This 98-year-old monk clashed with Thomas Merton over cheesemaking (and capitalism) But concern for the poor changed his mind americamagazine.org - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from americamagazine.org Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
John Bellamy Foster is editor of
Monthly Review and a professor of sociology at the University of Oregon. Brett Clark is associate editor of
Monthly Review and a professor of sociology at the University of Utah. Hannah Holleman is a director of the Monthly Review Foundation and an associate professor of sociology at Amherst College.
The “turn toward the indigenous” in social theory over the last couple of decades, associated with the critique of white settler colonialism, has reintroduced themes long present in Marxian theory, but in ways that are often surprisingly divorced from Karl Marx’s critique of capitalism, colonialism, and imperialism.
Soy plantation in Bolivia. China is the leading importer of soy, a commodity that drives tropical deforestation. Photo by Neil Palmer/CIAT via Wikimedia Commons
A recent study by Chinese and international experts argues that China’s leaders are recognizing the importance of greening the country’s commodity value chains. As China reassesses the vulnerability and risks of its global value chains due to the COVID-19 pandemic and considers how to build back its economy with greater resilience and sustainability, the political moment is right to make this shift.
Roughly 40% of tropical forest destruction in the past decade was driven by agricultural expansion, notably the production of “soft” commodities like soy, palm oil and beef, along with industrial-scale logging for timber. This ecosystem damage has a global impact, contributing approximately 23% of global greenhouse gas emissions and posing an unprecedented threat to animal and plant species.