John Bellamy Foster

Tag: Sole Author

  • “Introduction to Special Issue Commemorating the Twentieth Anniversary of Harry Braverman’s Labor and Monopoly Capital”

    “Introduction to Special Issue Commemorating the Twentieth Anniversary of Harry Braverman’s Labor and Monopoly Capital,” Monthly Review, vol. 46, no. 6 (November 1994), pp. 1-13. DOI: 10.14452/MR-046-06-1994-10_1

    It is a measure of the influence of Harry Braverman and radical labor process analysts generally that only two decades after the publication of Labor and Monopoly Capital: The Degradation of Work in the Twentieth Century (1974) it is difficult to recall the absolute confidence with which the orthodox view of work relations was espoused in the early post-Second World War years. At that time the preeminent interpretation of work in modern society was the one presented by Clark Kerr, John Dunlop, and others in a book entitled Industrialism and Industrial Man (1960).

    Translations:
    • Portugese translation in Revista Principios 43 (1996).

     

  • Multiculturalism and the American Revolution of 1776

    Multiculturalism and the American Revolution of 1776

    “The Balance of Injustice and the War for Independence; Multiculturalism and the American Revolution of 1776: A Response to David Lyons,” Monthly Review vol. 45, no. 11 (April 1994), pp. 27-37. DOI: 10.14452/MR-045-11-1994-04_2

    Many Americans of European ancestry, like me, now see the European colonization of the Western Hemisphere as invasion, conquest, and genocide. Many have grave misgivings about the constitutional settlement that protected trade in slaves, committed government to helping slave catchers, and gave extra votes in Congress to slave owners. The moral perceptions that underlie those reappraisals oblige us to go further. There is good reason to question whether the American Revolution—the British colonies’ fight for freedom from the Crown—was morally justifiable.

     

  • A Terrible Omission

    “A Terrible Omission,” (John Bellamy Foster) Monthly Review, vol. 45, no. 7 (December 1993), pp.61-64. DOI: 10.14452/MR-045-07-1993-11_8

    Review of Marx’s Capital: A Student Edition, By C.J. Arthur.

     

  • Introduction to a Symposium on The Ethical Dimensions of Marxist Thought

    “Introduction to a Symposium on The Ethical Dimensions of Marxist Thought,” (John Bellamy Foster) Monthly Review, vol. 45, no. 2 (June 1993), pp.8-16.

    In the decade before his death Raymond Williams frequently referred to the need for “resources for a journey of hope” that would enable socialists to continue the “shared search” for human emancipation in spite of all the obstacles posed by the reality of capitalism and of the first attempts to create socialism. In Cornel West’s Ethical Dimensions of Marxist Thought (New York: Monthly Review Press, 1991) constitutes such a resource of hope. It is an attempt to reclaim the cause of morality for progressive thought by following Marx himself (at his best) in radically historicizing moral questions.

  • The Limits of Environmentalism Without Class: Lessons from the Ancient Forest Crisis of the Pacific Northwest

    “The Limits of Environmentalism Without Class: Lessons from the Ancient Forest Crisis of the Pacific Northwest,” [PDF], Capitalism, Nature, Socialism, vol. 4, no. 1 (March 1993), pp. 11-41. DOI: 10.1080/10455759309358529.

    Many prominent environmentalists today have adopted a political stance that sets them and the movement that they profess to represent above and beyond the class struggle. For example, Jonathon Porritt, the British Green leader, has declared that the rise of the German Greens marks the demise of “the redundant polemic of class warfare and the mythical immutability of a left/right divide.” According to this outlook, both the working class and capitalist class are to blame for the global environmental crisis (insofar as it can be traced to capitalist rather than socialist modes of production), while the Greens represent a “new paradigm” derived from nature’s own values, one that transcends the historic class problem. By removing themselves in this way from the classic social debate, these Green thinkers implicitly em race the dominant “we have seen the enemy, and it is us” view that traces most environmental problems to the buying habits of consumers, the number of babies born, and the characteristics of industrialization, as if there were no class or other divisions in society.

    Reprints
    • Published in 1993 as a pamphlet issued jointly by Monthly Review Press and the Center for Ecological Socialism.
    • Expanded and updated version published in Daniel Faber, ed. The Movement for Environmental Justice in the United States (New York: Guilford Press, 1998), pp. 188-217.
    Translations
    • Italian translation of original, “I Limiti Dellámbientalismo Senza Classi. Un Esempio Che Viene Dalle Foreste,” Capitalismo, Natura, Socialismo, no. 9 (October 1993) pp. 32-53.

