March 1, 2026
"To make sense of present developments,"
MR editors write in this month's "Notes from the Editors," "it is essential to understand the dialectic of continuity and change in U.S. imperial grand strategy." By charting the evolution from post-Second World War dominance to the collapse of the Soviet Union and the eventual demise of the "Unipolar Moment," the Editors tie the reactionary impulses of MAGA to the raw shows of imperial force driven by Trump's policies.
March 1, 2026
In 1966, Johns Hopkins hosted a seemingly innocuous international conference titled "The Languages of Criticism and the Sciences of Man," featuring leading figures of what would later be known as "French Theory." However, John Bellamy Foster writes, far from a simple meeting of intellectuals, this represented a "politically motivated attempt to create a beachhead for French structuralism in the United States that would counter the radicalization then taking place."
March 1, 2026
Vijay Prashad critiques the argument that colonialism was, at most, ancillary to the transition between capitalism and feudalism in Western Europe. Instead, Prashad argues, "capitalism
as it historically emerged—industrial, global, racialized, and imperial—was inseparable from colonial expropriation." This reality must fuel a Marxist conception of the global struggle for reparations for those who have been oppressed and exploited at the hands of empires past and present.
March 1, 2026
Craig Medlen dissects the logic behind the Trump administration's efforts to impose tariffs as a way to counteract "unfair" U.S. trade deficits. Situating these deficits in the longer history of U.S. trade hegemony and its crumbling position in the global economy, Medlen uses incontrovertible data to illustrate how mainstream economic orthodoxy fails to acknowledge the effects of foreign inputs that integral to the workings of U.S. monopoly capital.
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
Using historical databases and quantitative analysis, Thomas E. Lambert calls into question the assertion that the trans-Atlantic slave trade can be considered a separate phenomenon from, rather than a major supporting factor in, the Industrial Revolution in England. Asserting otherwise, he writes, is a to deny "a horrifying and inhuman part of the global history of capitalism."
January 1, 2026
In this Introduction to the updated edition of
Unequal Exchange by Arghiri Emmanuel, published by Monthly Review Press, John Bellamy Foster and Brett Clark offer readers insight into the continuing influence of Emmanuel's seminal work. Through both deep understanding thoughtful critique, the authors deftly situate Emmanuel's text as an indispensable part of an enduring tradition of Marxist analysis of the global dynamics of labor.
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."
December 1, 2025
John Bellamy Foster introduces our special issue celebrating the life and work of
MR former coeditor and MR Press author Robert W. McChesney. In his recounting of over 50 years of close friendship and collaboration, Foster paints a portrait of McChesney as a visionary intellectual and activist whose work will reverberate through the communication field for decades to come.
