Monthly Review Press

A chilling account of the development of US nuclear strategy (Washington’s New Cold War reviewed by ‘Morning Star’)

A chilling account of the development of US nuclear strategy (Washington’s New Cold War reviewed by ‘Morning Star’)

'John Bellamy Foster’s contribution, "Notes on Extremism for the Twenty-First-Century Ecology and Peace Movements," is a chilling account of the development of US nuclear strategy. Carefully, he explains the shift in strategic thinking inside US governing circles. In the period before the end of the first cold war, the consensus was that the relative balance in nuclear weaponry meant that the US could not guarantee a victory in a nuclear war with the USSR.... In this context we can understand the eastward expansion of NATO from Bill Clinton to Joe Biden; the Maidan coup and promotion of an anti-Russian government in Ukraine; and the refusal to offer Russia security guarantees last year or peace negotiations this year.'

Stabilising the human relation to the earth (Capitalism in the Anthropocene reviewed in ‘Morning Star’)

Stabilising the human relation to the earth (Capitalism in the Anthropocene reviewed in ‘Morning Star’)

Geological epochs are divided into ages. So far the Anthropocene has been dominated by a globalised system of capitalist accumulation. Foster proposes the designation Capitalinian for this first geological age of the Anthropocene in the hope that it may be superseded by another; one “stabilizing the human relation to the earth” the Communian, rather than “an end-Anthropocene extinction event resulting in the destruction of civilization and quite possibly humanity itself.”

Stimulating thoughts anew for the cognoscenti (Radek reviewed in ‘Counterfire’)

Stimulating thoughts anew for the cognoscenti (Radek reviewed in ‘Counterfire’)

Heym’s own biography helps to explain why he chose Karl Radek as the central character for this historical novel. Like Heym, Radek was a literate and articulate Jew who rubbed authority the wrong way. Born Lolek Sobelsohn in Lemburg (Lviv), then under Austrian rule, Radek, like Heym, was a Marxist who became compromised as Russia went from being a beacon of revolutionary socialism to a Stalinist dictatorship. Radek helped to shape history and was also tested by it....

Markets and tech won’t solve climate emergency… (Foster interviewed for “Truthout”)

Markets and tech won’t solve climate emergency… (Foster interviewed for “Truthout”)

as many have observed, for many people it’s easier to envision the end of the world than the end of capitalism. Foster’s book tells us that we have a choice: “ruin or revolution.” The reason for the necessity of revolution is that tinkering won’t solve our problems. Technocratic fixes won’t save the Earth as a place fit for human habitation. The problem, as he told me in the interview that follows, is systemic....