Introducción
En la entrada en inglés en Wikipedia, que traduzco, se escribió:Nacido el 19 de agosto de 1953. Es profesor de sociología en la Universidad de Oregón (EE.UU.) y editor de Monthly Review, una revista socialista independiente. Sus investigaciones están orientadas hacia la economía política, la sociología del medio ambiente y la teoría marxista. Ha escrito varios libros; entre otros: The Great Financial Crisis: Causes and Consequences y What Every Environmentalist Needs to Know about Capitalism (ambos con Fred Magdoff), The Ecological Rift y Critique of Intelligent Design: Materialism versus Creationism from Antiquity to the Present (ambos con Brett Clark y Richard York), y The Ecological Revolution: Making Peace with the Planet.
Inicios y trayectoria académica
Foster ya era un militante medioambiental y contra la guerra antes de entrar en el Evergreen State College en 1971, centrado en el estudio de la economía, que buscaba respuesta a la crisis de la economía capitalista y a la partipación de los EE.UU. en el golpe de Estado en Chile que derrocó al muy popular gobierno socialista de Salvador Allende. En Evergreen conoció a Robert W. McChesney, que le introduciría en la Monthly Review y el trabajo de Paul M. Sweezy y Harry Magdoff.
En 1976, Foster se trasladó a Canadá para estudiar ciencias políticas en el "graduate program" de la Universidad de York, en Toronto, donde estudió con Neal Wood, Ellen Meiksins Wood, Gabriel Kolko, Robert Cox y Robert Albritton, entre otros intelectuales notables. Tras presentar una copia de The United States and Monopoly Capital: The Issue of Excess Capacity (su trabajo de 1979) a Paul Sweezy, de la Monthly Review, ambos iniciarían una larga correspondencia y colaboraciones periódicas. En los años siguientes, Foster escribió para publicaciones como The Quarterly Journal of Economics y Science & Society, y, más adelante, en 1986, publicaría The Theory of Monopoly Capitalism: An Elaboration of Marxian Political Economy, basado en su ponencia de doctorado (Ph.D.).
Foster fue contratado en 1985 como profesor sustituto [Visiting Member of the Faculty] en el Evergreen State College. Un año más tarde fue designado como profesor asociado [assistant professor] de sociología en la Universidad de Oregón, haciéndose profesor titular [full professor] en 2000. En la actualidad enseña allí y vive con su mujer y dos hijos en Eugene.
Monthly Review
Foster publicó su primer artículo en Monthly Review, “Is Monopoly Capital an Illusion?”, while in graduate school in 1981. He became a director of the Monthly Review Foundation Board and a member of the Monthly Review editorial committee in 1989. Along with Robert McChesney, who had since their days at Evergreen College become a leading scholar of the political economy of the media, Foster joined Paul Sweezy and Harry Magdoff as a co-editor of Monthly Review in 2000. Two years later, he became president of the Monthly Review Foundation.
After Paul Sweezy’s death in 2004, Robert McChesney’s resignation as co-editor (while remaining on the board), and Harry Magdoff’s death in 2006, Foster was left as sole editor of the magazine.
Work
Foster’s initial research centered on Marxian political economy and theories of capitalist development, with a focus on Paul Sweezy and Paul Baran’s theory of monopoly capital. In the late 1980s, Foster turned toward issues of ecology. He focused on the relationship between the global environmental crisis and the crisis in the capitalist economy, while stressing the imperative for a sustainable, socialist alternative. During this period he published The Vulnerable Planet: A Short Economic History of the Environment; Marx’s Ecology: Materialism and Nature, which received the book award from the Marxist section of the American Sociological Association; and Ecology Against Capitalism, as well as numerous articles.
As editor of Monthly Review, Foster returned to his earlier work on the political economy of capitalism, but with a renewed focus on the role of U.S. foreign policy following September 2001. His 2006 book Naked Imperialism, along with frequent editorials in the pages of Monthly Review, attempted to account for the growing U.S. military role in the world and the shift toward a more visible, aggressive global projection. Additionally, Foster has worked to expand Sweezy and Baran’s theory of monopoly capital in light of the current financially-led phase of capitalism, which he terms “monopoly-finance Capital.” In this context he has written several articles for Monthly Review on the financialization of capitalism and financial crisis of 2007-08.
Critique of Intelligent Design, Foster’s book co-authored with Brett Clark and Richard York, is a continuation of his research on materialist philosophy and the relationship between ancient Greek philosopher Epicurus and Karl Marx. Drawing on his ecological work, particularly Marx’s Ecology, Foster defends historical materialism as fundamental to a rational, scientific worldview, against proponents of Intelligent Design and other anti-materialist, superstitious ideologies.
The Great Financial Crisis: Causes and Consequences, written with Fred Magdoff, explores the financial crisis which began in the fall of 2008 and has come to affect the entire world economy. In it, he argues that the current crisis must be understood in the context of a broader crisis of monopoly-finance capitalism, one that has its roots in the tendency toward stagnation in mature capitalist economies. This tendency toward stagnation reduces investment opportunities in the "real" productive economy, thus driving capital to seek other sources of profit—particularly, since the 1980s, through financialization. And yet, far from providing a solution, the construction of a "casino" economy built on speculation and increasingly complex financial mechanisms is collapsing under the weight of its own contradictions, and the underlying problem—the crisis in the productive economy—is becoming more and more apparent. The only viable solution, Foster argues, is the economic remedy advocated in The Communist Manifesto proposed by Karl Marx in 1848: a radical restructuring of the entire economy to meet the needs of the vast majority, a reorientation toward production for social use as opposed to private gain.
The Ecological Revolution: Making Peace with the Planet is a collection focusing on the ecological crisis, and includes essays on global warming, peak oil, species extinction, world water shortages, global hunger, alternative energy sources, sustainable development, and environmental justice. Foster argues that we have reached a turning point in human relations with the earth, and that any attempt to solve our problems merely by technological, industrial or free market means, divorced from fundamental social relations, cannot succeed. This was followed by The Ecological Rift: Capitalism's War on the Earth, co-authored by Brett Clark and Richard York, and, with Fred Magdoff, What Every Environmentalist Needs to Know about Capitalism, a basic introductory primer on the political economy of the ecological crisis that was abridged and linguistically simplified in an attempt to make it more accessible to the majority of the population who still often lack proper intellectual references and training.
Artículos
Foster, J. B. - El redescubrimiento del imperialismo [2002].pdf [181.4 Kb] 
Foster, J. B. - La financiarización de la acumulación [2010].pdf [6.17 Mb] Foster, J. B. - Organizando la revolución ecológica [2005].pdf [109.4 Kb] Foster, J. B. y Clark, B. - Imperialismo ecológico. La maldición del capitalismo [2004].pdf [104.3 Kb] Foster, J. B. y Holleman, H. - La élite del poder financiero [2010].pdf [5.58 Mb] Foster, J. B. y Magdoff, F. - La gran crisis financiera. Tres años después [2011].pdf [1.11 Mb] Foster, J. B. y Magdoff, F. - Lo que todo ambientalista necesita saber sobre el c...lismo [2010].pdf [283.8 Kb] Foster, J. B. y Sweezy, P. - Sobre las leyes del capitalismo [2011].pdf [4.89 Mb] [ Add all 8 links to your ed2k client ]
