Marxism and monopoly

[Chris Burford <cburford@xxxxxxxxxx>]

I know Bill Gates has been heavily discussed, but from this side of the
Atlantic I would like to ask

a) what are the probabilities of the breakup of Microsoft being enforced?
It seems that yesterday's critical ruling was a response to the breakdown
of negotiations at the weekend. The judicial approach to this case had
clearly been designed to promote negotiations.

b) The reports we are getting this morning assume that these issues are in
the hands of the US courts - as they are. We assume we will have to pay
Microsoft every time we buy a computer.

In the USA too are the terms of reference of the issue so set that no one
discusses them in more radical terms. This is one way of course the
bourgeoisie controls the system - by defining the questions.

I submit that anti-trust legislation is a powerful bourgeois reformist
device for keeping capitalism on the road. Otherwise its natural tendency
to monopoly would cause such sharpening of the contradictions that it would
place the public ownership of the means of production overtly on the agenda.

Bill Gates has already recognised the social nature of production, as all
successful capitalists are wise to do, by giving billions away to charities.

I submit that a more radical, even marxist approach to the present
contradiction is not to pose the question in terms of should Microsoft be
broken up or not?

But to pose the question about methods to socialisation the ownership of
the means of production of Microsoft products.

It does not have to be socialism that are so aggressive as to be
immediately dismissed by middle opinion.

This should be a battle to define the terms of reference of relevant reform
- what reforms ultimately favour capital and what reforms ultimately favour
labour power?

What permutations on the management of Microsoft are possible that show
social foresight, to use Marx's phrase from his address to the First
International?

Chris Burford

London