ABSTRACT
Introduction Many Marxian economists regard the contemporary Japanese economy as being at the stage of Monopoly Capitalism or State Monopoly Capitalism. They assert that Monopoly Capital, which dominates Japan, intensifies capitalist contradictions and that its exploitation of labor is the most inequitable facet of contemporary income distribution. However, non-Marxian economists like us have a number of fundamental questions about these Marxian assertions. This paper asks a few frank questions about the Marxian view of Monopoly Capital and, at the same time, intends to examine a number of important problems in the policy of income redistribution in Japan. Non-Marxian economics sets economic policy to two major tasks: first, ensuring production with high efficiency in the economy as a whole and, second, realizing an “equitable” income distribution. Though Marxian and non-Marxian economists are divided on how to look at the problem of efficiency in the contemporary Japanese economy, the problem of efficiency is set aside in this paper.
