It is an indication of the sheer enormity of the historical challenge confronting humanity in our time that the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression, sometimes now called the Second Great Depression, is overshadowed by the larger threat of planetary catastrophe, raising the question of the long-term survival of innumerable species—including our own. An […]
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The Fossil Fuels War
By John Bellamy Foster on September 1, 2013 in Articles, Other Major Scholarly Journal Articles, Translated
Only a few years ago governments, corporations, and energy analysts were fixated on the problem of “the end of cheap oil” or “peak oil,” pointing to growing shortages of conventional crude oil due to the depletion of known reserves. The International Energy Agency’s 2010 report devoted a whole section to peak oil. Some climate scientists […]
Marx, Kalecki, and Socialist Strategy
By John Bellamy Foster on April 1, 2013 in Articles, Other Major Scholarly Journal Articles, Translated
A historical perspective on the economic stagnation afflicting the United States and the other advanced capitalist economies requires that we go back to the severe downturn of 1974–1975, which marked the end of the post-Second World War prosperity. The dominant interpretation of the mid–1970s recession was that the full employment of the earlier Keynesian era […]
Toward a Global Dialogue on Ecology and Marxism
I would like to thank Zhihe Wang, Meijun Fan, Hui Dong, Dezhong Sun, and Lichun Li for doing so much to promote a global dialogue on ecological Marxism by summarizing some of the insights and concerns of Chinese scholars in this area, focusing in this case on my work in particular. The various questions, challenges, […]
James Hansen and the Climate-Change Exit Strategy
By John Bellamy Foster on February 1, 2013 in Articles, Other Major Scholarly Journal Articles, Translated
The world at present is fast approaching a climate cliff. Science tells us that an increase in global average temperature of 2°C (3.6° F) constitutes the planetary tipping point with respect to climate change, leading to irreversible changes beyond human control. A 2°C rise is sufficient to melt a significant portion of the world’s ice […]
The Planetary Rift and the New Human Exemptionalism
Environmental sociology must address two challenges, emanating both from without and within. The world is faced with a growing planetary rift, as planetary boundaries are being crossed. At the same time a new exemptionalism in the form of ecological modernization theory has arisen within environmental sociology, resurrecting many aspects of the human exemptionalist model characteristic […]
A Missing Chapter of Monopoly Capital
By John Bellamy Foster on August 1, 2012 in Articles, Other Major Scholarly Journal Articles, Translated
Monopoly Capital: An Essay on the American Economic and Social Order by Paul A. Baran and Paul M. Sweezy, published in 1966, is one of the foundational works in the development of Marxian political economy in the United States and indeed the world, and is today recognized as a classic, having generated more than four-and-a-half […]
Capitalism and the Accumulation of Catastrophe
By John Bellamy Foster on December 1, 2011 in Articles, Other Major Scholarly Journal Articles, Translated
Over the next few decades we are facing the possibility, indeed the probability, of global catastrophe on a level unprecedented in human history. The message of science is clear. As James Hansen, the foremost climate scientist in the United States, has warned, this may be “our last chance to save humanity.” In order to understand […]
Samir Amin at 80
Samir Amin was born in Cairo in 1931, and studied within the French educational system in Egypt.… He is currently president of the World Forum for Alternatives.
The Ecology of Marxian Political Economy
By John Bellamy Foster on September 1, 2011 in Articles, Other Major Scholarly Journal Articles, Translated
It is no secret today that we are facing a planetary environmental emergency, endangering most species on the planet, including our own, and that this impending catastrophe has its roots in the capitalist economic system. Nevertheless, the extreme dangers that capitalism inherently poses to the environment are often inadequately understood, giving rise to the belief […]
