A Prime Competitor: Understanding Amazon’s Market Power

Stephen Maher and Scott Aquanno present an innovative analysis of Amazon’s market power, drawing on major themes from Marx’s Capital, volume 2. In a recent contribution published by Canada’s Socialist Project, they challenge understandings of “monopoly” common in mainstream economics as well as among sections of the left.

Amazon’s “bigness” and lack of a direct competitor would seem to suggest that it should be considered a monopoly. And yet, far from exhibiting the tell-tale signs of increasing monopoly prices, inefficiency, and technological stagnation, Amazon has engaged in cutthroat price competition, built a highly efficient and technologically advanced logistics system, and unleashed competitive forces whose effects have reverberated across the retail sector and beyond. Moreover, Amazon’s distinct vertically integrated structure, competing across a range of sectors including retail, e-commerce, logistics, online search engines, and media entertainment – each dominated by large firms – suggests that today’s giant corporations are not significantly encumbered by barriers to entry.

Stephen Maher is Assistant Professor of Economics at SUNY Cortland, and Co-Editor of the Socialist Register. With Scott Aquanno he co-authored The Fall and Rise of American Finance: From J.P. Morgan to Blackrock (Verso, 2024). Steve is also the author of Corporate Capitalism and the Integral State: General Electric and a Century of American Power (Palgrave, 2022).

Scott Aquanno is Assistant Professor of Political Science at Ontario Tech University, and a Visiting Associate at the Global Labour Research Centre at York University. With Stephen Maher he co-authored The Fall and Rise of American Finance: From J.P. Morgan to Blackrock (Verso, 2024). Scott is also the author of Crisis of Risk: Subprime Debt and US Financial Power from 1944 to Present (Edward Elgar, 2021).