industries while state capitalist fears of capitalism's creative destruction, the threat of revolution and any significant changes in the system result in the persistence of industries that have outlived their economic usefulness and an inefficient economic environment that is ill-equipped to inspire innovation. Several European scholars and political economists have used the term to describe one of the three major varieties of capitalism that prevail in the modern context of the European Union. This approach is mainly influenced by Schmidt's (2002) article on The Futures of European Capitalism, in which she divides modern European capitalism in three groups, namely market, managed and state. Here, state capitalism refers to a system where high coordination between the state, large companies and labour unions ensures economic growth and development in a quasi-corporatist model. The author cites France and to a lesser extent Italy as the prime examples of modern European state capitalism. A general theory of capitalist forms, whereby state capitalism is a particular case, was developed by Ernesto Screpanti, who argued that Soviet-type economies of the 20th century used state capitalism to sustain processes of primitive accumulation. In their historical analysis of the Soviet Union, Marxist economists Richard D. Wolff and Stephen Resnick identify state capitalism as the dominant class system throughout the history of the Soviet Union. State monopoly capitalism The theory of state monopoly capitalism was initially a neo-Stalinist doctrine popularised after World War II. The term refers to an environment where the state intervenes in the economy to protect large monopolistic or oligopolistic businesses from competition by smaller firms. The main principle of the ideology is that big business, having achieved a monopoly or cartel position in most markets of importance, fuses with the government apparatus. A kind of financial oligarchy or conglomerate therefore results, whereby government officials aim to provide the social and legal framework within which giant corporations can operate most effectively. This is a close partnership between big business and government and it is argued that the aim is to integrate labour-unions completely in that partnership. State monopoly capitalist (stamocap) theory aims to define the final historical stage of capitalism following monopoly capitalism, consistent with Lenin's definition of the characteristics of imperialism in his short pamphlet of the same name. Occasionally the stamocap concept also appears in neo-Trotskyist theories of state capitalism as well as in libertarian anti-state theories. The analysis made is usually identical in