The reality is that a monopoly is incredibly hard to sustain without government. And even in the cases where something close to it can be created, they can seldomly really push up the price as much as they think.
Historically its governments creating the monopolies most of the time.
It kinda did. Large stagnant industries tend to collapse into monopolies. However, this was masked either by new more nimble companies pushing out the incumbents by utilizing newer technologies, or by industries fading away entirely.
Defining monopoly is pretty hard in the first place. Only Will Smith can play Will Smith. Or is he in a market against all black actors? Or all actors? Or is it he also competing against the NBA/NFL?
If a single company exist to provide some service in a small town, is that company a monopoly.
If a company dominates a market for a decade+, is that a monopoly? There is a question of time.
One can answers these question different ways. And even if they are monopoly, sometimes that is not a actually a problem.
There are certainty some cases where some monopoly exist and are harmful. Mostly those are created by governments. However one can certainty have harmful situation in a relatively free market as well.
But I think the argument that there was ever a case to be made that the Marxist idea of all companies merging in a single mega cooperation has never even been remotely true. And you have industries that are reasonably unregulated (in terms of market entry) and still have lots of competition.
So the facts are 100% for sure much more complex then Marx and those that claim 'Capitalism always leads to centralization' believe. Or at least if it does it operates at timescales that makes it unclear that we should act on their recommendations.
Often Standard Oil is the best example people can come up with and they are not even remotely close to taking over much outside of their specialty.
Of course the whole discussion gets even more complex once multiple government (and cultures, and geographies, and climates and so on) are involved and we aren't taking about a single unified market.
