Current capitalism and monopoly prices

Abstract

The goal of this essay is to reassess two elements of the theoretical legacy of R. Hilferding that have been scantly emphasized in academic literature, despite being of great theoretical and methodological value to the study of current capitalism. The first is the analysis of the economic nature of monopoly prices, carried out in “Finance Capital”, while the second is the methodology that the author applies in his masterwork to research a new phase in the evolution of capitalism. The importance of the first element is today quite evident, as we live in a world in which the largest transnational corporations determine the prices of their products to a much greater degree than the cartels and trusts of the early twentieth century. The current relevance of the second aspect lies in the fact that we are once again living through a period of great changes in the capitalist economic system that are manifested in: the growing role of fictitious capital in the reproduction of global capital; the transition of economic policy from the logic of Bretton Woods to neo conservatism and the Washington Consensus; and in the modifications in the forms and mechanisms of the economic cycle.