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Integrated circuit on a microchip

What Do We Learn about Capitalism from Chip War?

Chip War (Simon and Schuster, 2022) by Chris Miller is a detailed accounting of the U.S. efforts to retain control of the computer chip industry—an industry that has become vital to nearly all aspects of modern life. Rahul Varman explores and expands on these themes, asking all the while: What can the escalating wars over this crucial technology teach us about global capitalism? | more…

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The Telecom Industry in India: Free Market or Monopoly-Finance Capital?

The success of the telecommunications industry in India has been heralded as a “miracle.” But a miracle for whom? The answer, Rahul Varman writes, has clearly been the capitalist class, who, over three decades, have amassed tremendous wealth and power through the machinations of large firms, in collusion with the Indian government. | more…

The Neoclassical Apology for Monopoly Capital

While the global economy is mired in ever-deepening crisis, there is no abatement in the propaganda rationalizing free markets and perfect competition. In the world of “perfect competition” governed by the “invisible hand” of market forces, no single actor (or even a combination of a few) is in a position to influence the market equilibrium, and prices are determined by the balance of demand and supply. This is a win-win world, where actors have sufficient information for arriving at their respective choices, consumers are free to make the correct decisions, and this self-governing system leads to progressively increasing welfare for all.… In this mythological world, there is also a hell, whose name is monopoly or oligopoly, the exact opposite of perfect competition, where a few sellers or producers distort the markets and generate inefficiency, monopoly profits, and compromise consumer choice.… The only difficulty with this mythology is that, while we are constantly told that the world is increasingly being governed by competition and market forces, the real world of business and industry is moving rapidly away from such free competition, as concentration, domination, and control of most economic activities has become common place.… It might be that perfectly competitive markets will provide answers for all of our ills, but in the real world, there is an absence of “free markets,” with market rigging and failure everywhere in the economy. | more…