John Bellamy Foster

Tag: Sole Author

  • The Long Ecological Revolution

    “The Long Ecological Revolution,” Monthly Review vol. 69, no. 6 (November 2017), pp. 1-19. DOI: 10.14452/MR-069-06-2017-10_1 [HTML]

    From an ecological perspective, the Anthropocene marks the need for a more creative, constructive, and coevolutionary relation to the earth. In ecosocialist theory, this demands the reconstitution of society at large—over decades and centuries. However, given the threat to the earth as a place of human habitation this transformation requires immediate reversals in the regime of accumulation.

    • Turkish translation, Dünyadan Ceviri, November 6, 2017, dunyadanceviri.wordpress.com

  • The Meaning of Work in a Sustainable Society

    “The Meaning of Work in a Sustainable Society,” Monthly Review vol. 69, no. 4 (September 2017), pp. 1-14. DOI: 10.14452/MR-069-04-2017-08_1 [HTML]

    The idea of total liberation from work, in its one-sidedness and incompleteness, is ultimately incompatible with a genuinely sustainable society. The real promise of a system of labor beyond capitalism rests not so much on its expansion of leisure time, but rather on its capacity to generate a new world of creative and collective work, controlled by the associated producers.

    • Earlier version published by the Center for the Understanding of Sustainable Society, University of Surrey, March 2017.
    • Spanish translation in Sinpermiso, April 1, 2018, sinpermiso.info,. Dutch and French translations, 2017 in Lavamedia.be.

  • Revolution and Counterrevolution, 1917-2017

    “Revolution and Counterrevolution, 1917-2017,” Monthly Review vol. 69, no. 3 (July-August 2017), pp. 1-13. DOI: 10.14452/MR-069-03-2017-07_1 [HTML]

    If counterrevolution ultimately triumphed over the revolutionary waves of the twentieth century, how are we to understand this, and what does it mean for the future of world revolution? The answer requires a survey of the whole history of imperialist geopolitics over the last century.

    • Spanish translation in Alejandro Muyshondt Noticas, July 29, 2017.

  • The Earth-System Emergency and Ecological Civilization: A Marxian View

    “The Earth-System Emergency and Ecological Civilization: A Marxian View”, International Critical Thought (2017), vol. 7, no. 4:439–458. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1080/21598282.2017.1357483. [PDF]

    The Holocene epoch in geological history of the last 10,000–12,000 years has given way to a new geological epoch which natural scientists are calling the Anthropocene, marked by humanity’s emergence as the main driver of change in the Earth system as a whole, threatening the future of civilization, a majority of ecosystems on the planet, and the human species itself. From a historical-materialist perspective, this planetary emergency constitutes a crisis of civilization. Human civilization arose in the relatively benign environment of the Holocene. In contrast, the Anthropocene is an epoch of increased ecological constraints and dangers, marked by what has been called the Great climacteric, objectively requiring the creation of a new more sustainable society, or ecological civilization. The making of such an ecological civilization is closely linked to the long revolutionary transition from capitalism to socialism.

  • This Is Not Populism

    “This Is Not Populism,” Monthly Review vol. 69, no. 2 (June 2017), pp. 1-24. DOI: 10.14452/MR-069-02-2017-06_1 [HTML]

    Since Trump’s election, mainstream commentary has generally avoided the question of fascism or neofascism, preferring instead to apply the vaguer, safer notion of “populism.” In today’s political context, however, it is crucial to understand not only how the failures of neoliberalism give rise to neofascist movements, but also to connect these to the structural crisis of concentrated, financialized, and globalized capitalism.

    •             Turkish traslation in Özgür Üniversite, July 6, 2017.

  • Neofascism in the White House

    “Neofascism in the White House,” Monthly Review vol. 68, no. 11 (April 2017), pp. 1-30. DOI: 10.14452/MR-068-11-2017-04_1 [HTML]

    Not only a new administration, but a new ideology has now taken up residence at the White House: neofascism. It resembles in certain ways the classical fascism of Italy and Germany in the 1920s and ’30s, but with historically distinct features specific to the political economy and culture of the United States in the opening decades of the twenty-first century.

  • Trump and Climate Catastrophe

    Trump and Climate Catastrophe

    “Trump and Climate Catastrophe,” Monthly Review, vol. 68, no. 9 (February 2017), pp. 1-17.

    The alarm bells are ringing. The climate-change denialism of the Trump administration, coupled with its goal of maximizing fossil-fuel extraction and consumption at all costs, constitutes, in the words of Noam Chomsky, “almost a death knell for the human species.” As noted climatologist Michael E. Mann has declared, “I fear that this may be game over for the climate.”

  • “Foreword” to English translation of Marta Harnecker, “Latin America and Twenty-First Century Socialism”

    “Foreword” to English translation of Marta Harnecker, “Latin America and Twenty-First Century Socialism” (originally published as a book in Spanish), Monthly Review, vol. 62, no. 3 (July-August 2010), iii-xvii. 

    Translation(s):

    Bangla translation in Bangla Monthly Review, vol. 3, no. 1 (December 2010). Translated by Ashish Lahiri.]

  • The Anthropocene Crisis

    The Anthropocene Crisis

    “Foreword,” to Ian Angus, Facing the Anthropocene (New York: Monthly Reviwe Press, 2016), 9-17.

    The Anthropocene, viewed as a new geological epoch displacing the Holocene epoch of the last 10,000 to 12,000 years, represents what has been called an “anthropogenic rift” in the history of the planet.2 Formally introduced into the contemporary scientific and environmental discussion by climatologist Paul Crutzen in 2000, it stands for the notion that human beings have become the primary emergent geological force affecting the future of the Earth system. Although often traced to the Industrial Revolution in the late eighteenth century, the Anthropocene is probably best seen as arising in the late 1940s and early 1950s. Recent scientific evidence suggests that the period from around 1950 on exhibits a major spike, marking a Great Acceleration in human impacts on the environment, with the most dramatic stratigraphic trace of the anthropogenic rift to be found in fallout radionuclides from nuclear weapons testing.

  • Marxism in the Anthropocene: Dialectical Rifts on the Left

    “Marxism in the Anthropocene: Dialectical Rifts on the Left,” International Critical Thought vol.6, no. 3 (2016): 393-421. DOI: 10.1080/21598282.2016.1197787. [PDF]

    Natural scientists have pointed to the Anthropocene as a new geological epoch, with the precise dating not yet decided, but often traced to the Great Acceleration of the human impact on the environment since 1945. Thus understood, the Anthropocene largely coincides with the rise of the modern environmental movement and corresponds to the age of planetary crisis. This paper looks at the evolution of Marxian and left contributions to environmental thought during this period. Although Marx’s ecological materialism is now widely recognized, with the rediscovery of his theory of metabolic rift, the debate has recently shifted to ecological dialectics, including dualism, monism, totality, and mediation, generating a conflict between ecological Marxism and radical ecological monism. It is argued here that only an ecological Marxism, rooted in a materialist dialectic of nature and society, is able to engage effectively with the Great Climacteric that increasingly governs our times.