Johnny Bellamy Foster

Johnny Bellamy Foster

Born August 19, 1953. He is a professor of sociology at the University of Oregon (USA) and publisher of Monthly Review, an independent socialist magazine. His research is oriented to political economy, the sociology of the environment and Marxist theory. He has written several books, among others: The Great Financial Crisis: Causes and Consequences and What Every Environmentalist Needs to Know about Capitalism (both with Fred Magdoff), The Ecological Rift and Critique of Intelligent Design: Materialism versus Creationism from Antiquity to the Present Both with Brett Clark and Richard York), and The Ecological Revolution: Making Peace with the Planet. Foster was already an environmental and anti-war activist before entering Evergreen State College in 1971, focused on the study of economics, which sought a response to the crisis of the capitalist economy and to the participation of the US in the coup In Chile that overthrew the very popular socialist government of Salvador Allende. At Evergreen he met Robert W. McChesney, who would introduce him to the Monthly Review and the work of Paul M. Sweezy and Harry Magdoff. In 1976, Foster moved to Canada to study political science at the York University Graduate Program in Toronto, where he studied with Neal Wood, Ellen Meiksins Wood, Gabriel Kolko, Robert Cox and Robert Albritton, among other notable intellectuals . After presenting a copy of The United States and Monopoly Capital: The Issue of Excess Capacity (his work of 1979) to Paul Sweezy, of the Monthly Review, both would begin a long correspondence and periodical collaborations. In the following years, Foster wrote for publications such as The Quarterly Journal of Economics and Science & Society, and later, in 1986, he would publish The Theory of Monopoly Capitalism: An Elaboration of Marxian Political Economy, based on his Ph.D. .D.). Foster was hired in 1985 as a Visiting Member of the Faculty at Evergreen State College. A year later he was appointed associate professor of sociology at the University of Oregon, becoming a full professor in 2000. He currently teaches there and lives with his wife and two children in Eugene.