Just some interesting things to note

Chapter 1

“Combination,” writes Hilferding, “levels out the fluctuations of trade and therefore assures to the combined enterprises a more stable rate of profit. (Note - Profit Stability)

Secondly, combination has the effect of eliminating trade. (Decoupling from potential competitors?)

Thirdly, it has the effect of rendering possible technical improvements, and, consequently, the acquisition of superprofits over and above those obtained by the ‘pure’ (i.e,, non-combined) enterprises. (Technical Improvement for super profit?)

Fourthly, it strengthens the position of the combined enterprises relative to the ‘pure’ enterprises, strengthens them in the competitive struggle in periods of serious depression, when the fall in prices of raw materials does not keep pace with the fall in prices of manufactured goods.”[3] (Relative security, compared to pure enterprises in times of crises)

the civilised struggle for “organisation”:

(1) stopping supplies of raw materials … –

(2) stopping the supply of labour by means of “alliances” (i.e., of agreements between the capitalists and the trade unions by which the latter permit their members to work only in cartelised enterprises);

(3) stopping deliveries; (4) closing trade outlets;

(5) agreements with the buyers, by which the latter undertake to trade only with the cartels;

(6) systematic price cutting (to ruin “outside” firms, i.e., those which refuse to submit to the monopolists. Millions are spent in order to sell goods for a certain time below their cost price; there were instances when the price of petrol was thus reduced from 40 to 22 marks, i.e., almost by half!);

(7) stopping credits; (8) boycott.

Chapter 2

The big enterprises, and the banks in particular, not only completely absorb the small ones, but also “annex” them, subordinate them, bring them into their “own” group or “concern” (to use the technical term) by acquiring “holdings” in their capital, by purchasing or exchanging shares, by a system of credits, etc., etc.

It is obvious that a bank which stands at the head of such a group, and which enters into agreement with half a dozen other banks only slightly smaller than itself for the purpose of conducting exceptionally big and profitable financial operations like floating state loans, has already outgrown the part of “middleman” and has become an association of a handful of monopolists.

The “decentralisation” that SchuIze-Gaevernitz, as an exponent of present-day bourgeois political economy, speaks of in the passage previously quoted, really means the subordination to a single centre of an increasing number of formerly relatively “independent,” or rather, strictly local economic units. In reality it is centralisation, the enhancement of the role, importance and power of monopolist giants.