The Free Market, Monopolies and Fascism
Monopoly - the game, not the phenomenon - is a brainchild of 19th century quakers as teaching tool for children to illustrate the predatory nature of capitalism. What Lizzy Magie conceived of to act as a warning, I think happens to double nicely as an argument against free market philosophy, which may or may not lead to quite interesting places if extrapolated to the logical conclusions. If we were to go by what playing Monopoly can feel like, it's a soul-crushing exercise of handing over the fruits of ones labour to the player that probably had a head start most of the game. Explicitly, it claims that no entity can hope to compete with a monopoly, and that monopolies mean to grow stronger as they absorb more and more things into themselves. However, there is one force stronger than monopolies on the free market.
Rosa Luxemburg and Competition
Back in the 1860s to 1870s, when Marx was working on one of the simultaneously most important and driest books written to the socialist cause, he had little inkling about the extend of capital in an increasingly globalized market. Of course that wasn't the basis he was working off of, so it's hardly a fault of his, considering he could fill 800-some pages on capital in industrialized societies as it was. Rosa Luxemburg already had a bit more perspective when she wrote her 800-some pages book with the word "capital" in the title. She described the necessity for capital under capitalism to not only exploit downwards, but also sideways. An abridged version of her central argument (as I haven't read most of the theoreticians she counters in her work apart from Smith), is that capital, if it wants to remain competitive on the free market, it needs to increase indefinitely. This has some worrying implications, some of which are illustrated by Lenin in his 1917 Imperialism, the Highest Form of Capitalism, the easiest of these is following this need to its logical conclusion. If in competition and constrained to an area with finite resources, capital must seek to either monopolize these resources at which point it can dictate the usage of them without any recourse or competition, or alternatively, it must aim to surpass the resources of its competition. If the former is forbidden, then latter path will quickly lead to a situation, where the competing entities will have divided the available resources among themselves. Their remaining options is either domination of the other entities, which will in turn lead to monopolies once more, or the acquisition of resources from a different source. The latter marks the birth of colonialism and the function of modern imperialism. This, along with the fruits of colonialism, which we will come to discuss later, being held up and maintained by capital gives quite troubling implications in as to how capitalism relates to ideologies renounced by liberals and actively opposed by revolutionary leftists.
Colonialism
The European enlightenment period of the 17th and 18th centuries wished to break with the historical view of the relationship of the state and its people. Where up to that point, the aristocracy had been chosen by their god, and the clerical class was kept well fed by the aristocracy, philosophers like Locke, Hobbes and Rousseau crafted theories of state that were – while simplistic in their ambitions – revolutionary for the times they emerged from. A central statement of these treatises is the inherent equality of the person as an individual.
However, those aware of the history of colonialism might know that most European countries, as well as the USA legally abolished slavery in the 19th century. The scramble of Africa began towards the end of the 19th century and reached well into the 20th, not to speak of the sudden wave of fascism within the “enlightened” nations in the time leading up to the second world war, most of which was protected by a “hierarchy of races” defined and redefined by colonial scientists (Linnaeus, Blumenbach) into whatever pseudo-scientific standard fit the zeitgeist.
The axiom of an equality of all people, in a world of perpetual war between distinct nations, would have been a nice thing to have, so why disregard it so callously? Capital dictates it, driven by the demands of competition. After all, colonies are a lucrative ventures, so much so that Germany, as the loser of the first world war was forbidden to own colonies, while no such demand was made from France or Britain, even as comrades from the same colonies fought and won important battles during the course of the war, and also to the point of this being a sore spot for a collection of terminally paranoid meth-heads that would start the next world war. Colonialism and slavery also form the very basis on which the American empire is built today, and refuses to amend its errors. Capital and colonialism are irrefutably intertwined, as one is a direct consequence of the other, and the latter, if it’s not satisfied to exist within openly declared barbarism, will rationalize a clear path towards whichever flavour of fascism happens to be convenient at the moment.
What about Europe?
When I state examples of colonialism, the details of this may seem a little nebulous. The difference in which conflicts are considered wars and which are considered colonialist invasions tends to come down to a somewhat unfortunate qualifiers. The most prominent examples of colonialism – that is the ones I don’t need to explain in too much detail – include of course the scramble for Africa and settler America, along with the subsequent west expansion. Of course the goal of colonialist conflict tends to be profit of the capital variety, but then again, there are precious few armed conflict that don’t at least have one foot in the war-profiteering camp. Even the wars waged on the basis of religion, the crusades for example, were often motivated by the access to the land in contention, along with its resources. This makes war – in a sense – a bourgeois endeavor, even if the particular war isn’t about royal successions or some such nonsense.
Why then aren’t conflicts like the Napoleonic Wars, a series of conflict explicitly about the expansion of an empire to neighboring European territories, or the Austro-Prussian War, a conflict over the right to administer over a previously conquered part of former Denmark, considered colonialist in nature? Like during those conflicts that are commonly considered colonial, the aftermath saw some territory absorbed into “ownership” to a country, and the methods to achieve this are quite similar. Since the roots of the conflict aren’t indicative of colonialist nature, maybe the treatment of the people post-conflict might be.
