Monopoly Capital

Today the typical economic unit in the capitalist world is not the small firm producing a negligible fraction of a homogeneous output for an anonymous market but a large scale enterprise producing a significant share of the output of an industry, or even several industries, and able to control its prices, the volume of its production, and the types and amounts of its investments. The typical economic unit, in other words, has the attributes which were once thought to be possessed only by monopolies. (P. 6)

The revolutionary initiative against capitalism, which in Marx’s day belonged to the proletariat in the advanced countries, has passed into the hands of the impoverished masses in the underdeveloped countries who are struggling to free themselves from imperialist domination and exploitation. (p. 9)

Comment: The ruling classes in those countries which successfully free themselves from imperialist domination and exploitation soon impose domestic domination and exploitation to the masses in their own countries.

The economic surplus, in the briefest possible definition, is the difference between what a society produces and the costs of producing it. The size of the surplus is an index of productivity and wealth, of how much freedom a society has to accomplish whatever goals it may set for itself. The composition of the surplus shows how it uses that freedom: how much it invests in expanding its productive capacity, how much it consumes in various forms, how much it wastes and in what ways. (p. 10)

In 1957, General Motors produced 3.4 million cars and sold them at an average price of $2,213 per car. Variable costs (chiefly hourly-rated labor and materials) amounted to $1,350 per vehicle, leaving $863 for overhead and profit. Total overhead came to $1,870 million which, averaged over 3.4 million units, was $550 per unit. Profit was therefore $313 per unit or an aggregate of $1,068 million. (p. 83)

As of the end of 1958, the percentage distribution of assets and profits by regions was as follows:

Assets Profits

United States and Canada 67 34

Latin America 20 39

Eastern Hemisphere 13 27

Total 100 100

While two thirds of Jersey’s assets were located in North America, only one third of its profit came from that region. (P. 194)

Comments: It is the same today. Check Starbuck’s profit margin in different regions. China operation’s margin is the highest, while profit margins in other international markets are lower than US profit margin.

Long after the socialization of the Cuban economy, the Havana government was vigorously promoting its trade with Britain, France, Spain, Canada, Japan --- in short, with any country willing and able to do business with Cuba. …

Against this background, one can see that Cuba’s crime was to assert, in deeds as well as in words, her sovereign right to dispose over her own resources in the interests of her own people. …

It might perhaps be thought that since Cuba is a small country, the violence of the reaction was out of all proportion to the damage suffered. But this would be to miss the main point. What makes Cuba so important is precisely that she is so small, plus the fact that she is located so close to the United States. If Cuba can defect from the “free world” and join the socialist camp with impunity, then any country can do so. And if Cuba prospers under the new set up, all the other underdeveloped and exploited countries of the world will be tempted to follow her example. The stake in Cuba is thus not simply the exploitability of one small country but the very existence of the “free world” itself, that is to say, of the whole system of exploitation.

It is this fact that has dictated the Cuban policy of the United States. The strategy has been to damage and cripple the Cuban economy in every possible way, with a threefold objective. First, it is hoped that the Cuban people will sooner or later become disillusioned with their revolutionary leadership, thus setting the stage for a successful counter-revolution. Second, the people of the underdeveloped countries are to be taught that revolution does not pay. And third, the burden of supporting Cuban economy thrown on the rest of the socialist camp, and especially on the Soviet Union as its economically most developed member, is to be maximized so that these other socialist countries may be induced to use their influence to restrain any new revolutions which might place further burdens on their already overstrained economies. (p. 202)

In addition, Myrdal argued that for a variety of reasons wars have a favorable effect on the status of Negroes. (P. 250)

Comment: Higher uncertainty favor low fixed cost systems and low fixed cost parts of a system. After a system is established by force, it often evolved into a peace loving or at least force loathing state. Lower fixed cost systems, however, continue to favor uncertainty. That is why violent activities are overwhelmed committed by low fixed cost parts of a society or the world. Violence is not just an act of despair. It is also a strategy to gain more favorable positions.

Read Myrdal’s An American Dilemma.

As long as the Negro knew and kept his “place”, he was tolerated and even liked by whites. What whites hated was the Negro who believed in and acted on the principle that all men are created equal. (P. 252)

Comment: This applies equal well to any outsiders.

The Civil War was not fought by the Northern ruling class to free the slaves, as many mistakenly believe. It was fought to check the ambitions of the Southern slave-owning oligarchy which wanted to escape from what was essentially a colonial relation to Northern capital. (P. 252)

Disorientation, apathy, and often despair, haunting Americans in all walks of life, … A heavy, strangulating sense of the emptiness and futility of life permeates the country’s moral and intellectual climate. … The malaise deprives work of meaning and purpose; turns leisure into joyless, debilitating laziness; fatally impairs the educational system and the conditions for healthy growth in young; transforms religion and church into commercialized vehicles of “togetherness”; and destroys the very foundation of bourgeois society, the family. (P. 281)

Nor are matters any better when it comes to another aspect of the worker’s non-work life --- the expenditure of leisure time. Leisure has traditionally been thought of serving the purpose of “recreation”, that is to say the revival and refocusing of mental and psychic energies from their compulsory commitment to work to genuinely interesting pursuits. Now, however, the function of leisure undergoes a change. As Erich Fromm has observed, leisure becomes a syn

The fact that the man can obtain a measure of somatic release of tension through sexual relations, while this possibility is much more limited for the woman, tends to reinforce in the wife a sense of being abused and exploited. This in turn gives rise to a persistent demand that the husband at least live up to his obligations in other areas of martial life. He, on the other hand, suffering from a nagging uncertainty whether it might not indeed be his own exceptional inadequacy which is responsible for his wife’s unhappiness, succumbs to the pressure. He redoubles his efforts to provide for the family, attempts to be as useful as possible around the house, and goes into debt to satisfy her whims. He puts his woman on a pedestal and does all he can do to placate her by being continuously at her beck and call --- only to discover that all his efforts are in vain, that nothing he can give can satisfy her wants, and instead of winning her affection he merely loses her respect. (P. 358)