We are now living under the most aggressive form of capitalism in history. The global circulation of capital compels states and the workers living within them to compete for investment and jobs — leading to exploding inequality and eroding protections for labor and the environment. Meanwhile, investment is booming, R&D spending is growing, technological development is proceeding rapidly, and profits have reached historic highs. This confounds long-standing arguments that the rise of finance was “hollowing out” production, undermining competitiveness, and leading to economic decline. It also sharply contradicts theories of “political capitalism,” “monopoly capitalism,” and other forms of rentierism, which depict capitalism as stagnating, increasingly unproductive, or in a decadent “late” stage.

In a series of recent articles, we challenged such accounts, arguing that the concentration of capital, financialization, and the growing role of the state have served to intensify what Anwar Shaikh calls “real competition.” These arguments elicited responses from Dylan Riley — who, with Robert Brenner, developed the theory of “political capitalism” — and John Bellamy Foster and Brett Clark, editors of Monthly Review and foremost representatives of monopoly capital theory. Riley argues that productive investment is being displaced by rentier accumulation secured through privileged access to the state, while Foster and Clark claim that ongoing corporate concentration has further entrenched monopoly capitalism.

Both arguments miss the mark. Riley detaches rent from the competitive dynamics of production and distribution, and he conflates corruption with the emergence of a new regime of accumulation. Foster and Clark, meanwhile, treat the absence of expected indicators of monopoly as beside the point, stretching the concept of monopoly until it becomes effectively unfalsifiable. Despite their differences, both struggle to reconcile theories of stagnation with the reality of highly profitable and intensely competitive accumulation — which, we argue, is the chief cause of the social, ecological, and political crises unfolding around us.