Is overcompetition the problem?

Monthly Review

Volumn 51, Issue 2, 1999, Pages 28-37

  Foster, John Bellamy ^a,b  

^a Monthly Review Foundation

^b UNIVERSITY OF OREGON   (United States)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 0007262776     PISSN: 00270520     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.14452/MR-051-02-1999-06_5     Document Type: Article

References (12)

1. Although Brenner himself refrains from citing any of these writings, it is important to note that supply-side theory has been subjected to a relentless critique, principally by radical political economists in the United States associated with Monthly Review, for two decades or more. All of the major points that Brenner makes in his critique are already to be found in this literature. For example, see the essays by various authors in John Bellamy Foster and Henryk Szlajfer, ed., The Faltering Economy: The Problem of Accumulation Under Monopoly Capitalism (New York: Monthly Review Press, 1984);
2. also John Bellamy Foster, "The Long Stagnation and the Class Struggle," Journal of Economic Issues, vol. 31, no. 2 (June 1997), pp. 445-51,
3. and "What is Stagnation?," in Robert Cherry, ed., The Imperiled Economy (New York: Union for Radical Political Economics, 1987), pp. 59-70.
4. Baran and Sweezy devoted a substantial portion of their book to the analysis of Standard Oil of New Jersey, which they viewed as "the leading multi-national corporation," and an example of the contemporary mechanisms of imperialism. See Paul A. Baran and Paul M. Sweezy, Monopoly Capital (New York: Monthly Review Press, 1966), pp. 193-202.
5. The global dimension of monopoly capital was brought out even more strongly in Harry Magdoff's Age of Imperialism (New York: Monthly Review Press, 1969).
6. On the use and abuse of productivity-growth statistics, see Harry Magdoff and Paul M. Sweezy, The Deepening Crisis of U.S. Capitalism (New York: Monthly Review Press, 1981), pp. 115-26 and 169-77.
7. It would not be too much to say that Brenner's entire model depends on the inability of the low-cost innovator to obtain short-term monopoly profits, even though the existence of such temporary monopoly profits constituted the essence of Schumpeterian profit theory. On Schumpeter's theory, see John Bellamy Foster, "The Political Economy of Joseph Schumpeter: A Theory of Capitalist Development and Decline," Studies in Political Economy, no. 15 (Fall 1984), pp. 5-42.
8. See Michael E. Porter, The Competitive Advantage of Nations (New York: The Free Press, 1998);
9. Lester Thurow, The Zero-Sum Solution: Building a World-Class American Economy (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1985).
10. The following discussion on the classical theory of competition relies very heavily on Paul M. Sweezy, "Competition and Monopoly," in Foster and Szlajfer, ed., The Faltering Economy, pp. 27-29.
11. Karl Marx, Grundrisse (New York: Vintage, 1973), pp. 552, 752.
12. Robert Brenner, "The Origins of Capitalist Development: A Critique of Neo-Smithian Marxism," New Left Review, no. 104 (July-August 1977), pp. 25-93.