Americans today worry about concentrated power in private industry to an extent not seen in generations. Not only do they find diminished diversity of service-providers and producers, but they are disquieted by the power of a few large companies to shape and constrain democratic processes. Americans across the political spectrum, from former President Donald Trump to Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren, have sounded alarms about the overlarge power of business in both public and private life. While many of the technologies and industries that worry Americans are new, the concerns they've raised are not unprecedented.
Antimonopoly and American Democracy traces the history of antimonopoly politics in the United States, arguing that organized action against concentrated economic power comprises an important American democratic tradition. While prevailing narratives tend to treat monopoly as a risk to people mainly in their roles as consumers--by causing prices to increase, for example--this study broadens the conversation, recounting ways in which monopolism can hurt ordinary people without directly impacting their wallets. From the pre-revolutionary era to the age of Big Tech, the volume explores the effects that historical monopolies have had on democracy by using their wealth and influence to dominate electoral politics and regulation. Chapters also highlight a range of sites of economic concentration, from land ownership to media reach, and attempts at combating them, from labor organizing to constitutional revision. Featuring original scholarship from some of the world's leading experts in American economic, political, and legal
history, Antimonopoly and American Democracy offers important lessons for our contemporary political moment, in which fears of concentrated wealth and influence are again on the rise.
PART ONE: THE LONG HISTORY OF ANTIMONOPOLY AND AMERICAN DEMOCRACY I. Introduction: Democracy and the American Antimonopoly Tradition Daniel Crane and William J. Novak II. Rethinking the Monopoly Question: Commerce, Land, Industry Richard R. John III. From Antimonopoly to Antitrust Richard White PART TWO: RETHINKING THE PROGRESSIVE AND NEW DEAL ANTIMONOPOLY TRADITIONS IV. Antimonopoly and State Regulation of Corporations in the Gilded Age and Progressive Era Naomi R. Lamoreaux V. America Antimonopoly and the Rise of Regulated Industries Law William J. Novak VI. Banking and the Antimonopoly Tradition: The Long Road to the Bank Holding Company Act Jamie Grischkan PART THREE: REMAKING ANTIMONOPOLY IN A NEW GLOBAL AGE VII. De-Nazifying by De-Cartelizing: The Legacy of the American Decartelization Project in Germany Daniel Crane VIII. Jurisdiction Beyond Our Borders: United States v. Alcoa and the Extraterritorial Reach of American Antitrust, 1909-1945 Laura Phillips Sawyer IX. From Market Power to State Capture: The Fateful Shift in Postwar Antimonopoly James T. Sparrow PART FOUR: ANTIMONOPOLY AND AMERICAN DEMOCRACY: SELECT CASE STUDIES X. Antitrust and the Corporate Tax, 1909-1928 Reuven Avi-Yonah XI. Beyond the Labor Exemption: Labor's Antimonopoly Vision and the Fight for Greater Democracy Kate Andrias XII. Antimonopoly in the Media Industries: A History Sam Lebovic
Daniel A. Crane is the Frederick Paul Furth, Sr. Professor of Law at the University of Michigan Law School. He served as the Associate Dean for Faculty and Research from 2013 to 2016. Crane's work has appeared in the University of Chicago Law Review, the California Law Review, the Michigan Law Review, the Georgetown Law Journal, and the Cornell Law Review, among other journals. He is the author of several books on antitrust law, including Antitrust (Aspen, 2014), The Making of Competition Policy: Legal and Economic Sources (Oxford University Press, 2013), and The Institutional Structure of Antitrust Enforcement (Oxford University Press, 2011). William J. Novak is the Charles F. and Edith J. Clyne Professor of Law at the University of Michigan Law School. He is an award-winning legal scholar and historian, and is the author of The People's Welfare: Law and Regulation in Nineteenth-Century America (University of North Carolina Press, 1996) and New Democracy: The Creation of the Modern American State (Harvard University Press, 2022). He is also the co-editor of The Democratic Experiment (Princeton University Press, 2003), The State in U.S. History (University of Chicago Press, 2015), and The Corporation and American Democracy (Harvard University Press, 2017).
Reviews for Antimonopoly and American Democracy
An essential guide to the history of the fight against monopoly in the United States, this remarkable book reveals that from the Boston Tea Party to today, the battle against monopoly has been a battle for freedom. * Luigi Zingales, Robert C. McCormack Distinguished Service Professor of Entrepreneurship and Finance, University of Chicago Booth School of Business * Antimonopoly and American Democracy is a scholarly, eminently readable, and wide-ranging treatment of Americans' understanding of the monopoly problem from the late-eighteenth to the mid-twentieth centuries. Its authors treat various markets and technologies, and from disciplines that are not limited to economics. In particular, this book addresses the heavy presence of antimonopoly rhetoric in the development of corporate law, antitrust, the law of regulated industries, and related concerns about federalism and international relations. An outstanding list of contributors explores these topics from every angle, emphasizing the extent to which monopoly was perceived as a threat to equality, economic participation and opportunity, and democracy itself. * Herbert Hovenkamp, James G. Dinan University Professor, University of Pennsylvania *
