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.
February 1, 2026
Paul Buhle reviews Insectopolis: A Natural History, a new graphic novel by Peter Kuper. In the book, Kuper, a prolific producer and publisher of left-wing comics, spins a tale of two siblings who find themselves in a world of insects. Through encounters with butterflies, beetles, ants, and more, Kuper reveals the deep entanglements between human society—at its best and worst—and the creatures of its living environment.
January 1, 2026
David E. Perlman and Ashly Vigneault explore the linkages between humanity's metabolic rift with nature and the accelerating emergence of epidemics, which are fundamentally related to the capitalist mode of production and concomitant alienated social metabolism. Using historical and epidemiological research that extends from the rise of the bubonic plague to the emergence of COVID-19, Perlman and Vigneault are able to deftly tie these concepts to the breach of planetary boundaries that threatens all of humanity.
January 1, 2026
Mateo Crossa delineates the history of U.S. imperialism in Mexico through the lens of its domination of the fossil fuel industry, particularly by way of the Shale Revolution and the advent of fracking. "By engineering new regional dependencies and reshaping energy alliances to suit is strategic ambitions," Crossa writes, "the United States weaponized its command over natural gas to deepen its grip on the global fossil energy system and reinforce its imperial reach."
November 1, 2025
In Aeschylus’s play Prometheus Bound, the Prometheus is a revolutionary figure. Defying divine interdiction to bring fire to humanity, the Titan has since been adopted by thinkers from the Enlightenment to today to represent revolutionary forces in human existence. So, John Bellamy Foster asks in November’s Review of the Month, what is “Prometheanism,” and how has the term been used (and misused) in discussions of Marx, the ecological crisis, and sustainable human development?