John Bellamy Foster

Tag: Sole Author

  • Aspects of Class in the United States

    Aspects of Class in the United States

    “Aspects of Class in the United States: An Introduction“, Monthly Review, vol. 58, no. 3 (July-August 2006), pp. 1-5. DOI: 10.14452/MR-058-03-2006-07_1

    If class war is continual in capitalist society, there is no doubt that in recent decades in the United States it has taken a much more virulent form. In a speech delivered at New York University in 2004 Bill Moyers pointed out that the effects of this relentless offensive by the vested interests against the rest of the society are increasingly evident. In 2005 the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal each published a series of articles focusing on class in the United States.

    Reprints:
    • Reprinted in Michael Yates, ed., More Unequal: Aspects of Class in the United States (New York: Monthly Review Press, 2007), pp. 15-18.
    Translations:
    • Translated in Monthly Review, Turkish edition, no. 9 (Istanbul: Kalkedon, 2006).

     

  • Naked Imperialism

    Naked Imperialism

    Buy at Monthly Review Press

    “Naked Imperialism: The U.S. Pursuit of Global Dominance,” (New York: Monthly Review Press, 2006), 192 pp.

    (Consists of previously published articles/chapters from Monthly Review between 2000 and 2005 with a new preface by the author.)

    During the Cold War years, mainstream commentators were quick to dismiss the idea that the United States was an imperialist power. Even when U.S. interventions led to the overthrow of popular governments, as in Iran, Guatemala, or the Congo, or wholesale war, as in Vietnam, this fiction remained intact. During the 1990s and especially since September 11, 2001, however, it has crumbled. Today, the need for American empire is openly proclaimed and defended by mainstream analysts and commentators.

    Editions:

    • Indian edition (Delhi:Aakar Books, 2006).
    Translations:
    • Japanese translation by Watanabe Keiko, published by arrangement through Sakai Agency, 2009.
    • Korean translation, Renaissance Publishing Co. Korea, 2008.
    • Preface translated into Bangla in Bangla Monthly Review, no. 1 (December 2006). Translated by Indrani Nandi.
  • The Household Debt Bubble

    The Household Debt Bubble

    “The Household Debt Bubble“, Monthly Review 58, no. 1 (May 2006), pp.1-11. DOI: 10.14452/MR-058-01-2006-05_1

    It is an inescapable truth of the capitalist economy that the uneven, class-based distribution of income is a determining factor of consumption and investment. How much is spent on consumption goods depends on the income of the working class. Workers necessarily spend all or almost all of their income on consumption. Thus for households in the bottom 60 percent of the income distribution in the United States, average personal consumption expenditures equaled or exceeded average pre-tax income in 2003; while the fifth of the population just above them used up five-sixths of their pre-tax income (most of the rest no doubt taken up by taxes) on consumption.1 In contrast, those high up on the income pyramid-the capitalist class and their relatively well-to-do hangers-on-spend a much smaller percentage of their income on personal consumption. The overwhelming proportion of the income of capitalists (which at this level has to be extended to include unrealized capital gains) is devoted to investment.

    Translations:
    • Chinese translation by Wang Shui in The Journal of Society and Science (China), 2006.

     

  • The New Geopolitics of Empire

    The New Geopolitics of Empire

    “The New Geopolitics of Empire,” Monthly Review, vol. 57, no. 8 (January 2006), pp.1-18. DOI: 10.14452/MR-057-08-2006-01_1

    Today’s imperial ideology proclaims that the United States is the new city on the hill, the capital of an empire dominating the globe. Yet the U.S. global empire, we are nonetheless told, is not an empire of capital; it has nothing to do with economic imperialism as classically defined by Marxists and others. The question then arises: How is this new imperial age conceived by those promoting it?

    Translations:

     

  • Organizing Ecological Revolution

    “Organizing Ecological Revolution,” Monthly Review, vol. 57, no. 5 (October 2005), pp.1-10. DOI: 10.14452/MR-057-05-2005-09_1

    My subject—organizing ecological revolution—has as its initial premise that we are in the midst of a global environmental crisis of such enormity that the web of life of the entire planet is threatened and with it the future of civilization.

    Reprints:
    • Reprinted in John Jermier, ed., Corporate Environmentalism and the Greening of Organizations (Sage Publications, March 2013). Reprinted in Jane Kelley and Sheila Malone, ed., Ecosocialism or Barbarism (London: Socialist Resistance, 2006, pp. 56-67).
    Translations:
    • Persian translation in Paul M. Sweezy, et. al., Capitalism and the Environment (Tehran: Digar Publishing House, 2008).
    • Greek translation published in Monthly Review (Greek edition, Athens), no. 2 (2005), pp. 11-23.
    • Spanish translation in Globalización, September 2005.
    • Portuguese translation at
      http://cai.xtreemhost.com/cdc-galiza/foster.htm.
    • Turkish translation in Monthly Review, Turkish edition (Istanbul: Kalkedon, 2008), pp. 183-93.

     

  • Naked Imperialism

    “Naked Imperialism,” Monthly Review, vol. 57, no. 4 (September 2005), pp. 1-11. DOI: 10.14452/MR-057-04-2005-08_1

    The global actions of the United States since September 11, 2001, are often seen as constituting a “new militarism” and a “new imperialism.” Yet, neither militarism nor imperialism is new to the United States, which has been an expansionist power—continental, hemispheric, and global—since its inception. What has changed is the nakedness with which this is being promoted, and the unlimited, planetary extent of U.S. ambitions.