  • ‘Let Them Eat Pollution’

    “‘Let Them Eat Pollution’: Capitalist Economics and the World Environment” [PDF] (John Bellamy Foster) Monthly Review vol. 44, no. 8 (January 1993), pp.10-20. DOI: 10.14452/MR-044-08-1993-01_2

    On December 12, 1991, Lawrence Summers, chief economist of the World Bank, sent a memorandum to some of his colleagues presenting views on the environment that are doubtless widespread among orthodox economists, reflecting as they do the logic of capital accumulation, but which are seldom offered up for public scrutiny, and then almost never by an economist of Summers’ rank. This memo was later leaked to the British publication, The Economist, which published part of it on February 8, 1992, under the title “Let Them Eat Pollution.”

    Reprints:

    • Third World Resurgence, no. 34 (January 1993), pp. 7-10.
    • Johnathon Petrikin, ed., Environmental Justice (San Diego, California: Greenhaven, 1995), pp. 100-07.
    • George Gerbner, Hamid Mowlana and Herbert Schiller, ed., Invisible Crises: What Conglomerate Control of the Media Means for America and the World (Boulder, Colorado: Westview Press, 1996), pp. 221-28;
    • Amanda Konradi and Marta Schmidt, Reading Between the Lines: Toward an Understanding of Current Social Problems (Mountain View, California: Mayfield Publishing Co., 1998), pp. 491-95.
    Translations:
    • Persian translation in Paul M. Sweezy, et. al., Capitalism and the Environment (Tehran: Digar Publishing House, 2008).

     

  • Dock Strike

    “Dock Strike,” [PDF], The Northern Mariner, vol. III, no. 1 (January 1993), p. 78. (Review of Peter Turnbull, Charles Woolfson and John Kelly, Dock Strike: Conflict and Restructuring in Britain’s Ports.)

    In the 1989 national dock strike, British dockworkers, falling into a pattern already evident in the fate of coalminers, printers and seafarers, suffered an historic defeat. The National Dock Labour Scheme of 1947, which had enabled the Transport and General Workers Union (T&GWU) to exercise considerable control not only over the labour process but more importantly over the process of hiring and firing, was abolished; thousands of workers became redundant.

  • Colón and Colonialism

    “Colón and Colonialism,” (John Bellamy Foster) Monthly Review, vol. 44, no. 6 (November 1992), pp. 46-48.

    A number of readers have pointed out that an egregious error was made in my introduction to the July-August issue on the Quincentennial, where it says (on page 2) that, “The nature of the encounter was a colonial one (a word derived from Colon or Columbus) …. ” This was a mistake since the Latin word “colonia” dates back to Roman times.

  • Paul Marlor Sweezy 1910-

    “Paul Marlor Sweezy 1910–” in Biographical Dictionary of Dissenting Economists, edited by Philip Arestis and Malcolm Sawyer (Brookfield, Vermont: Edward Elgar Publishing, 1992, pp. 562-70. [PDF]

    Editions

    • Revised and expanded for 2000 edition.

  • The Absolute General Law of Environmental Degradation Under Capitalism

    “The Absolute General Law of Environmental Degradation Under Capitalism,” [PDF] Capitalism, Nature, Socialism, vol. 3, no. 3 (September 1992), pp. 77-82. DOI:10.1080/10455759209358504

    James O’Connor has asked us to consider the relationship between what he has termed the “first and second contradictions” of capitalism. I would like to refer to the first contradiction, following Marx, as ‘the absolute cereal law of capitalist accumulation.” The second contradiction may then be designated as “the absolute general law of environmental degradation under capitalism.” It is characteristic of capitalism that the second of these “absolute general laws” derives its momentum from the first; hence it is impossible to overthrow the second without overthrowing the first. Nevertheless, it is the second contradiction rather than the first that increasingly constitutes the most obvious threat not only to capitalism existence but to the life of the planet as a whole.

    Translations:
    • Translated and published in Spanish as “La Ley General Absoluta de la Degradacion Ambiental en el Capitalismo,” Ecología Politica (September 1992), pp. 167-73.
    • Spanish translation later reprinted in Economía Politica, no. 11, Jan.-Feb. 1997.
    • Translated and published in Italian as “La Legge Assoluta, Generale del Degrado Ambientale nel Capitalismo,” Capitalismo, Natura, Socialismo, no. 6 (November 1992).