John Bellamy Foster

Tag: Sole Author

  • Restructuring the World Economy in a Time of Lasting Crisis

    Restructuring the World Economy in a Time of Lasting Crisis

    “Restructuring the World Economy in a Time of Lasting Crisis,” (John Bellamy Foster) Monthly Review, vol. 41, no. 1 (May 1989), pp. 46-55. DOI: 10.14452/MR-041-01-1989-05_5

    Review of Restructuring the World Economy by Joyce Kolko.

     

  • The Uncoupling of the World Order

    “The Uncoupling of the World Order: A Survey of Global Crisis Theories,” in Mark Gottdiener and Nikos Kominos, ed. Capitalist Development and Crisis Theory: Accumulation, Regulation and Spatial Restructuring (London: Macmillan Press, 1989), pp. 99-122.

    In every discussion of the current global crisis one single fact eclipses all others – the demise of undisputed US hegemony within the world hierarchy of nation states. Despite differing al political persuasions, there seems to be widespread agreement among social scientists that it is only in this context that the chief threats of our time – namely, the heightened conflict between centre and periphery, the international debt crisis, and the drift toward world war – can be properly understood and surmounted.

  • Monthly Review

    “Monthly Review,” in Encyclopedia of the American Left, edited by Mari Jo Buhle, Paul Buhle and Dan Georgakas (New York: Garland, 1989; also included in second edition published by Oxford University Press, 1998), pp. 483-85 (500 words.)

    The first comprehensive reference book on radicalism in the United States from the Civil War to the present, this work fills serious gaps in basic reference materials on American politics, labor, and culture by focusing on radicals rather than reformers. Merging previously unutilized sources such as oral history with the wealth of insight available from feminist, ethnic, racial studies and popular culture analysis as well as traditional scholarly approaches, their efforts retrieved a hitherto inaccesible history.

  • The Fetish of Fordism

    The Fetish of Fordism

    “The Fetish of Fordism”, Monthly Review vol. 39, no. 10 (March 1988), pp. 14-33. DOI: 10.14452/MR-039-10-1988-03_2

    It may seem strange that Henry Ford, an automobile manufacturer during the early decades of the twentieth century who died in 1947, should suddenly become a major source of contention among those interested in analyzing the contemporary crisis of the U.S. economy. The last few years, however, have seen a vast expansion of the Ford legend, particularly by thinkers working within the left, who have elaborated a whole new mythology of “Fordism,” intended to sum up the political, economic, and cultural development of twentieth-century monopoly capitalism. Nowhere is this fetish of Ford and the ism now attached to his name more obvious than in Michael Harrington’s latest book, The Next Left (New York: Henry Holt, 1986).

    Translations:
    • Translated and published in German as “Fordismus als Fetish,” Prokla (Zeitschrift fur Politische Okonomie und Sozialistiche Politik), no. 76 (September 1989), pp. 71-85.

     

  • The United States and the Crisis of World Finance

    The United States and the Crisis of World Finance

    “The United States and the Crisis of World Finance” (John Bellamy Foster) Monthly Review, vol. 38, no. 10 (March 1987), pp. 52-57. DOI: 10.14452/MR-038-10-1987-03_7

    Review of Casino Capitalism by Susan Strange.

     

  • Sweezy, Paul Marlor

    “Sweezy, Paul Marlor,” in The New Palgrave: A Dictionary of Economic Theory and Doctrine (New York: Stockton Press, 1987), vol. 4 (Q-Z), pp. 580-82. DOI: 10.1057/978-1-349-95121-5.

    Harvard-trained economist and co-editor of Monthly Review, Paul Sweezy was among the most influential economists and Marxist intellectuals of the 20th century. His contributions extended over six decades from the early 1930s to the early 1990s. He played a role in the development of imperfect-competition analysis and in debates surrounding the Great Depression. His Theory of Capitalist Development (1942) provided the premier exposition of Marxian economics, after Marx. Monopoly Capital (1966, with Paul Baran) was the most influential economic analysis emanating from the US New Left. With Harry Magdoff he extended this analysis into the 1970s, ’80s and early ’90s.

