The theory of state monopoly capitalism (also referred as stamocap) was initially a

Marxist Marxism is a left-wing to far-left method of socioeconomic analysis that uses a materialist interpretation of historical development, better known as historical materialism, to understand class relations and social conflict and a dialecti ...

thesis popularised after

World War II World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the World War II by country, vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great power ...

Lenin Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov. ( 1870 – 21 January 1924), better known as Vladimir Lenin,. was a Russian revolutionary, politician, and political theorist. He served as the first and founding head of government of Soviet Russia from 1917 to 1 ...

had claimed in 1916 that

World War I World War I (28 July 1914 11 November 1918), often abbreviated as WWI, was List of wars and anthropogenic disasters by death toll, one of the deadliest global conflicts in history. Belligerents included much of Europe, the Russian Empire, ...

had transformed

laissez-faire ''Laissez-faire'' ( ; from french: laissez faire , ) is an economic system in which transactions between private groups of people are free from any form of economic interventionism (such as subsidies) deriving from special interest groups ...

capitalism into ''monopoly capitalism'', but he did not publish any extensive theory about the topic. The term refers to an environment where the state intervenes in the economy to protect larger monopolistic or oligopolistic businesses from threats. As conceived by Lenin in his pamphlet of the same name the theory aims to describe the ''final historical stage'' of capitalism, of which he believed the

Imperialism Imperialism is the state policy, practice, or advocacy of extending power and dominion, especially by direct territorial acquisition or by gaining political and economic control of other areas, often through employing hard power (economic powe ...

of that time to be the highest expression.

The main thesis

The main Marxist–Leninist thesis is that big business, having achieved a

monopoly A monopoly (from Greek language, Greek el, μόνος, mónos, single, alone, label=none and el, πωλεῖν, pōleîn, to sell, label=none), as described by Irving Fisher, is a market with the "absence of competition", creating a situati ...

cartel A cartel is a group of independent market participants who collude with each other in order to improve their profits and dominate the market. Cartels are usually associations in the same sphere of business, and thus an alliance of rivals. Mos ...

position in most markets of importance, ''fuses'' with the government apparatus. State monopoly capitalism protected monopolistic economics from competition by smaller firms. Lenin insists in ''The State and Revolution'' (1917) that state monopoly capitalism is not a development beyond capitalism but a manifestation of it, countering liberal and social-democratic politicians who characterised this economic development as

state socialism State socialism is a political and economic ideology within the socialist movement that advocates state ownership of the means of production. This is intended either as a temporary measure, or as a characteristic of socialism in the transition ...

, for example with regard to the so-named

State Socialism State socialism is a political and economic ideology within the socialist movement that advocates state ownership of the means of production. This is intended either as a temporary measure, or as a characteristic of socialism in the transition ...

initiatives in the

German Empire The German Empire (),Herbert Tuttle wrote in September 1881 that the term "Reich" does not literally connote an empire as has been commonly assumed by English-speaking people. The term literally denotes an empire – particularly a hereditary ...

Versions of the theory

Different versions of this idea were elaborated by economists of the

Communist Party of the Soviet Union " Hymn of the Bolshevik Party" , headquarters = 4 Staraya Square, Moscow , general_secretary = Vladimir Lenin (first) Mikhail Gorbachev (last) , founded = , banned = , founder = Vladimir Lenin , newspape ...

(e.g., Eugen Varga), East Germany's Socialist Unity Party, the

French Communist Party The French Communist Party (french: Parti communiste français, ''PCF'' ; ) is a political party in France which advocates the principles of communism. The PCF is a member of the Party of the European Left, and its MEPs sit in the European ...

(e.g., Paul Boccara), the

Communist Party of Great Britain The Communist Party of Great Britain (CPGB) was the largest communist organisation in Britain and was founded in 1920 through a merger of several smaller Marxist groups. Many miners joined the CPGB in the 1926 general strike. In 1930, the CPGB ...

(e.g., Ben Fine and Laurence Harris), and the American

Communist Party of the USA The Communist Party USA, officially the Communist Party of the United States of America (CPUSA), is a communist party in the United States which was established in 1919 after a split in the Socialist Party of America following the Russian Revo ...

(e.g.,

Victor Perlo Victor Perlo (May 15, 1912December 1, 1999) was an American Marxist economist, government functionary, and a longtime member of the governing National Committee of the Communist Party USA. Biography Early years Victor Perlo was born May 15, 19 ...

Political implication

The strategic political implication of the theory for Marxist-Leninists, towards the end of the

Joseph Stalin Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin (born Ioseb Besarionis dze Jughashvili; – 5 March 1953) was a Georgian revolutionary and Soviet Union, Soviet political leader who led the Soviet Union from 1924 until his death in 1953. He held power as Ge ...

era and afterwards, was that the labour movement should form a ''people's democratic alliance'' under the leadership of the Communist Party ''with'' the progressive middle classes and small business, ''against'' the state and big business (called "monopoly" for short). Sometimes this alliance was also called the "anti-monopoly alliance".

