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  • Monthly Review Essays

About John Bellamy Foster

John Bellamy Foster, professor of sociology at the University of Oregon, is editor of Monthly Review, an independent socialist magazine published monthly in New York City. His research is devoted to critical inquiries into theory and history, focusing primarily on the economic, political and ecological contradictions of capitalism, but also encompassing the wider realm of social theory as a whole. He has published numerous articles and books focusing on the political economy of capitalism and the economic crisis, ecology and the ecological crisis, and Marxist theory: (with Brett Clark) The Robbery of Nature: Capitalism and the Ecological Rift; The Return of Nature: Socialism and Ecology; (with Paul Burkett) Marx and the Earth: An Anti-Critique (2016); The Theory of Monopoly Capitalism: An Elaboration of Marxian Political Economy (New Edition, 2014); (with Robert W. McChesney) The Endless Crisis: How Monopoly-Finance Capital Produces Stagnation and Upheaval from the USA to China (2012); (with Fred Magdoff) What Every Environmentalist Needs to Know About Capitalism: A Citizen's Guide to Capitalism and the Environment (2011); (with Brett Clark and Richard York) The Ecological Rift: Capitalism’s War on the Earth (2009); (with Fred Magdoff) The Great Financial Crisis: Causes and Consequences (2009); The Ecological Revolution: Making Peace with the Planet (2009); (with Brett Clark and Richard York) Critique of Intelligent Design: Materialism versus Creationism from Antiquity to the Present (2008); Ecology Against Capitalism (2002); Marx's Ecology: Materialism and Nature (2000); (with Frederick H. Buttel and Fred Magdoff) Hungry for Profit: The Agribusiness Threat to Farmers, Food, and the Environment (2000); The Vulnerable Planet: A Short Economic History of the Environment (1999); (with Ellen Meiksins Wood and Robert W. McChesney) Capitalism and the Information Age: The Political Economy of the Global Communication Revolution (1998); (with Ellen Meiksins Wood) In Defense of History: Marxism and the Postmodern Agenda (1997); The Theory of Monopoly Capitalism: An Elaboration of Marxian Political Economy (1986); (with Henryk Szlajfer) The Faltering Economy: The Problem of Accumulation Under Monopoly Capitalism (1984). His work is published in at least twenty-five languages. Visit johnbellamyfoster.org for a collection of most of Foster's works currently available online.
  • Neofascism in the White House

    John Bellamy Foster

    In this republished essay from 2017, John Bellamy Foster discusses how U.S. neofascism in certain ways resembles the classical fascism of Italy and Germany in the 1920s and ’30s, but with historically distinct features specific to the political economy and culture of the United States in the opening decades of the twenty-first century.

  • "The Dialectics of Ecology"

    John Bellamy Foster: “The Dialectics of Ecology: Socialism and Nature” – Book Review

    Originally published: John Bellamy Foster: "The Dialectics of Ecology: Socialism and Nature" - Book Review on Volume 79, No 9, 2024 by Jakub Bokes (more by John Bellamy Foster: "The Dialectics of Ecology: Socialism and Nature" - Book Review)

    How can we transcend the alienation of humanity and nature, and create a world of substantive equality and ecological sustainability?

  • "The Dialectics of Ecology"

    John Bellamy Foster Book Launch: “The Dialectics of Ecology”

    Originally published: Critical Theory Workshop on October 5, 2024 (more by Critical Theory Workshop)

    Book Launch: “The Dialectics of Ecology”

  • John Bellamy Foster

    John Bellamy Foster interviewed by Daniel Tutt on Georg Lukács and “The Destruction of Reason”

    Originally published: Historical Materialism on February 10, 2023 by Daniel Tutt (more by Historical Materialism)  |

    John Bellamy Foster speaks with Daniel Tutt about the work of István Mészáros and Paul Baran, contemporary irrationalist tendencies in left ecological thought, intensifying global class struggles, and the continued relevance of Georg Lukács’s The Destruction of Reason (1952), recently reissued with an introduction by Enzo Traverso by Verso in 2021.

  • “Beyond Leviathan” by István Mészáros

    What is the State & the challenge to transcend it?

    Originally published: Global Political Economy (GPEnewsdocs) on August 19, 2024 (more by Global Political Economy (GPEnewsdocs))

    John Bellamy Foster points to “Beyond Leviathan” by István Mészáros for insights into the ancient origins of the state and nature of its evolution over thousands of years, the necessity to move beyond the state and how to meet that challenge.

  • John Bellamy Foster on Albert Einstein’s Radical Politics

    Originally published: KPFA on July 15, 2024 (more by KPFA)

    A brilliant theoretical physicist best known for his theory of relativity, Albert Einstein was also a socialist. John Bellamy Foster describes Einstein’s radical political commitments, including his efforts in relation to the founding of Brandeis University, his role in the Henry Wallace campaign, and his seminal essay “Why Socialism?”

  • The World’s Most Dangerous Marxist | John Bellamy Foster

    The World’s Most Dangerous Marxist | John Bellamy Foster | #182 HR

    Originally published: Medium on September 27, 2023 (more by Medium)  |

    Foster explains Marx’s ecological critique of capitalism and how the concept of “metabolic rift” highlights the alienation between humans and nature caused by capitalism’s focus on profit over sustainability.

