LPE Project - Why Antitrust Reform Matters
Legal director Sandeep Vaheesan explores the debate between antitrust reformers and Marxist critics, arguing that antitrust law can serve as a tool for democratizing economic life when paired with broader political movements.
Putting antitrust and Marxism side by side is, on its face, a peculiar endeavor. It is akin not to comparing the proverbial apples to oranges but comparing apples to the cuisine of China. Antitrust reformers set themselves comparatively modest goals, embracing one set of legal tools for advancing justice, whereas Marxists entertain extraordinary ambitions, seeking to offer a foundational theory of history and the state of the world today. One has intellectual roots in American pragmatism and the efforts of institutionalist economists and legal realists to restructure the political economy through statutes and regulations, the other in Hegelian philosophy.
Yet whatever the limits of the comparison, the LPE series on the subject has been illuminating and stimulating. It has highlighted important political and theoretical divides on the left, while raising important questions about the promise and perils of legal reform. My sense, however, is that the disagreement between the antitrusters (Paul and Steinbaum) and the Marxists (Winant and Dimick) is due, at least in part, to differing understandings of the project of antitrust reform—what it aims to do, where it should be situated with respect to other legal fields, and how it relates to broader political movements. In the following post, I’ll address each of these questions, identifying rival views that one might take on the issue. These binaries are not hard and fast and instead exist along a continuum. Nonetheless, they are helpful in clarifying the debate, and, I hope, in showing how antitrust law can be an instrument for democratizing economic life.
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