John Bellamy Foster

Tag: Sole Author

  • The Greening of Marxism

    ”The Greening of Marxism,” [PDF], Environment, vol. 39, no. 6 (July/August 1997), pp. 31-32. (Book note on Ted Benton, ed. The Greening of Marxism.)

    Marxism and radical ecology are both critical of the capitalist commodity economy. Nevertheless, the two traditions often seem opposed. Marxism is often identified with the official Marxism of Soviet-type societies, in which (as in the capitalist world economy) nature was seen as an external object to be used and abused for economic ends. From the first, however, Marxism had a more ecologically sensitive side reflected in Marx’s personal concern over the destruction of the soil.

  • The Long Stagnation and the Class Struggle

    “The Long Stagnation and the Class Struggle” [PDF], Journal of Economic Issues, vol. 31, no. 2 (June 1997), pp. 445-51. (Included among select papers published from the Association of Evolutionary Economics, 1997 Annual Meeting.)

    For more than a quarter-century, the advanced capitalist economies have been mired in a condition of economic stagnation, characterized by slow growth, sluggish investment and high levels of unemployment and excess capacity. Since this condition has persisted so long and shows no signs of abating despite the current cyclical upswing, it seems appropriate to label it the “Long Stagnation,” thus distinguishing it from other periods of stagnation, most notably the “Great Depression” of the 1930s.

  • Erde (Earth)

    ”Erde (Earth),” in Historisch-Kritisches Wörterbuch Des Marximus, Band 3 (Ebene-Extremisis) (Berlin: Argument-Verlag, 1997), pp. 669-710. [HTML]

    Reprints

  • Logging the Globe

    ”Logging the Globe,” [PDF], Contemporary Sociology (Featured Essay), vol. 25, no. 5 (September 1996), pp. 598-99. (Review of Patricia Marchak, Logging the Globe.)

    Logging the Globe goes on to analyze the ecological implications of these changes. Marchak carefully documents the unsustainable exploitation of both temperate and tropical forests. In addition, she raises issues about the ecological consequences of plantation forestry, with its sterile monoculture, and highlights the toxic wastes associated with pulp and paper production.

  • Sustainable Development of What?

    “Sustainable Development of What?” [PDF], Capitalism, Nature, Socialism, vol. 7, no. 3 (September 1996), pp. 129-32.

    The 1992 Earth Summit in Rio marked a turning point in world history. Faced with the reality of a planetary ecological crisis, all the countries of the world joined in declaring their support for “sustainable development” — or the goal of striking a balance between present development and the potential for future development, the latter requiring some degree of protection of the earth’s resources.

    Translation:

  • Market Fetishism and the Attack on Social Reason

    “Market Fetishism and the Attack on Social Reason: A Comment on Hayek, Polanyi and Wainwright,” [PDF], Capitalism, Nature, Socialism, vol. 6, no. 4 (December 1995), pp. 101-107. DOI:10.1080/10455759509358654

    In an age when the rationalist tradition of the Enlightenment is under attack, it is perhaps worth recalling that the arch-conservative economist, Friedrich Hayek, the leading intellectual figure of the free market right, made one of the sharpest attacks ever to be directed at the idea that reason can play a useful role in shaping human affairs. In The Fatal Conceit: The Errors of Socialism, Hayek writes:

    The basic point of my argument — that morals, including, especially, our institutions of property, freedom, and justice, are not a creation of man’s reason but a distinct second endowment conferred on him by cultural evolution — runs counter to the main intellectual outlook of the twentieth century. The influence of rationalism has indeed been so profound and pervasive that, in general, the more intelligent an educated person is, the more likely he or she now is not only to be a rationalist, but also to hold socialist views (regardless

    of whether he or she is sufficiently doctrinal to attach to his or her views any label, including ‘socialist’). The higher we climb up the ladder of intelligence, the more we talk with intellectuals, the more likely we are to encounter socialist convictions. Rationalists tend to be intelligent and intellectual; and intelligent intellectuals tend to be socialists….One’s initial surprise at finding that intelligent people tend to be socialists diminishes when one realizes that, of course, intelligent people will tend to overvalue intelligence, and to suppose that we

    must owe all the advantages and opportunities that our civilization offers to deliberate design rather than to following traditional rules, and likewise to suppose that we can, by exercising our reason, eliminate all remaining undesired features by still more intelligent reflection, and still more appropriate design and “rational coordination” of our undertakings. This leads one to be favorably disposed to the central economic planning and control that lie at the heart of socialism.

