
Big Pharma and Monopoly Capital: Four Dynamics in the Decline of Innovation
This article will be released in full online June 16, 2025.
In an age of cutting-edge medical science, how do the world’s largest pharmaceutical companies stifle innovation in order to juice profits and remain competitive in the international markets? The answer, Jia Liu writes, can be found in the concept of monopoly capitalism. This brand of “intellectual monopoly capitalism,” she notes, contributes to “a logic of expropriation and rent-seeking,” leading in turn to “closed science and declining medical innovation.” | more…