John Bellamy Foster - Beginnings

Beginnings

Foster was already active in the anti-war and environmental movements before enrolling at Evergreen State College in 1971, focusing on the study of economics in response to the unfolding crisis in the capitalist economy and US involvement with the coup in Chile that replaced the popularly elected government of Salvador Allende. It was at Evergreen that he met Robert W. McChesney, who introduced him to Monthly Review and the work of Paul M. Sweezy and Harry Magdoff.

In 1976 Foster moved to Canada and entered the political science graduate program at York University in Toronto, where he studied with Neal Wood, Ellen Meiksins Wood, Gabriel Kolko, Robert Cox, and Robert Albritton, among other noted critical thinkers. After submitting a copy of his 1979 paper, The United States and Monopoly Capital: The Issue of Excess Capacity, to Paul Sweezy of Monthly Review, the two struck up a lifelong correspondence and eventual collaboration. Over the next few years, Foster published in journals such as The Quarterly Journal of Economics and Science & Society, and, in 1986, published The Theory of Monopoly Capitalism: An Elaboration of Marxian Political Economy, based on his Ph.D. dissertation.

Foster was hired in 1985 as a Visiting Member of the Faculty at The Evergreen State College. One year later he took a position as assistant professor of sociology at the University of Oregon, and became a full professor of sociology in 2000. In 1989 he became a director of the Monthly Review Foundation Board and a member of the editorial committee of Monthly Review.