July 1, 2026
Since the wane of mercantilism in Europe, conceptions of wealth, trade, and productivity have also changed: from one of a zero-sum game reliant only on the productivity of land, to one of the potential for positive-sum wealth created by industry, and, now, to the zero-sum neomercantilism necessitated in a world of resource depletion, where the earth is pushed to its biophysical limits. But the response to this crisis does not have to be further fortification—it could also be a world that organizes itself within the metabolic limitations of nature.
July 1, 2026
In order to comprehend the environmental crisis that goes hand-in-hand with the "Structural Crisis of Capital," we must also understand the nature of global value chains and how they contribute to environmental degradation and worker exploitation on a global level. Benjamin Selwyn elucidates how global value chains and digitalization sit within a "conjoined dynamic of labor-exploitative accumulation and ecological expropriation."
June 1, 2026
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.
June 1, 2026
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.
May 1, 2026
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."
May 1, 2026
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."
May 1, 2026
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.
April 1, 2026
While the "world is rapidly approaching tipping points that spell irreversible and catastrophic climate change," write The Editors, "we are not seeing the necessary turn from ecological reform to ecological revolution, but rather the rise of ecological reaction.… An absolute no-quarters war from above is now being waged against all political attempts to address climate change." This attack is epitomized by "the Donald Trump administration's goal of removing the 2009 Endangerment Finding of the Clean Air Act that underlies all national climate legislation in the United States." While this tactic is unlikely to succeed, the proliferation of similar attacks clearly demonstrate that "[m]onopoly-finance capital has now abandoned the energy transition, which was its only answer to climate change."
February 1, 2026
In this talk from the inaugural conference of the Society for Peace, Internationalism, and Ecology, John Bellamy Foster relates the story of Prometheus, as presented in the plays of Aeschylus, to Western Marxism's "dialectic of defeat," in which capitalism is portrayed as an unbreakable bond for the working class. Instead, Foster says, we must recognize Prometheus as a subject who is freed from the seemingly inescapable fetters imposed upon him.
February 1, 2026
Speaking before at the Opening Ceremony of the Fourth World Conference on Marxism in Beijing, John Bellamy Foster discusses the development of eco-Marxism and its relation to Marxist theory. Here, Foster argues, "eco-Marxism as we know it today is not simply another branch of Marxism," but is a pathway to the projects of complete socialism and ecological civilization.
