ABSTRACT
It is hardly necessary to say that in speaking of the monopolist organisation of early capitalism in German industry it is not implied that this organisation always appeared in concrete form. Certain forms of trade monopolies existed, like the privileged companies or the creation of a "staple" of capitalist merchants. It is clear from what has been said that in German mining and smelting in the eighteenth and in some cases till late in the nineteenth century the law hampered competition and led to the monopolist dominion of existing undertakings. It is remarkable that English political economy at the end of the eighteenth century was not aware of the contrast between the form assumed by capitalist industry in England throughout the eighteenth century, and both that which it had taken in the seventeenth century and that which it was then taking on the Continent.
