>>> furuhashi.1 at osu.edu 02/12/01 01:19AM >>>
Doug says:
>The word "monopoly" is thrown around, as if J.P. Morgan were still
>walking the earth.
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CB: Yea, not only that . The word "capitalism" is thrown around as if Henry P. Ford still was out there at Greenfield Village , goofin' off with Thomas Edison. Anybody knows today's companies are nothing at all like what it was in Henry's day. Lets quit being so careless with our language.
I wonder if that pirate Morgan's fortune just dissipated and diffused after his death, sort of like according to the 2nd law of thermodynamics, or did his heirs keep it concentrated ?
Actually, Nikitin, as late as 1983, did sight Morgan's offspring in one of the largest monopoly finance groups. He finds that there were at that time 18 high finance groups, which "controlled the assets to a sum of 678.4 billion dollars, including 319.5 billion in banking and 358.9 billion in industry, commerce, and the services sphere. the biggest of these financial groups were ( are?) the Morgans, Rockefellers, California and Chicago groups. "
"The Morgan sphere of indluence was (is) the iron and steel industry, the chemical industry, the motor, electrical engineering, electronics, rubber industries, The group had in 1983 167.5 billion dollars worth of assets, including 54.7 billion in bankiing, and 112.8 billion in industry, commerce and the services sphere. "
Seems unlikely that these holdings would have shrunk in the last 18 years But we know Morgan really is dead. It's only his ghost haunting those investment bankers.
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Yoshie: Well, Lenin wasn't such a simpleton. He writes, for instance, that "monopolies, which have grown out of free competition, do _not_ eliminate the latter, but exist over it and alongside it" (emphasis mine, Lenin, "Imperialism: The Highest Stage of Capitalism," _Marxism: Essential Writings_, ed. David McLellan, Oxford: Oxford UP, 1988, p. 153).
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Charles: Agree with Yoshie. Lenin also said " In fact it is this combination of antagonistic principles, viz. competition and monopoly, that is the essence of imperialism..." ( "Comments on the Remarks Made by Committee of the All-Russia Conference").
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Yoshie: On one hand, it is true that "[f]or the last 20 years, it's been the policy of many governments around the world to promote competition, through deregulation and the dismantling of import barriers" as you note.
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CB: I'm trying to think how "deregulation" necessarily contradicts or lessens monopoly. Much of deregulation is helpful to giant companies, as with the big bucks the California companies have just been shown to have made on deregulation there. All of the automobile monopolies favor much deregulation. Approval of the Time Warner/AOL merger seems to be forebearance from regulating, an inaction that redounds to the advantage of those/that monopoly too.
Government deregulation in the last 10 years seems a very good 2001 example of what Lenin termed state-monopoly. State-monopoly is characterised by an intertwining of private and state monopolies ( as with "public" utilities and privatization), and subordination of the state machine to the financial oligarchy, the purpose of this subordination being to put the government directly in the service of enriching the monopolies more and more, in ever new ways.
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Yoshie: On the other hand, intra-firm trade is estimated to account for 40-60% of total global trade, depending on studies. A large part of the FDI flow is attributed to cross-border mergers and acquisitions. Moreover, economic control is exercised even without mergers and acquisitions, for instance via the enforcement of intellectual property rights. Lastly, outsourcing & subcontracting simply make the mode of economic integration more flexible, without lessening the degree of integration of production & concentration of wealth. To sum up, while the mode of economic integration has changed since Lenin's days, we have & will not return to the days of "laissez faire" mythologized by anarcho-capitalists -- calls for "free trade" & "deregulation" notwithstanding; the capitalist world economy is more socialized than ever.
You correctly point out the virtual disappearance of violent rivalries among imperial nations, due to the USA's hegemony over Japan & Europe; the Second World War & the Cold War were the decisive moments in the creation of the Empire. This does not bode well for the proletariat, however. During the era of inter-imperialist rivalry, revolutionary socialists could play one empire against another (e.g., the German government allowed Lenin to cross Germany en route from Switzerland to Sweden in a sealed railway car, hoping to disrupt the Russian war effort); while the USSR existed, nationalist and/or socialist movements could gain valuable Soviet assistance if and when their objectives coincided Soviet interests. Today, leftists of all stripes have much less room of maneuver.
It's tough going against the wishes of the Empire, even in minor details, not to mention in such fundamentals as the ownership of the means of production, when there exists no countervailing power.
Ultra-imeprialism indeed. :(
Yoshie
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CB: Ultra-monopoly too.