Monopoly Capital: An Essay on the American Economic & Social Order, Paul Baran, Paul M. Sweezy

Monopoly Capital: An Essay on the American Economic & Social Order, Paul Baran, Paul M. Sweezy
1. monopoly capitalism, system made up of giant corporations 
2. Big Business organized as corporations
3. small business is not independent of big corporations 
4. corporate-monopoly center
5. smaller-business sector, take on strategies/calculations of Big Business
6. Big Business, dominant element
7. corporations maximize profit, accumulate capital
8. smaller business, receiving end
9. Big Business creates crises
10. direct, hierarchial, bureaucratic relations in corporations
11. directions from top down
12. responsibility from bottom up
13. market relations are price relations
14. competitive price system tended to produce a state of equilibrium, p. 54
15. business cycles, disturbances in the normal course of development
16. attacks on traditional price theory
17. Keynes: General Theory Of Employment
18. a monopolistic price system was substituted for a traditional competitive system, p. 56
19. wide range of prices attractive to corporations
20. similar corporations, if one lowers prices, effect will be felt by others
21. cartels
22. antitrust laws to prevent formation of cartels
23. corporations act in group interest
24. Marx: “the executive power of the state is simply a committee for managing the common affairs of the entire bourgeois class.”(64)
25. low profits in agriculture, > price supports & acreage controls
26. “the function of the state is to serve the interests of monopoly capital.”(66)
27. “With every advance of monopoly toward greater economic power and more general social acceptance the federal government becomes more subservient to it, more dependent on it, more disposed to favor it with grants and privilege, protection, and subsidy.”
28. corporations aren’t that technologically progressive & organized efficiently
29. incentive to cut costs faster than rivals
30. if a new instrument, material, or machine can help save money, customers want it, p. 70
31. producers make more profits by helping others make more profits, p. 71
32. increasing productivity > more profits for corporations
33. innovation originates in a handful of corporations,
34. workers need to be paid well to keep consuming 
35. “The system will cease to be capable of generating sufficient purchasing power to keep the mechanism of growth in operation,”(75)
36. labor productivity has increased, 75
37. more organized workers command higher wages, p. 77