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  • Monthly Review Essays

About Fred Magdoff

Fred Magdoff is professor emeritus of plant and soil science at the University of Vermont and a long-time commentator on political-economic topics. He is coauthor, with John Bellamy Foster, of The Great Financial Crisis (2009) and What Every Environmentalist Needs to Know About Capitalism (2011)—both published by Monthly Review Press.
  • Salinized soil fields in Ethiopia

    Soil ecology and capitalism agriculture: Fred Magdoff interviewed by Farooque Chowdhury

    Fred Magdoff and Farooque Chowdhury

    Ecological and social conditions are mostly ignored in a system in which profit is the goal: Fred Magdoff discusses capitalist agriculture

  • Wikipedia Exile of Ovid - Wikipedia

    Amazon women warriors and revolutionary pants

    Fred Magdoff

    For much of human history, most people—men and women—wore loose fitting robes of various types to cover their bodies. It is thought that trousers were invented relatively recently in human history, around 1000 BCE, so that people could be more comfortable riding horses.

  • Sprinkler irrigation in steep field

    The struggle for a just society is long, requiring action on many fronts

    Farooque Chowdhury and Fred Magdoff

    ‘The struggle for a socially just and ecologically sound society requires activity on many fronts. This includes the crucial work of organizing and activist engagement, as well as education about the economic, political, and ecological complexities that exist and why so many of the problems facing humanity are either caused or made worse by capitalism.’

  • Dr James Hansen before congress in 1988

    June 2018: reflections on 1988 three decades later

    Fred Magdoff

    Capitalism as a system functions irrationally because social and ecological concerns cannot be taken into account when making business decisions. Profits before all else.

  • Over a million Cubans march on May Day 2017

    May Day 2018: Exploitation, NO! Expropriation, NO! Unite for justice!

    John Bellamy Foster and Farooque Chowdhury and Fred Magdoff

    In view of the historic May Day, May 1st, analysts from Monthly Review, the famous independent socialist magazine, identify tasks the working classes should press with. The following interviews were conducted in early April with John Bellamy Foster, Professor and Editor of Monthly Review; Fred Magdoff, Professor Emeritus, and one of Monthly Review’s closest associates; […]

  • Ce que tout écologiste doit savoir à propos du capitalisme (What every environmentalist needs to know about capitalism)

    The earth shall rise on new foundations

    Fred Magdoff and John Bellamy Foster

    The United States is sometimes viewed as the most extreme capitalist society on earth. The decision of the newly elected Trump administration to withdraw from the Paris Climate Agreement would seem to affirm such a judgment. It highlights the fact that while capitalism cannot solve the environmental problem, a more extreme capitalist society can, if it is not stopped, eliminate all possibility for a future sustainable society, by accelerating the runaway train to catastrophe represented by today’s business as usual.

  • Flag Map

    Capitalism is national and imperialist, not transnational

    Fred Magdoff

    Capitalism is characterized by both centripetal and centrifugal tendencies. There is not and cannot be a transnational capitalist state and for that reason there cannot be a transnational capitalist class.

  • The Problem Is Capitalism

    Fred Magdoff

    NYC Climate Convergence, September 20, 2014 A. The Environmental Crisis The “environmental crisis” is actually a number of crises, including the following: climate change; acidification of the oceans (related to elevated atmospheric CO2 levels); pollution of air, water, soil, and organisms with harmful substances; degradation of agricultural soils; destruction of wetlands and tropical forests; and […]

  • The Environmental Crisis and Capitalism

    Fred Magdoff

    Fred Magdoff: What I would end with is just a couple of ideas — not to give you a blueprint of another type of system but a couple of ideas of what it might be like.  I would say one in which basically the economy and politics are both under social control, under democratic social […]

  • Farewell Comrade Chávez

    Fred Magdoff

    With the death of Hugo Chávez, Venezuela and the world have lost a leader whose primary concern was to bring a new system into existence — one he referred to as 21st Century Socialism.  This meant a lot of things to Chávez, including making sure that all people had access to the necessities of life […]

  • Reducción de recursos y degradación ambiental: una propuesta modesta

    Fred Magdoff

      Hay un número importante de personas en los países adinerados que cree que los grandes problemas de la reducción de los recurso con que cuenta el planeta y la contaminación ambiental global, son causados principalmente por la enorme cantidad de habitantes que tiene el mundo: actualmente más de 7 mil millones, y que esta […]

