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Notes from the Editors
October 2026 (Volume 78, Number 5)
Marking the sixtieth anniversary of Paul A. Baran and Paul M. Sweezy's Monopoly Capital, the MR editors situate this key work of political economy within the contemporary political-economic landscape. The tendency toward the overaccumulation capital, they explain, represents a shift from the "generation of economic surplus…to one of its absorption." In an age of financialization and market bubbles, the editors note, Baran and Sweezy's work stands as a testament to the continuing necessity of incisive political-economic analysis of capitalism, inequality, and the irrationality that pervading the entire system.
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Review of the Month
Marxian Ecology and the Critique of AI Capital
What is the rise of AI capital, and what does it mean for contemporary work, culture, and the ecological state of our planet? John Bellamy Foster dispels the myth of a "hyperorganized AI capitalism." As Foster writes: "We are not entering a stable new age…but rather a new, capitalist-engendered global disorder in which humanity, according to climate science, is headed ever more rapidly toward a planetary 'point of no return.'" The only way out—the only way, that is, to ensure the survival of humanity—is a radical shift away from the catastrophically destructive regime of capital accumulation and toward sustainable human development through socialism.
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Article
Babylon Burning: Reggae and Black Liberation
Christian Noakes explores the deep connections between the Jamaican Black Power movement and the political roots of its renowned indigenous musical genre, reggae. From the history of capitalist oppression in Jamaica and the indelible influence of Guyanese revolutionary Walter Rodney, Noakes provides essential context for incendiary political radicalism within reggae. Musically innovative and lyrically radical, reggae, he writes, was "instilled with a sense of militant determination that was at once a reflection of the culture it came from and a source of defiant resilience in the face of rampant inequality."
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Article
Legal Imperialism: International Law and Dependency in Late Imperialism
Today's resurgence in U.S. imperialist interventions abroad and the concomitant so-called crisis of the "rules-based order" can be explained, Luís Eduardo Fernandes argues, through the category of "legal imperialism, which refers to how the international juridical form is internalized within societies and in the context of dependency, colonialism, unequal exchange, and monopoly capital. "International law and imperialism," Fernandes writes, "do not stand as opposing poles. They are part of the same unity.… Violence is constitutive of the juridical form."
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Article
Why Is “Patient Capital” Patient? Rereading ‘Das Kapital’ through Chinese Modernization
Large-scale investment toward the good of all society, Karl Marx once wrote, "presupposes that society be able to wait." The capital that funds just and sustainable human development, in other words, must operate at time scales much longer than short-term gain and transitory profit margins. Siyuan Liu situates this idea within the Chinese notion of "patient capital" and the institutional requirements for planning a just and equitable future—and a changed horizon for capital.
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Interview
Materializing the Revolution: The Movement toward Ecosocialism
Álvaro de Regil Castilla interviews John Bellamy Foster. In the interview, de Regil Castilla and Foster discuss the existential risk to humanity presented by the ongoing planetary crisis wrought by capitalism and its endlessly destructive impacts on society and the earth. What would an ecosocialist movement look like? How do we pursue an equitable and sustainable path toward the development of all, rather than the privileged few? Do we still have time to organize to save the planet—and indeed, all of humanity?
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Review of the Month
India’s Ruling Classes and the Global Crisis
In September's Review of the Month, the Research Unit for Political Economy delves into how the crisis pervading the world system, on stark display in the tech sector, global finance, and the sphere of production, lays bare the longstanding vulnerabilities of the Indian economy. As the contradictions in the neoliberal phase become unmistakable, the authors write, it is necessary to take a class-based approach to resolving the questions of how to bring about key questions regarding the productive life and development of India.
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Article
José Carlos Mariátegui and Local Traditions of Struggle
The relationship between Marxism and other revolutionary traditions is a key question for our time. If we approach the issue incorrectly, we risk Eurocentrism and underrecognizing Marxism's role in the Global South contexts where it is most vital and active. This article examines and extends José Carlos Mariátegui's dialectical approach to the issue, which demonstrates how Marxism is not diluted but strengthened through engagement with the thought and practice of existing struggles, while those struggles can, in turn, gain greater depth and groundedness through the same relationship.
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Article
Beyond Scarcity: Thomas Sowell and the Limits of Neoclassical Economics
Through the work of neoclassical economist Thomas Sowell, Elliot Goodell Ugalde dissects the orthodox view that takes for granted that scarcity is at the center of economic life. In a world of various kinds of surpluses, Goodell argues, the idea that scarcity is the only organizing principle of our economic is inadequate to describe the complex interactions of institutions, history, and social power that make up economic organization under capitalism.
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Reprise
The Economics of Destruction
In this 1980 talk by Joan Robinson, first published in MR in 1983, the economist painted a stark picture of global arms race fueled by military capitalism and imperialism. "The important question," she urged, "is not whether the rate of inflation is high or low or can be brought under control but whether our generation will succeed in destroying the world…. Economics should begin to address the important issue of our impending doom."
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Review
Radical Jewish Tradition
Paul Buhle reviews The Radical Jewish Tradition by Donny Gluckstein and Janey Stone. The book, Buhle writes, is a window onto "the antinomies of nineteenth-century Jewish life"—including the growing movement against Zionism and for socialism among Eastern European Jews. This authors, Buhle notes, also tells the story of Jewish communists in Britain, the United States, and beyond, taking into account the wide sweep of Jewish left activity globally, situating the present struggles against genocide in Palestine squarely within the legacy of radical Jews everywhere.
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Introduction
The Global Structural Crisis of Capital
John Bellamy Foster introduces our special summer issue on the "Structural Crisis of Capital," illuminating its four main characteristics as first outlined by István Mészáros in Marx's Theory of Alienation. Capital, Foster says, has found itself in a position akin to Lucian's sorcerer's apprentice: futilely attempting to control a runaway system that he had himself created, accumulating not only contradictions but outright catastrophe—with globe-spanning consequences.
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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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In NY or DC in coming days? See Aymeric Monville, Jennifer Ponce de León and Gabriel Rockhill, on “Requiem for French Theory”
LIVE in NYC, October 29th, at CUNY; LIVE in DC, October 30th, at Busboys and Poets; (a couple of days ago at Philly's Free Library)...
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In Chicago in November? August Nimtz’ “‘Black Marxism’: A Marxist Critique”
The latest, an interview by Constantin Berlin, for Jacobin: "The recently published collection, 'Black Marxism: A Marxist Critique,' makes accessible, for the first time, a critique that spans four decades and addresses Robinson’s claims and those made by his followers by putting forth an authentic Marxism as the most reliable method for human liberation in the real world and explaining why it remains the guiding principle for the transracial class struggle today...."
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Hitting the mark: “Grand Theft Capital”, by Fred Magdoff and John Bellamy Foster
The latest: Red Pepper's David Matthews picks six of the best new books for leftists...
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In Amsterdam in November? Head to Pakuis de Zwijger for Chris dePloeg’s “The Exterminating Empire”
Will you be in Amsterdam on November 23rd? Head to the social center known as Pakuis de Zwijger for a lively and engaging event with Chris dePloeg together with renowned climate author Jason Hickel (in person), frontline Palestinian surgeon Ghassan Abu-Sittah (joining online) and moderator, climate justice activist and researcher Harriët Bergman. There will also be cultural performances from Chihiro Geuzebroek and brothers Chris and Max de Ploeg, tying their ancestral struggles in Bolivia and Armenia to the global struggle for liberation.
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