The Theory Of Monopoly Capitalism

Download or read book The Theory of Monopoly Capitalism written by John Bellamy Foster and published by NYU Press. This book was released on 2014-04-01 with total page 320 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In 1966, Paul Baran and Paul Sweezy published Monopoly Capital, a monumental work of economic theory and social criticism that sought to reveal the basic nature of the capitalism of their time. Their theory, and its continuing elaboration by Sweezy, Harry Magdoff, and others in Monthly Review magazine, infl uenced generations of radical and heterodox economists. They recognized that Marx’s work was unfi nished and itself historically conditioned, and that any attempt to understand capitalism as an evolving phenomenon needed to take changing conditions into account. Having observed the rise of giant monopolistic (or oligopolistic) fi rms in the twentieth century, they put monopoly capital at the center of their analysis, arguing that the rising surplus such fi rms accumulated—as a result of their pricing power, massive sales efforts, and other factors—could not be profi tably invested back into the economy. Absent any “epoch making innovations” like the automobile or vast new increases in military spending, the result was a general trend toward economic stagnation—a condition that persists, and is increasingly apparent, to this day. Their analysis was also extended to issues of imperialism, or “accumulation on a world scale,” overlapping with the path-breaking work of Samir Amin in particular. John Bellamy Foster is a leading exponent of this theoretical perspective today, continuing in the tradition of Baran and Sweezy’s Monopoly Capital. This new edition of his essential work, The Theory of Monopoly Capitalism, is a clear and accessible explication of this outlook, brought up to the present, and incorporating an analysis of recently discovered “lost” chapters from Monopoly Capital and correspondence between Baran and Sweezy. It also discusses Magdoff and Sweezy’s analysis of the fi nancialization of the economy in the 1970s, ‘80s, and ‘90s, leading up to the Great Financial Crisis of the opening decade of this century. Foster presents and develops the main arguments of monopoly capital theory, examining its key exponents, and addressing its critics in a way that is thoughtful but rigorous, suspicious of dogma but adamant that the deep-seated problems of today’s monopoly-fi nance capitalism can only truly be solved in the process of overcoming the system itself.

Download or read book The Theory of Monopoly Capitalism written by John Bellamy Foster and published by NYU Press. This book was released on 2014-04 with total page 320 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Absent any "epoch making innovations" like the automobile or vast new increases in military spending, the result was a general trend toward economic stagnation--a condition that persists, and is increasingly apparent, to this day. Their analysis was also extended to issues of imperialism, or "accumulation on a world scale," overlapping with the path-breaking work of Samir Amin in particular. John Bellamy Foster is a leading exponent of this theoretical perspective today, continuing in the tradition of Baran and Sweezy's Monopoly Capital. This new edition of his essential work, The Theory of Monopoly Capitalism, is a clear and accessible explication of this outlook, brought up to the present, and incorporating an analysis of recently discovered "lost" chapters from Monopoly Capital and correspondence between Baran and Sweezy.

Download or read book Monopoly Capital written by Paul A. Baran and published by NYU Press. This book was released on 1966 with total page 415 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Essay on the capitalist economy of the USA - covers corporation structure and giant entrepreneurship, generation and absorption of surplus profit, consumption, investment, historical and political aspects of monopoly, defence policy, etc., and includes sociological aspects, the standard of living and intergroup relations. References.

Download or read book Labor and Monopoly Capital written by Harry Braverman and published by New York : Monthly Review Press. This book was released on 1974 with total page 484 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This widely acclaimed book, first published in 1974, was a classic from its first day in print. Written in a direct, inviting way by Harry Braverman, whose years as an industrial worker gave him rich personal insight into work, Labor and Monopoly Capital overturned the reigning ideologies of academic sociology. This new edition features an introduction by John Bellamy Foster that sets the work in historical and theoretical context, as well as two rare articles by Braverman, "The Degradation of Work in the Twentieth Century" (1975) and "Two Comments" (1976), that add much to our understanding of the book.

