The original intent of The Vulnerable Planet,when it was first published fifteen years ago, was to provide a brief historical materialist analysis of the development of the global ecological crisis, beginning with the early civilizations and leading up to the monopoly capitalist society of the late twentieth century. Looking back now at the book as […]
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A Failed System
By John Bellamy Foster on March 1, 2009 in Articles, Other Major Scholarly Journal Articles, Translated
In referring in my title here to “A Failed System” I do not of course mean that capitalism as a system is in any sense at an end. Rather I mean by “failed system” a global economic and social order that increasingly exhibits a fatal contradiction between reality and reason—to the point, in our time, […]
Ecology and the Transition from Capitalism to Socialism
By John Bellamy Foster on November 1, 2008 in Articles, Other Major Scholarly Journal Articles, Translated
The transition from capitalism to socialism is the most difficult problem of socialist theory and practice. To add to this the question of ecology might therefore be seen as unnecessarily complicating an already intractable issue. I shall argue here, however, that the human relation to nature lies at the heart of the transition to socialism. […]
Marx’s Critique of Heaven and Earth
By John Bellamy Foster on October 1, 2008 in Articles, Other Major Scholarly Journal Articles, Translated
In recent years the intelligent design movement, or creationism in a more subtle guise, has expanded the attack on the teaching of evolution in U.S. public schools, while promoting an ambitious “Wedge strategy” aimed at transforming both science and culture throughout society. As explained in our book Critique of Intelligent Design: Materialism versus Creationism from […]
Marx’s Grundrisse and the Ecological Contradictions of Capitalism
Nevertheless, because Marx’s overall critique of political economy remained unfinished, these and other aspects of his larger materialist conception of nature and history were incompletely developed – even in those works, such as Capital, volume 1, published in his lifetime. Moreover, the relation of his developed political–economic critique in Capital to the wider corpus of […]
Peak Oil and Energy Imperialism
By John Bellamy Foster on July 1, 2008 in Articles, Other Major Scholarly Journal Articles, Translated
The rise in overt militarism and imperialism at the outset of the twenty-first century can plausibly be attributed largely to attempts by the dominant interests of the world economy to gain control over diminishing world oil supplies. Beginning in 1998 a series of strategic energy initiatives were launched in national security circles in the United […]
Sweezy in Perspective
By John Bellamy Foster on May 1, 2008 in Articles, Other Major Scholarly Journal Articles, Translated
Paul M. Sweezy was, in the words of his contemporary John Kenneth Galbraith, “the most distinguished of present-day American Marxists.” A Harvard-trained economist, his writings spanned some seven decades from the early 1930s to the closing years of the twentieth century. For more than half a century he was coeditor of Monthly Review, subtitled An […]
“Foreword” to Paul M. Sweezy, Globalization is Nothing New; Selected Essays
“Foreword” to Paul M. Sweezy, Globalization is Nothing New; Selected Essays in Bengali (Dhaka, Bangladesh: Shrabon Prokoshani, 2008). English version published as “Sweezy in Perspective,” Monthly Review, vol. 60, no. 1 (May 2008), pp. 45-49. Translation(s): Portuguese translation of this piece published in Monthly Review, Portuguese-Language Edition, 2008.
The Financialization of Capital and the Crisis
By John Bellamy Foster on April 1, 2008 in Articles, Other Major Scholarly Journal Articles, Translated
With the benefit of hindsight, few now doubt that the housing bubble that induced most of the recent growth of the U.S. economy was bound to burst or that a general financial crisis and a global economic slowdown were to be the unavoidable results. Warning signs were evident for years to all of those not […]
A New Stage in Capitalism’s War on the Planet
By John Bellamy Foster on November 1, 2007 in Articles, Introductions, Other Major Scholarly Journal Articles
The introduction to this book, the last part to be completed, was sent to the printer in New York City only days before the attacks on the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001, and was first published in October 2001 in Monthly Review. Since then the world has witnessed a continuing war by the […]