What’s commonly understood about colonialist ventures is the poor treatment of the people of the land in contention after it has been conquered. These are the stories of slavery, apartheid and the genocide on indigenous populations of Australia and the Americas, the only common thread here being that the people being subjected to colonialist violence are of a distinctly different phenotype from those that are doing the violence. This fact, may act as a secondary proof – if the reaction to colonialist projects in history isn’t proof enough – that this, its evolution into forms of Imperialism are very much dependent on the exploitation, exclusion and objectification of people.
Monopolies and Market Forces
Suppose then, one wanted to conserve capitalism and one managed to avoid imperialist aspirations on both state, and private level, creating fertile ground for monopolies to emerge. What are the concrete consequences? The shortest, most obfuscated answer would be “market forces failing”. This is a somewhat lacking description in my opinion. I’ll explain why in the following. “Market forces failing” might look like the monopoly being able to freely dictate prices – to an extent. A monopoly providing a product, let’s say a t-shirt with a particularly enticing logo on it, and charge some absurd price for it, let’s say the equivalent of easily three weeks of food. Since this monopoly had complete control over this resource, nobody would be able to compete and consumers would no longer be certifiably gullible for buying into the product. Monopolies would suddenly stop needing to provide good products and services, because of their lack of competition, designing products to fail deliberately and requiring exorbitant fees, even when production costs are generally kept low (no, development costs do not justify denying people means for survival).
Of course in reality, even allowing monopolies will not lessen the frequency or severity of colonialist ventures, and colonial ventures won’t create a buffer against entities that will functionally act as monopolies. In fact, some of the examples provided are at least partially caused by monopolistic characteristics within the systems as they exist. Since these are all global players, then maybe capitalist markets don’t actually do what it claims to be doing. The existence of monopolistic characteristics proves that the market is not in fact healthy, as defined by economists, and the existence of imperialist tendencies, as well as an imperialist core, proves that it does not in fact put the interest of people first.
To recap, under capitalism, we receive systems with fascism implicitly built into its ideological basis, and don’t receive the advertised (or rather propagandized) benefits of a free market. Then, to quote, what is to be done?
To Hamper the Market
For anybody opposed to fascism then, letting the market act freely is not an option. The alternative could then be minor alterations to the free market principle. This is the route commonly chosen by social democrats. They add several things that prevent the market from becoming the arbiter over situations where it has no business playing a role. It functionally separates parts of the market from its ecosystems – healthcare, utilities – and socializes them. This is almost universally thought to be a good thing, since it raises the rate of survival in most if not all its applications. However, beyond these very specific parts that each country still decides for itself, the market tends to run free. This decision seems odd, since it might fix very specific things that rendered situations unlivable, but if free market capitalism evolves into fascist structures, and structural fascism is generally bad for potentially everybody, then the market – while allowed to exist – very probably shouldn’t be free. In practice this means separating the interest of capital from governing mechanisms and the remainder of the market. In short, this would put the interest of the people first, which technically is the purpose of the state, even as the enlightenment philosophers envisioned it.
If the social democratic approach were meant to dismantle fascist structures, then it would have to aim to "dethrone capital" as it were. It would have to aim for the abolition of markets in essential goods and the dissolution of the bourgeois class. Anything else is the acceptance of exclusionary practice of people in the name of capital - even explicitly outside times or crises. Their approach, by definition, would have to dismantle the capitalist state itself, something that the capitalist state might have a thing or two to say about.
To Hamper the State
If you’ve read ye olde Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State, this should be very familiar. If not, here’s the skinny on that part about the state. The state as not in fact separate from the exploitation happening under capitalism. States, as they currently exist, are extensions of bourgeois interests. Although not technically included in the proletariat/bourgeois distinction, as a result of this, there does in fact exist something akin to a ruling class, a class with distinct and separate interest from the proletariat. Think of the ever-present connection between state entities (politicians, law enforcement, judicial executives) and bribery or unpunished misconduct (immunity, they call it). Proletarian attempts to address these systemic injustices will fail for the simple fact that the interests of these classes don’t align. The first order or business is then logically to eliminate the class divide, then establish a proletarian state whose task it is to build systems that guarantee the well-being of the people (not just its people). The proletarian state does not need to administer to ensure the class interest of the ruling party remains status quo and it will become unnecessary as a result. He described this as the withering away of the state.
The first instinct here is to question some increasingly detailed logistical question that would be relevant to most systems as it is, but it is already posited that systems may be in place, they have just ceased to be exclusive to the bourgeois. Structures like these require desperately to be egalitarian to function, as such, exclusionary ideologies become poison to a functioning system and cause the afflicted system to start failing rapidly. This has the benefit of self-correcting in as it reveals its own weaknesses to be addressed by the collective. As such, a system doesn’t need to be perfect, but is rather expected to iterate upon itself regularly, maybe even on its base levels. This is good, as its allowed to be decluttered regularly and avoid obfuscating tendencies.
Solutions to systemic issues like monopolistic characteristics and fascism - systemic failures of capitalist structures - are certainly not simple, but if one wanted to seriously address them, systemic analysis is required for a sensible understanding of the issues and possible solutions. Attempts to legislate away issues that are characteristic of the system one operates in are then somewhat misguided, valiant as they may be. Praxis like anti-fascist action is a good thing to do in the mean time, but the historical dialectics of a situation can’t get lost in the noise and the unwillingness to change.