John Bellamy Foster

Tag: Robert W. McChesney

The ‘Left-Wing’ Media?
“The ‘Left-Wing’ Media?,” (coauthored with Robert W. McChesney, McChesney listed as first author), Monthly Review, vol. 55, no. 2 (June 2003), pp. 1-16. DOI: 10.14452/MR-055-02-2003-06_1

If we learn nothing else from the war on Iraq and its subsequent occupation, it is that the U.S. ruling class has learned to make ideological warfare as important to its operations as military and economic warfare. A crucial component of this ideological war has been the campaign against “left-wing media bias,” with the objective of reducing or eliminating the prospect that mainstream U.S. journalism might be at all critical toward elite interests or the system set up to serve those interests. In 2001 and 2002, no less than three books purporting to demonstrate the media’s leftward tilt rested high atop the bestseller list. Such charges have already influenced media content, pushing journalists to be less critical of right-wing politics. The result has been to reinforce the corporate and rightist bias already built into the media system.

Reprints:
- Reprinted in abridged from in Karl Finsterbusch, ed., Taking Sides: Clashing Views on Controversial Social Issues, 13th edition (New York: McGraw-Hill, 2005), pp. 29-37.
- Republished in expanded and revised form in Robert W. McChesney, The Problem of the Media: U.S. Communication Politics in the 21st Century. New York: Monthly Review Press, 2004, pp. 98-137.
June 1, 2003
What Recovery?

“What Recovery?,” (coauthored with Harry Magdoff and Robert W. McChesney, listed as “by the editors” Monthly Review vol. 54, no. 11 (April 2003), pp. 1-16. DOI: 10.14452/MR-054-11-2003-04_1

Only a few years ago it was widely suggested that the capitalist economy had entered a new economic era. The rapid economic growth experienced during the brief period of the late 1990s, we were told, would become virtually endless, spurred on by rising productivity led by high technology and the New Economy. The circumstances that now confront us following the bursting of the speculative bubble could not be more different. The country is once again mired in economic stagnation. In the present “recovery”—if indeed we can call it that—new jobs remain few and far between. Of the four sources of demand that create economic activity—personal consumption, business investment, government spending, and net exports—it is mainly consumption, backed by increasing debt, that is currently keeping the economy from slipping deeper into stagnation. Indeed, many business leaders and economists fear the return of recession—referred to as the likelihood of a “double dip.” Behind this fear lies excess capacity in almost every industry, the absence of new growth stimuli, slow growth or recession in most of the rest of the world, and the aftereffects of the bursting of the speculative stock market bubble. All of this suggests that there is more at stake than the traditional business cycle. At the very least, there is reason to expect the continuation of the tendency of stagnation.

April 1, 2003
The Commercial Tidal Wave
“The Commercial Tidal Wave,” (coauthored with Robert W. McChesney, McChesney listed as first author), Monthly Review vol. 54, no. 10 (March 2003), pp. 1-16. DOI: 10.14452/MR-054-10-2003-03_1

For a long time now it has been widely understood within economics that under the capitalism of giant firms, corporations no longer compete primarily through price competition. They engage instead in what economists call “monopolistic competition.” This consists chiefly of attempts to create monopoly positions for a particular brand, making it possible for corporations to charge more for the branded product while also expanding their market share. Competition is most intense in what Thorstein Veblen called the “production of salable appearances,” involving advertising, frequent model changes, branding of products, and the like. Once this logic takes over in twentieth and now twenty-first century capitalism it is seemingly unstoppable. All human needs, relationships and fears, the deepest recesses of the human psyche, become mere means for the expansion of the commodity universe under the force of modem marketing. With the rise to prominence of modem marketing, commercialism—the translation of human relations into commodity relations—although a phenomenon intrinsic to capitalism, has expanded exponentially.

Reprints:
- Republished in expanded and revised form in Robert W. McChesney, The Problem of the Media: U.S. Communication Politics in the 21st Century. New York: Monthly Review Press, 2004, pp. 138-74.
March 1, 2003
Capitalism in the Information Age
Buy at Monthly Review Press

“Capitalism in the Information Age,” (co-edited with Robert McChesney and Ellen Meiksins Wood (Foster listed third) (New York: Monthly Review Press, 1998), 254 pp.

Expanded version of July-August 1996 issue of Monthly Review. (Contains one essay co-authored by Foster.)

Not a day goes by that we don’t see a news clip, hear a radio report, or read an article heralding the miraculous new technologies of the information age. The communication revolution associated with these technologies is often heralded as the key to a new age of “globalization.” How is all of this reshaping the labor force, transforming communications, changing the potential for democracy, and altering the course of history itself? Capitalism and the Information Age presents a rigorous examination of some of the most crucial problems and possibilities of these novel technologies. Taken together, the essays reveal how the new information technologies have been grafted onto a global capitalist system characterized by vast and growing inequality, economic stagnation, market saturation, financial instability, urban crisis, social polarization, graded access to information, and economic degradation.

Editions:
- Indian edition, (Kharagpur, India: Cornerstone Publications, 1998).
Translations:
- Turkish translation, (Ankara: EPOS, 2003).
- Vietnamese translation, Hanoi, May 2001.
January 1, 1998