    Reprints

    • Reprinted in John Eatwell, Murray Milgate and Peter Newman, ed., Marxian Economics (New York: W.W. Norton, 1990), pp. 350-55. Revised, expanded and updated for second edition of New Palgrave, 2007.
  • The Working Class: Is It Dead?

    The Working Class: Is It Dead?

    “The Working Clas: Is it Dead?” (John Bellamy Foster) Monthly Review vol. 38, no. 7 (December 1986), pp.55-64. DOI: 10.14452/MR-038-07-1986-11_7

    Review of Longshoremen: Community and Resistance on the Brooklyn Waterfront by William DiFazio.

    Among those who are convinced of the need for radical social change in the advanced capitalist countries as the world nears the year 2000 there are two broad streams of thought. One of these adheres to the traditional left view that the working class is (almost by definition) the only social force capable of carrying out a genuine socialist transformation within the center of the capitalist system. Although not denying the fact that workers in the developed countries are far from revolutionary at present, those who adhere to this perspective tend to emphasize the continuing radical significance of class struggles on the job, and would find themselves in general agreement with David Montgomery’s stance that when I thought about the question of socialism, and heard people asking whether the working class was an agent for social change, I found it very hard to even relate to the question. If the working class isn’t going to change its own life and make a new world, why bother? To change one boss for another is not something i’m going to go out and put myself on the line for.

  • A Turn to Reality

    A Turn to Reality

    “A Turn to Reality,” (John Bellamy Foster) Monthly Review, vol. 38, no. 5 (October 1986), pp. 56-64. DOI: 10.14452/MR-038-05-1986-09_7

    Review of Economics Without Equilibrium by Nicholas Kaldor.

    It would be impossible to discover a much greater gap between what poses as a modern scientific tradition and the underlying reality that it purports to explain than that which is currently dis- closed by neoclassical economics. Indeed, “within today’s standard economic theory, which is commonly called the neoclassical synthesis,” as Hyman Minsky has observed in his new book, Stabilizing an Unstable Economy, “the question ‘why is our economy so unstable?’ is … a nonsense question. Standard economic theory not only does not lead to an explanation of instability as a system attribute, it really does not recognize that endogenous instability is a problem that a satisfactory theory must explain.”

     

  • The Political Economy of the United States Left

    The Political Economy of the United States Left

    “The Political Economy of The United States Left,” Monthly Review, vol. 38, no. 4 (September 1986), pp. 42-50. DOI: 10.14452/MR-038-04-1986-08_5

    Review of Radical Political Economy Since the Sixties: A Sociology of Knowledge Analysis by Paul Attewell.

    Twenty years ago, when Monopoly Capital by Baran and Sweezy first appeared, there were only a handful of Marxian political economists in the U.S. But the escalating invasion of Vietnam, the popular resistance movement that grew up in response, and the worsening conditions of economic crisis that came with the winding down of the war changed all of that. By the mid-1970s radical political economy had grown into a vast and sprawling multi-disciplinary effort, cutting across the boundaries of economics, political science, sociology and history. Yet such rapid growth was not without its contradictions. Indeed, in the 1980s it seems clear that the “new political economy” of the U.S. left is torn by contradictory developments, while showing comparatively few signs at present of further development through contradiction.

     

  • Sources of Instability in the U.S. Political Economy and Empire

    “Sources of Instability in the U.S. Political Economy and Empire,” [PDF] Science & Society, vol. XLIX, no. 2 (Summer 1985), pp. 167-193.

    In Discussing the sources of instability in the U.S. social order, it is useful to focus successively on the economic, political-cultural and imperial aspects of the problem, corresponding to the three levels of economy, state and world economy. This does not mean that these factors can be sealed off from one another, or that there is some kind of strict causal relationship running from the economic to the political to the international aspects of the current impasse. The interconnection, as I hope to demonstrate, is a dialectical one; which in the present context means that is is difficult to assign historical priority to any single dimension of the basic dilemma, or to neatly separate one manifestation of the overall disorder from another. “The social process,” as Joseph Schumpeter wrote in the introduction to The Theory of Economic Development, “is really one indivisible whole.” If anything, this becomes even more apparent in times of deepening crisis.