John Bellamy Foster

Tag: Robert W. McChesney

  • Capitalism, the Absurd System

    Capitalism, the Absurd System

    “Capitalism, the Absurd System: A View from the United States“, (coauthored with Robert W. McChesney, McChesney listed first), Monthly Review vol. 62, no. 2 (June 2010), pp. 1-16. DOI: 10.14452/MR-062-02-2010-06_1

    Perhaps nothing points so clearly to the alienated nature of politics in the present day United States as the fact that capitalism, the economic system that drives the society, is effectively off-limits to critical review or discussion. To the extent that capitalism is mentioned by politicians or pundits, it is regarded in hushed tones of reverence for the genius of the market, its unquestioned efficiency, and its providential authority. One might quibble with a corrupt and greedy CEO or a regrettable loss of jobs, but the superiority and necessity of capitalism—or, more likely, its euphemism, the so-called “free market system”—is simply beyond debate or even consideration. There are, of course, those who believe that the system needs more regulation and that there is room for all sorts of fine-tuning. Nevertheless, there is no questioning of the basics.

     

  • Listen Keynesians, It’s the System! Response to Palley

    Listen Keynesians, It’s the System! Response to Palley

    “Listen Keynesians, It’s the System! Response to Palley” (John Bellamy Foster and Robert W. McChesney) Monthly Review 61, no. 11 (April 2010), pp.44-56. DOI: 10.14452/MR-061-11-2010-04_3

    In an article entitled “Listen, Keynesians!,” published in January 1983 in Monthly Review, Harry Magdoff and Paul Sweezy argued that the radical break that John Maynard Keynes’s General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money (1936) represented for orthodox economics lay in the fact that “For the first time the possibility was frankly faced, indeed placed at the very center of the analysis, that breakdowns of the accumulation process, the heart and soul of economic growth, might be built into the system and non-self correcting.”… In November 1982, only two months before the publication of “Listen, Keynesians!,” Magdoff and Sweezy had pointed out in “Financial Instability: Where Will it All End?” that the question as to whether a major financial crisis (on the scale of 1929) could propel the economy into a deep downturn, approaching the scale of the Great Depression of the 1930s, was still an open one. They were responding here to Hyman Minsky, a proud Keynesian (albeit with socialist leanings), “whose views,” they claimed, were “especially worthy of attention precisely because over the years he has been the American economist who has done more than any other to focus on the crucially important destabilizing role of the financial system in advanced capitalist countries.”

     

  • Monopoly-Finance Capital and the Paradox of Accumulation

    Monopoly-Finance Capital and the Paradox of Accumulation

    “Monopoly-Finance Capital and the Paradox of Accumulation“, (coauthored with Robert W. McChesney, Foster listed first), Monthly Review vol. 61, no. 5 (October 2009), pp. 1-20.  DOI: 10.14452/MR-061-05-2009-09_1

    This month marks the eightieth anniversary of the 1929 Stock Market Crash that precipitated the Great Depression of the 1930s. Ironically, this comes at the very moment that the capitalist system is celebrating having narrowly escaped falling into a similar abyss. The financial crash and the decline in output a year ago, following the collapse of Lehman Brothers, was as steep as at the beginning of the Great Depression. “For a while,” Paul Krugman wrote in the New York Times in August, “key economic indicators — world trade, world industrial production, even stock prices—were falling as fast or faster than they did in 1929-30. But in the 1930s the trend lines kept heading down. This time, the plunge appears to be ending after just one terrible year.” Big government, through the federal bailout and stimulus, as well as the shock-absorber effects of the continued payouts of unemployment and Social Security benefits, Medicare, etc., slowed the descent and helped the economy to level off, albeit at a point well below previous output.

    Reprints:
    • Reprinted in John F. Sitton, ed., Marx Today: Selected Works and Recent Debates (New York: Palgrave-Macmillan, 2010), 185-200.
    Translations:
    • Galician translation by Xosé Díaz Díaz in Terra e Tempo (no. 2, 2010), http://www.terraetempo.net.
    • Arabic translation by Thamer Al-Saffar, Civilized Dialogue, May 24, 2010, http://www.ahewar.org.
    • Chinese transltion in Foreign Theoretical Trends,2010.
    • Turkish translations appears in Kapitalizmin Finansal Krizi, edited by Prof. Dr. Abdullah Ersoy (Ankara, Turkey: Imaj Publishing, 2011), 330pp; and in Monthly Review, Turkish edition, 26 (Istanbul: Kalkedon Publications, March 2011).
    • Bangla translation in Bangla Monthly Review, vol. 2. no. 2 (March 2010). Translation by Farooque Chowdhury.

