ABSTRACT
This chapter investigates the process of centralization of capital in Peru during the period when the manufacturing sector expanded from a small base. It explores concentration as the increase in the scale of production, or the concentration of workers into larger workplaces. Centralization of capital refers to the distribution among capitals of the value of those use values and the means of production necessary to produce them. The impact of the level of centralization is ambigious, however, and changes from period to period and for different levels of disaggregation. Centralization asserts its impact in the sphere of production, in that it is the process by which the means of production are transformed in a capitalist society. Centralization of capital is not significantly related to foreign ownership, and nor is it related to the rate of growth of sectors. As a consequence, the centralization process results in lower values for commodities.
