This year marks the forty-fifth anniversary of the publication of Paul Baran and Paul Sweezy’s classic work, Monopoly Capital: An Essay on the American Economic Order (Monthly Review Press, 1966). Three years before the publication of their book, in the July 1963 issue of Monthly Review,Baran and Sweezy published two chapters of Monopoly Capital in MR, together with an introduction. (The publication of the actual book was delayed by Baran’s death in 1964.) Today MR editor John Bellamy Foster and Robert W. McChesney are currently completing a book, entitled Monopoly-Finance Capital: Politics in an Era of Economic Stagnation and Social Decline, to be published by Monthly Review Press early next year. The purpose of this new work is to bring the analysis of Monopoly Capital up to date, addressing the changes that have occurred in the capitalist system in the last half-century. We have therefore decided to follow the example of Baran and Sweezy and publish a number of the core chapters of this book, in early form in the magazine, in advance of the book itself. The March 2011 Review of the Month, “The Internet’s Unholy Marriage to Capitalism,” was one such chapter. This issue’s Review of the Month, “Monopoly and Competition in Twenty-First Century Capitalism“…is another. | more…
A striking paradox animates political economy in our times. On the one hand, mainstream economics and much of left economics discuss our era as one of intense and increased competition among businesses, now on a global scale. It is a matter so self-evident as no longer to require empirical verification or scholarly examination. On the other hand, wherever one looks, it seems that nearly every industry is concentrated into fewer and fewer hands. Formerly competitive sectors like retail are now the province of enormous monopolistic chains, massive economic fortunes are being assembled into the hands of a few mega-billionaires sitting atop vast empires, and the new firms and industries spawned by the digital revolution have quickly gravitated to monopoly status. In short, monopoly power is ascendant as never before. | more…
Michael Lim Mah Hui and Lim Chin, Nowhere to Hide: The Great Financial Crisis and Challenges for Asia (Singapore: Institute of Southeast Asian Studies, 2010), 200 pages, $39.90, paperback.
Nowhere to Hide by Michael Lim Mah Hui and Lim Chin is another book on the financial crisis, although with added attention to Asia. In addition to the regional implications of the crisis for Asia, what makes this volume different from so many others is its critical perspective.… The book thus reflects an insider’s view of the banking system that is informed by a critical, political-economic perspective. As such, Nowhere to Hide makes a good companion to Monthly Review’s own The Great Financial Crisis by John Bellamy Foster and Fred Magdoff. Indeed, there is a close connection between these works, symbolized by the incorporation of Foster and Magdoff’s title into the subtitle of Nowhere to Hide. | more…
The United States and the world are now a good two decades into the Internet revolution, or what was once called the information age. The past generation has seen a blizzard of mind-boggling developments in communication, ranging from the World Wide Web and broadband, to ubiquitous cell phones that are quickly becoming high-powered wireless computers in their own right.… The full impact of the Internet revolution will only become apparent in the future, as more technological change is on the horizon that can barely be imagined and hardly anticipated. But enough time has transpired, and institutions and practices have been developed, that an assessment of the digital era is possible, as well as a sense of its likely trajectory into the future. | more…
I have written repeatedly on the structural crisis in the world-system, most recently in New Left Review in 2010. So, I shall just summarize my position, without arguing it in detail. I shall state my position as a set of premises. Not everyone agrees with these premises, which are my picture of where we are at the present time. On the basis of this picture, I propose to speak to the question, where do we go from here? | more…
The two lead articles in this issue of Monthly Review are both outgrowths of important new books published by Monthly Review Press. Samir Amin’s article, “The Trajectory of Historical Capitalism and Marxism’s Tricontinental Vocation,” is based on recent developments in his theoretical outlook presented in The Law of Worldwide Value…. A substantially revised and extended version of his earlier work, The Law of Value and Historical Materialism (Monthly Review Press, 1978), The Law of Worldwide Value also incorporates new conceptual breakthroughs, making it a major advance in itself.… The article by Richard York and Brett Clark entitled “Stephen Jay Gould’s Critique of Progress” is taken from their book The Science and Humanism of Stephen Jay Gould…. Gould’s far-ranging work in natural history, biology, and paleontology—even extending to the humanities and the social sciences—has fascinated countless readers, but the complexity of his thought and the extent of his intellectual commitments have defied previous attempts to bring out the unity of his work. | more…
