What is Monopoly Capital?1

Abstract

“Monopoly capital” is the term often used in Marxian political economy and by some non-Marxist analysts to designate the new form of capital, embodied in the modern giant corporation, that, beginning in the last quarter of the 19th century, displaced the small family firm as the dominant economic unit of the system, marking the end of the freely competitive stage of capitalism and the beginning of monopoly capitalism. The surplus concept was employed as a complementary category to the classical concept of surplus value, facilitating the exploration of contradictions specific to monopoly capitalism such as the growing role of waste in production, which were not easily addressed using the surplus value category. The concept of monopoly capital also had an enormous influence in the global south. Maurice Dobb in Studies in the Development of Capitalism (1947), Ernest Mandel in Marxist Economic Theory, and Samir Amin in Accumulation on a World Scale.