8 MONOPOLY CAPITAL
9
sue~, and have pointed to its crucial problems and the ways in
which they may be most fruitfully tackled.
Our essay-sketch makes no pretense to comprehensiveness.
It is organized around and attains its essential unity from one
central the~.e: the generation and absorption of the surplus
under cond1t1ons of monopoly capitalism. 5
We believe that this is the most useful and enlightening way
to anal~ze the purely economic functioning of the system. But,
no less important, we also believe that the modes of utilization
of surpl~s constitu.te the indispensable mechanism linking the
economic foundation of society with what Marxists call its
political, cultural, and ideological superstructure. In some
societies this mechanism is relatively simple and its effects
easily accessible to analysis. In a true feudal society, for ex-
ample, the surplus is forcibly extracted by feudal lords from
the labor of serfs and directly consumed by the lords and their
retainers without significant mediation of traders and other
types of middlemen. Under these circumstances, the determi-
~ants of the size of the surplus, the way it is used, and the rela-
tion between these matters and the politics and culture of the
society are readily understandable. In other societies the
connecting mechanism between economic and noneconomic
ph~nomena is vas~ly more complicated and may come to play
an important role in the functioning of both the foundation and
the. superstructure. We believe that monopoly capitalism is a
soc~ety of ~he latter type and that any attempt to understand it
which omits or slights the modes of utilization of surplus is
bound to fail.
We do n~t claim that directing attention to the generation
and absorption of surplus gives a complete picture of this or
any other society. And we are particularly conscious of the fact
that this approach, as we have used it, has resulted in almost
total ,neglect of a subject which occupies a central place in
Ma1·x s study of capitalism: the labor process. We stress the
5
For a discussion of the concept of the economic surplus see Paul A
Baran, The Political Economy of Growth, Chapter 2. ' .
INTRODUCTION
· 1 role of technological change in the development of
crucia oly capitalism but make no attempt to inquire
· · system-
rn?nolpl · to the consequences which the particular kinds of
at1ca Y in l · al' t
h no logical change characteristic of the monopo y cap1t is
tee k h 't'
eriod have had for the nature of wor , t e compos1 ion an ( d
~·ff rentiation) of the working class, the psychology of work-
1 ethe forms of working-class organization and struggle, and
;:s~n. These are all obviously important subjects which would
have to be dealt with in any comprehensive study of monopoly
capitalism.
Our neglect of the labor process does not, however, mean
that this book is not concerned with the class st~ggle. For a
number of reasons, some of which are analyzed 1n. Chapte: 7,
the class struggle in our time has been. thorou~hl~ 1ntern~t10~­
alized. The revolutionary initiative agamst cap1tal1sm, which in
Marx's day belonged to the proletariat in the advanced cou~­
tries, has passed into the hands of the impov~rished masses 1n
the underdeveloped countries who are struggl1~g ~o free ~hem­
selves from imperialist domination and explo1ta~1on. It is the
exigencies of this international class str~g.gle wh1c~, as we ~t­
tempt to show play an increasingly dec1s1ve part 1n determin-
ing the utiliz~tion of the surplus, ~d. ther~w~th the whole
character of the society, in the leading 1mper1al1st power ..we
also deal in Chapter 9 with the racial problem in the. United
States which is one of the critical links between the interna-
tional' class struggle and the internal balance of social forces
within the United States.
4
The economic surplus, in the briefest possible definition, is
the difference between what a society produces and the costs
of producing it. The size of the surplus is an in~ex of produc-
tivity and wealth, of how much freedom a society has t~ ~c­
complish whatever goals it may set for itself. The compos1t10~
of the surplus shows how it uses that freedom: how much ~t
invests in expanding its productive capacity, how much it