[A]lmost four decades after the Club of Rome raised the issue of “the limits to growth,” the economic growth idol of modern society is once again facing a formidable challenge. What is known as “degrowth economics,” associated with the work of Serge Latouche in particular, emerged as a major European intellectual movement in 2008 with the historic conference in Paris on “Economic De-Growth for Ecological Sustainability and Social Equity,” and has since inspired a revival of radical Green thought, as epitomized by the 2010 “Degrowth Declaration” in Barcelona.… Ironically, the meteoric rise of degrowth (décroissance in French) as a concept has coincided over the last three years with the reappearance of economic crisis and stagnation on a scale not seen since the 1930s. The degrowth concept therefore forces us to confront the questions: Is degrowth feasible in a capitalist grow-or-die society—and if not, what does this say about the transition to a new society? | more…
In 1913 Lenin identified three intellectual sources of Marxism: German philosophy, English political economy, and French utopian socialism—each in turn created in the social conditions of their societies. But the process did not end there. Marxism continues to grow and to learn from the most advanced, liberating ideas of each period. (It is also influenced in negative ways, narrowing its horizons and getting dragged along by fashion in times of defeat). Here, I want to identify four contemporary sources of enrichment of Marxism: ecology, feminism, national/racial struggles, and pacifism. It is important to recognize them as sources of ideas, not only as allies in political struggles. Their interaction with Marxism is, of course, different from the pre-Marxist sources. They come to Marxism from the outside, but from an outside already influenced in part by Marxism, and they are both welcomed and resisted. | more…
Paul Baran and Paul Sweezy’s voluminous correspondence in the 1950s and early 1960s ranks as one of the crucial exchanges of letters between Marxist political economists in the second half of the twentieth century, and, indeed, in the entire history of Marxist thought.… Only a few letters in their extensive correspondence have been published so far.… We have thus chosen to publish two additional letters here in recognition of the joint centennial of the births of the two Pauls: Paul Baran (1910-1964) and Paul Sweezy (1910-2004). | more…
Although the Great Recession officially ended in the U.S. economy more than a year ago (June 2009), for most people—especially the long-term unemployed, minorities, and youth—the effects are far from over. Indeed, it is a measure of the economic malaise in which the industrialized countries remain mired that the specter of stagnation is once again haunting mainstream discourse. As Paul Krugman recently observed, the U.S. economy is experiencing “what looks increasingly like a permanent state of stagnation and high unemployment” akin to the 1930s (“This is Not a Recovery,” New York Times, August 26, 2010) | more…
To understand the disaster that is present-day economics, it is crucial to recognize that we are living today, not only in the deepest economic crisis/stagnation since the Great Depression, but also—as Paul Krugman declared in his New York Times blog on January 27, 2009—in “A Dark Age of Macroeconomics,” in which the central discoveries of the 1930s have been forgotten or discarded. “What made the Dark Ages dark,” Krugman wrote, “was the fact that so much knowledge had been lost, that so much known to the Greeks and Romans had been forgotten by the barbarian kingdoms that followed.” The critical knowledge lost that gave rise to the new Dark Age in Macroeconomics, he claimed, was none other than the Keynesian Revolution centered on the critique of Say’s Law, or the notion that supply creates its own demand. In the context of arguing against government deficit spending, leading economists at the University of Chicago, the bastion of reaction in economics, have reverted to a “pure Say’s Law, pure ‘Treasury view’” by insisting that increased savings automatically lead to increased investment, while government borrowing invariably “crowds out” investment | more…
In 1997, in his last published article, Paul Sweezy referred to “the financialization of the capital accumulation process” as one of the three main economic tendencies at the turn of the century (the other two were the growth of monopoly power and stagnation). Those familiar with economic theory will realize that the phrase was meant to be paradoxical. All traditions of economics, to varying degrees, have sought to separate out analytically the role of finance from the “real economy.” Accumulation is conceived as real capital formation, which increases overall economic output, as opposed to the appreciation of financial assets, which increases wealth claims but not output. In highlighting the financialization of accumulation, Sweezy was therefore pointing to what can be regarded as “the enigma of capital” in our time | more…
