capitalism is shaped by the quest for surplus-profits in monopolistic and oligopolistic markets in which a few large corporations dominate supply. Thus, the extra or above-average profits do not arise so much from real productivity gains, but from corporations monopolising access to resources, technologies and markets. It is not so much that enterprises with superior productivity outsell competitors, but that competitors are blocked in various ways from competing, for example through cartelisation, mergers, fusions, take-overs, government-sanctioned licensing, exclusive production and selling rights. In that case, the extra profits have less to do with reward for entrepreneurship than with market position and market power, i.e. the ability to offload business costs onto someone else (the state, consumers and other businesses) and force consumers to pay extra for access to the goods and services they buy, based on supply monopolies. Tibor Palánkai instead argues that while superprofit can be monopolistic profit, abusing monopoly position is regulated by rigorous competition policies in developed democratic countries. Superprofit coming from other sources like comparative advantages or technical innovation contribute to public welfare. Criticism Critics of superprofit hold a different view. Their argument can be summarised in the following points: The average rate of surplus value is typically higher in rich countries because of higher labor-productivity. High-paid skilled workers can be very militant and display class consciousness. The existence of reformist labor parties in the Third World. The differences in wages between rich and poor countries are far greater than the differences in wages within rich countries—so if anything, the whole working class in rich countries is a labor aristocracy from a global point of view. It is not clear that workers in the imperialist country directly share in repatriated profits from overseas dominions. The actual amount of repatriated profit from overseas investments that could trickle down to the working class as salary income is not large enough to sustain a labor aristocracy, if there is one. Probably the main economic benefit that workers in rich countries obtain directly from poor countries is cheap consumer goods, but in fact the monetary value of these goods is statistically only a small part of their total budget. The big ticket foreign-made items in working class budgets are foreign computer hardware, foreign-made appliances and foreign cars (i.e. durable consumer goods), but out of that total expenditure only a small fraction represents goods from poor countries. See also New Imperialism