To demand, as the liberals and petty-bourgeois, moral socialists do, that monopolies be broken up, in favour of competition between smaller capitals is not only reactionary, but utopian, because, as Lenin notes in “Imperialism”, quoting Hilferding against Kautsky, even if that is done, the competition between these smaller capitals only goes through the same process once more, leading again to the formation of new monopolies.
““It is not the business of the proletariat,” writes Hilferding “to contrast the more progressive capitalist policy with that of the now bygone era of free trade and of hostility towards the state. The reply of the proletariat to the economic policy of finance capital, to imperialism, cannot be free trade, but socialism. The aim of proletarian policy cannot today be the ideal of restoring free competition—which has now become a reactionary ideal—but the complete elimination of competition by the abolition of capitalism.””
This contrasts starkly both with the approach of those on the “Left”, who continually seek to advise on how the capitalist state should best organise its affairs, as though this was simply some kind of technical operation, free from class interests, let alone those who pursue the delusion that they can somehow have the capitalist state operate in the interests of workers. It is, also, in stark contrast to the ideas of building an “anti-monopoly alliance”, as a Popular Front with the petty-bourgeoisie, whose international form is the alliance with various bourgeois and petty-bourgeois nationalists in an “anti-imperialist” alliance to oppose the role of multinational capital, globalisation and so on.
Lenin continues,
“Kautsky broke with Marxism by advocating in the epoch of finance capital a “reactionary ideal,” “peaceful democracy,” “the mere operation of economic factors,” for objectively this ideal drags us back from monopoly to non-monopoly capitalism, and is a reformist swindle.
Trade with Egypt (or with any other colony or semi-colony) “would have grown more” without military occupation, without imperialism, and without finance capital. What does this mean? That capitalism would have developed more rapidly if free competition had not been restricted by monopolies in general, or by the “connections,” yoke (i.e., also the monopoly) of finance capital, or by the monopolist possession of colonies by certain countries?
Kautsky’s argument can have no other meaning; and this “meaning” is meaningless. Let us assume that free competition, without any sort of monopoly, would have developed capitalism and trade more rapidly. But the more rapidly trade and capitalism develop, the greater is the concentration of production and capital which gives rise to monopoly. And monopolies have already arisen—precisely out of free competition! Even if monopolies have now begun to retard progress, it is not an argument in favour of free competition, which has become impossible after it has given rise to monopoly.
Whichever way one turns Kautsky’s argument, one will find nothing in it except reaction and bourgeois reformism.”
(ibid)
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