The previous blog post reviewed the history of early twentieth century antitrust action. Led by President Theodore Roosevelt and Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis, the scope of antitrust went beyond strictly economic consideration of anticompetitive activity and monopolistic control of prices. Impacts on employment, worker pay and corporate political influence entered the deliberation.

Tim Wu, a law professor at Columbia Law School, has written a book titled The Curse of Bigness: Antitrust in the New Gilded Age.” He states, antitrust law “needs better tools to assess new forms of market power . . . and to take seriously the link between industrial concentration and political influence. . . It needs stronger remedies, including a return to breakups, that are designed with the broader goals of antitrust in mind.”

Wu links economic concentration and dictatorship in a November 2018 article in the New York Times. In that article, Wu discusses the extreme economic concentration that developed in Germany following World War I, when Hitler’s rise to power was facilitated by monopolistic companies in key industries.

That danger was recognized and addressed in the U.S. by the adoption in 1950 of stronger anti-merger legislation nicknamed the Celler-Kefauver Act. Nonetheless, later twentieth century antitrust activity returned to the consumer protection model – monopoly was okay if it didn’t raise prices – and even then, few antimonopoly antitrust cases were brought by the Justice Department. The late 1970s breakup of AT&T was a notable exception, and the Clinton administration’s pursuit of Microsoft appeared winnable, but the incoming Bush administration settled without a breakup.

In recent years the power of corporate influence in opposition to popular will was compellingly communicated in two renowned cases. In his New York Times article referenced above, Tim Wu cited the pharmaceutical industry’s lobbying during the leadup to the 2003 Medicare Prescription Drug, Improvement, and Modernization Act. He states that lobbying by the pharmaceutical industry “cost the industry more than $100 million – but it returns some $15 billion a year in higher payments for its products.”

More directly impacting the balance of power between individuals and corporations is the 2010 Supreme Court decision Citizens United vs Federal Election Commission. The Court ruled that political expenditures on political campaigns by corporations and unions are protected “free speech” under the First Amendment. Spending by outside groups soared following the decision.

Popular disgust with corporate power and greed are at an intensity reminiscent of Theodore Roosevelt’s presidency. Until the influence of corporate campaign financing, and so-called “big money” in general, is curtailed, the many grievances over inequality, gerrymandering, voter purges, minority disenfranchisement and many more issues will be all the more difficult to resolve.