crony capitalism emerged as the development and direct continuation of the fundamental characteristics of free markets in general. but free markets only became crony capitalism at a definite and very high stage of its development, when certain of its fundamental characteristics began to change into their opposites, when the features of the epoch of transition from free markets to a higher social and economic system had taken shape and revealed themselves in all spheres. economically, the main thing in this process is the displacement of free competition by monopoly. free competition is the basic feature of free markets, and of commodity production generally; monopoly is the exact opposite of free competition, but we have seen the latter being transformed into monopoly before our eyes, creating large-scale business and forcing out small business, replacing large-scale by still larger-scale business, and carrying concentration of growth and money to the point where out of it has grown and is growing monopoly: conglomerates, funds and trusts, and merging with them, the capital of a dozen or so banks, which manipulate thousands of billions. at the same time the monopolies, which have grown out of free competition, do not eliminate the latter, but exist above it and alongside it, and thereby give rise to a number of very acute, intense antagonisms, frictions and conflicts. monopoly is the transition from free markets to a higher system.
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08-13-2020, 06:27 PM
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