Monopoly: ‘the death-knell of capitalism’
- Details
- Created: Thursday, 06 June 2019 11:41
- Written by Séamus Padraic
The Myth of Capitalism: Monopolies and the Death of Competition
Jonathan Tepper with Denise Hearn
John Wiley & Sons (4 Dec. 2018), £14.99 (hardcover)
Tepper and Hearn have a thesis. Capitalism is defined by competition. The modern US economy, however, is dominated by monopolies. Therefore, US Americans live under ‘fake’ capitalism, a ‘grotesque deformed version of capitalism’ which is ‘as far away from the real thing as Disney’s Pirates of the Caribbean are from real pirates’ (p.xv). Tepper and Hearn have clearly identified one of the central issues in understanding modern capitalism: monopoly. In doing so, they have collected a wealth of useful material. Socialists should read this book, which is written in a very readable and enjoyable style, and use the information in it, but reject the reactionary politics that underlie it.
• Life in Strangeways: from riot to redemption, my 32 years behind bars, 
Russell Brand rocketed to public attention far beyond his usual fan base after a BBC Newsnight interview with Jeremy Paxman during which he called for ‘no vote’ at elections. Brand’s personal life and his politics came under immediate and hostile attention from media commenters. There was outrage that an argument for a ‘no vote’ position should be presented on a major BBC platform. However, as Brand himself says in Revolution, he is neither leading nor following: ‘I think it unlikely that people aren’t voting because I told them not to; it is more likely that they’re not voting because they are subject to the same conditions that led me not to vote. The realisation that it’s bloody hopeless’ (p78).
‘No oppressed people ever won their freedom, by hoping their oppressors would change their minds’
Harry Paterson’s book is written with class consciousness and engagement. It has a political shrewdness which distinguishes it from some of the more sentimentalised accounts of the struggle of 1984-85. A focus on the Notts miners, in an area where a better-off workforce largely refused to back the strike, evokes the passions and anguish of this huge industrial and political battle. The defeat of the miners, despite their courage, signified a huge blow for the British working class as a whole.
What lies across the water, Stephen Kimber, Fernwood Publishing 2013, Can$19.95
