Class, capital and the global unfree market: resituating theories of monopoly capitalism and unequal exchange

The theories of Unequal Exchange and Monopoly Capital raise important questions about how powerful states and firms might be able to monopolize profits and both ideas continue to be invoked as telling criticisms of mainstream complacency and faith in free markets. Inter-state and inter-firm relations are often, even usually, unequal. However, the theories make unsatisfactory claims to identify decisive motors of the global economy, and fail to capture capitalism's persistently complex dynamism. Important insights into the potentially unequal nature of exchange relations gain greater critical purchase when incorporated into a more classically Marxist framework and understood as more provisional and testable research hypotheses.