Tassos Tsakiroglou: How urgent do you consider the necessity to develop an understanding of the interconnections between the deepening impasse of the capitalist economy and the rapidly accelerating ecological threat? John Bellamy Foster: The urgency of understanding the interconnections between the economic impassse and the ecological emergency derives from the combined threats they pose to […]
Geography Archives: Europe
Countries in the continent of Europe
GroKo Politics: No Change of Key in Germany
Some suggested the German “Word of the Year” should be “whistleblower” — in the Denglish language here breezily called “Neu-Deutsch” (“New German”). But chosen instead was “GroKo,” headline shorthand for “Grosse Koalition,” a term used constantly during three months of wrangling between Germany’s two biggest parties, once seen as “irreconcilable foes,” to form a nice […]
Barbarism on the Horizon: An Interview With István Mészáros
Mr. István Mészáros, you are coming to visit Brazil to talk about György Lukács. As a profound expert of the work of the philosopher, how do you evaluate the importance of his ideas today? György Lukács was my great teacher and friend for twenty-two years, until he died in 1971. He started publishing as a […]
What Is Political Will?
Samuel Grove [SG]: For a while now you’ve been working on and defending the old idea of ‘the will of the people’, and you’ve described it in terms of a ‘dialectical voluntarism’; what do you mean by this? Peter Hallward [PH]: I’m not stuck on the terminology, and I’m leery of the way these […]
Germany: Fast Food, Slow Decisions
Let me begin with food — fast food. Let me invite you in. Looking around, there’s no denying it: this is Burger King. It could be in Augusta, ME, or Anaheim, CA, and the fatty Whoppers taste the same. But it’s not — most customers here speak German, some maybe Turkish (the biggest minority). For […]
Mandela Was Not a Hallmark Card
Long-time South African educator and President of the New Unity Movement, R. O. Dudley had a quote that he used when speaking of various iconic South African struggle leaders: He “had arms, not wings.” It is a phrase that we should remember when speaking of the late Nelson Mandela, but unfortunately, press coverage in the […]
Will the ANC Sell-out Workers?
“ANC President, Nelson Mandela delivered an opening address to the September COSATU Special Congress. Having completed his prepared speech, comrade Mandela put aside his notes and spoke directly and spontaneously to the 1 700 worker delegates. He asked a question that was uppermost in the minds of many.” — The African Communist (1993) COMRADES, […]
Refrigerator Wars: The Revolution Goes Back in Action
The Venezuelan state is intervening in retail businesses around the country, principally those that trade in domestic appliances. This apparently modest decision, taken a week ago, has set in motion an interesting process of push and pull. Long lines outside the intervened stores and some disorder inside meet with predictable outcry about “mobs” and “communism” […]
Nepal and Qatar in the World Turned Upside Down . . . and in a World Turned Right Side Up
Analytical Monthly Review, published in Kharagpur, West Bengal, India, is a sister edition of Monthly Review. Its October 2013 issue features the following editorial. — Ed. When the last of the British army departed on February 28, 1948, they marched to the Gateway of India — not yet obstructed by yellow concrete barricades — […]
Statement of Support to Middle East Technical University’s Resistance Against the Government’s Unlawful Environmental Massacre on Their Campus
Ankara Metropolitan Municipality, led by the AKP (Justice and Development Party), has, despite opposition, initiated a road construction project that goes through a forest area located in Ankara’s inner city, which is also property of Middle East Technical University (METU). University students, the University presidency as well as the residents of the neighborhood located right […]
Jobs Versus the Environment
Is there a fundamental conflict between a healthy environment and a healthy economy? There has been a lot of concern lately about damage that we humans are inflicting on our small, beautiful Planet Earth. Waste CO2 from our way of life has been dissolving in the oceans, increasing the acidity of the water and making […]
Statement of Support to CUNY Students Attacked and Arrested in Peaceful Protests Against Ex-Gen. David Petraeus
On September 18, 2013, a press release issued by the Ad Hoc Committee Against the Militarization of CUNY stated: “Six students were arrested in a brutal, unprovoked police attack during a peaceful protest by the City University of New York’s students and faculty against CUNY’s appointment of former CIA chief ex-General David Petraeus. Students were […]
Orange Is Not New, and Prison Is Not Our Best Color
Twenty-five years ago, I, a hapless reporter on assignment, went to the DC Jail and met the woman who was to be my life’s partner. I interviewed her about her political bombing case; we fell in love; I visited her in various prisons for 11 years; she was released; we’re now spending the rest of […]
Who Really Benefits From Sweatshops?
Consumers are ultimately the ones responsible for dangerous conditions in garment assembly plants in the Global South, Hong Kong-based business executive Bruce Rockowitz told the New York Times recently. The problem is that improved safety would raise the price of clothing, according to Rockowitz, who heads Li & Fung Limited, a sourcing company that hooks […]
Germany: Threats of Violence, Hopes for Votes
All summer the threat of violence was in the air in Hellersdorf. This borough on the outskirts of East Berlin, once a huge site of modern high-rise buildings aimed at solving East German housing problems, provided homes for nearly 130,000 people. After “the Wall went down” many high-rise buildings were cropped from eleven to five […]
Wage Theft, Wage as Theft
I. On Thursday, June 27th, fast food workers gathered outside City Hall in New York before a hearing on low wages and wage theft. Some of the workers described to the reporters of the New York Times the difficulty of living on minimum wage, $7.25 per hour in the state of New York. One worker, […]
Michael D. Yates Interviewed by Cedric Muhammad (for the Final Call)
The following is an interview of me (MDY) conducted by Cedric Muhammad (CM), who is an aide to the Honorable Minister Louis Farrakhan, the National Representative of the Honorable Elijah Muhammad and the Nation of Islam. An abbreviated version of the interview appears in The Final Call, the Nation of Islam’s newspaper (available at www.finalcall.com/artman/publish/Business_amp_Money_12/article_100637.shtml). […]
Preface to the Indian Edition of Harry E. Vanden and Marc Becker’s José Carlos Mariátegui: An Anthology
Upon the release of the Indian edition of Harry E. Vanden and Marc Becker’s José Carlos Mariátegui: An Anthology (Kharagpur: Cornerstone Publications, 2013; originally New York: Monthly Review Press, 2011), Vanden is in India on a lecture tour to spread the word about the ideas of José Carlos Mariátegui. On this occasion, we are publishing […]
An Interview with John Bellamy Foster (for the Sunday Eleftherotypia)
CJP: What began as a financial crisis in 2007 has become one of the biggest unemployment crises in the advanced capitalist world. Could this perhaps mean that the crisis of 2007-08 was not actually caused by finance itself but had its underlying causes in the real economy? JBF: No one doubts that it was […]
Crises of Capitalism and Social Democracy
John Bellamy Foster is best-known as author of Marx’s Ecology (2000; in which he corrects the popular misapprehension that Marx did not ‘get’ environmental limits), and as editor of Monthly Review (monthlyreview.org), the journal founded by Marxist economist Paul Sweezy in the late 1940s. In his latest book, The Endless Crisis (2012; written with […]
