[moorobot]

These assertions were made by Rudolf Hilferding:

"The development of capitalist industry produces concentration of banking, and this concentrated banking system is itself an important force in attaining the highest stage of capitalist concentration in cartels and trusts"

"..amalgamation of the banks requires cartelization. For example, a number of banks have an interest in the amalgamation of steel concerns, and they work together to bring about this amalgamation even against the will of individual manufacturers."

"(Over time) the power of the banks increases and they become founders and eventually rulers of industry, whose profits they seize for themselves as finance capital (In Hilferding's terminology finance capital=capital in money form which is actually transformed in this way into industrial capital---Moo), just a sformely the old usurers seized, in the form of 'interest', the produce of the peasants and the ground rent of the lord of the manner."

Discuss.