Dear cj, Excellent article below - concise, traces highlights of the history, the critical court decisions, and traces to the current day.
Monopolization is one of the biggest unreported stories of our day.
With globalization we're going to see a whole new breed of global monopolies. Mergers, acquisitions, hostile takeovers, and predatory pricing - I guess these pretty much make up the Monopoly Toolkit. The members of such a clique compete in a narrow sense, jockying for relative market shares, but at a macro level they are more accurately viewed as collaborators. Similarly mafia dons or drug gangs might elbow each other's territories, but mainly they're collaborating in maintaining their collective hegemony. The same pattern is shown below for the airline majors.