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Notes from the Editors
July-August 2026 (Volume 78, Number 3)
This month's "Notes from the Editors," originally published in May by the German Quarterly, explores the last few decades of U.S. belligerence in Iran, culminating in the Trump administration's recent acts of war in the region. Together with Israel, the Editors write, the United States "has entrapped itself in an imperialist war that it cannot win," thus underscoring the necessity of a global anti-imperialist peace movement.
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Article
On the Economic Crisis of Capitalism
Considering the "Structural Crisis of Capital" from the perspective of economics, Prabhat Patnaik sheds light on two major aspects that have risen to prominence in our current conjuncture. The first, rampant stagnation and unemployment, is clear and undeniable. The second, particular to the capitalism of the late twentieth century and the shedding of colonies on which imperial nations depended for wealth is particularly salient to Trump's economic strategy of economic recolonization not only through soft power, but direct military action.
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Article
Between the Times: Privatized Keynesianism, Permanent Catastrophe, and the Task of an Economy of Social Production
"Old-style neoliberalism," write Riccardo Bellofiore and Giovanna Vertova "is dead, or at least gravely ill. The new paradigm that may replace it has not yet been born or is not yet recognizable. In the middle, between the times, lies what we have proposed to call the permanent catastrophe: a regime in which capitalist responses in catastrophic form have become the norm, in which crises are no longer overcome but accumulate."
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Article
U.S. Imperialism Resurgent
It is quite evident, Costas Lapavitsas begins, that the world is currently ensnared in geopolitical turmoil, perhaps for over a decade. In this article, Lapavitsas provides insight into the inseparable and interlocking mechanisms of dollar dominance and imperialism backed by the escalatory militarism of the second Trump administration. As Lapavitsas notes: "The dollar and the F-35—monetary coercion and military power—are two moments of a single structure of domination."
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Article
Monetary Policy and Capitalism
Jan Toporowski explains our contemporary age of "monetary policy dominance": the era in which the setting of short-term interest rates by the central banks is seen as the key instrument for regulating economic activity. This, however, does not reflect an ironclad law of the business cycle but, rather, a set of assumptions that underscores the dependence of capitalism on the accumulation of capital itself. This in turn obscures deeper truths about the effectiveness of monetary policy on the daily lives of the working class.
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Review of the Month
The Destruction of Reason and the Rise of Ecofascism in the United States
MR associate editor Brett Clark and editor John Bellamy Foster explore "the death drive of late imperialism" and its manifestations in an ecological crisis that is not parallel to, but inseparable from, increasingly open ecofascism in the United States. Drawing from Luckács's Destruction of Reason and István Mészáros's work on imperialism, Clark and Foster present a materialist analysis that illuminates the cult of unreason so pervasive under capitalism and imperialism while pointing to a path forward that is grounded in the historical-materialist Marxist tradition.
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Article
The Thermodynamics of Capital: Artificial Intelligence, Energy Crisis, and Ecological Crisis
Te Li unravels the myth of digital dematerialization so heavily promulgated by Silicon Valley and other AI boosters, which presents the technology as a phenomenon that has escaped the material realm and thus, entropy itself. In fact, Li shows that the material and energetic requirements of AI places it squarely in the physical realm, then situates the technology within the context of the metabolic rift under capitalism.
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Article
Workers Suffer as Wealth Accumulates: Finance as Grift and Other Revelations
Fred Magdoff presents an incisive, data-driven analysis of the current state of the worker laboring under the domineering system of financialization and, in particular, private equity. In his conclusion, Magdoff asks: "Is there a way out of twenty-first-century 'normal' for labor?" "The key way out," he answers, "is an extraordinary growth of workers' power in order to combat the extraordinary power of capital"—one rooted in fully democratic socialist production and fundamental equality.
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Article
Digital Imperialism and Emotional Tribute in East Asia
"In the contemporary era of stagnant monopoly-finance capital," Jianlu Bi and Ting Zhou begin, "the maintenance of global hegemony…necessitates the systemic colonization of digital consciousness. In examining the presentation of Sino-Japanese political tension across three media outlets, the authors describe digitally manufactured hatreds that "serve a vital imperialist function: the prevention of horizontal class solidarity" that may threaten U.S. hegemonic power in East Asia.
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Article
Capitalism and the Crisis of Meaning in Our Times
Philosopher and frequent MR contributor Helena Sheehan considers the implications of living in a world in which a lack of meaning runs rampant, as well as how it is expressed in the literary world. If we lack coherent analysis, the varied crises of our times can seem disconnected and overpowering. A materially grounded Marxist worldview, she notes, allows us to clear away the fog of meaninglessness engulfing contemporary society and chart a path toward socialism.
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Review of the Month
The Fetishism of AI
John Bellamy Foster takes on sweeping questions of artificial intelligence and its role in today's capitalist society. "The Great Houses of AI are divided against themselves and cannot stand," he writes, "If humanity is to flourish, the forces and relations of production must be revolutionized together…creating a world of sustainable human development."
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Article
Engels’s Dialectics of Nature and Marxist Ecology
Yiwen Chen dives deep into Frederick Engels's Dialectics of Nature in order to give context to present-day debates surrounding the juxtaposition of the dialectics of nature and Marxist ecology. "It is hardly surprising that Engels's and Marx's ecological ideas are not entirely identical," Chen writes. "Nevertheless, their ideas do possess an inherent consistency."
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Article
Marx on the Circular Economy
Today, many use the term "circular economy" to describe a shift in the use of industrial waste products in a way that does not challenge the present mode of production. Returning to Marx, Benjamin Selwyn is able to show that this usage of the term is designed to facilitate the acquisitive demands of a capitalist economy, rather than a fundamental shift in resource use.
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New! “Requiem for French Theory”
In advance of the book's release in summer of 2026, John Bellamy Foster's introduction to "Requiem for French Theory" has already been translated into Spanish by the publication "La Haine".
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June 24: Workshop on Ian Angus’ “Metabolic Rifts”
June 29th, join the Marxist Education Project for an online launch of Socialist Register 2026, featuring Catarina Principe together with Michael Roberts, Alfredo Saad-Filho, and Stephen Maher.
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June 27th: Online workshop on Socialist Register 2026
June 27th, join the Marxist Education Project for an online launch of Socialist Register 2026, featuring Catarina Principe together with Michael Roberts, Alfredo Saad-Filho, and Stephen Maher.
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In the public eye: Gabriel Rockhill’s “Who Paid the Pipers of Western Marxism?”
The latest: "...I was among those who criticized the Soviet system in its post-Stalin decades, and the lesson learned was that the greatest losers were the peripheral countries, especially the Arab nation..."
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