Capitalism and imperialism
also small enough in number that they can simultaneously collaborate in the interests of the profits of the entire capitalist class.
This means companies can collectively set their prices high in order to maximize profits. Sometimes this allows them to use their extensive corporate infrastructure to compete with loyalty schemes and advertising, rather than with lowered prices or improved services, which is part of why the cost of living continues to rise. Oligopolies are seen in pharmaceuticals – as the COVID pandemic has made starkly clear, with pharmaceutical stock prices soaring as millions die – which habitually overcharge national health services and, in countries without widespread public healthcare, individual consumers, thereby draining tax resources. They are seen in oil, as in OPEC, which is a group of oil companies that regularly meet to divide oil production between them. This particular example is called a cartel . It is illegal, but international law does not really care enough to stop such arrangements, because the law exists to benefit these multinational corporations and the bourgeois class. In fact, we see oligopolies and cartels in gas, aluminium, and steel, among most other major industries. Modern capitalism is, therefore, the direct enemy of ‘free trade’ and ‘competition’. Starbucks, for example, obliterates smaller competition with ‘clustering’, building multiple cafes in the same area to drive enemies into the ground, which explains why there are 115 Starbucks within 3 miles of the Bank of England.
Finance capital
As a last example of this, I’ll talk about the finance sector. The three largest banks (by some measures) – HSBC, Barclays, and Lloyds – accounted for 50% of bank assets in the UK in 2017. The eight largest banks, including RBS, Standard Chartered Bank, Santander, NatWest, and the Nationwide Building Society, accounted for 75%. Like any other industry, finance is controlled by the big fish – that is, by an oligopoly. The role of banks in this ‘monopoly stage’ is that of concentrating all of society’s wealth through credit and shareholding. Industrial companies, arms producing companies, and oil companies are, through shares, mostly owned by private banks and individuals who make fortunes through speculation and lending, making profits appear, seemingly, out of nowhere. In reality, these profits, too, are extracted by paying the workers less than the value of their labour.
Corporate structure
We live in an economy which is planned and structured by a few big fish who dominate each industry, service, or product. Not only big industrial corporations, but also big financial corporations corner an industry and, to a degree, have overseen a transition to a planned economy, under private hands. The huge supply chains we see today, as well as the corporate bureaucracies – composed of a slightly better paid class of workers, including regional managers, sub-managers, union-busters – form highly organized mechanisms which use the ceaseless labour of workers to extract, develop, and distribute goods. These corporations use their size to have global influence. Starbucks uses ‘clustering’, as mentioned above, all over the world. All of these phenomena are signs that we live in an economy which, despite an appearance of free-market competition, is actually planned , because it’s all owned by a series of industrial and financial oligopolies with a control so far-reaching that entire industries are co-ordinated in order to maximize profit. Capitalism, in constant flux, has turned into its opposite. Always exploitative, it used to be revolutionary – developing industry and growing the proletariat class
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