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 […]
Subjects Archives: Political Economy
For the Finance Minister of Germany, Crisis Is a “Necessity”
Angela Merkel’s face usually displays a rather plain, friendly, almost benign expression, matching her simple, benign words. But in rare unguarded moments, some claim, they glimpse a very hard visage, which is matched, equally rarely, by hardly benign words, like her annoyed statement that Cyprus was “exhausting the patience of its euro partners.” Yes, Angela […]
The Relevance of Marxism Today: An Interview With Michael A. Lebowitz
Do you think Marxism is still relevant today? If so, which parts? I think that Marxism is completely relevant for understanding capitalism now. It’s an error to think that capitalism has changed and that therefore we have to change Marxism. Marx grasped the nature of capitalism; and, although capitalism has changed in some of […]
The Environmental Crisis and Capitalism
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 […]
Chávez’s Chief Legacy: Building, with People, an Alternative Society to Capitalism
When Hugo Chávez triumphed in the 1998 presidential elections, the neoliberal capitalist model was already foundering. The choice then was none other than whether to re-establish the neoliberal capitalist model — clearly with some changes including greater concern for social issues, but still motivated by the same logic of profit seeking — or to go […]
The Logic of Legalization
The political calculus behind immigration reform was supposed to have changed after the elections of 2012. The outcome of the elections, along with some basic economics, was supposed to have made the logic of legalization all but inevitable, setting the stage for the passage of comprehensive immigration reform early this year. And yet, we remain […]
Debt Trial of the Century: NML Capital, LTD. v. Republic of Argentina
“The Third World Network and Jubilee are partnering today to stand up against vulture fund activity, stand up for Argentina, in this incredibly important court case that has massive repercussions for all countries around the world to be able to protect themselves from this kind of litigation in the courts by holdout vulture funds. […]
Workers of the World
Labor historians Marcus Rediker and Peter Linebaugh have vividly described how sailors and other maritime workers were in the vanguard of the creation of an international working class. Unlike most people in the early modern period who largely stayed rooted to the soil of their birth or tied closely to their particular artisanal enterprises, Jack […]
Capitalism Becomes Questionable
The depth and length of the global crisis are now clear to millions. In the sixth year since it started in late 2007, no end is in sight. Unemployment rates are now less than halfway back from their recession peak to where they were in 2007. Over 20 million are without work, millions more limited […]
Davos Mysticism: Elite Optimism Amid Endless Crisis
“An economic recovery has begun.” — President Obama, Second Inaugural Address President Obama’s optimism — baseless as it may be — was surely appreciated at the annual meeting of the World Economic Forum. For in what was described as the “most optimistic” meeting since 2007, 2,600 members of the global elite convened over the weekend […]
Capitalism, Crises, and a Socialist Alternative: In Conversation With Michael A. Lebowitz
Rebekah Wetmore and Ryan Romard (RW/RR): The crisis of world capitalism starting in 2007 was the most severe crisis of capitalism since the Great Depression and thus far the recovery, both globally and within Canada, has been weak at best. With this mind, to what extent is the current crisis cyclical and in what […]
Do We Oppose the Anomalies of Capitalism or Capitalism Itself?
Q. Can you comment on increased public outrage regarding acts of corruption and strivings towards achieving what is considered normal functioning of the capitalist system? A. The question is: Do we oppose the anomalies of capitalism or capitalism itself? Corruption is vastly overrated. Of course, it can reach proportions in which even the normal […]
Zyuganov and Religion: On the Current State of the Russian Communist Party
On 27 October, 2012, Gennady Zyuganov gave a rather important speech. Presented at the 14th plenum of the central committee, it sought to provide the framework for renewing and improving the theoretical work of the party. But this is not any party and Zyuganov is not any leader, for the party is the Russian Communist […]
The Idea of Apocalypse in the Age of ‘Capitalist Realism’
So the world didn’t end after all and the ‘Mayan apocalypse’ turned out to be another in a long line of doomsday-related tall tales and hoaxes. No doubt a hard-core of Armageddon enthusiasts who really did believe — or wanted to believe — that the ‘Mayan prophecy’ was anything other than a load of cobblers […]
As Long as Capitalism Continues, These Tragedies Will Happen
Sometimes history repeats itself — the first time as tragedy and the second time . . . as another tragedy. The horrendous fire that just killed 112 workers, mostly young women, at the Bangladesh garment factory echoes the Triangle Shirtwaist Fire in New York City in 1911 that killed 146 workers, again mostly women. Both […]
The Threat of Barbarism: US Imperialism Unleashed
With signs of a global economic downturn mounting, US aggression across the Middle East and North Africa ratchets up. Once again, US imperialism stands poised to open the gates of Hell. According to the IMF’s World Economic Outlook report released last week, the “risks for a serious global slowdown are alarmingly high.” The report projects […]
Capitalism and “Human Nature”: A Rebuttal
In the celebrated section of The Wealth of Nations in which he discusses the advantages of the division of labor, Adam Smith advances the thesis that “common to all men” is a “propensity to truck, barter, and exchange one thing for another.” Smith hedges on whether this “propensity” is a matter of original human nature […]
Some Memories of Paul Baran and Paul Sweezy
In 1949, Paul Sweezy and Leo Huberman created Monthly Review. In the same year, Paul Baran and I began to teach in the San Francisco Bay Area: Baran at Stanford, myself at UC Berkeley. As the years unfolded, we worked together politically in the area with the same social aims and values. Meanwhile, the two […]
Can Caring Capitalists or Progressive Policies Save the American Economy?
The Occupy movement forced the issue of economic inequality into American political discourse. The most common diagnosis, which comes from mainstream economics, is that inequality has risen over the last 40 years because technical change, notably computers and the Internet, has favored highly-educated workers and left lower-skilled workers behind. The cure is to increase education […]
All Sorts of Roguery? The ‘Financial Aristocracy’ and Government à Bon Marché in India
My voice is a crime, My thoughts anarchy, Because I do not sing to their tunes, I do not carry them on my shoulders. — Cherabandaraju, who was the lead accused in a “conspiracy case” involving poets and their poetry. It’s been two decades and a year since India’s elite embraced neo-liberalism. Money — the […]
