John Bellamy Foster

John Bellamy Foster

John Bellamy Foster (born August 19, 1953) is a professor of sociology at the University of Oregon and also editor of Monthly Review, an independent socialist magazine. His writings have focused on political economy, environmental sociology, and Marxist theory. He has written several books, including: The Great Financial Crisis: Causes and Consequences and What Every Environmentalist Needs to Know about Capitalism (both with Fred Magdoff), The Ecological Rift and Critique of Intelligent Design: Materialism versus Creationism from Antiquity to the Present (both with Brett Clark and Richard York), and The Ecological Revolution: Making Peace with the Planet.

Beginnings and Academic Career

Foster was already active in the anti-war and environmental movements before enrolling at Evergreen State College in 1971, focusing on the study of economics in response to the unfolding crisis in the capitalist economy and US involvement with the coup in Chile that replaced the popularly elected pro-USSR Socialist government of Salvador Allende. It was at Evergreen that he met Robert W. McChesney, who introduced him to Monthly Review and the work of Paul M. Sweezy and Harry Magdoff.

In 1976 Foster moved to Canada and entered the political science graduate program at York University in Toronto, where he studied with Neal Wood, Ellen Meiksins Wood, Gabriel Kolko, Robert Cox, and Robert Albritton, among other noted critical thinkers. After submitting a copy of his 1979 paper, The United States and Monopoly Capital: The Issue of Excess Capacity, to Paul Sweezy of Monthly Review, the two struck up a lifelong correspondence and eventual collaboration. Over the next few years, Foster published in journals such as The Quarterly Journal of Economics and Science & Society, and, in 1986, published The Theory of Monopoly Capitalism: An Elaboration of Marxian Political Economy, based on his Ph.D. dissertation.

Foster was hired in 1985 as a Visiting Member of the Faculty at The Evergreen State College. One year later he took a position as assistant professor of sociology at the University of Oregon, and became a full professor of sociology in 2000. He teaches there today and lives with his wife and two children in Eugene.

Monthly Review

Foster published his first article for Monthly Review, “Is Monopoly Capital an Illusion?”, while in graduate school in 1981. He became a director of the Monthly Review Foundation Board and a member of the Monthly Review editorial committee in 1989. Along with Robert McChesney, who had since their days at Evergreen College become a leading scholar of the political economy of the media, Foster joined Paul Sweezy and Harry Magdoff as a co-editor of Monthly Review in 2000. Two years later, he became president of the Monthly Review Foundation.

After Paul Sweezy’s death in 2004, Robert McChesney’s resignation as co-editor (while remaining on the board), and Harry Magdoff’s death in 2006, Foster was left as sole editor of the magazine.

Work

Foster’s initial research centered on Marxian political economy and theories of capitalist development, with a focus on Paul Sweezy and Paul Baran’s theory of monopoly capital. In the late 1980s, Foster turned toward issues of ecology. He focused on the relationship between the global environmental crisis and the crisis in the capitalist economy, while stressing the imperative for a sustainable, socialist alternative. During this period he published The Vulnerable Planet: A Short Economic History of the Environment; Marx’s Ecology: Materialism and Nature, which received the book award from the Marxist section of the American Sociological Association; and Ecology Against Capitalism, as well as numerous articles.

As editor of Monthly Review, Foster returned to his earlier work on the political economy of capitalism, but with a renewed focus on the role of U.S. foreign policy following September 2001. His 2006 book Naked Imperialism, along with frequent editorials in the pages of Monthly Review, attempted to account for the growing U.S. military role in the world and the shift toward a more visible, aggressive global projection. Additionally, Foster has worked to expand Sweezy and Baran’s theory of monopoly capital in light of the current financially-led phase of capitalism, which he terms “monopoly-finance Capital.” In this context he has written several articles for Monthly Review on the financialization of capitalism and financial crisis of 2007-08.

Critique of Intelligent Design, Foster’s book co-authored with Brett Clark and Richard York, is a continuation of his research on materialist philosophy and the relationship between ancient Greek philosopher Epicurus and Karl Marx. Drawing on his ecological work, particularly Marx’s Ecology, Foster defends historical materialism as fundamental to a rational, scientific worldview, against proponents of Intelligent Design and other anti-materialist, superstitious ideologies.

