Introduction
Modern capitalism is a system dominated by corporate giants, where capital accumulation has become an impersonal necessity. Baran and Sweezy’s analysis challenges traditional economics by introducing the law of the rising surplus. This surplus, hidden within marketing and armament costs, becomes a source of systemic tension. This article explains why production efficiency leads to stagnation and how the irrationality of the whole impacts our quality of life.
The Corporation: The Twilight of the Individual Entrepreneur
The place of the former tycoon has been taken by the organizational algorithm. The modern manager is merely a function of the system; their career depends on the longevity of the corporation, which institutionalizes the logic of profit.
The Law of the Rising Surplus: The Mechanism of Capital Accumulation
In a monopoly economy, the classical law of the falling rate of profit is replaced by a tendency for the economic surplus to rise—the difference between productive potential and necessary social costs.
Oligopolies: The Elimination of Free-Market Price Competition
Under oligopolistic conditions, prices are downwardly sticky. The strategic calculations of a few players eliminate price wars, making corporations active price makers rather than passive recipients of market signals.
Cost Reduction: The Engine of the Economic Surplus
Constant pressure for automation and rationalization lowers production costs. With stable prices, this mechanism pushes the profitability curve upward, generating excess capital that the system must absorb.
Consumption and Waste: Channels for Surplus Utilization
When traditional investments fail, the system seeks an outlet in waste. Elite consumption, though luxurious, is insufficient to absorb the swelling surplus, forcing the search for external channels.
Sales Effort: The Systemic Waste of Resources
Advertising, branding, and planned obsolescence are "apparent costs." They serve to engineer demand, wasting resources on activities that do not satisfy real social needs.
Armaments: A Military Safety Valve for the Surplus
The state becomes the "ideal client" through the military-industrial complex. Military spending absorbs the surplus for destructive purposes without competing with the private sector, thereby reinforcing the hierarchy of power.
Excess Surplus: The Source of Structural Systemic Stagnation
Paradoxically, the greater the economy's potential, the stronger the tendency toward chronic stagnation. The lack of opportunities for productive reinvestment of the surplus pushes the system into a state of permanent underutilization of resources.
Financialization: A Parasitic Drain on the Real Economy
The financial sector grows to parasitic proportions, focusing on speculation and arbitrage. Instead of supporting production, it drains the surplus, deepening instability and wealth inequality.
Economic Surplus: A Barrier to Improving Quality of Life
The system generates abundance that provides no sense of meaning. The quality of life crisis manifests as burnout and the erosion of social bonds, while key areas like healthcare and education remain underfunded.
USA, Europe, and Arab Countries: Divergence of Absorption Models
The USA relies on militarism, Arab countries on resource-based rentierism, and Europe on the welfare state. Each of these models struggles in its own way with the pressures of global competition and capital concentration.
Artificial Intelligence: A Digital Tool for Profit Concentration
AI technology radicalizes monopoly. Control over data and infrastructure allows Big Tech to capture the surplus from automation, threatening the total reification of social consciousness structures.
Baran and Sweezy’s Theory Under Scientific Criticism
Critics point to innovations stemming from the military sector; however, this is a logical fallacy. The fact that destruction generates side effects does not make it a rational foundation for technical progress.
Elżbieta Mączyńska: Ethics as the Foundation for Economic Recovery
Prof. Mączyńska emphasizes that the economy must be rooted in a system of values. Disorder and crises are signals that market mechanisms have become detached from human needs and ethics.
A New Deal: Institutional Redefinition of Surplus Goals
Fixing the system requires redefining corporations as socially responsible entities. The surplus should become a common resource, funding the ecological transition and lasting social security.
Summary
In a world of algorithmic capitalism, are we destined for the reification of consciousness structures? Or is it time to redefine the rationality of the economic system, evaluating it not only by growth and profits, but primarily by its ability to transform the surplus into a lasting improvement in the quality of life and the expansion of fundamental civil rights? Only then can the economy, subservient to ethics rather than just economics, become a tool for true progress.
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