SOLOMON HUGHES recommends Sunjeev Sahota’s recent novel set in a trade union election campaign for its fresh approach to what unites and divides workers, but wishes the union backdrop was truer to life
The return of anti-monopoly politics?
Opposition to the mega-companies that dominate industry cannot be left to the political centre — the labour movement could build a a powerful coalition around the cause. But beware, warns ZOLTAN ZIGEDY, this is still not anti-capitalism
Morning Star international editor ROGER McKENZIE says Trump’s ceaseless belligerence is a desperate effort to prevent the emergence of a multilateral world
Don’t dismiss Lebanon as a side theatre of this war, warns SEVIM DAGDELEN — there are signs Israel has expansion in mind, and it has demonstrated its willingness to expel and kill whole populations
The media present Starmer as staying out of Trump’s war — but we’re already deeply involved in a conflict that sees the US and Israel kill civilians on a huge scale, argues IAN SINCLAIR
LINDA PENTZ GUNTER reports on this week’s conference unveiling the findings of the Gaza Tribunal established by Jeremy Corbyn
CHRISTOPHE IMMER of the Morning Star’s German sister paper Junge Welt reports on a Berlin conference on the politics of art and the legacy of Marxist critic Hans Hess
ECONOMIC MONOPOLIES — enterprises or groups of enterprises that overwhelmingly reign over a specific economic sector — have been the target of reformers and revolutionaries since their widespread notice in the last quarter of the 19th century.
Many keen observers in the most advanced capitalist countries of the late 1800s perceived the development of a tier of capitalist firms in various industries that rose to dominate those industries. Through rapid expansion, ruthless competition, absorption and consolidation, a few capitalists or corporations acquired a majority share of markets and the lion’s share of profits.
A classic US example of the process of monopolisation was the creation of the Rockefeller oil monopoly, Standard Oil. Like an uncontrollable wildfire, Standard Oil devoured competitors, both horizontally — in oil extraction — and vertically — in the shipping, refining and selling of the final product. Eventually, Standard Oil was on the verge of completely controlling the petroleum industry in the US.
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