Sismondi, like the Narodniks, denies that capitalism develops the productive forces. The same position is taken, today, by the “anti-capitalists/imperialists”, who argue that capitalism may have been progressive once, in the distant past, but is not so today. Ironically, they take this idea, at least in part, from Lenin, in Imperialism, where he says,
“As we have seen, the deepest economic foundation of imperialism is monopoly. This is capitalist monopoly, i.e., monopoly which has grown out of capitalism and which exists in the general environment of capitalism, commodity production and competition, in permanent and insoluble contradiction to this general environment. Nevertheless, like all monopoly, it inevitably engenders a tendency of stagnation and decay. Since monopoly prices are established, even temporarily, the motive cause of technical and, consequently, of all other progress disappears to a certain extent and, further, the economic possibility arises of deliberately retarding technical progress. For instance, in America, a certain Owens invented a machine which revolutionised the manufacture of bottles. The German bottle-manufacturing cartel purchased Owens’s patent, but pigeon-holed it, refrained from utilising it.”
This notion that capitalist monopolies held back technological development, in order to continue to make monopoly profits, in protected markets, became a standard for Stalinist ideologists, but the facts show that it is bunkum. The development of huge industrial monopolies/oligopolies, simply led to monopolistic competition on a global scale. Competing on price was destructive of profits, and so these huge monopolies instead competed on the quality/range of products, and that, of itself, drove rapid technological development, to be able to develop new products, or better products, to attract buyers. If selling prices were not to fall, to increase market share, continual technological development was required, to ensure that these new products could be sold at the same prices as those they replaced, because the oligopolies soon realised that, whilst competitors would all copy a price cut, no one would copy price rises. Companies were, thereby, led to seek to increase profits by continually reducing their costs, which could only be achieved by continual technological development to raise productivity.
In fact, far from decay, or new products being deliberately kept from market, this monopolistic competition raised it to new heights, and the period of the greatest monopolistic competition, of imperialism proper, since WWII, has been the greatest period of technological development seen in the history of capitalism. Lenin could perhaps be forgiven for getting his prognosis wrong, along with most of the rest of the contents of Imperialism, but those who have the benefit of hindsight, certainly do not. In fact, its only necessary to read the rest of what Lenin says in that paragraph to put his prognosis into context.
“Certainly, monopoly under capitalism can never completely, and for a very long period of time, eliminate competition in the world market (and this, by the by, is one of the reasons why the theory of ultra-imperialism is so absurd). Certainly, the possibility of reducing the cost of production and increasing profits by introducing technical improvements operates in the direction of change. But the tendency to stagnation and decay, which is characteristic of monopoly, continues to operate, and in some branches of industry, in some countries, for certain periods of time, it gains the upper hand.”
Yet, on that shaky ground, largely driven by Lenin's reliance on the views of the liberal Hobson, hedged with all of the provisos of “some branches”, “some countries”, “certain periods of time”, a whole theory of decay and stagnation of technological development was constructed by the Stalinists and other catastrophists.
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