I'm in the process of transforming my dissertation on Theodor Adorno into a book, and you all are marvelously well-qualified to lend a hand with one of the more rickety sections. I take Adorno to task for uncritically adopting large chunks of F. Pollock's work on 'State Capitalism,' and argue that he deploys a far too simple contrast between 'liberal' 'competitive' capitalism and modern-day monopoly or 'state' capitalism. I need to do two things at this point: 1) Become more familiar with the continental literature on monopoly K that Adorno takes for granted. I assume this kind of analysis was commonplace; is there a 'classical' statement of this that would be a logical place to start (obviously aside from uncle Karl himself)? and 2) find some cogent critiques of this neat little narrative of heroic, liberal capitalism subverted by nasty, faceless monopoly K. As I say in my diss, no doubt liberal K was not quite so liberal, and twentieth C. capitalism is not simply US Steel and IG Farben. Unfortunately, that's all I'm able to say just now. How can I school myself to the point of making some credible judgement about the non-competitive nature of the 'liberal' era, and about the scope and significance of 'competitive' pockets in 20th C. capitalism? Oh, and it'd be even better to get some perspective on developments since Pollock -- there seem to be different trends depending on which sectors & regions one looks at. Thanks for any help you can offer. --Mike Parkhurst [EMAIL PROTECTED]