     

  • The Penal State in an Age of Crisis

    The Penal State in an Age of Crisis

    “The Penal State in an Age of Crisis“, (coauthored with Hannah Holleman, Robert W. McChesney, and R. Jamil Jonna, Foster listed third), Monthly Review vol. 61, no. 2 (June 2009), pp. 1-17. DOI: 10.14452/MR-061-02-2009-06_1

    As a rule, crime and social protest rise in periods of economic crisis in capitalist society. During times of economic and social instability, the well-to-do become increasingly fearful of the general population, more disposed to adopt harsh measures to safeguard their positions at the apex of the social pyramid. The slowdown in the economic growth rate of U.S. capitalism beginning in the late 1960s and early 1970s—converging with the emergence of radical social protest around the same period—was accompanied by a rapid rise in public safety spending as a share of civilian government expenditures. So significant was this shift that we can speak of a crowding out of welfare state spending (health, education, social services) by penal state spending (law enforcement, courts, and prisons) in the United States during the last third of a century.

    Reprints:
    Translations:
    • Spanish translation in El Aromo, no. 50/Razón y Revolucion (Argentina, 2009), http://www.razonyrevolucion.org.
    • Bangla translation in Bangla Monthly Review, vol. 2, no. 1 (December 2009). Translated by Farooque Chowdhury.
    • Turkish translation in Monthly Review, Turkish edition no. 22 (Istanbul: Kalkedon), pp. 29-48.

     

  • The Sales Effort and Monopoly Capital

    The Sales Effort and Monopoly Capital

    “The Sales Effort and Monopoly Capital“, (coauthored with Robert W. McChesney, Inger L. Stole, and Hannah Holleman, Foster listed second), Monthly Review vol. 60, no. 11 (April 2009), pp. 1-23. DOI: 10.14452/MR-060-11-2009-04_1

    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 household finance as a result of decades of wage stagnation and the piling up of debt. Consumer spending in today’s economy, dominated by giant firms, is significantly dependent on the sales effort, i.e., marketing as a whole, with advertising as its most conspicuous form. But the sales effort is also ebbing in the crisis, contributing to the general decline. So integral is the sales effort to the regime of monopoly capital that one cannot be understood without the other.

    Translations:
    • Portuguese translation in Monthly Review, Portuguese-Language Edition, April 2009.
    • Translated in Monthly Review, Turkish edition, no. 26 (Istanbul: Kalkedon, March 2011).

     

  • A New New Deal under Obama?

    A New New Deal under Obama?

    “A New New Deal under Obama?“, (coauthored with Robert W. McChesney, Foster listed first), Monthly Review, vol. 60, no. 9 (February 2009), pp. 1-11. DOI: 10.14452/MR-060-09-2009-02_1

    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 $850 billion over two years aimed at lifting the nation out of the deep economic slump.

    Reprints:
    Translations:
    • French translation in Etudes Marxistes, no. 86, December 1, 2009.
    • Spanish translation in Monthly Review, Selecciones en Castellano, no. 10, 131-40.
    • Galician translation published by Avantar, February 25, 2009.
    • Portuguese translation by Zion Edições in Association Resistir.Info , February 1, 2009, http://reistir.info.
    • Korean translation by Social Policy Committee, People’s Solidarity for Social Progress, http://www.pssp.org/main/index.php
    • Bangla translation in Bangla Monthly Review, vol. 1, no. 3, June 2009. Translated by Pachu Ray.
    • Turkish translation in Monthly Review, Turkish edition, no. 21 (Istanbul: Kalkedon, 2009), pp. 63-74.

     

  • The U.S. Imperial Triangle and Military Spending

    The U.S. Imperial Triangle and Military Spending

    “The U.S. Imperial Triangle and Military Spending“, (coauthored with Hannah Holleman and Robert W. McChesney, Foster listed first), Monthly Review, vol. 60, no. 5 (October 2008), pp. 1-19. DOI: 10.14452/MR-060-05-2008-09_1

    Note: due to an unfortunate error in the publication of the Turkish edition, in which the bylines of two different articles were confused, the authors are mistakenly listed as Richard York, Brett Clark, and John Bellamy Foster.