Neo-Trotskyist theory

In neo-Trotskyist theory, however, such an alliance was rejected as being based either on a false strategy of

popular front A popular front is "any coalition of working-class and middle-class parties", including liberal and social democratic ones, "united for the defense of democratic forms" against "a presumed Fascist assault". More generally, it is "a coalition ...

s, or on political

opportunism Opportunism is the practice of taking advantage of circumstances – with little regard for principles or with what the consequences are for others. Opportunist actions are expedient actions guided primarily by self-interested motives. The term ...

, said to be incompatible either with a

permanent revolution Permanent revolution is the strategy of a revolutionary class pursuing its own interests independently and without compromise or alliance with opposing sections of society. As a term within Marxist theory, it was first coined by Karl Marx and F ...

or with the principle of independent

working class The working class (or labouring class) comprises those engaged in manual-labour occupations or industrial work, who are remunerated via waged or salaried contracts. Working-class occupations (see also " Designation of workers by collar colou ...

political action. The

state State may refer to: Arts, entertainment, and media Literature * ''State Magazine'', a monthly magazine published by the U.S. Department of State * ''The State'' (newspaper), a daily newspaper in Columbia, South Carolina, United States * ''Our S ...

in Soviet-type societies was redefined by the neo-Trotskyists as being ''also'' state-monopoly capitalist. There was no difference, in their view, between the West and the East in this regard. Consequently, some kind of ''anti-bureaucratic revolution'' was said to be required, but different Trotskyist groups quarreled about what form such a revolution would need to take, or could take. Some Trotskyists believed the anti-bureaucratic revolution would happen spontaneously, inevitably and naturally, others believed it needed to be organised - the aim being to establish a society owned and operated by the working class. According to the neo-Trotskyists, the Communist Party could not play its leading role, because it did not represent the interests of the working class.

Market anarchism

Market anarchists typically criticize neoliberal forces for inconsistent or hypocritical application of neoliberal theory regarding stamocap (State monopoly capitalism); that in those inconsistencies exist the basis of continued selective state-guaranteed privileges for the plutocratic neoliberal elite.

Eurocommunism

The concept was to a large extent either modified or abandoned in the era of

eurocommunism Eurocommunism, also referred to as democratic communism or neocommunism, was a trend in the 1970s and 1980s within various Western European communist parties which said they had developed a theory and practice of social transformation more rel ...

, because it came to be believed that the state apparatus could be ''reformed'' to reflect the interests of the working majority. In other words, the ''fusion'' between the state and big business postulated earlier was not so tight that it could not be undone by a mass movement from below, under the leadership of the Communist Party (or its central committee).

Criticism

When Varga introduced the theory, orthodox Stalinist economists attacked it as incompatible with the doctrine that state planning was a feature only of socialism, and that "under capitalism anarchy of production reigns."The Case of Eugene Varga
Raya Dunayevskaya 1949 Critics of the theory (e.g.,

Ernest Mandel Ernest Ezra Mandel (; also known by various pseudonyms such as Ernest Germain, Pierre Gousset, Henri Vallin, Walter (5 April 1923 – 20 July 1995), was a Belgian Marxian economist, Trotskyist activist and theorist, and Holocaust survivor. He f ...

and Leo Kofler) claimed that: * the theory wrongly implied that the state could somehow ''overrule'' inter-capitalist

competition Competition is a rivalry where two or more parties strive for a common goal which cannot be shared: where one's gain is the other's loss (an example of which is a zero-sum game). Competition can arise between entities such as organisms, ind ...

, the laws of motion of capitalism and market forces generally, supposedly cancelling out the operation of the

law of value The law of the value of commodities (German: ''Wertgesetz der Waren''), known simply as the law of value, is a central concept in Karl Marx's critique of political economy first expounded in his polemic '' The Poverty of Philosophy'' (1847) again ...

. * the theory lacked any sophisticated account of the ''class basis'' of the

, and the real linkages between governments and elites. It postulated a monolithic structure of domination which in reality did not exist in that way. * the theory failed to explain the rise of neo-liberal ideology in the business class, which claims precisely that an important social goal should be a ''reduction'' of the state's influence in the economy. However, neoliberalism does not oppose making states subservient to the aims of large corporations, in what is known as

government-granted monopoly economics, a government-granted monopoly (also called a "de jure monopoly" or "regulated monopoly") is a form of coercive monopoly by which a government grants exclusive privilege to a private individual or firm to be the sole provider of a good ...

. * the theory failed to show clearly what the difference was between a ''socialist'' state and a ''bourgeois'' state, except that in a socialist state, the Communist Party (or, rather, its central committee) played the leading political role. In that case, the ''class-content'' of the state itself was defined purely in terms of the policy of the ruling political party (or its central committee).

References

External links

The Age of Monopoly-Finance Capital
by

John Bellamy Foster John Bellamy Foster (born August 15, 1953) is an American professor of sociology at the University of Oregon and editor of the '' Monthly Review''. He writes about political economy of capitalism and economic crisis, ecology and ecological cri ...

, ''

Monthly Review The ''Monthly Review'', established in 1949, is an independent socialist magazine published monthly in New York City. The publication is the longest continuously published socialist magazine in the United States. History Establishment Following ...

'', February 2010 {{Authority control Marxist theory Capitalism Monopoly (economics)