To link Marxism and ecological transition may seem at first like trying to bridge two entirely different movements and discourses, each with its own history and logic: one having mainly to do with class relations, the other with the relation between humans and the environment. However, historically socialism has influenced the development of ecological thought […]
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The Ecology of Marxian Political Economy
By John Bellamy Foster on September 1, 2011 in Articles, Other Major Scholarly Journal Articles, Translated
It is no secret today that we are facing a planetary environmental emergency, endangering most species on the planet, including our own, and that this impending catastrophe has its roots in the capitalist economic system. Nevertheless, the extreme dangers that capitalism inherently poses to the environment are often inadequately understood, giving rise to the belief […]
Capitalism and Degrowth
By John Bellamy Foster on January 1, 2011 in Articles, Other Major Scholarly Journal Articles, Translated
[A]lmost four decades after the Club of Rome raised the issue of “the limits to growth,” the economic growth idol of modern society is once again facing a formidable challenge. What is known as “degrowth economics,” associated with the work of Serge Latouche in particular, emerged as a major European intellectual movement in 2008 with […]
The Ecological Rift
Humanity in the twenty-first century is facing what might be described as its ultimate environmental catastrophe: the destruction of the climate that has nurtured human civilization and with it the basis of life on earth as we know it. All ecosystems on the planet are now in decline. Enormous rifts have been driven through the […]
The Dialectic of Social and Ecological Metabolism
One of the most remarkable aspects of Marxist scholarship in recent decades has been the recovery and development of Marx’s argument on social and ecological metabolism, which was crucial to his metabolic terms. As he wrote in Capital: “Labour is … a process between man and nature, a process by which man … mediates, regulates […]
The Financial Power Elite
By John Bellamy Foster on May 1, 2010 in Articles, Other Major Scholarly Journal Articles, Translated
Has the power of financial interests in U.S. society increased? Has Wall Street’s growing clout affected the U.S. state itself? How is this connected to the present crisis? We will argue that the financialization of U.S. capitalism over the last four decades has been accompanied by a dramatic and probably long-lasting shift in the location […]
The Sales Effort and Monopoly Capital
By John Bellamy Foster on April 1, 2009 in Articles, Other Major Scholarly Journal Articles, Translated
On the eightieth anniversary of the 1929 Stock Market Crash that led to the Great Depression, the United States is once again caught in a Great Financial Crisis and deep downturn of an order of magnitude comparable to the 1930s. At the center of this crisis is plunging consumer spending, caused by the destruction of […]
A Failed System
By John Bellamy Foster on March 1, 2009 in Articles, Other Major Scholarly Journal Articles, Translated
In referring in my title here to “A Failed System” I do not of course mean that capitalism as a system is in any sense at an end. Rather I mean by “failed system” a global economic and social order that increasingly exhibits a fatal contradiction between reality and reason—to the point, in our time, […]
A New New Deal under Obama?
By John Bellamy Foster on February 1, 2009 in Articles, Other Major Scholarly Journal Articles, Translated
With U.S. capitalism mired in an economic crisis of a severity that increasingly brings to mind the Great Depression of the 1930s, it should come as no surprise that there are widespread calls for “a new New Deal.” Already the new Obama administration has been pointing to a vast economic stimulus program of up to […]
Financial Implosion and Stagnation
By John Bellamy Foster on December 1, 2008 in Articles, Other Major Scholarly Journal Articles, Translated
“The first rule of central banking,” economist James K. Galbraith wrote recently, is that “when the ship starts to sink, central bankers must bail like hell.” In response to a financial crisis of a magnitude not seen since the Great Depression, the Federal Reserve and other central banks, backed by their treasury departments, have been […]
