This article reviews the background and the implications of two transitions in Brazil: the political transition from a military regime (1964-85) to democracy (1985-present), and the economic transition from import-substituting industrialization (ISI, 1930-80) to neoliberalism (1990-present). It subsequently examines how neoliberal economic policies were implemented in a democracy, under the centre-right administrations led by Fernando […]
Subjects Archives: Ecology
Marxist Ecology, Environmental Science and Ecological Crisis
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 […]
Climate Change and Socialism: An interview with John Bellamy Foster
Steve da Silva (SD): Over the last decade you have emerged as a leading thinker in synthesizing radical ecology with the Marxist tradition. From Marx’s Ecology (2000) to The Ecological Rift (2010) and everything in between, you’ve carried out the much needed intellectual work of recovering the overlooked ecological content of Marx’s original thought, presenting […]
Challenging Harper’s Imperialist Agenda
It has become commonplace to observe that the Conservative government of Stephen Harper has been re-making the symbols and practices of the Canadian state. Canada, in this view, was once the social democratic heartland of North America. But under Harper, Canada has been transformed into a hyper-regime of neoliberal market fundamentalism. Nowhere, it is argued, […]
The Epochal Crisis, Unequal Ecological Exchange, and Exit Strategies
John Bellamy Foster: My talk is called “The Epochal Crisis.” The term “epochal crisis” was introduced by Jason Moore to deal with periods in which economic and ecological crises intersect or merge. We are certainly in the greatest epochal crisis in the history of the world. . . . Now, we can also talk about […]
A New Phase of Neoliberalism in Iran: The Untold Story of Iran’s “Moderate” Government
An Iranian economic delegation, headed by Economic Affairs and Finance Minister Ali Tayyebnia, held intensive talks with their counterparts from other countries on the sidelines of the joint annual meeting of the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) on October 11-13. The talks followed the little noticed meeting between Iran’s new president Hassan […]
January 2014 Delegation to Venezuela: The Revolution Continues!
January 28 to February 6, 2014 While the mainstream media speculates about the future of the Bolivarian Revolution after the passing of Hugo Chavez, for the Venezuelan people there is no question. Come learn about the process currently transpiring in Venezuela as the people, reinvigorated by the legacy of Chavez, deepen and further radicalize their […]
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 […]
Agrarian Crisis as the Crisis of Small Property Ownership in Globalizing Capitalism
The topic of agrarian crisis is everywhere. What does it mean, though? We know what ‘agrarian’ means. It refers to agriculture and its social relations. What does ‘crisis’ mean? It means a problem (or a set of problems). It is not an ordinary problem, however. It is a big problem. It is a problem that […]
Momentous Agrarian Strike Brings Colombian Government to Table
The divide in Colombia between poverty-stricken rural masses and land-hungry ruling elements is famous for leading to serious conflict. Farmers, agricultural workers, truckers, and traditional miners revived that pattern on August 19 as they launched a nationwide agrarian strike. Government repression, true to form, was not lacking. Some farmers gain reasonable livelihoods from sales of […]
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). […]
The Great Rift: Capitalism and the Metabolism of Nature and Production
John Bellamy Foster: We need a society that is geared, as István Mészáros always tells us, to substantive equality. And no compromise on the issue of equality. Bolívar said equality is the law of laws. So we need substantive equality and we need ecological sustainability. And they have to go together. How do we know […]
The Complexities of Putting Ideals into Practice: Interview with Margaret Randall
Introduction Margaret Randall is a feminist poet, writer, photographer, and social activist. Born in New York City in 1936 and currently residing in Albuquerque, New Mexico, she has also spent a number of years outside the United States. Randall participated in the 1968 student movement while living in Mexico City, from where she was […]
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 […]
Who Can Best Help End the Colombian Government Repression of Catatumbo Peasants?
“Mr. President [Santos]: I would like to have you tell me to my face that I am a guerrilla. None of us are. We are workers, peasants who try to live as we can. It’s not easy to live here. Our crops produce only losses. We have to sell very cheap and can’t buy things. […]
Pork: The New Weapon of Mass Destruction
One of the greatest horrors of the US security and policy establishment is the prospect of terrorists sabotaging critical infrastructure and key resources — the only horror greatest than that is the prospect of turning the infrastructure itself into a weapon of mass destruction. Imagine a vast network of pipelines and storage units containing highly […]
Facing Off: The Integration of Capital v. the Integration of Peoples in the Americas
João Pedro Stédile, second from left, speaks to the Peasant Movement of Papay in Haiti. Photo: Beverly Bell. João Pedro Stédile is an economist, co-founder and co-coordinator of the Landless Workers Movement (MST) of Brazil, and leader among Latin American social movements. He gave the following talk to hundreds of Haitian farmers at the 40th […]
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 […]
Interdom at Eighty: Reflections in Russia, on Dreams Old and Renascent
Russia, as travelers have noted over the centuries, is immense. Most of it is far from large bodies of water. And yet, in a first visit after many years, I came upon some unusual islands right in the heart of the country. But they were not islands in the geographic sense. Some were children’s islands. […]
