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Shaikh argues that the monopoly capital school base their view of ‘fundamental change’ on a false reality that back in the mid-19th century when Marx wrote Capital, that capitalism worked in ‘perfect competitive markets’ which now longer exist and have been replaced by monopolies backed by the state. But this was never the case. As Shaikh puts it: “the capitalist economy should not be viewed as a “perfect” market economy with accompanying “imperfections”, but as individual capitals in competition to gain profit and market share. Monopoly should not be counterposed to competition, as neoclassical, orthodox, and even some Marxist economists do. Real competition is a struggle to lower costs per unit of output in order to gain more profit and market share. In the real world, there are capitals with varying degrees of monopoly power competing and continually changing as monopoly power is lost with new entrants to the market and new technology that cuts costs.