1. 1818 Karl Marx 2018 Conference Lyon, 27-29 September 2017
Andres Lazzarini (Federal University of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil; CONICET, Argentina)
Denis Melnik (National Research University Higher School of Economics, Russia)
Lyon, September 2017

2. Competition vs. Monopoly
Monopoly price before Marx
Self-interest drive and monopolist position
monopoly can persist in the long run due to political and institutional obstacles
Competition of capitals as the condition of tendency to equilibrium
values = prices

3. The notion of monopoly capitalism: the context of origins
Reflections on structural changes: e.g., the Progressive Era (1890s-1920s) muckraker journalism in the U.S.
the ‘death’ of economic order based on free competition as a broad cultural perception that bypassed partisan boundaries
Formalizing the notion:
Rudolf Hilferding’s Finance Capital (1910): 2nd International vision
John Hobson’s Imperialism (1912): liberal vision
Vladimir Lenin’s Imperialism (1917): Bolshevik vision

4. Ambiguities in the notion
Monopolist capitalism
Finance capitalism
Imperialism
Militarism
Ultra-imperialism (Kautsky, )

5. The last stage of capitalism
Political implications:
social reformism: administered evolution towards socialization
radicalism: the inevitability of crash
Theoretical implications:
‘historical’ understanding of the ‘law of value’
transformation of economic cycles (stagnation thesis)
‘globalization’

6. Hilferding (1912)
Classical economics conceives price as the expression of the anarchic character of social production... But the objective law of price can operate only through competition. If monopolistic combination abolish competition, they eliminate at the same time the only means through which an objective law of price can actually prevail. Price ceases to be an objectively determined magnitude and becomes an accounting exercise, ... a presupposition instead of a result, subjective rather than objective, something arbitrary and accidental rather than a necessity which is independent of the will and consciousness of the parties concerned. It seems that the monopolistic combine, while it confirms Marx's theory of concentration, at the same time tends to undermine his theory of value

7. Immediate responses to Hilferding
Critique of Lenin (mostly rhetorical)
Production, not exchange
Neglect of monopolist character of production
Struggle for power
Capitalism is dead
Critique of Alexander Finn-Enotaevsky
Excessive reliance on Engels’ insertions
Has the nature of capitalism changed?
Capitalism is alive

8. Monopoly capitalism and the ‘revision’ of value theory
Monopoly price
The uniform rate of profit

9. Hilferding:
“[within cartelized industries] the technically superior enterprises gain, from the prices fixed by the cartel, extra profits which are not averaged out through competition, since cartel excludes this, and seem to assume the character of differential rent” (207). On the other hand, “if demand exceeds supply the market price is determined by the least efficient enterprises, and those which have more favorable conditions of production realize an extra profit” (192).

10. Hilferding (cont.)
The difference from ground rent consists in the fact that the least efficient enterprise, unlike the worst agricultural land, is not needed in order to meet market demand. The marginal enterprise can be closed down... Since the cartel price is meanwhile maintained, however, increased production means extra profit for the low-cost producers, and it becomes profitable to discontinue production in the high-cost plants. But in that case the “differential rent” disappears and only the high cartel profit remain (207).

11. What Marx would have said - 1
Having revealed the intrinsic connection, [Smith] is suddenly obsessed again with the aspect of the phenomenon, with the connection, as it appears in competition, and in competition everything always appears in inverted form, always standing on its head. ( [549])

12. What Marx would have said - 2
[Ricardo] presupposes a general rate of profit or an average profit of equal magnitude for different capital investments of equal magnitude, or for different spheres of production in which capitals of equal size are employed—or, which is the same thing, profit in proportion to the size of the capital employed in the various spheres of production. Instead of postulating this general rate of profit, Ricardo should rather have examined in how far its existence is in fact consistent with the determination of value by labour-time, and he would have found that instead of being consistent with it, prima facie, it contradicts it, and that its existence would therefore have to be explained through a number of intermediary stages, a procedure which is very different from merely including it under the law of value. He would then have gained an altogether different insight into the nature of profit and would not have identified it directly with surplus-value (174 [X-528])

13. What Marx would have said - 3
Competition … does not bring about the market-value or market-price by the equalisation of profits within a particular sphere of production […] On the contrary, competition here equalises the different individual values to the same, equal, undifferentiated market-value, by permitting differences between individual profits, profits of individual capitalists, and their deviations from the average rate of profit in the sphere. It even creates differences by establishing the same market-value for commodities produced under unequal conditions of production, therefore with unequal productivity of labour, the commodities thus represent individual unequal quantities of labour-time. The commodity produced under more favourable conditions, contains less labour-time than that produced under less favourable conditions, but it sells at the same price, and has the same value, as if it contained the same labour-time though this is not the case. (206 [X-544])

14. Some conclusions