Marx and "moderate" capitalism

[ex_next_worker]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gwQ41Yo60og

I saw this clip and I don't have the arguments or knowledge, but can someone point out to Marx's analysis (I suppose in Capital) that could illuminate how this idea of moderate capitalism or whatever (you know these liberal arguments - "hard work" gets rewarded and the ratio of inequality isn't so disproportionate) inevitably leads to monopolies and basically to what we have today or to what capitalism will always tend to become. From what I've read or heard, Marx argued that there's no middle way, that capitalism necessarily becomes the extreme concentration of wealth in the hands of the ruling classes.

Can someone clear this up a bit?

[Hit The North]

According to Marx, competition between capitalists has a tendency towards monopoly, simply because mergers and takeovers are a major part of the competitive relations between individual enterprises; because technological advance favours large enterprises; and because the inevitable crisis built into the motion of capitalist accumulation allows opportunities for big capital to gobble up small capital. Big capital is therefore an inevitable result of small capital.

The relations between the classes in the mode of production also means that capitalist accumulation results in a concentration of wealth whereby capitalists are enriched and the proletariat becomes relatively poorer.

So the means of production becomes increasingly centralised around large corporate interests and the social fruits of labour become concentrated in the hands of a particular class or classes.

Having said that, there are countervailing tendencies, according to Marx, which act against the tendency to absolute monopoly.

The guy in the audience in the video seemed to be arguing for a return to small capitalism. It's a particular form of North American utopianism. Marx's work explains why it is impossible.

[ex_next_worker]

According to Marx, competition between capitalists has a tendency towards monopoly, simply because mergers and takeovers are a major part of the competitive relations between individual enterprises; because technological advance favours large enterprises; and because the inevitable crisis built into the motion of capitalist accumulation allows opportunities for big capital to gobble up small capital. Big capital is therefore an inevitable result of small capital.

The relations between the classes in the mode of production also means that capitalist accumulation results in a concentration of wealth whereby capitalists are enriched and the proletariat becomes relatively poorer.

So the means of production becomes increasingly centralised around large corporate interests and the social fruits of labour become concentrated in the hands of a particlar class or classes.

Having said that, there are countervailing tendencies, according to Marx, which act against the tendency to absolute monopoly.

The guy in the audience in the video seemed to be arguing for a return to small capitalism. It's a particular form of North American utopianism. Marx's work explains why it is impossible.

Thanks. Where does Marx explicate this? I want to read some more ... I remember bits from the Manuscripts, but I'm not sure if they're related to monopolies.

[mikelepore]

I think most of Marx's comments about this refer to the tendency of self-employed small business owners to go out of business, and their owners become workers.

"In addition, the working class is also recruited from the higher strata of society; a mass of small business men and of people living upon the interest of their capitals is precipitated into he ranks of the working class, and they will have nothing else to do than to stretch out their arms alongside of the arms of the workers. Thus the forest of outstretched arms, begging for work, grows ever thicker, while the arms themselves grow every leaner. It is evident that the small manufacturer cannot survive in a struggle in which the first condition of success is production upon an ever greater scale. It is evident that the small manufacturers and thereby increasing the number of candidates for the proletariat -- all this requires no further elucidation."

-- from Marx, _Wage-Labor and Capital_

"The lower strata of the middle class -- the small tradespeople, shopkeepers, and retired tradesmen generally, the handicraftsmen and peasants -- all these sink gradually into the proletariat, partly because their diminutive capital does not suffice for the scale on which Modern Industry is carried on, and is swamped in the competition with the large capitalists, partly because their specialized skill is rendered worthless by new methods of production. Thus, the proletariat is recruited from all classes of the population."

-- from Marx and Engels, _Communist Manifesto_