ABSTRACT
Capitalism has transformed itself beyond recognition into something new-not really capitalism at all, at least as his compatriots such as David Ricardo and even Adam Smith, who lived a generation before him, imagined it. Karl Marx saw capitalism becoming a marriage of big business with big government. Monopoly corporations would create a big government partner to create conditions for ever more profit, as overproduction and stagnation intensify. One can call this "monopoly capitalism", as Marx did, but it is a big government system that socializes risk and privatizes profit. In this sense, monopoly capitalism undermines any "free market" logic and turns into its current state in the United States, which might be called plutocratic socialism, socialism for the rich. Capitalism has become thoroughly monopolistic and statist and centrally planned, much like socialism is presumed to be, except it all works of, by, and for the rich.
