abroad (China), no. 3, 2009.
    • French translation in Mondialisation.ca, March 13, 2007.
    • Arabic translation in Donia-Alwatan (Gaza-Palestine), www.alwatanvoice.com, January 15, 2007.
    • Korean translation in Monthly Review Korean Edition, no. 1 published by Philmac Publishing, Seoul Korea, May 2007, 40-57.
    • Italian version appears at Arianna Editrice.it, March 13, 2007.

     

  • The Household Debt Bubble

    The Household Debt Bubble

    “The Household Debt Bubble“, Monthly Review 58, no. 1 (May 2006), pp.1-11. DOI: 10.14452/MR-058-01-2006-05_1

    It is an inescapable truth of the capitalist economy that the uneven, class-based distribution of income is a determining factor of consumption and investment. How much is spent on consumption goods depends on the income of the working class. Workers necessarily spend all or almost all of their income on consumption. Thus for households in the bottom 60 percent of the income distribution in the United States, average personal consumption expenditures equaled or exceeded average pre-tax income in 2003; while the fifth of the population just above them used up five-sixths of their pre-tax income (most of the rest no doubt taken up by taxes) on consumption.1 In contrast, those high up on the income pyramid-the capitalist class and their relatively well-to-do hangers-on-spend a much smaller percentage of their income on personal consumption. The overwhelming proportion of the income of capitalists (which at this level has to be extended to include unrealized capital gains) is devoted to investment.

    Translations:
    • Chinese translation by Wang Shui in The Journal of Society and Science (China), 2006.

     

  • West Coast Longshore Strikes, 1923 and 1935

    “West Coast Longshore Strikes, 1923 and 1935,” The Canadian Encyclopedia (Edmonton: Hurtig, 1988), 200 words.

    West Coast Longshore Strikes, 1923 and 1935 On 8 Oct 1923 the 1400 members of the International Longshoremen’s Assn (ILA) in Vancouver struck for higher wages. The Shipping Federation imported strikebreakers, housed in the CPR ship Empress of Japan, while an armed launch and 350 armed men guarded the waterfront. The longshoremen gave up on Dec 10. Refusing further dealings with the ILA, the Shipping Federation took over the dispatch of the work force, formerly controlled by the union, and set up a company union, the Vancouver and District Waterfront Workers Assn. This evolved into a genuine union, and on 4 June 1935 became involved in the strike-lockout of 1935, resulting from union struggles to regain control of dispatch and to unite with other longshoremen in the region. The conflict led to the “Battle of the Ballentyne Pier” on June 18, when mounted police charged 1000 longshoremen. Following the imprisonment of union leaders, the strike ended on Dec 9.

  • The New Geopolitics of Empire

    The New Geopolitics of Empire

    “The New Geopolitics of Empire,” Monthly Review, vol. 57, no. 8 (January 2006), pp.1-18. DOI: 10.14452/MR-057-08-2006-01_1

    Today’s imperial ideology proclaims that the United States is the new city on the hill, the capital of an empire dominating the globe. Yet the U.S. global empire, we are nonetheless told, is not an empire of capital; it has nothing to do with economic imperialism as classically defined by Marxists and others. The question then arises: How is this new imperial age conceived by those promoting it?

    Translations:

     

  • Organizing Ecological Revolution

    “Organizing Ecological Revolution,” Monthly Review, vol. 57, no. 5 (October 2005), pp.1-10. DOI: 10.14452/MR-057-05-2005-09_1

    My subject—organizing ecological revolution—has as its initial premise that we are in the midst of a global environmental crisis of such enormity that the web of life of the entire planet is threatened and with it the future of civilization.