Download or read book Modern Imperialism, Monopoly Finance Capital, and Marx's Law of Value written by Samir Amin and published by NYU Press. This book was released on 2018-02-22 with total page 248 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The complete collection of Samir Amin's work on Marxism value theory Unlike such obvious forms of oppression as feudalism or slavery, capitalism has been able to survive through its genius for disguising corporate profit imperatives as opportunities for individual human equality and advancement. But it was the genius of Karl Marx, in his masterwork, Capital, to discover the converse law of surplus value: behind the illusion of the democratic, supply-and-demand marketplace, lies the workplace, where people trying to earn a living are required to work way beyond the time it takes to pay their wages. Leave it to the genius of Samir Amin to advance Marx's theories—adding to them the work of radical economists such as Michal Kalecki, Josef Steindl, Paul Baran, and Paul Sweezy—to show how Marxian theory can be adapted to modern economic conditions. Amin extends Marx's analysis to describe a concept of “imperialist rent” derived from the radically unequal wages paid for the same labor done by people in both the Global North and the Global South, the rich nations and the poor ones. This is global oligopolistic capitalism, in which finance capital has come to dominate worldwide production and distribution. Amin also advances Baran and Sweezy’s notion of economic surplus to explain a globally monopolized system in which Marx's “law of value” takes the form of a “law of globalized value,” generating a super-exploitation of workers in the Global South. Modern Imperialism, Monopoly Finance Capital, and Marx's Law of Value offers readers, in one volume, the complete collection of Samir Amin’s work on Marxian value theory. The book includes texts from two of Amin's recent works, Three Essays on Marx’s Value Theory and The Law of Worldwide Value, which have provoked considerable controversy and correspondence. Here, Amin answers his critics with a series of letters, clarifying and developing his ideas. This work will occupy an important place among the theoretical resources for anyone involved in the study of contemporary Marxian economic and political theory.

Download or read book Manufacturing Consent written by Michael Burawoy and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2012-10-15 with total page 286 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Since the 1930s, industrial sociologists have tried to answer the question, Why do workers not work harder? Michael Burawoy spent ten months as a machine operator in a Chicago factory trying to answer different but equally important questions: Why do workers work as hard as they do? Why do workers routinely consent to their own exploitation? Manufacturing Consent, the result of Burawoy's research, combines rich ethnographical description with an original Marxist theory of the capitalist labor process. Manufacturing Consent is unique among studies of this kind because Burawoy has been able to analyze his own experiences in relation to those of Donald Roy, who studied the same factory thirty years earlier. Burawoy traces the technical, political, and ideological changes in factory life to the transformations of the market relations of the plant (it is now part of a multinational corporation) and to broader movements, since World War II, in industrial relations.

Download or read book Imperialism and the development myth written by Sam King and published by Manchester University Press. This book was released on 2021-09-07 with total page 277 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: China and other Third World societies cannot 'catch up' with the rich countries. The contemporary world system is permanently dominated by a small group of rich countries who maintain a vice-like grip over the key parts of the labour process – over the most technologically sophisticated and complex labour. Globalisation of production since the 1980s means much more of the world’s work is now carried out in the poor countries, yet it is the rich, imperialist countries – through their domination of the labour process – that monopolise most of the benefits. Income levels in the First World remain five and ten times higher than Third World countries. The huge gulf between rich and poor worlds is getting bigger not smaller. Under capitalist imperialism, it is permanent. China has moved from being one of the poorest societies to a level now similar with other relatively developed Third World societies – like Mexico and Brazil. The dominant idea that it somehow threatens to ‘catch up’ economically, or overtake the rich countries paves the way for imperialist military and economic aggression against China. King’s meticulous study punctures the rising-China myth. His empirical and theoretical analysis shows that, as long as the world economy continues to be run for private profit, it can no longer produce new imperialist powers. Rather it will continue to reproduce the monopoly of the same rich countries generation after generation. The giant social divide between rich and poor countries cannot be overcome.