  • Ecology and Human Freedom

    “Ecology and Human Freedom”, Monthly Review vol. 47, no. 6 (November 1995), pp. 22-31. DOI: 10.14452/MR-047-06-1995-10_3

    We live at a time when it is reasonable to speak of the possibility of complete ecological destruction, in virtually the same sense that critics of nuclear armaments have often referred to the possibility of complete nuclear destruction. Both human society and the survival of the planet as we know it are now at risk.

     

  • Rationality and Nature

    “Rationality and Nature,” [PDF], Contemporary Sociology, vol. 24, no. 6 (November 1995), pp. 784-86. (Review of Raymond Murphy, Rationality and Nature; Richard Norgaard, Development Betrayed; and Michael Redclift and Ted Benton, ed. Social Theory and the Global Environment.)

    The emergence in the 1980s and ’90s of an increasingly global approach to ecological problems-marked by the ascendance of such issues as the destruction of the ozone layer, global warming, tropical deforestation, and an annual loss of species possibly in the tens of thousands-has altered forever the relation of ecology to the social sciences. Recognizing that the entire planet is increas- ingly subject to ecological depredations and that the time available for addressing these problems is extremely short, social scientists concerned with ecological issues are becoming more aggressive in their demands for the ecological transformation of their disciplines. “Sociology,” as Raymond Murphy declares in the preface to Rationality and Nature, “has been constructed as if nature didn’t matter. It has failed to take the processes of nature into account, perceiving only the social construction of reality. Environmental problems are beginning to send shock waves through this myopic sociological structure. Sociology fabricated as if nature didn’t matter constitutes pre-ecological sociology” (p. x).

  • Marx and the Environment

    “Marx and the Environment”, Monthly Review vol. 47, no. 3 (July 1995), pp. 108-123. DOI: 10.14452/MR-047-03-1995-07_8

    It has become fashionable in recent years, in the words of one critic, to identify the growth of ecological consciousness with “the current postmodernist interrogation of the metanarrative of the Enlightenment.” Green thinking, we are frequently told, is distinguished by its postmodern, post-Enlightenment perspective. Nowhere is this fashion more evident than in certain criticisms directed at Marx and Engels. Historical materialism, beginning with the work of its two founders, is often said to be one of the main means by which the Baconian notion of the mastery of nature was transmitted to the modern world. The prevalence of this interpretation is indicated by its frequent appearance within the analysis of the left itself. “While Marx and Engels displayed an extraordinary understanding of and sensitivity toward the ‘ecological’ costs of capitalism,” socialist ecofeminist Carolyn Merchant writes, “… they nevertheless bought into the Enlightenment’s myth of progress via the domination of nature.”

    Reprints:
    • Reprinted in John F. Sitton, ed., Marx Today: Selected Works and Recent Debates (New York: Palgrave-Macmillan, 2010), 229-40.
    • Reprinted in Bob Jessop and Russell Wheatley, ed., Marx’s Social and Political Thought, volume 8(London: Taylor and Francis, 1999), 44-56.
    Translations:
    • Translated and published in German as “Marx, der Produktivismus und die Ökologie,” Sozialistische Zeitung, vol. 11, no. 13 (June 27, 1996), pp. 14-19.
    • Spanish translation by Renán Vega Cantor, 1998.

     

  • Global Ecology and the Common Good

    “Global Ecology and the Common Good”, Monthly Review vol. 46, no. 9 (February 1995), pp. 1-10. DOI: 10.14452/MR-046-09-1995-02_1

    Over the course of the twentieth century human population has increased more than threefold and gross world product perhaps twentyfold. Such expansion has placed increasing pressure on the ecology of the planet. Everywhere we look—in the atmosphere, oceans, watersheds, forests, soil, etc.—it is now clear that rapid ecological decline is setting in.

    Reprints:
    • Kevin Danaher, ed., Corporations are Gonna Eat Your Mama: Globalization and the Downsizing of the American Dream (Monroe, Maine: Common Courage Press, 1996), pp. 133-41.
    • William F. Grover and Joseph G. Peschek, ed., Voices of Dissent: Critical Readings in American Politics (New York: Addison-Wesley, 1999, 2003), pp. 33-37.
    Translations:
    • Persian translation in Paul M. Sweezy, et. al., Capitalism and the Environment (Tehran: Digar Publishing House, 2008).