Can any critic of capitalism justify their criticism on ground of supposed monopolistic tendencies?

[Sienna]

One of the frequent allegations against capitalism is its alleged tendencies to monopolies. They are always assumed to be bad, but I have never seen anyone give a rational justification for this assumption.

I have never even seen the "monopolistic capitalism" critics
a) define monopoly,
b) explain why the alleged monopoly price is immoral or anti-social, and
b) why it is valid to assume that the State would be in any better position to know what the alleged fair price should be.

In particular, the argument must deal with the following issues.

Definition.
I have a monopoly of the sale of my own poetry. This doesn't mean that I can charge whatever I want, unfortunately. Fred has a monopoly of the sale of his own labour. Ditto. How do you define monopoly so as to distinguish it from situations where there is only one seller of a good or service in the market, and yet
a) this is not seen as being immoral or anti-social? *and*
b) it is patently untrue that they can command whatever price they want?

Distinction between monopoly price, and price caused by seller withholding sale for other reasons.
Everyone at some point prefers leisure to the income they could get by working more, owing to the disutility of labour. In other words, they withhold the supply of their labour from the market, because they want a higher price if they are to sell. But this is the alleged wrong of monopolists. So if Fred withholds his labour because he wants more money per hour than he is getting at a given rate, and at that rate prefers leisure to further work, how is that conceptually different from a monopolist who has, say, a store of coffee, but withholds supply at a given market price because he is unwilling to agree to sell unless the price is higher? Each is the only seller of a good or service, we are supposing, and each withholds supply in an attempt to realise a higher price. Why is it okay, normal, good in one instance but self-evidently immoral or anti-social in the other?

Alleged imperfection
Sometimes the argument is that the monopoly price differs from the price that would obtain under perfect competition. The absurdity of this argument should be obvious.
a) Perfection is not of this world. It is vain to hold it up as a standard of human behaviour in any event.
b) The same standard must be applied to the State if any policy response is proposed.
c) there is no way for the critic or the State to *know* what the alleged perfect or fair price would be.

In summary, if transactions are voluntary, then what is the basis of the objection? Why does not that answer all questions of morality so far as concerns monopolies? The market price is the *agreed* price. You're not *entitled* to other people's labour or property unless they agree. Both parties need to agree. Why do you think this is right in some cases, but not others?

In any event, if the *possibility* of a *voluntary* monopoly by the market is self-evidently immoral, how can the *certainty* of a *coercive* monopoly by the State be in any better position? Even if your criticism of capitalism on grounds of monopoly were justified - and as I have shown, it isn't - it would still a non sequitur to conclude from that, that any policy response is justified. If peaceful monopoly is no good, why is violent monopoly better?

[thunderingrain292]

only true monopolism occurs when the state has the power over the economy and has the say on prices. thus socialism and communism are hateful practices

[white-eye]

Surely in their own minds but not in yours. The argument that I'd make if I was a capitalist is that the lowest cost and most efficient producers will come to dominate the market, and since costs are lowered by reducing labor costs, youll end up with a bigger organization of unemployed "have-nots" and taking-yours which would certainly not be good for 'community.' Conceivably, pure capitalism could cause the death of capitalism faster than anything else.

[Aleconomixt]

To most of the part the argument is correct.Monopoly, oligopoly, perfect, imperfect etc. are word-play.
A market is a market , differs only if profit driven( capitalism) or welfare(?) driven ( communist).
All those chapters on mono, oligo etc. polies in microeconomics textbooks are as bogus as monetarism. as if state sleeps over market control by an monopolistic trend.

There are minds saying free market differs from capitalism and many such bogus things.

Has any " economist" experimented how monopoly/ oligopoly replacing free market changes the market behavior in same society and same politics of state? No, they do not have enough money /power than their payers allocate them.

Game theory is another stupidity. why you have to theorize things which are common sense and prone to changes by strange behavior ? you are trying to quantize psychology .... and this madness starts with utility functions and almost ends with augmented Phillips curves.

[Anjaree]

You said monopoly power,I said individual property rights. I still can sell my chicken if I want to or let them die naturally. What is the difference? I saw one.There is a difference in degree of monopoly. Monopolistic monopoly is the least one. That means you have to lower your price to the bottom to sell the chicken,compared to the monopolist. But even the least one, it still creates the deadweight loss,compare to the hypothesis of perfectly competitive market. No one argues that it is only hypothesis,not the real one. But hypothesis does not need to be real, the aim is to be a norm to compare with the real one.It means only, the reality cannot achieve the norm we wish it to be. You might argue that we don't need to compare real people with the angel.That is not the point,because comparison can help us to see and understand the difference.In any case,I love chicken too,even when I don't have a farm.