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This is what Lenin said about financial capitalism and monopoly. Every boom-bust cycle, endemic to capitalism, results in further consolidation. The free market

This is what Lenin said about financial capitalism and monopoly. Every boom-bust cycle, endemic to capitalism, results in further consolidation. The free market / small producer capitalism that everyone says they like died around the 1880s-1890s when large firms began to dominate. Everything said in favor of that form since then has been essentially nostalgia for a lost time that wasn't even that good to begin with. If the trust busters don't come back, we will see essentially a kind of feudalist economy develop around a few extraordinarily powerful companies as every ladder is pulled up behind them and smaller institutions are "creatively destroyed". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Imperialism,_the_Highest_Stage_of_Capitalism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Imperialism,_the_Highest_Stage...

Ericson2314 6y ago
This shouldn't be down-voted. Just because you don't like something Lenin did doesn't mean all his observations are wrong. I recently found https://ilr.law.uiowa.edu/print/volume-100-issue-5/all-i-really-need-to-know-about-antitrust-i-learned-in-1912/ https://ilr.law.uiowa.edu/print/volume-100-issue-5/all-i-rea... which was a great read. Eugene V Debs had a similar conclusion about consolidation being inevitable, but thought that that was a good thing. And to be clear, whether competition is possible / what's the right trade-off between efficiency and robustness, is really important to grapple with. If we don't know how to e.g. break up Google, proposals like having workers on boards become dramatically more essential.
- sdinsn 6y ago
  > This shouldn't be down-voted. Just because you don't like something Lenin did doesn't mean all his observations are wrong. He is probably being downvoted for saying that consolidation will lead to feudalism. That is a ridiculous idea that deserves a downvote!
  - tonyedgecombe 6y ago
    He said a "feudalist economy" which seems an apt description for an economy run by a handful of companies.

Ericson2314 6y ago

This shouldn't be down-voted. Just because you don't like something Lenin did doesn't mean all his observations are wrong. I recently found https://ilr.law.uiowa.edu/print/volume-100-issue-5/all-i-really-need-to-know-about-antitrust-i-learned-in-1912/ https://ilr.law.uiowa.edu/print/volume-100-issue-5/all-i-rea... which was a great read. Eugene V Debs had a similar conclusion about consolidation being inevitable, but thought that that was a good thing. And to be clear, whether competition is possible / what's the right trade-off between efficiency and robustness, is really important to grapple with. If we don't know how to e.g. break up Google, proposals like having workers on boards become dramatically more essential.

sdinsn 6y ago
> This shouldn't be down-voted. Just because you don't like something Lenin did doesn't mean all his observations are wrong. He is probably being downvoted for saying that consolidation will lead to feudalism. That is a ridiculous idea that deserves a downvote!
- tonyedgecombe 6y ago
  He said a "feudalist economy" which seems an apt description for an economy run by a handful of companies.