Article Sections: Review of the Month
Review of the Month
The U.S. Ruling Class and the Trump Regime
April 1, 2025
John Bellamy Foster revisits and critiques the contention that the U.S. capitalist class is not a “governing” class, or indeed a class-conscious bloc in any sense. However, he writes, the fact that the ruling-class oligarchy is now openly wielding power on the national and international stages as part of the Trump regime shows that the overwhelming political influence of the capitalist class is no longer in dispute as this alignment pushes the country deeper into neofascism.
Western Marxism and Imperialism: A Dialogue
March 1, 2025
John Bellamy Foster and Gabriel Rockhill assess the history and influence of Western Marxism, defined not geographically, but by a rejection of the Marxism developed in the Soviet Union, in the Global South, and even in classical Marxism. This strain of Marxist thought, birthed in the imperial core, represents a concession to the dominance of U.S. ideology, rather than to correct the pressing issues confronting society today.
Imperialism and White Settler Colonialism in Marxist Theory
February 1, 2025
Over the last quarter century—and especially since the beginning of Israel’s latest genocidal incursion into Palestine in October 2023—the term “settler colonialism” has proliferated in academic and popular discourse. In February’s “Review of the Month,” John Bellamy Foster connects readers to thinkers from around the globe and across time to illustrate the phenomenon of settler colonialism as a dimension of imperialism, and thus capitalism, driven by a rapacious extractivism that threatens the whole of humanity.
The Dialectical Ecologist: Richard Levins and the Science and Praxis of the Human-Nature Metabolism
January 1, 2025
In January’s Review of the Month, John Bellamy Foster and Brett Clark revisit the legacy of scientist and MR author Richard Levins, from his “red diaper” infancy to his agroecological work in Cuba and his contributions to Marxian ecological thinking as a whole. “As a dialectical ecologist,” they write, “Levins proposed that we ask the big questions, as part of understanding why the world came to be organized in a particular way, and how it might be different.”
Braverman, Monopoly Capital, and AI: The Collective Worker and the Reunification of Labor
December 1, 2024
December’s Monthly Review begins the fiftieth-anniversary celebration of Harry Braverman’s seminal work, Labor and Monopoly Capital (Monthly Review Press, 1974), with this Review of the Month by John Bellamy Foster, which explores the connections between Marx’s “collective worker,” Braverman’s “collective scientist,” and the struggle against the degradation of work in the digital age.
The New Denial of Imperialism on the Left
November 1, 2024
John Bellamy Foster returns to the touchstones of anti-imperialist Marxist thought, found in the works of V. I. Lenin, Samir Amin, and others, in order to confront the rising denial of imperialism on the left. This worldview and its consequences, he writes, has troubling implications not only for the superexploited workers of the periphery, but for all of the workers of the world, and for the internationalist character of contemporary Marxism.