nathan tankus wrote: > what was marx's theory of competition? shaikh and the so-called new > school marxists argue that marx didn't have a theory of perfect > competition or imperfect competition but of "real competition" where > the accumulation and centralization of capital increases competition > between firms and workers, destroying small firms and small rentiers.
Marx never developed his theory of competition completely. There are two dimensions of the competition among capitalists: 1) in volume I of CAPITAL, Marx presents a theory that's preminiscent of Schumpeter: one firm improves its technology (in the sense that labor productivity rises) and undersells the rest in a market, with the individual value being below the (average) value. The new technology is imitated (under the lash of competition) so that eventually the (average) value falls too. 2) in volume III, competition shows up as the movement of capital between sectors, tending to equalize the rate of profit between sectors. Neither of these are "perfect" competition; though Marx's analysis implies equilibrium, I don't think that he believed it was ever achieved. The first one tends to destroy small firms, etc. > baran and sweezy seem to argue that the centralization in the early > 20th century disrupted the competitive dynamics marx saw and thus his > laws of motion need to be replaced. I don't agree. To the extent that they were right, it's only for a limited sector of the economy (and in most cases should be called "oligopoly" instead). Among others, Jim O'Connor points to a bifurcation between the "monopoly" and "competitive" sectors. Since O'Conner wrote his FISCAL CRISIS OF THE STATE (1973?), I'd say that the monopoly sector has become more competitive in the US, because of globalization and a high US$ exchange rate. However, the tendency seems to be toward re-monopolization on a world scale. > what would you argue? do you think the two schools of thought above > are missing something crucial? what is it? do you think marx's theory > of competition needs to be updated? I don't think that his theory needs to be updated. His statement in his early POVERTY OF PHILOSOPHY that competition generates monopoly and _vice versa_ makes a lot of sense. It just needs to be made more concrete. -- Jim Devine / "In an ugly and unhappy world the richest man can purchase nothing but ugliness and unhappiness." -- George Bernard Shaw _______________________________________________ pen-l mailing list [email protected] https://lists.csuchico.edu/mailman/listinfo/pen-l