    Reprints:
    • Reprinted in John Jermier, ed., Corporate Environmentalism and the Greening of Organizations (Sage Publications, March 2013). Reprinted in Jane Kelley and Sheila Malone, ed., Ecosocialism or Barbarism (London: Socialist Resistance, 2006, pp. 56-67).
    Translations:
    • Persian translation in Paul M. Sweezy, et. al., Capitalism and the Environment (Tehran: Digar Publishing House, 2008).
    • Greek translation published in Monthly Review (Greek edition, Athens), no. 2 (2005), pp. 11-23.
    • Spanish translation in Globalización, September 2005.
    • Portuguese translation at
      http://cai.xtreemhost.com/cdc-galiza/foster.htm.
    • Turkish translation in Monthly Review, Turkish edition (Istanbul: Kalkedon, 2008), pp. 183-93.

     

  • The Great Financial Crisis

    “The Great Financial Crisis—Three Years On,” (coauthored with Fred Magdoff), Monthly Review vol. 62, no. 5 (October 2010), pp. 52-55. DOI: 10.14452/MR-062-05-2010-09_5

    The Great Financial Crisis began in the summer of 2007 and three years later, despite a putative “recovery,” it is still having profound effects in the United States, Europe, and in much of the world. Austerity is being forced on working people in many countries. Matters are especially difficult in Greece, a country that is being compelled by the demands of bankers, including the International Monetary Fund, to squeeze its workers in return for loans from abroad to help pay down government debts. Official unemployment in the United States is still around 10 percent, and real unemployment is much higher. An unprecedented 44 percent of the officially unemployed have been without work for over six months. A record number of people are receiving government food assistance as well as meals and groceries from charities. Many U.S. states and cities, facing large shortfalls in their budgets due to falling tax revenues, are cutting jobs and reducing funding for schools and social programs.

    Translations:
    • English language version of preface to the Bangla edition of The Great Financial Crisis.
    • Spanish translation by Alberto Nadal in Viento Sur, November 11, 2010.
    • Spanish language translation by Alberto Nadal in El Diario Internacional (December 2010).
    • Italian version published by Attac Italia, January 7, 2011, at http://www.italia.attac.org/spip/spip.php?article3525.
    • French translation printed by Le Comité pour l’Annulation de la Dette du Tiers Monde, December 29, 2010.
    • Galician translation published by Avantar, December 21, 2010, http://www.galizacig.com/avantar/autor/john-bellamy-foster-e-fred-magdoff.
    • Catalan translation published by En Lluita, http://www.enlluita.org/site/?q=node/3150.
    • Turkish translation appears in Kapitalizmin Finansal Krizi, edited by Prof. Dr. Abdullah Ersoy (Ankara, Turkey: Imaj Publishing, 2011), 330pp.

     

  • Naked Imperialism

    “Naked Imperialism,” Monthly Review, vol. 57, no. 4 (September 2005), pp. 1-11. DOI: 10.14452/MR-057-04-2005-08_1

    The global actions of the United States since September 11, 2001, are often seen as constituting a “new militarism” and a “new imperialism.” Yet, neither militarism nor imperialism is new to the United States, which has been an expansionist power—continental, hemispheric, and global—since its inception. What has changed is the nakedness with which this is being promoted, and the unlimited, planetary extent of U.S. ambitions.

    Translations:
    • Translated in Monthly Review, Turkish edition (Istanbul: Kalkedon, March 2006).

     

  • The End of Rational Capitalism

    The End of Rational Capitalism

    “The End of Rational Capitalism,” Monthly Review, vol. 56, no. 10 (March 2005), pp. 1-13. DOI: 10.14452/MR-056-10-2005-03_1

    The twentieth century’s dominant myth was that of a “rational capitalism.” The two economists who did the most to promote this idea were John Maynard Keynes and Joseph Schumpeter. Both were responding to the great historical crisis of capitalism manifested in the First World War, the Great Depression, and the Second World War. In the wake of the greatest set of horrors the world had ever seen, accompanied also by the rise of an alternative, contending system in the Soviet Union, it was necessary for capitalism following the Second World War to reestablish itself ideologically as well as materially. In terms of the ideological requirement, the two economists who accomplished this most effectively were Keynes and Schumpeter—not simply because they epitomized the best in bourgeois economic ideology, but also because they were the leading representatives of bourgeois economic science. What they set out in their analyses were the requirements of a rational capitalism and at least the hope that these requirements would be achieved.

    Translations: