Monopoly Capital: An Essay on the American Economic and Social Order by Paul A. Baran

Monopoly Capital: An Essay on the American Economic and Social Order Reviews

• 
  Feliks

  One of the finest books of its kind I have yet experienced. The value of these erudite classics of economics can't be understated. Like a basin of cold, clear, fresh water to scrub and rinse your brain in. Expunges all the rickety, rusty, and encrusted notions clogging your faculties. Clear away the fog. These authors--their voices--shook the trees, when this volume was published. Who has the guts these days to announce themselves a Marxist? No one does anything like that anymore. So read these guys, not all the jays and jackdaws hopping about from branch-to-branch lately.
  
  Frankly, these men were prescient. Everything they discuss in this landmark from the '60s is not only still true; the situation they described is all the more aggravated. It's all the more reason you know they were speaking the truth. If you want to dismiss them, then explain why their predictions are so unerring?
  
  The first chapter is pretty strong: laying out their approach. The concept they hone in on--in our system--is the dilemma of surplus. You remember that the issue of fair redistribution of surplus was the great concentration of Marx himself.
  
  But this book does not proselytize for fairer distribution of profits. The authors simply explicate, chapter after chapter (education, welfare, marketing, foreign exchange, investing, the service sector, the military, the history of stock market crashes) why our system is as irrational as it is. It is a 'unifying theory of everything' which they offer, and it holds up.
  
  "Profit,"--they explain--"which is not reinvested or consumed, is not profit at all". So obvious, once articulated. Modern capitalism cannot function at anything more than partial capacity. We only operated at full capacity during WWII, and every other decade finds us desperately struggling with too much production on our hands. Thus, the eternal hunt for new markets to sell our goods in. The last thing any merchant wants is a warehouse full of products lying idle. Move that product!
  
  At the end of it all (the book closes with a withering excoriation of this national befuddlement) these authors do not suggest a methodology for fairer redistribution. They do not paint capitalism as a demon without any merit.
  
  All they wish, is to point out what other economists miss: that over-production and over-surplus are the glaring, colossal, and insoluble problems underpinning the entire system of capitalism. Every ill effect--you can trace, if you are patient enough--and see that it leads back to this lone conundrum. What to do about it? At least recognize that there's a problem. Is that too much to ask of any patient in his sickbed?
  
  No. It should not be anathema to any thinking man today, to hear that the state of the country needs a serious, systematic re-thinking from the ground up. As the authors point out: we in the modern era are always so gung-ho for science and rational in everything else; so why do we resist so ferociously any rational re-appraisal of our economic system?
  
  Ask the question yourselves. Who is behind such rabid and obstinate refusal to even consider different ways of doing anything differently than ...the way things have always been done?
  
  'Pro-monopoly' capitalists?? H'mmm...gee, d'ya think?
  This is a book that riles all conservatives and especially self-styled libertarians. Keep it out on your coffee table if you have such among your acquaintances. Ten to one they've never even heard of this title --and no odds given at all, that they have an answer to its assertions. They don't.
  
  
• 
  Owen Hatherley

  Informative and brutal assessment of mid-60s American capitalism, interesting today for many reasons, among them the continuities with this alleged "golden age" as much as the breaks, and for the fact Penguin Books in the '60s put out a book that is basically 'here is why we must immediately destroy Amerikkka'
• 
  Jon

  Sweezy wrote Monopoly Capital in conjunction with
  Paul Baran, who saw the manuscript to completion but died two years before it was published. Sweezy (and presumably Baran) was a Marxist who was heavily influenced by the Polish Neo-Marxist economist
  Michał Kalecki (as is stated in this work: "anyone familiar with the work of Kalecki and Steindl will readily recognize that the authors of the present work owe a great deal to them.")
  
  Monopoly Capital is a great historical work which traces the development of monopolies, primarily in the US economy beginning after the civil war, and seems to be a follow-up to Kalecki's theorizing on the topic (which I haven't read, but Sweezy and Baran trace back to Lenin's
  Imperialism: The Highest Stage of Capitalism).
  
  If you've read
  Late Capitalism then you probably remember it's author, Mandel, was a pretty fierce critic of this work. Be that as it may, there can't be any doubt that Mandel also thought pretty highly of it too. Personally I find it to be a rich work that gives unique insight into more familiarly "modern" topics affecting the economy, such as the rise of such "unproductive" institutions like the advertising industry. It outlines the lessons that needed to be learned in their day, and because they weren't, it gives insight into the consequences. In other words, our living predicaments today are the result of the predicaments which were not solved yesterday.
  
  That may seem like a strong claim, but what I'm saying is the documentation is pretty good.
• 
  D.M.

  This book was among the most difficult and persuasive of my college years. Did the great depression ever really end? What are the ways capitalism emerged as a different animal after world war two? I'm not sure I'm smart enough to reread this book, but I know I think about economics differently as a result of pouring over it.
• 
  Erik Graff

  This is one of the best, most important books I have ever read. It was also one of the more difficult as I was young and substantially ignorant of macroeconomic theory at the time.
  
  I reviewed the book's description from Wikipedia, but, while they seem to represent some of the author's argument, they do not, so far as memory serves, actually represent the book adequately. As I recall, the primary thrust of the work is as an extension of Marxist economic theory to account for the movement from a primary capital investment in industry, in concrete productive instruments, towards credit and other relatively ephemeral financial instruments in the years since WWII. The arguments about "how to absorb surpluses while keeping the costs of variable capital (labor) down?", while certainly important to these depression-era thinkers, are of secondary importance.
  
  While I was in high school, 'Monthly Review' was my favorite magazine. Years later, in a publication called 'Left Court', a friend and I, under the aegis of the SPUSA created an inferior imitation of it. Still later, the 'Review' actually gave a little, rather insubstantial, piece of mine cover billing because I'd had the fortuity to write to them about religion and the Left just as they were preparing an issue on the topic.
• 
  Dominick Cortese

  A book written for its time. It gives insight into how Marxist theory was effected by the post-war boom and the integration of mainstream economics to explain that. This isn't to say they are apologists, but that their analysis, to the extent that it challenges capital, would only lead to reforms, e.g., the problem is workers need higher wages in order to buy back that which they produce.
• 
  Lucien Ryan

  Extremely useful update of Marxist thinking for the late 20th century that still feels entirely relevant. Baran and Sweezy review Marx's framework and address some significant questions about its applicability to American life, specifically the disappearance of the American industrial working class. The latter half of the volume explores the challenges and possibilities for politics, education, relationships, and sexuality. Grim stuff, quite frankly!
• 
  Phil

  While dated, this text has really stood the test of time. All the trends they illustrated are still around if not even stronger. The end was a little trite-- the only solution is revolution! Well worth a read!
• 
  Ben

  A good book on how monopoly works, though a bit dense.
• 
  Algernon

  Eerily prescient analysis of the monopolistic tendencies of global capitalism.
• 
  Marko

  I have the english and the german edition.