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Lynch me but Walmart-ish superstores are infinitely better than a bunch small mom and pop stores. These articles always come off as petit-bourgeois propaganda.
Walmartish superstores under public ownership would indeed be good, but under capitalism centralization simply results in more efficient exploitation the workers.
When Walmart comes to town, it uses its low prices to undercut competitors and become the dominant player in a given area, forcing local mom-and-pop grocers and regional chains to slash their costs or go out of business altogether. As a result, the local farmers, bakers, and manufacturers that once sold their goods to those now-vanished retailers are gradually replaced by Walmart’s array of national and international suppliers. (By some estimates, the company has historically sourced 60 to 80 percent of its goods from China alone.)
This paragraph in especial tells me the biases of the author, petit bourgeois combined with china bad propaganda.
I do agree that a monopoly has a tighter grip on the atomized workers, but this same relation could be flipped on its head if workers were to unionize. Even then, mom and pop shops are not known for their excellent working conditions and wages lol, quite the contrary.
No arguments there, I’m just pointing out that within the framework of the system the tendency is for an increased rate of exploitation within large monopolies. You’re right that unionization is a tool to counter that, but we can see how difficult that’s been to put into practice in large corps like Walmart and Amazon.
Ultimately, consolidation of capital is a natural progression of the capitalist system. Marx talks about this in the first volume of Capital where he explains how large capitalists end up cannibalizing smaller ones in the end. It’s an inevitable outcome that stems from the rules of the system. The petty bourgeoisie are becoming proletarianized and they’re not happy about it.
Agreed, monopolies are an inevitable outcome of the process of capital accumulation, these articles that come out as “big = bad, go back to small” are inherently reactionary and as marxists we should point that out. What we should fight is the property relations of these industries, not the industry itself.
completely agree
:shocked_pikachu:
