On a special combined version of Presswatch and Fight the Empire hosts Theresa Mitchell and Per Fagereng speak with author and professor Fred Magdoff about his book "
What Every Environmentalist Needs to Know about Capitalism," co-authored with John Bellamy Foster.
A Citizen's Guide to Capitalism and the Environment is a manifesto for those environmentalists who reject schemes of “green capitalism” or piecemeal reform. Environmental and economic scholars Magdoff and Foster contend that the struggle to reverse ecological degradation requires a firm grasp of economic reality. Going further, they argue that efforts to reform capitalism along environmental lines or rely solely on new technology to avert catastrophe misses the point. The main cause of the looming environmental disaster is the driving logic of the system itself, and those in power—no matter how “green”—are incapable of making the changes that are necessary.
What Every Environmentalist Needs To Know about Capitalism tackles the two largest issues of our time, the ecological crisis and the faltering capitalist economy, in a way that is thorough, accessible, and sure to provoke debate in the environmental movement.
Fred Magdoff is professor emeritus of plant and soil science at the University of Vermont. His most recent books include Agriculture and Food in Crisis: Conflict, Resistance, and Renewal (edited with Brian Tokar), The ABCs of the Economic Crisis: What Working People Need to Know (with Michael Yates), and The Great Financial Crisis: Causes and Consequences (with John Bellamy Foster). John Bellamy Foster is editor of Monthly Review. He is professor of sociology at the University of Oregon and author of The Ecological Revolution: Making Peace with the Planet, The Great Financial Crisis (with Fred Magdoff), Critique of Intelligent Design: Materialism Versus Creationism from Antiquity to the Present (with Brett Clark and Richard York), Ecology Against Capitalism, Marx’s Ecology, and The Vulnerable Planet.
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