  • Marx, the Anthropocene, and the Metabolic Rift

    Originally published: Polen Ekoloji by Polen Ekoloji (more by Polen Ekoloji)

    A Polen Ekoloji seminar featuring John Bellamy Foster on the theoretical and historical background of Marx, the Anthropocene, and the metabolic rift.

  • Daniel Tutt of Study Groups on Psychoanalysis and Politics interviews John Bellamy Foster

    The New Irrationalism: a conversation with John Bellamy Foster

    John Bellamy Foster and Eds.

    Daniel Tutt of Study Groups on Psychoanalysis and Politics interviews John Bellamy Foster on his new article, “The New Irrationalism,” from the February 2023 (Volume 74, Number 9) issue of Monthly Review.

  • John Bellamy Foster

    Engels and the second foundation of Marxism

    Originally published: Marx Memorial Library on November 30, 2022 (more by Marx Memorial Library)  |

    John Bellamy Foster, Editor of Monthly Review (New York, USA) gives our annual Engels Memorial Lecture, joint with the Working Class Movement Library.

  • Dio Cramer

    Extractivism in the Anthropocene

    Originally published: Science for the People on Volume 25, no. 2, Bleeding Earth (more by Science for the People)  |

    Late Imperialism and the Expropriation of the Earth.

  • The Return of Nature

    Marxism and the climate crisis (John Bellamy Foster on the ‘Historical Materialism podcast’)

    Originally published: Historical Materialism on October 2022 (more by Historical Materialism)  |

    Foster begins by referencing the fact that the 19th century, Newtonian view of nature, and the mechanistic, positivist approach to science originally penetrated socialist thought.

  • High Speed Train

    Why is the great project of Ecological Civilization specific to China?

    John Bellamy Foster and Jianren Guo and Zhang Haiyan and Fan Meijun

    When the concept of ecological civilization came to prominence in China, beginning around 2002 it was depicted as a defining element of socialism with Chinese characteristics, requiring a transition away from the expropriation of nature endemic to capitalist modernity and pointing to the need for worldwide social transformations. It was thus closely related from the start to the Marxist critique of capitalism.

  • Police officers help firefighters to extinguish a fire in Thrakomakedones, near Mount Parnitha, north of Athens

    Be moderate…we only want THE EARTH!

    John Bellamy Foster

    We have to recognize that there is a pathway forward for humanity, but that the capitalist world system, and today’s governments that are largely subservient to corporations and the wealthy, are blocking that pathway, simply because it requires revolutionary-scale socioecological change.

  • Green Marx

    Turning the Earth into money w/ John Bellamy Foster

    Originally published: Tribune Magazine on May 11, 2022 (more by Tribune Magazine)  |

    This week, Grace talks to John Bellamy Foster, professor of sociology at the University of Oregon and editor of Monthly Review. They discuss Marx’s theory of nature and the relationship between humanity and nature under capitalism.

  • Olga Chernysheva (Russia), Kind People, 2004.

    The U.S. proxy war in Ukraine

    John Bellamy Foster

    There are two prongs to U.S. imperial grand strategy, one as geopolitical expansion and positioning, including the enlargement of NATO, the other as the U.S. drive for nuclear primacy.

  • John Bellamy Foster Posted on September 7, 2021 Marxism, Ecology and the Climate Crisis

    Marxism, Ecology and the Climate Crisis—John Bellamy Foster

    John Bellamy Foster

    In the week before the COP26 international summit, John Bellamy Foster analyzed the climate emergency and how we can achieve climate justice.

  • Return of the Dialectics of Nature: Marxian Ecology and the Struggle for Freedom as Necessity

    Return of the Dialectics of Nature: Marxian Ecology and the Struggle for Freedom as Necessity —A Discussion of the Deutscher Prize 2020

    Originally published: Haymarket Books on November 12, 2021 (more by Haymarket Books)  |

    This session is a discussion of the Deutscher Prize Winning Book 2020 ‘The Return of the Dialectics of Nature: Marxian Ecology and the Struggle for Freedom as Necessity’ – John Bellamy Foster

  • The Return of Nature

    ‘The Return of the Dialectics of Nature’: 2020 Deutscher Prize Lecture by John Bellamy Foster

    John Bellamy Foster

    John Bellamy Foster – Deutscher Memorial Lecture

  • A Discussion with John Bellamy Foster – Presenting the 2021 transform! yearbook

    A Discussion with John Bellamy Foster – Presenting the 2021 transform! yearbook

    Originally published: Transform Europe on October 19, 2021 (more by Transform Europe)  |

    A discussion with John Bellamy Foster, one of the world’s leading figures in Marxian ecological theory.

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  • Some Preliminary Theses on the Concept of Eco-Civilization January 01, 2025
  • Braverman, Monopoly Capital, and AI: The Collective Worker and the Reunification of Labor December 01, 2024

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  • Albert Einstein’s “Why Socialism?”: The Enduring Legacy of His Classic Essay May 06, 2025

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    Over 10,000 people died in transit to Spain in 2024 alone.[1] On June 2022, the border fence of Melilla, one of two Spanish enclaves in Morocco, was witness to a massacre that killed or disappeared over a hundred African migrants.[2]  A recent BBC investigation revealed that Greek border guards systematically repeal immigrants already on Greek […]

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