American Myths that Need to Die: Breaking up Monopolies is Socialism (It is definitely not). Plus--The Revolution Today Store is Open!

Socialism is workers or government owning the means of production. Monopoly is when one interest owns all the means of production in a market. Neither is healthy. Both must be stopped.

Jun 22, 2024

Got to give it to the billionaires, their decades of propaganda is effective. You see, anything that the billionaires don’t like, namely taxes, regulation and welfare for the poor (but not for corporations), is immediately labeled as socialism. And through their ownership of the media and both political parties, large swathes of the American populace reflexively and uncritically agree.

My aim is for us who make up the large swathes to start to recognize what is actually in our own self-interest, and not in the interest of the billionaires.

While there are avowed socialists in America, for the most part their worldview is correctly denounced. It’s not that market economies are inherently fair and free, they are decidedly not. However, when the two economic philosophies are compared to each other, socialism is so much worse as to be truly anti-human.

Karl Marx did not believe in the individual. His vision of socialism on its way to communism was that individual liberty and self-interest must be squashed and the will of the individual bent to the whole. Marxism and socialism start with such a deep misunderstanding of what it means to be a human being that as form of government and economy it can lead to nothing but indignity and ruin for the masses. Ultimately, a scientific Marxism still requires a powerful few to tell everyone else exactly what they will get, regardless if you want what is being offered.

Ok, so yes, socialism is really bad and unworkable. That doesn’t mean capitalism, really open market economies, are perfect. People are not wholly rational, nor are they perfect. Therefore, markets can never be perfect. Moreover, anyone trying to sell you a perfect anything is lying to you; perfect does not exist.

Adam Smith is remarkable amongst philosophers and economists because, in my opinion, he bests understands that neither people nor markets can ever by perfect. What people can do is follow their own self-interest as best as possible in markets that are open as possible in order to satisfy needs and wants effectively, not perfectly.

What does Smith point out as the most distorting market forces? Unsurprisingly, he aims his ire at monopolies and corporations. When Smith is writing, he is describing nascent market economies that are still co-existing with feudal society and mercantilist, or colonialist, trade policies. But he knew back in 1775 that monopolists like the East India Company where awful for open markets and worse for people. Smith would be just as disgusted with our monopolists today, such as Microsoft, Amazon and Google Alphabet.

Monopolies form when the super wealthy who control the corporations capture the government and allow a single winner (or just a few winners) to completely control a market. The monopolist, having captured government, can inflict pain on wage earners by offering abysmally low wages, and they can inflict pain on consumers by charging more for a good or service than would be natural if competition existed in the market.

Put slightly another way, it’s not immigrants, minorities, women, gays or other poor people keeping you poor, it’s large monopolistic corporations who have captured the government to protect them from competition. While price collusion and anti-competitive practices are less than desirable, its possible to make an argument that in order to provide maximum liberty, the owners of businesses can absolutely conspire to set wages and prices.

This isn’t so much an issue when there’s lots of competition in a market, because while it might temporarily benefit all the competitors to conspire, all it takes is one to raise wages or lower prices or find a more efficient means of production to internally break a cartel. OPEC’s misery today is a good example of what happens to cartels with lots of competition in the long run.

However, price collusion and anti-competitive practices are a huge issue when there is no competition because a true monopolist completely owns a market, or when there is oligopoly marked by limited competition amongst a small number of producers or sellers.

If we want to restore markets and we want to create a better capitalism, then we would push back against the billionaire propaganda. Each citizen of this country would recognize that in order for you to have a fair shot in an open market, that the market actually has to be open. We would boo the billionaires and their paid shills in the form of the politicians who run for both major parties and for the economists who pretend that defending open markets against monopoly is socialism.

What is to be done? Well, it requires finding people who want to be our representatives at every level of government who stand for open, competitive markets. That means an individual willing to represent not only their self-interest, but also yours and mine, over any corporation, especially the monopolists and oligopolists. It’s hight time to find representatives who will not only pass laws to break-up the monopolists, but to also appoint judges who will properly rule that these laws are constitutional and enforceable.

I believe in fair and open markets. They are not perfect, but they are better than the alternatives. The billionaires are right in one sense, we don’t need socialism. What they are wrong about is that we need their monopolies. Let’s break them up immediately and restore competition to markets now.

Note: Microsoft is easily three distinct companies: operating systems, cloud compute services and software (which would include their hardware for PCs and Xbox). Amazon is easily two companies: online marketplace (which includes logistics) and cloud compute services. Google Alphabet is easily four companies: search, advertising, cloud compute services and video distribution (YouTube is so much bigger than any other content competitor that it’s crazy). Starting the dismantling of monopolists and oligopolists with these three companies would spur much needed competition by allowing new entrants, bring sanity back to anti-competitive markets and help wage earners and consumers.