From Monopoly to Monopsony Capitalism

This paper argues for the characterization of contemporary capitalism as monopsony capitalism and, specifically, as global monopsony capitalism. This means that the degrees of buyer power should be added to the usual demand-supply analysis of markets for labour power and other inputs. Monopsony is used to understand the nature of global value chains, within which the paper distinguishes high, medium and low levels of monopsony power and outlines the main features of labour conditions in these different levels of monopsony power. The paper also sees how the working of monopsony power is gendered. The concluding section points to the difficult task of forming countervailing power in the age of global monopsony capitalism.