[lbo-talk] Fitch and Brenner

Charles Brown cdb1003 at prodigy.net
Sat Feb 28 07:12:45 PST 2009


^^^^^ CB:  In 1916, Lenin formulated the concept of monopoly competition ( competition in monopoly  capitalism as fiercer even than "free" competition)

One of the most succinct statements of this principle by Lenin is quoted in Nitkin's _Fundamentals of Political Economy_:

"Imperialism cannot eliminate competition. In fact it  is this combination of antagonistic principles, viz, competition and monopoly, that is the essence of imperialism, ...' quoting Lenin "Comments on the Remarks Made by the Committee of the April All-Russian Conference, Collected Works, Vol. 24, Progress Publishers, Moscow, 1974, p465).

In _Imperialism_ , Lenin  discusses monopoly competition as _fiercer_ than the competition in the pre-imperialist phase of capitalism

Interestingly, Paul Krugman's Nobel Prize was based on work formulating a concept of "monopolistic competition":

The Professor and the Columnist [by David Warsh]

To the long list of sharp reactions provoked around the world by George W. Bush now must be added another:  the decision last week ( last fall -CB) by the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences to give its 2008 Nobel Prize in economics to Paul Krugman, 55, of Princeton University and The New York Times.

Not that the honor is in any sense undeserved. On the contrary, it has long been anticipated; for two decades, it has been a question of how and when. The central part that Krugman played in overturning 175 years of conventional thinking about international trade by introducing the analytic tools of monopolistic competition is by now something of a legend, thanks to two autobiographical essays as forthcoming as any in economics...



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