The Theory of Monopoly Capitalism

In 1966, Paul Baran and Paul Sweezy published Monopoly Capital,

a monumental work of economic theory and social criticism

that sought to reveal the basic nature of the capitalism of their

time. Their theory, and its continuing elaboration by Sweezy, Harry

Magdoff, and others in Monthly Review magazine, infl uenced generations

of radical and heterodox economists. They recognized

that Marx's work was unfi nished and itself historically conditioned,

and that any attempt to understand capitalism as an evolving

phenomenon needed to take changing conditions into account.

Having observed the rise of giant monopolistic (or oligopolistic)

fi rms in the twentieth century, they put monopoly capital at the

center of their analysis, arguing that the rising surplus such fi rms

accumulated--as a result of their pricing power, massive sales

efforts, and other factors--could not be profi tably invested back

into the economy. Absent any "epoch making innovations" like the

automobile or vast new increases in military spending, the result

was a general trend toward economic stagnation--a condition that

persists, and is increasingly apparent, to this day. Their analysis

was also extended to issues of imperialism, or "accumulation on

a world scale," overlapping with the path-breaking work of Samir

Amin in particular. John Bellamy Foster is a leading exponent of this theoretical perspective

today, continuing in the tradition of Baran and Sweezy's

Monopoly Capital. This new edition of his essential work, The

Theory of Monopoly Capitalism, is a clear and accessible explication

of this outlook, brought up to the present, and incorporating

an analysis of recently discovered "lost" chapters from Monopoly

Capital and correspondence between Baran and Sweezy. It also

discusses Magdoff and Sweezy's analysis of the fi nancialization

of the economy in the 1970s, '80s, and '90s, leading up to the

Great Financial Crisis of the opening decade of this century. Foster

presents and develops the main arguments of monopoly capital

theory, examining its key exponents, and addressing its critics in a

way that is thoughtful but rigorous, suspicious of dogma but adamant

that the deep-seated problems of today's monopoly-fi nance

capitalism can only truly be solved in the process of overcoming

the system itself.