In 1966, Paul Baran and Paul Sweezy published Monopoly Capital,
a monumental work of economic theory and social criticism
that sought to reveal the basic nature of the capitalism of their
time. Their theory, and its continuing elaboration by Sweezy, Harry
Magdoff, and others in Monthly Review magazine, infl uenced generations
of radical and heterodox economists. They recognized
that Marx's work was unfi nished and itself historically conditioned,
and that any attempt to understand capitalism as an evolving
phenomenon needed to take changing conditions into account.
Having observed the rise of giant monopolistic (or oligopolistic)
fi rms in the twentieth century, they put monopoly capital at the
center of their analysis, arguing that the rising surplus such fi rms
accumulated--as a result of their pricing power, massive sales
efforts, and other factors--could not be profi tably invested back
into the economy. Absent any "epoch making innovations" like the
automobile or vast new increases in military spending, the result
was a general trend toward economic stagnation--a condition that
persists, and is increasingly apparent, to this day. Their analysis
was also extended to issues of imperialism, or "accumulation on
a world scale," overlapping with the path-breaking work of Samir
Amin in particular.