While environmentalist Greta Thunburg was at the UN, John Bellamy Foster, environmental sociologist and editor of the Monthly Review, was in Mauritius to discuss climate change. Weekly had an opportunity to talk with him.
Author Archive | John Bellamy Foster
Ecosocialism and a just transition
The idea of a “just transition” is appearing everywhere these days, most notably in the preamble of the 2015 Paris Climate Agreement, which refers to the need to take “into account the imperatives of a just transition of the workforce and the creation of decent work and quality jobs in accordance with nationally defined development […]
The crisis of capital
It may be hard, but I want you to try to think back a decade, actually slightly less than a decade. In 2000, we were celebrating the millennium, and if you remember what was happening at that time, it was an enormous celebration of a new global capitalism, of globalization, of the end of conflict […]
Twenty-first century capitalism—the means exist to break the chains that hold us
“The overwhelming character of the ecological crisis will eventually…[force workers to recognize] that the main material conditions determining their lives are both economic and environmental—and indeed that the latter are more far-reaching.”
There is still time for an ecological revolution to prevent hothouse earth
The only thing that could alter this dire situation, all over the world, is the rise of another power in society. We need not millions but hundreds of millions of people, necessarily predominantly working class, in the street day in and day out.
The hope of ecosocialism
“The gross irrationality of our economic and social system is a measure of what we could do to improve the lives of people and the environment.”
Making War on the Planet: Geoengineering and Capitalism’s Creative Destruction of the Earth
The enormous dangers that rapid climate change present to humanity as a whole, and the inability of the existing capitalist political-economic structure to address them, symbolized by the presence of Donald Trump in the White House, have engendered a desperate search for technofixes in the form of schemes for geoengineering, defined as massive, deliberate human […]
Marxian theory & eco-revolution – Prof. John Bellamy Foster
The Marxism 2018 festival, hosted by the Socialist Workers Party (SWP), took place last week in a context of deepening political polarisation across the world.
Capitalism and the Expropriation of Nature: The Strategic Discourse of Ecosocialism with John Bellamy Foster
Ecological resistance in the twenty-first century has more and more been informed by the development of Marxian ecology and ecosocialism more generally.
A new Marxian century
It’s not just that Marx’s ideas remain relevant — we’re also in the midst of a great new age of Marxian thought.
May Day 2018: Exploitation, NO! Expropriation, NO! Unite for justice!
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; […]
The U.S. can’t revive the Monroe Doctrine or expel China from Latin America, but it can inflict pain on the region
In this MPN exclusive, we speak to Monthly Review editor John Bellamy Foster and Latin America studies scholar Harry L. Simón Salazar about the U.S. fight to maintain hegemony in Latin America, the rise of the right wing, and the danger of “regime change” in Venezuela.
‘Socialism a necessity for human survival’
According to John Bellamy Foster, the world environmental crisis is a systemic crisis, a product of capitalism, and requires systemic changes in the capitalist system. He says that environmental sustainability is incompatible with capitalism.
Trump, the Nationalist-Populist Movement, and Wolff’s Fire and Fury
The real story of Wolff’s Fire and Fury—ignored by an establishment media that has no interest in revealing anything about the class struggle—is the rise of the nationalist-populist movement, which has used Trump effectively to grow its base.
Capitalism, exterminism and the long ecological revolution
teleSUR spoke to Monthly Review editor John Bellamy Foster about climate change & the need to fight for an ecosocialist, revolutionary alternative to the profit-driven world capitalist system.
Foreword to Creating an Ecological Society
As Fred Magdoff and Chris Williams point out in their new book, Creating an Ecological Society, the word “ecology” (originally œcology) was first coined in 1866 by Ernst Haeckel, Darwin’s leading German follower, based on the Greek word oikos, or household. Ironically, the word “economy,” to which ecology is often nowadays counterposed, was derived much […]
Third nature
John Bellamy Foster’s essay,“Third Nature: Edward Said on Ecology and Imperialism” is taken from Vijay Prashad, ed., Will the Flower Slip Through the Asphalt (New Delhi: LeftWord Books, 2017), pp. 50-57. This edited collection was organized around Naomi Klein’s 2016 Edward W. Said Lecture, “Let Them Drown,” originally published in the June 2016 issue of […]
Neoliberalism in crisis
Persistent economic stagnation together with neoliberal austerity has at this point seriously undermined the stability of the liberal-democratic state and thus the political command sector of the capitalist system. This has led to a dangerous resurgence of political movements in the fascist genus (fascism, neofascism, post-fascism), representing an alternative way of managing the state of […]
John Bellamy Foster interviewed on Law and Disorder radio
Is Trump a neofascist? Thoughtful analysts on the left like Cornell West, Noam Chomsky, and Judith Butler think he is. But mainstream liberal commentators refuse to associate the Trump phenomena with fascism. They call him a right wing populist. What is neofascism? Right wing Populism? Does it really matter what Trump is called? The great […]
What is to constitute the new “yes” is the problem
For Klein, developing a meaningful anti-shock politics involves some combination of what Sanders represented and what Clinton symbolized: Sanders with respect to class and economics, Clinton as far as race and gender, and everything else. Imperialism and war scarcely enter the argument.
