'If monopoly persists, monopoly will always sit at the helm of the government," Woodrow Wilson once wrote. "If there are men in this country big enough to own the government of the United States, they are going to own it." This was the great, consuming fear of the once-robust antitrust movement: that competition would be destroyed and government itself brought to heel by concentrated private power. That movement was a force to be reckoned with in the 19th and early 20th centuries, but after World War II the public's dread of bigness seemed to fade away.
'If monopoly persists, monopoly will always sit at the helm of the government," Woodrow Wilson once wrote. "If there are men in this country big enough to own the government of the United States, they are going to own it."
This was the great, consuming fear of the once-robust antitrust movement: that competition would be destroyed and government itself brought to heel by concentrated private power. That movement was a force to be reckoned with in the 19th and early 20th centuries, but after World War II the public's dread of bigness seemed to fade away.
...Barry C. Lynn's recent book ... arises directly from the old antitrust tradition, and it presents us with an amazing catalogue of present-day monopolies, oligopolies and economic combinations. Its subjects are, by definition, some of the largest and most powerful organizations in the world. And yet almost none of it was familiar to me. Mr. Lynn tells us, for example, about the power of single companies or small groups of companies over such disparate fields as eyeglasses, certain categories of pet food, washer-dryer sales, auto parts, many aspects of food processing, surfboards, medical syringes... .... Mr. Lynn ... describes companies that swallow their rivals and then, with competitive pressure diminished, set about "destroying product variety and diversity." ... We learn of entire industries where competitors have grown so close to one another that a collapse at one company would probably bring down many of the others as well. This is, we are often reminded, a populist age, with fresh flare-ups of fury every time Wall Street bonuses hit the headlines. ...Mr. Lynn's anger at the Wall Street bailout, his fondness for small business, and his frequent homages to the nation's founders may seem superficially similar to the attitudes of the tea party protesters. But Mr. Lynn also takes pains to demonstrate that the economic "freedom" so beloved by the snake-flag set has actually yielded the opposite of freedom: a "neofeudal" system of "private corporate governments" answerable to no one.
Mr. Lynn tells us, for example, about the power of single companies or small groups of companies over such disparate fields as eyeglasses, certain categories of pet food, washer-dryer sales, auto parts, many aspects of food processing, surfboards, medical syringes...
....
Mr. Lynn ... describes companies that swallow their rivals and then, with competitive pressure diminished, set about "destroying product variety and diversity." ... We learn of entire industries where competitors have grown so close to one another that a collapse at one company would probably bring down many of the others as well.
This is, we are often reminded, a populist age, with fresh flare-ups of fury every time Wall Street bonuses hit the headlines. ...Mr. Lynn's anger at the Wall Street bailout, his fondness for small business, and his frequent homages to the nation's founders may seem superficially similar to the attitudes of the tea party protesters. But Mr. Lynn also takes pains to demonstrate that the economic "freedom" so beloved by the snake-flag set has actually yielded the opposite of freedom: a "neofeudal" system of "private corporate governments" answerable to no one.
This statement ought be greeted by readers with extreme skepticism. First, its meaning is to be compared with historical events, in particular third party formations and prosecution of their constituents in the US, M&A activity, and legislative results, if any, authorizing state dissolution of combinations (pools, trusts). Second, its meaning is to be compared with the pull-quote which is morally but not historically ambiguous. Mr Wilson affirmed the obvious. He also said, in 1907, the next year in a series of financial panics and one of marked labor agitation, in a lecture at Columbia University.
Concessions obtained by financiers must be safeguarded by ministers of state, even if the sovereignty of unwilling nations be outraged in the process... the doors of the nations which are closed must be battered down. [Zinn: 362]
Third, and most important, the reader is to be alert to the legal usage and epistemologic meanings of the word "trust" and as compared to its ambiguous utility in discussions of "antitrust" political conflict between corporate entities, in particular, legitimacy of trust --or license to operate-- vested in private enterprise on the one hand versus state enterprise on the other. Ironically, Thoma approaches this topic tentatively in a preceeding post, another book review promotion, summarizing Adam Smith's intuition of a natural monopoly exemplified by the state, or if one prefers, a representative government.
In other words, evoking "the old antitrust tradition" in this post "New Age of Monopolies" more accurately expresses the political intransigence of US capitalist celebrities than it does jurisprudential and law enforcement priorities of federal agents, much less mystical competitive "forces" or popular appeals for "reform."
Finally, this statement "after World War II the public's dread of bigness seemed to fade away" is symptomatic of the ignorance that perenially plagues policy "analysts". This ignorance is blindness to political agency among and between individual firms' owners exerted in particular to indemnify their own monopolistic business practices whether from prosecution by statute or popular sanction. This ignorance is repeated in the sentiment often poured over "technical" documents into the innerboobs, "I'm here to discuss economics, not politics."
The public's dread didn't fade away. It was pulverized. 1900-1941, US federal government institutionalized "self-regulation" of incorporated entities into law. The National (Industrial) Recovery Act epitomizes the strategy to legitimize private trusts and to classify beneficiaries of proferred exemptions by industry, purportedly balanced with the state sanction of the National Labor Relations Board --a trust-- established in principle to combine unions' interests in wage arbitrage (rather than violent strikes) and Congressional patronage. Simultaneously, the state enacted prohibitions of certain competition, namely ideological, and executed, deported, or imprisoned large numbers of persons and criminalized any enterprise inimicable to national policy objectives addressed by state or corporate agents.
Then the US went to war, again. That enterprise produced 11M casualties. After which re-education of survivors proceeded apace, culminating one could argue in Mr Thoma's unfamiliarity with a history of US industry structure and practices prior to Barry Goldwater's presidential campaign. Diversity is the key to economic and political evolution.
Who knows what Brad, Brad, and Mark know.
Possibly related post:
Y. Smith harvests Web 2.0 material, celebrates with N. Wolf
pfft Diversity is the key to economic and political evolution.