The Great Financial Crisis: Causes and Consequences, written with Fred Magdoff, explores the financial crisis which began in the fall of 2008 and has come to affect the entire world economy. In it, he argues that the current crisis must be understood in the context of a broader crisis of monopoly-finance capitalism, one that has its roots in the tendency toward stagnation in mature capitalist economies. This tendency toward stagnation reduces investment opportunities in the "real" productive economy, thus driving capital to seek other sources of profit—particularly, since the 1980s, through financialization. And yet, far from providing a solution, the construction of a "casino" economy built on speculation and increasingly complex financial mechanisms is collapsing under the weight of its own contradictions, and the underlying problem—the crisis in the productive economy—is becoming more and more apparent. The only viable solution, Foster argues, is the economic remedy advocated in The Communist Manifesto proposed by Karl Marx in 1848: a radical restructuring of the entire economy to meet the needs of the vast majority, a reorientation toward production for social use as opposed to private gain.

The Ecological Revolution: Making Peace with the Planet, is a collection focusing on the ecological crisis, and includes essays on global warming, peak oil, species extinction, world water shortages, global hunger, alternative energy sources, sustainable development, and environmental justice. Foster argues that we have reached a turning point in human relations with the earth, and that any attempt to solve our problems merely by technological, industrial or free market means, divorced from fundamental social relations, cannot succeed. This was followed by The Ecological Rift: Capitalism's War on the Earth, co-authored by Brett Clark and Richard York, and, with Fred Magdoff, What Every Environmentalist Needs to Know about Capitalism, a basic introductory primer on the political economy of the ecological crisis that was abridged and linguistically simplified in an attempt to make it more accessible to the majority of the population who still often lack proper intellectual references and training.

See also

• Monthly Review
• Eco-socialism
• Environmental sociology
• Naked Imperialism
• Critique of Intelligent Design
• Ian Angus
• Derek Wall

Bibliography

• "What Every Environmentalist Needs To Know about Capitalism: A Citizen's Guide to Capitalism and the Environment 2011
• The Ecological Rift: Capitalism's War on the Earth 2010
• The Ecological Revolution: Making Peace with the Planet 2009
• The Great Financial Crisis: Causes and Consequences with Fred Magdoff, 2009
• Critique of Intelligent Design: Materialism versus Creationism from Antiquity to the Present with Brett Clark and Richard York, 2008
• Naked Imperialism: The U.S. Pursuit of Global Dominance 2006
• Pox Americana: Exposing the American Empire (co-edited with Robert McChesney, 2004
• Ecology Against Capitalism 2002
• Marx’s Ecology: Materialism and Nature 2000
• Hungry For Profit: The Agribusiness Threat to Farmers, Food, and the Environment 1999, co-edited with Fred Magdoff and Fred Butte
• The Vulnerable Planet: A Short Economic History of the Environment 1999, 2nd Ed.
• In Defense of History: Marxism and the Postmodern Agenda (co-edited with Ellen Meiksins Wood, 1996
• Capitalism and the Information Age: The Political Economy of the Global Communication Revolution co-edited with Ellen Meiksins Wood and Robert W. McChesney, 1998
• The Faltering Economy: The Problem of Accumulation under Monopoly Capitalism (co-edited with Henryk Szlajfer, 1984)

External links

• Interview with John Bellamy Foster, Frontline magazine, 2006
• The Monthly Review Story by Robert W. McChesney
• Monthly Review website
• University of Oregon page
• John Bellamy Foster discusses his book Naked Imperialism with C.S. Soong on the KPFA radio program Against the Grain September 19, 2006 (link to audio download)
• John Bellamy Foster speaking at the Climate Change Social Change Conference - Sydney , Australia April 2008 (audio)
• Interview, Online Journal, February 27, 2009
• John Bellamy Foster, Marxist ecologist and editor of Monthly Review, addressed the Climate Change I Social Change Conference on ``Capitalism and Climate Change, Sydney, April 11, 2008
• Review of The Ecological Revolution: Making Peace with the Planet by Simon Butler
• The Vulnerable Planet Fifteen Years Later by John Bellamy Foster, Monthly Review, November 2009
• VIDEO: John Bellamy Foster - The Crisis of Capital: Economy, Ecology and Empire, lecture delivered at the Econvergence Conference in Portland, Oregon, on October 2, 2009.