Is there by any chance a _verbal_ problem operative here? That doesn't happen very often, and when it does it is usually merely a symptom of a deeper difference, but it _does_ actually happen on occasion. "Monopoly" sometimes, perhaps often, is used as a synonym for "virtual monopoly." This slippage perhaps operates in a comment I once heard attributed to Paul Sweezy" The only error, he said, in _Monopoly Capital_ was the title! If he did say that he probably meant that the word "monopoly" was impossibly ambiguous.
Ian speaks of intellectual property, and denies that it is the same as monopoly. He is almost certainly -- except that in _some_ instances, such property does represent a "virtual" monopoly, in which case some of the economic features of monopoly would exist. Carrol P.S. Leaving aside the title, the core argument of _Monopoly Capital_ was that the capitalist system was entering an epoch of stagnation that could not be 'solved' by any of the means available to a capitalist state. Quite a few left liberals over the decades have been anxious to mock that argument on empirical grounds. Similarly, if I remember correctly, Joan Robinson, though friendly to "Marxist" politics, more or less mocked Luxemburg's _Accumulation of Capital_ in her Introduction to that work. _______________________________________________ pen-l mailing list pen-l@lists.csuchico.edu https://lists.csuchico.edu/mailman/listinfo/pen-l
