Suchergebnisse

In this review, we assess the state of competition and monopoly in the contemporary capitalist economy -- empirically, theoretically, and historically. We explain why understanding competition and monopoly has been such a bedeviling process, by examining the "ambiguity of competition." In particular, we review how the now dominant neoliberal strand of economics reconciled itself to monopoly and became its mightiest champion, despite its worldview -- in theory -- being based on a religious devotion to the genius of economically competitive markets. We argue that what we have been witnessing in the last quarter century is the evolution of monopoly capital into a more generalized and globalized system of monopoly-finance capital that lies at the core of the current economic system in the advanced capitalist economies -- a key source of economic instability, and the basis of the current new imperialism. Adapted from the source document.

"The rich correspondence that preceded the publication of Monopoly Capital Paul A. Baran and Paul M. Sweezy were two of the leading Marxist economists of the twentieth century. Their seminal work, Monopoly Capital: An Essay on the American Economic and Social Order, published in 1966, two years after Baran's death, was in many respects the culmination of fifteen years of correspondence between the two, from 1949 to 1964. During those years, Baran, a professor of economics at Stanford, and Sweezy, a former professor of economics at Harvard, then co-editing Monthly Review in New York City, were separated by three thousand miles. Their intellectual collaboration required that they write letters to one another frequently and, in the years closer to 1964, almost daily. Their surviving correspondence consists of some one thousand letters. The letters selected for this volume illuminate not only the development of the political economy that was to form the basis of Monopoly Capital, but also the historical context--the McCarthy Era, the Cold War, the Cuban Missile Crisis--in which these thinkers were forced to struggle. Not since Marx and Engels carried on their epistolary correspondence has there has been a collection of letters offering such a detailed look at the making of a prescient critique of political economy--and at the historical conditions from which that critique was formed"--Provided by publisher

"The rich correspondence that preceded the publication of Monopoly Capital Paul A. Baran and Paul M. Sweezy were two of the leading Marxist economists of the twentieth century. Their seminal work, Monopoly Capital: An Essay on the American Economic and Social Order, published in 1966, two years after Baran's death, was in many respects the culmination of fifteen years of correspondence between the two, from 1949 to 1964. During those years, Baran, a professor of economics at Stanford, and Sweezy, a former professor of economics at Harvard, then co-editing Monthly Review in New York City, were separated by three thousand miles. Their intellectual collaboration required that they write letters to one another frequently and, in the years closer to 1964, almost daily. Their surviving correspondence consists of some one thousand letters. The letters selected for this volume illuminate not only the development of the political economy that was to form the basis of Monopoly Capital, but also the historical context--the McCarthy Era, the Cold War, the Cuban Missile Crisis--in which these thinkers were forced to struggle. Not since Marx and Engels carried on their epistolary correspondence has there has been a collection of letters offering such a detailed look at the making of a prescient critique of political economy--and at the historical conditions from which that critique was formed"--Provided by publisher.

In an interview with Brazilian magazine Margem Esquerda, John Bellamy Foster shares with Fabio Querido, Maria Orlanda Pinassi, and Michael Löwy the formative experiences that contributed to his work as a young activist and, later, a preeminent scholar of ecological Marxism. The interview concludes with a message to the ecological left in Brazil and elsewhere: "Whatever solutions there are to the present planetary crisis must, in historical-materialist terms, arise from concrete social formations, on the basis of which the new revolutionary transformations will take place."

Humanity's present social–ecological metabolic configuration is not sustainable, and the need for a radical transformation of society to address its metabolic rifts with the rest of nature is increasingly apparent. The work of French Marxist Henri Lefebvre, one of the few thinkers to recognize the significance of Karl Marx's theory of metabolic rift prior to its rediscovery at the end of the twentieth century, offers valuable insight into contemporary issues of sustainability. His concepts of the urban revolution, autogestion, the critique of everyday life, and total (or metabolic) revolution all relate directly to the key concerns of sustainability. Lefebvre's work embodies a vision of radical social–ecological transformation aimed at sustainable human development, in which the human metabolic interchange with the rest of nature is to be placed under substantively rational and cooperative control by all its members, enriching everyday life. Other critical aspects of Lefebvre's work, such as his famous concept of the production of space, his temporal rhythmanalysis, and his notion of the right to the city, all point to the existence of an open-ended research program directed at the core issues of sustainability in the twenty-first century.

Draws on Paul Baran & Paul Sweezy's Monopoly Capital (1966) to introduce the "sales effort under monopoly capital," & more specifically, contemporary monopoly-finance capital, viewing advertising as the most transparent form of the sales effort. Focus is on advertising's socioeconomic functions. Explored are the historical link between the emergence of advertising & monopoly capital's rise; the importance of the sales effort to attenuate economic stagnation arising from ineffective demand; advertising's role in the creation of the dominant corporate media & the shaping of modern journalism; marketing's social costs; & political struggles against commercialism. Tables, Charts, Appendixes. Adapted from the source document.