>>> Doug Henwood <dhenwood at panix.com> 05/03/00 06:57PM >>>
Charles Brown wrote:
>CB: From summary of Lenin's analysis of imperialism: 1) monopoly
>capitalism is still applicable 2) state-monopoly capitalism is
>still applicable ; privatization is a late 1900's -2000 fresh
>example of state-monopoly.
Privatization is an instance of state-monopoly? I find that very confusing.
Lenin and Hilferding talked about state-sponsored cartels and the suppression of competition. Everywhere on earth, deregulation and the intensification of competition are the rule of the day. Please clarify how this proves Lenin and Hilferding right.
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CB: Here is a reply from Lenin on monopoly competition>
VII. IMPERIALISM, AS A SPECIAL STAGE OF CAPITALISM
We must now try to sum up, put together, what has been said above on the subject of imperialism. Imperalism emerged as the development and direct continuation of the fundamental characteristics of capitalism in general. But capitalism only became capitalist imperialism at a definite and very high stage of its development, when certain of its fundamental characteristics began to change into their opposites, when the features of the epoch of transition from capitalism to a higher social and economic system had taken shape and revealed themselves all along the line. Economically, the main thing in this process is the displacement of capitalist free competition by capitalist monopoly. Free competition is the fundamental characteristic of cap-
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* J. E. Driault, Probèmes politiques et sociaux, Paris, 1907, p. 299. page 105
italism, and of commodity production generally; monopoly is the exact opposite of free competition, but we have seen the latter being transformed into monopoly before our eye, creating large-scale industry and forcing out small industry, replacing large-scale by still larger-scale industry, and carrying concentration of production and capital to the point where out of it has grown and is growing monopoly: cartels, syndicates and trusts, and merging with them, the capital of a dozen or so banks, which manipulate thousands of millions. At the same time the monopolies, which have grown out of free competition, do not eliminate the latter, but exist over it and alongside of it, and thereby give rise to a number of very acute, intense antagonisms, frictions and conflicts. Monopoly is the transition from capitalism to a higher system.
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CB