Lee Brown explains how Ecuador’s election wasn’t free — and its people will pay the price under President Noboa
The return of anti-monopoly politics?
Opposition to the mega-companies that dominate industry cannot be left to the political centre — the labour movement could build a a powerful coalition around the cause. But beware, warns ZOLTAN ZIGEDY, this is still not anti-capitalism
Monopoly
MARY ADOSSIDES of the London May Day Organising Committee calls on all to join the traditional march from Clerkenwell Green, which will bring together countless international workers’ organisations in a statement against the far right
Although Musk’s cuts left a massive funding hole for reactionary projects ranging from subversive TV stations to hip-hop music, NATASHA HICKMAN warns that the money tap to anti-Cuban agitators will never be shut off under Trump
Mountains of research show that online hardcore material harms children by direct exposure and often indirectly - by those men porn inspires. Yet there are still no simple measures like age and content regulation in place, writes JOHN GREEN
We face austerity, privatisation, and toxic influence. But we are growing, and cannot be beaten
Trump’s economic adviser has exposed the actual strategy: forcing other countries to provide financial support for US world hegemony
Activist Angie Zelter has been arrested more than a hundred times. She’s not stopping now, writes LINDA PENTZ GUNTER
ECONOMIC MONOPOLIES — enterprises or groups of enterprises that overwhelmingly reign over a specific economic sector — have been the target of reformers and revolutionaries since their widespread notice in the last quarter of the 19th century.
Many keen observers in the most advanced capitalist countries of the late 1800s perceived the development of a tier of capitalist firms in various industries that rose to dominate those industries. Through rapid expansion, ruthless competition, absorption and consolidation, a few capitalists or corporations acquired a majority share of markets and the lion’s share of profits.
A classic US example of the process of monopolisation was the creation of the Rockefeller oil monopoly, Standard Oil. Like an uncontrollable wildfire, Standard Oil devoured competitors, both horizontally — in oil extraction — and vertically — in the shipping, refining and selling of the final product. Eventually, Standard Oil was on the verge of completely controlling the petroleum industry in the US.
More from this author
The transformation of a stable secular state into a fractured ruin largely ruled by Western-backed fundamentalists exposes the hollow nature of ‘multipolarity’ and the absence of principled anti-imperialism today, writes ZOLTAN ZIGEDY
ZOLTAN ZIGEDY reflects on the lessons from two books looking at the US labour movement and the recent history of spontaneous mass uprisings – and finds two pernicious ideologies working against the interests of the people
ZOLTAN ZIGEDY argues Trump’s victory shows the deep failure of liberal calculations that write off huge swathes of the electorate and mirrors the worldwide rise of right-wing populism amid Establishment collapse
From ‘middle class’ to ‘microaggressions,’ from ‘fascism’ to ‘terrorism,’ ZOLTAN ZIGEDY makes an anguished cry for us to turn away from the most misused and misleading terms and tropes – or at least use them accurately