  • Reducing Resource Use and Environmental Degradation: A Modest Proposal

    Fred Magdoff

    There are significant numbers of people in the wealthy countries who believe that the great issues of resource depletion and global environmental pollution are caused primarily by the huge number of people on the globe — currently about 7 billion — and that things will only get much worse with the anticipated increase to about […]

  • Lessons from a Long History of Dissent: From the Early Twentieth Century to Occupy Wall Street

    Fred Magdoff

    World Peace Forum Teach-In, Vancouver, Canada, November 12, 2011 (Modified from Notes) We are at what social theorists call a “historic moment,” in which real change suddenly seems possible.  It is therefore all the more important to learn from past struggles.  One of the first lessens of a long history of dissent from the early […]

  • OWS Movement: A Down-to-Earth View

    Fred Magdoff

    A participant’s note from Burlington. . . . I went to OWS (a week ago) and Occupy Burlington last Saturday.  I was VERY happy that, while it was the last day of the regular weekly farmers’ market at the same small park, the farmers gave the Occupy Burlington people $400 worth of tokens to buy […]

  • The Great Recession and Its Aftermath: Causes vs. Symptoms

    Fred Magdoff

    There is much confusion about the current economic situation, among left media and organizations as well as in the mainstream media.  This is certainly understandable given its complexity.  But what many are referring to as causes are symptoms of a deeper underlying problem — in other words, sparks that produced the Great Recession by igniting […]

  • The Financial Crisis of Capitalism

    Fred Magdoff

    “Our community is expanding: MRZine viewers have increased in number, as have the readers of our editions published outside the United States and in languages other than English.  We sense a sharp increase in interest in our perspective and its history.   Many in our community have made use of the MR archive we put […]

  • Reflections on Venezuela: Food, Health, Democracy, and a Hope for a Better World

    Fred Magdoff

    Written hurriedly in Caracas February 2008 Background These are some brief impressions and reflections in the midst of a short visit to Venezuela.  For 10 days I traveled with a wonderful group of 23, mainly from the New York City area (with delegates from Washington, DC, Washington State, and myself from Vermont).  It was led […]

  • Reflections on the June 9-10, 2006 Hong Kong Conference: “The Fortieth Anniversary: Rethinking the Genealogy and Legacy of the Cultural Revolution”

    Fred Magdoff

      Flying into Hong Kong with my wife, Amy Demarest, early in the morning of June 8, 2006 and jetlagged, I wasn’t sure I’d be up to the next two days of a fully packed conference on the Cultural Revolution.  The conference was sponsored by the China Study Group, Monthly Review, and the Contemporary China […]

Also By Fred Magdoff in Monthly Review Magazine

  • Grand Theft Capital: The Increasing Exploitation and Robbery of the U.S. Working Class May 01, 2023
  • Repairing the Soil Carbon Rift April 01, 2021
  • A Rational Agriculture Is Incompatible with Capitalism March 01, 2015
  • An Ecologically Sound and Socially Just Economy September 01, 2014
  • Stagnation and Financialization May 01, 2014
  • The Plight of the U.S. Working Class January 01, 2014
  • Twenty-First-Century Land Grabs November 01, 2013
  • Class War and Labor’s Declining Share March 01, 2013
  • Global Resource Depletion January 01, 2013

Books By Fred Magdoff

  • Creating an Ecological Society: Toward a Revolutionary Transformation May 18, 2017

Monthly Review Essays

  • US Imperialism in Crisis: Opportunities and Challenges to a Global Community with a Shared Future
    Sam-Kee Cheng A late 1940s Soviet poster showing a US military service member lounging on top of a German factory, smoking a cigar. The text beneath reads DER DOLLARIMPERIALISMUS [dollar imperialism].

    1. Introduction The predominance of US economic, political and military power in the world was established at the end of the Second World War.1 With just 6.3 percent of global population, the United States held about 50 percent of the world wealth in 1948. As the only power which had used nuclear weapons on civilian […]

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    Our job is to make media reform part of our broader struggle for democracy, social justice, and, dare we say it, socialism.

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