John Bellamy Foster

Tag: Turkish

  • Empire of Barbarism

    Empire of Barbarism

    “Empire of Barbarism,” coauthored with Brett Clark (Foster listed first), Monthly Review vol. 56, no. 7 (December 2004), pp. 1-15. DOI: 10.14452/MR-056-07-2004-11_1

    “A new age of barbarism is upon us.” These were the opening words of an editorial in the September 20, 2004, issue of Business Week clearly designed to stoke the flames of anti-terrorist hysteria. Pointing to the murder of schoolchildren in Russia, women and children killed on buses in Israel, the beheading of American, Turkish, and Nepalese workers in Iraq, and the killing of hundreds on a Spanish commuter train and hundreds more in Bali, Business Week declared: “America, Europe, Israel, Egypt, Pakistan, and governments everywhere are under attack by Islamic extremists. These terrorists have but one demand—the destruction of modern secular society.” Western civilization was portrayed as standing in opposition to the barbarians, who desire to destroy what is assumed to be the pinnacle of social evolution.

    Translations:
    • Original published version appeared in Portuguese translation in Commnicações, vol. 1, Civilização ou Barbárie (Serpa, Portugal: Encontro Internacional, September 2004), pp. 46-53.
    • German translation in Utopiekreativ: Diskussion Sozialistischer Alternativen, June 2005, vol. 176, 491-503;
    • Spanish translation in Marx Ahora (Cuba), no. 19 (2005), 7-19.
    • Polish translation in Rewolucja, no. 4, 2006.
    • Translated in Monthly Review, Turkish edition, no. 9 (Istanbul: Kalkedon, 2006).
    • Japanese translation, February 1, 2005, at http://www.ne.jp/asahi/institute/association/old/newsletter/20050201/article_2.htm.

     

  • 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

     

  • The Rediscovery of Imperialism

    The Rediscovery of Imperialism

    “The Rediscovery of Imperialism: Introduction” to Harry Madoff, Essays on Imperialism and Globalization,” Monthly Review vol. 54, no. 6 (November 2002), pp. 1-16. DOI: 10.14452/MR-054-06-2002-10_1

    The concept of “imperialism” was considered outside the acceptable range of political discourse within the ruling circles of the capitalist world for most of the twentieth century. Reference to “imperialism” during the Vietnam War, no matter how realistic, was almost always a sign that the writer was on the left side of the political spectrum. In a 1971 foreword to the U.S. edition of Pierre Jalée’s Imperialism in the Seventies Harry Magdoff noted, “As a rule, polite academic scholars prefer not to use the term ‘imperialism.’ They find it distasteful and unscientific.”

    Translations:
    • Turkish translation in Cosmo Politik, no. 6 (Winter 2002), pp. 16-25.
    • Spanish translation at Correntroig, July 6, 2008. Translation by Fernando Lizárraga.

     

  • Imperialism and ‘Empire’

    Imperialism and ‘Empire’

    “Imperialism and ‘Empire,” Monthly Review, vol. 53, no. 7, pp. 1-9. (December, 2001) DOI: 10.14452/MR-053-07-2001-11_1

    Only a little more than a month ago at this writing, before September 11, the mass revolt against capitalist globalization that began in Seattle in November 1999 and that was still gathering force as recently as Genoa in July 2001 was exposing the contradictions of the system in a way not seen for many years. Yet the peculiar nature of this revolt was such that the concept of imperialism had been all but effaced, even within the left, by the concept of globalization, suggesting that some of the worst forms of international exploitation and rivalry had somehow abated.

    Translations:

     

  • Capitalism’s Environmental Crisis

    Capitalism’s Environmental Crisis

    “Capitalism’s Environmental Crisis—Is Technology the Answer?,”(John Bellamy Foster) Monthly Review vol. 52, no. 7 (December 2000), pp.  1-13. DOI: 10.14452/MR-052-07-2000-11_1

    The standard solution offered to the environmental problem in advanced capitalist economies is to shift technology in a more benign direction: more energy-efficient production, cars that get better mileage, replacement of fossil fuels with solar power, and recycling of resources. Other environmental reforms, such as reductions in population growth and even cuts in consumption, are often advocated as well. The magic bullet of technology, however, is by far the favorite, seeming to hold out the possibility of environmental improvement with the least effect on the smooth working of the capitalist machine. The 1997 International Kyoto Protocol on global warming, designed to limit the greenhouse-gas emissions of nations, has only reinforced this attitude, encouraging many environmental advocates in the United States (including Al Gore in his presidential campaign) to advocate technological improvement in energy efficiency as the main escape from the environmental mess.

    Reprints:
    • Published in a different version in Tokyo in Hitotsubashi Journal of Social Sciences, vol. 33, no. 1 (July 2001), pp. 143-50.
    Translations:
    • Turkish translation in Emperyalizmin Yeniden Keşfi (Istanbul, Turkey: Kalkedon Publications (January 2006).

     

  • Marx and Internationalism

    Marx and Internationalism

    “Marx and Internationalism,” Monthly Review, vol. 52, vol. no. 3, pp. 11-22. DOI: 10.14452/MR-052-03-2000-07_2

    It is not uncommon within social science today to acknowledge that Karl Marx was one of the first analysts of globalization. But what is usually forgotten, even by those who make this acknowledgment, is that Marx was also one of the first strategists of working-class internationalism, designed to respond to capitalist globalization. The two major elements governing such internationalism, in his analysis, were the critique of international exploitation and the development of a working-class movement that was both national and international in its organization. A scrutiny of Marx’s views at the time of the First International offers useful insights into the struggle to forge a new internationalism in our own day.

    Translations:
    • Turkish translation in Cosmo Politik, no. 3 (Summer 2002), pp. 168-74.

     

  • Capitalism in the Information Age

    Capitalism in the Information Age

    Buy at Monthly Review Press

    “Capitalism in the Information Age,” (co-edited with Robert McChesney and Ellen Meiksins Wood (Foster listed third) (New York: Monthly Review Press, 1998), 254 pp.
     Expanded version of July-August 1996 issue of Monthly Review. (Contains one essay co-authored by Foster.)

    Not a day goes by that we don’t see a news clip, hear a radio report, or read an article heralding the miraculous new technologies of the information age. The communication revolution associated with these technologies is often heralded as the key to a new age of “globalization.” How is all of this reshaping the labor force, transforming communications, changing the potential for democracy, and altering the course of history itself? Capitalism and the Information Age presents a rigorous examination of some of the most crucial problems and possibilities of these novel technologies. Taken together, the essays reveal how the new information technologies have been grafted onto a global capitalist system characterized by vast and growing inequality, economic stagnation, market saturation, financial instability, urban crisis, social polarization, graded access to information, and economic degradation.

    Editions:

    • Indian edition, (Kharagpur, India: Cornerstone Publications, 1998).
    Translations:
    • Turkish translation, (Ankara: EPOS, 2003).
    • Vietnamese translation, Hanoi, May 2001.