Review of the Month
October 1, 2024
Shakespeare’s Richard III famously immortalized the eponymous king as a scoundrel and tyrant, thirsty for power and blood. Using economic data spanning centuries, Thomas Lambert questions the truth of this spurious reputation: Was Richard III indeed a murderous despot bent on absolute rule? Or a myth propagated by Tudor allies aiming to ingratiate themselves to the new dynasty?
September 1, 2024
In an interview with Brazilian magazine Margem Esquerda, John Bellamy Foster shares with Fabio Querido, Maria Orlanda Pinassi, and Michael Löwy the formative experiences that contributed to his work as a young activist and, later, a preeminent scholar of ecological Marxism. The interview concludes with a message to the ecological left in Brazil and elsewhere: “Whatever solutions there are to the present planetary crisis must, in historical-materialist terms, arise from concrete social formations, on the basis of which the new revolutionary transformations will take place.”
June 1, 2024
Originally published in the German journal Widerspruch, Arman Spéth interviews John Bellamy Foster about the growing interest in degrowth thought and the importance of incorporating democratic planning aimed at true equality into all levels of society. And what of the ecosocialist revolution? “Opportunities,” Foster says, “are everywhere. Obstacles, largely a product of the present system, are also everywhere.… Nothing can or will remain the same. That is the very definition of a revolutionary situation.”
May 1, 2024
For our seventy-fifth anniversary issue, John Bellamy Foster revisits the legacy of Albert Einstein and his deep connections to Monthly Review, including his authorship of the article “Why Socialism?,” published in our first-ever issue in May 1949. Through historical documents and the famed physicist’s own words, Foster rediscovers Einstein’s commitment to socialism in both word and deed, and his collegial ties to MR‘s founding editors.
April 1, 2024
This month’s Review of the Month by John Bellamy Foster illuminates the idea of extractivism, a key concept in understanding our current planetary crisis. The accelerated extraction of Earth’s resources since the mid-twentieth century, Foster notes, threatens not only the natural world, but the means of life for the entire planet.
March 1, 2024
Marnie Holborow is associate faculty at Dublin City University and the author of Homes in Crisis Capitalism, recently published by Bloomsbury. She is a socialist activist living in Dublin, Ireland…. READ MORE
February 1, 2024
This article was originally written for A New Global Geometry?: The Socialist Register 2024 (Merlin Press, forthcoming). It has been lightly edited for Monthly Review. When I come to study… READ MORE
January 1, 2024
This is the introduction to John Bellamy Foster, The Dialectics of Ecology: Society and Nature (New York: Monthly Review Press, 2024). All nature is in a perpetual state of flux.…… READ MORE
December 1, 2023
John Bellamy Foster is editor of Monthly Review and professor emeritus of sociology at the University of Oregon. Mahesh Maskey is chief editor of Bampanth (The Left), Nepal. This is… READ MORE
November 1, 2023
John Bellamy Foster is editor of Monthly Review and professor emeritus of sociology at the University of Oregon. Batuhan Sarican is editorial director of Gastro Eko, a news website based… READ MORE