    Translations:
    • Translated in Monthly Review, Turkish edition (Istanbul: Kalkedon, March 2006).

     

  • The End of Rational Capitalism

    The End of Rational Capitalism

    “The End of Rational Capitalism,” Monthly Review, vol. 56, no. 10 (March 2005), pp. 1-13. DOI: 10.14452/MR-056-10-2005-03_1

    The twentieth century’s dominant myth was that of a “rational capitalism.” The two economists who did the most to promote this idea were John Maynard Keynes and Joseph Schumpeter. Both were responding to the great historical crisis of capitalism manifested in the First World War, the Great Depression, and the Second World War. In the wake of the greatest set of horrors the world had ever seen, accompanied also by the rise of an alternative, contending system in the Soviet Union, it was necessary for capitalism following the Second World War to reestablish itself ideologically as well as materially. In terms of the ideological requirement, the two economists who accomplished this most effectively were Keynes and Schumpeter—not simply because they epitomized the best in bourgeois economic ideology, but also because they were the leading representatives of bourgeois economic science. What they set out in their analyses were the requirements of a rational capitalism and at least the hope that these requirements would be achieved.

    Translations:

     

  • The Treadmill of Accumulation

    “The Treadmill of Accumulation: Schnaiberg’s Environment and Marxian Political Economy,” [PDF], Organization and Environment, vol. 18, no. 1 (March 2005), pp. 7-18. DOI:10.1177/1086026604270442

    Allan Schnaiberg’s “treadmill of production” model has formed the single most influential framework of analysis within environmental sociology in the United States. Schnaiberg’s work is often characterized as “neo-Marxist,” but its actual relation to Marxian political economy has been left obscure. The following article examines Marx’s treatment of the treadmill as the crudest historical expression of the capitalist mode of production; the roots of Schnaiberg’s analysis in Baran and Sweezy’s conception of monopoly capital and Gabriel Kolko’s conception of political capitalism; the later divergence of the treadmill theory and Marxian political economy; the disappearance of the explicit critique of capitalism in the joint work of Schnaiberg and Kenneth Alan Gould; and the reconvergence of these traditions in the current phase of environmental sociology characterized by the debate with ecological modernization. The treadmill model demonstrates that the choice between barbarism and civilization is not simply a question of the organization of the human relations within society but also a question of the organization of the human relation to the environment.

  • The Commitment of an Intellectual

    The Commitment of an Intellectual

    “The Commitment of an Intellectual: Paul M. Sweezy (1910-2004),” Monthly Review, vol. 56, no. 5 (October 2004), pp. 5-39. DOI: 10.14452/MR-056-05-2004-09_2

    Original draft placed on the Monthly Review web page in March of 2004, shortly after Sweezy’s death.

    The following brief intellectual biography of Paul Sweezy was drafted in September 2003 shortly before I saw Paul for the last time. It conveys many of the basic facts of his life. But as with all biographies of leading intellectuals it fails to capture the brilliance of his work, which must be experienced directly through his own writings. Nor is the warmth of Paul’s character adequately conveyed here. A short personal note is therefore needed. What was so surprising about Paul was his seemingly endless generosity and humanity. Paul gave freely of himself to all of those seeking his political and intellectual guidance. But a few, such as myself, were particularly blessed in that they experienced this on a deeper, more intense level. For decades Paul was concerned that Monthly Review not perish as had so many socialist institutions and publications in the past. He recognized early on that the continuance of the magazine and the tradition that it represented required the deliberate cultivation of new generations of socialist intellectuals. I was fortunate to be singled out while still quite young as one of those. For decades Paul wrote me letter after letter—no letter that I wrote to him ever went unanswered—sharing his knowledge, intellectual brilliance, and personal warmth. It was an immense, indescribable gift.

    Translations:
    • Turkish translation of early version in iktisat dergisi (August 2004), pp. 22-40.
    • Persian translation of early version in Ketaab-e-Bar-rassi-haa-ye Ejtema’i (Journal of Social Reviews), November 2004 (publisher: Baztabnegar).
    • Bengali translation included in In the Rank of the Wretched: A collection of Short Biographies of Albert Einstein, Paul M. Sweezy, and Harry Magdoff. (Dhaka, Bangladesh: Shrabon Prokashoni, 2006).
    • Chinese translation by Xi Cai in Foreign Theory Dynamics, 6 (2003).

     

  • The New Age of Imperialism

    The New Age of Imperialism

    “The New Age of Imperialism,” Monthly Review vol. 55, no. 3 (July 2003), pp. 1-14. DOI: 10.14452/MR-055-03-2003-07_1

    Imperialism is meant to serve the needs of a ruling class much more than a nation. It has nothing to do with democracy. Perhaps for that reason it has often been characterized as a parasitic phenomenon-even by critics as astute as John Hobson in his 1902 classic, Imperialism: A Study. And (rom there it is unfortunately all too easy to slide into the crude notion that imperialist expansion is simply a product of powerful groups of individuals who have hijacked a nation’s foreign policy to serve their own narrow ends.

    Translations:
    • Portuguese translation in Fragmetos de Cultura in Goiânia (Brazil), vol. 13, no. 6 (Nov-December 2003), pp. 1235-53.
    • Spanish translation in Marx Ahora (Havana, Cuba), no. 17 (November 2004)
    • Turkish translation in Cosmo Politik, vol. 6 (Fall 2003), pp. 12-22.
    • Russian translation on www.left.ru