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Ecological Materialism and Ecological Civilization

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November 2026 (Volume 78, Number 6)

by The Editors

In this election season, the MR Editors consider the history of U.S. interventions in foreign elections throughout the twentieth and twenty-first century and, in particular, the notable uptick in such meddling in the post-Cold War era. Throughout the capitalist world, Western "democracies"—which are democratic in form only and oligarchic in their content—continue to look away while the United States covertly and overtly engineers interference in elections around the globe on behalf of Trump-aligned, right-wing demagogues.

by John Bellamy Foster, Jennifer Ponce de León and Gabriel Rockhill

John Bellamy Foster discusses the tradition of cultural analysis in Monthly Review with Jennifer Ponce de León and Gabriel Rockhill. "MR's approach…over its long history," Foster explains, "has been a product of its deep commitment to historical materialism." Drawing parallels between Bertolt Brecht's observations during Hitler's rise in Germany and an analysis of MAGA-style fascism under Trump today, it becomes clear that "control of the intellectual and cultural life of the nation is integral to the neofascist project." However, there is also hope, as culture "constantly emerges from below in revolutionary new forms, which cannot be entirely repressed."

by Gabriel Rockhill

MR is pleased to be able to share with readers Gabriel Rockhill's Introduction to The Poverty of Left Nietzscheanism by Aymeric Monville (Iskra Books, 2026). Rockhill provides readers with a thorough account of the rehabilitation of Nietzsche within French Theory and its consequences within the non-communist left. Fascism, Rockhill argues, "can only be understood and contested through materialist analysis and anticapitalist praxis"—a fitting preamble to a book that acts as "an insightful indictment of the dominant capitalist ideologies while clearly articulating the political path forward."

by Jason Hickel

In this stirring foreword to Chris Kaspar de Ploeg's The Exterminating Empire (Monthly Review Press, 2026), Jason Hickel decries a world in which cruelty, genocide, and rapacious capitalism have become de rigueur, seemingly with no consequences for the Western elites perpetuating these atrocities in the Global South. "The narrative of 'double standards,'" Hickel writes, "presupposes that they have at least some shred of morality. But they do not. For them there is but one standard: the law of capital."

by John Bellamy Foster

What is the rise of AI capital, and what does it mean for contemporary work, culture, and the ecological state of our planet? John Bellamy Foster dispels the myth of a "hyperorganized AI capitalism." As Foster writes: "We are not entering a stable new age…but rather a new, capitalist-engendered global disorder in which humanity, according to climate science, is headed ever more rapidly toward a planetary 'point of no return.'" The only way out—the only way, that is, to ensure the survival of humanity—is a radical shift away from the catastrophically destructive regime of capital accumulation and toward sustainable human development through socialism.

by Christian Noakes

Christian Noakes explores the deep connections between the Jamaican Black Power movement and the political roots of its renowned indigenous musical genre, reggae. From the history of capitalist oppression in Jamaica and the indelible influence of Guyanese revolutionary Walter Rodney, Noakes provides essential context for incendiary political radicalism within reggae. Musically innovative and lyrically radical, reggae, he writes, was "instilled with a sense of militant determination that was at once a reflection of the culture it came from and a source of defiant resilience in the face of rampant inequality."

by Luís Eduardo Fernandes

Today's resurgence in U.S. imperialist interventions abroad and the concomitant so-called crisis of the "rules-based order" can be explained, Luís Eduardo Fernandes argues, through the category of "legal imperialism, which refers to how the international juridical form is internalized within societies and in the context of dependency, colonialism, unequal exchange, and monopoly capital. "International law and imperialism," Fernandes writes, "do not stand as opposing poles. They are part of the same unity.… Violence is constitutive of the juridical form."

by Siyuan Liu

Large-scale investment toward the good of all society, Karl Marx once wrote, "presupposes that society be able to wait." The capital that funds just and sustainable human development, in other words, must operate at time scales much longer than short-term gain and transitory profit margins. Siyuan Liu situates this idea within the Chinese notion of "patient capital" and the institutional requirements for planning a just and equitable future—and a changed horizon for capital.

by John Bellamy Foster and Álvaro de Regil Castilla

Álvaro de Regil Castilla interviews John Bellamy Foster. In the interview, de Regil Castilla and Foster discuss the existential risk to humanity presented by the ongoing planetary crisis wrought by capitalism and its endlessly destructive impacts on society and the earth. What would an ecosocialist movement look like? How do we pursue an equitable and sustainable path toward the development of all, rather than the privileged few? Do we still have time to organize to save the planet—and indeed, all of humanity?

by Paul Buhle

Paul Buhle reviews Emily Pierson: A Yankee Radical, a new biography of the eponymous Christian radical and communist organizer. As a "strong willed" woman born at the nineteenth century and living well into the twentieth, Pierson is a figure whose work spanned the fight for women's suffrage, public health, the labor movement, and the Russian, Chinese, and Cuban Revolutions, traveling to the latter countries toward the end of her life. As a writer, teacher, churchgoer, and worker, Pierson, Buhle writes, was a presence to be reckoned with throughout her lifetime.

by Research Unit for Political Economy (RUPE)

In September's Review of the Month, the Research Unit for Political Economy delves into how the crisis pervading the world system, on stark display in the tech sector, global finance, and the sphere of production, lays bare the longstanding vulnerabilities of the Indian economy. As the contradictions in the neoliberal phase become unmistakable, the authors write, it is necessary to take a class-based approach to resolving the questions of how to bring about key questions regarding the productive life and development of India.

by Chris Gilbert

The relationship between Marxism and other revolutionary traditions is a key question for our time. If we approach the issue incorrectly, we risk Eurocentrism and underrecognizing Marxism's role in the Global South contexts where it is most vital and active. This article examines and extends José Carlos Mariátegui's dialectical approach to the issue, which demonstrates how Marxism is not diluted but strengthened through engagement with the thought and practice of existing struggles, while those struggles can, in turn, gain greater depth and groundedness through the same relationship.

by Elliot Goodell Ugalde

Through the work of neoclassical economist Thomas Sowell, Elliot Goodell Ugalde dissects the orthodox view that takes for granted that scarcity is at the center of economic life. In a world of various kinds of surpluses, Goodell argues, the idea that scarcity is the only organizing principle of our economic is inadequate to describe the complex interactions of institutions, history, and social power that make up economic organization under capitalism.