Doug Henwood wrote:
> Yeah, I worry about how lots of lefties play down competition. Just the
> other night, I interviewed Martin Khor of the Third World Network in Penang
> on the radio, and he mocked the use of free market rhetoric in a world of
> monopolies and market manipulation. I wanted to hear about what Malaysia
> was up to, so I didn't challenge him, but economies now are more
> competitive than they were 20 or 30 years ago, no?
It has been many years since I last reread Lenin's *Imperialism*, but as I understood it at the time one of its central concerns was to argue that monopoly did NOT eliminate competition -- i.e. that imperialism did not require any revision of marxism. Kautsky, on the other hand, argued that monopoly would develop to global cooperation of capitalists rather than competition, and that therefore capitalism had overcome all internal contradictions; and therefore the time for revolution had passed, the critique of capitalism and been reduced to a MORAL rather than a material critique, etc. etc.
Capitalism is by its nature competitive; IF anything that could be called state capitalism could come into existence, even that would be fundamentally competitive. The elimination of competition is very nearly by definition the elimination of capitalism, and the concepts of non-competitive capitalism OR competitive (i.e. market) socialism are oxymorons.
Carrol