    The United States is unique today among major states in the degree of its reliance on military spending, and its determination to stand astride the world, militarily as well as economically. No other country in the post–Second World War world has been so globally destructive or inflicted so many war fatalities. Since 2001, acknowledged U.S. national defense spending has increased by almost 60 percent in real dollar terms to a level in 2007 of $553 billion. This is higher than at any point since the Second World War (though lower than previous decades as a percentage of GDP). Based on such official figures, the United States is reported by the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) as accounting for 45 percent of world military expenditures. Yet, so gargantuan and labyrinthine are U.S. military expenditures that the above grossly understates their true magnitude, which, as we shall see below, reached $1 trillion in 2007.

    Translations:
    • Bangla translation in Natun Diganta (a Bangla quarterly from Dhaka), July-September 2009.
    • Translated by Farooque Chowdhury. Turkish translation in Monthly Review, Turkish edition (Istanbul: Kalkeodon), no. 22, pp. 7-28.

     

  • The American Empire

    “The American Empire: Pax Americana or Pox Americana?,” Monthly Review, vol. 56, no. 4 (September 2004), pp. 1-4. DOI: 10.14452/MR-056-04-2004-08_1

    From the Book: Pox Americana: Exposing the American Empire

    “Editors’ Preface”

    On June 10, 1963, President John F. Kennedy delivered a commencement address at American University in Washington, D.C., in which he declared that the peace that the United States sought was “not a Pax Americana enforced on the world by American weapons of war.” His remarks were a response to criticisms of the United States advanced in a recently published Soviet text on military strategy. Kennedy dismissed the charge that “American imperialist circles” were “preparing to unleash different kinds of wars” including “preventative war.” The Soviet text, he pointed out, had stated, “The political aims of American imperialists were and still are to enslave economically and politically the European and other capitalist countries and, after the latter are transformed into obedient tools, to unify them in various military-political blocs and groups directed against the socialist countries. The main aim of all this is to achieve world domination.” In Kennedy’s words, these were “wholly baseless and incredible claims,” the work of Marxist “propagandists.” “The United States, as the world knows, will never start a war.”

    Translations:

     

  • Pox Americana

    Pox Americana

    Buy at Monthly Review Press

    “Pox Americana: Exposing the American Empire,” co-edited with Robert W. McChesney (Foster listed first) (New York: Monthly Review Press/London: Pluto Press, 2004), 192 pp.

    This volume brings together the work of leading Marxist analysts of imperialism to examine the burning question of our time—the nature and prospects of the U.S. imperial project currently being given shape by war and occupation in the Middle East.

    Notes/Reprints

    • Revised and expanded version of July-August 2003 special issue of Monthly Review with new material. (Contains an article co-authored by Foster and a preface and another article co-authored by Foster).
    • “Editors’ Preface” reprinted in Monthly Review, vol. 56, no. 4 (September 2004), pp. 1-4—under the title “The American Empire: Pax Americana or Pox Americana?”

    Translations

  • Kipling, the ‘White Man’s Burden,’ and U.S. Imperialism

    Kipling, the ‘White Man’s Burden,’ and U.S. Imperialism

    “Kipling, the ‘White Man’s Burden,’ and U.S. Imperialism,” (coauthored with Harry Magdoff and Robert W. McChesney listed as “by the editors”), Monthly Review vol. 55, no. 6 (November 2003), pp. 1-11. DOI: 10.14452/MR-055-06-2003-10_1

    We are living in a period in which the rhetoric of empire knows few bounds. In a special report on “America and Empire” in August, the London-based Economist magazine asked whether the United States would, in the event of “regime changes … effected peacefully” in Iran and Syria, “really be prepared to shoulder the white man’s burden across the Middle East?” The answer it gave was that this was “unlikely”—the U.S. commitment to empire did not go so far. What is significant, however, is that the question was asked at all.

    Translations:
    • Spanish translation published in Neoimperialism en la Era de la Globalización (Monthly Review—Selecciones en Castellano, 2004).