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.
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