{"id":1179,"date":"2019-09-26T09:56:34","date_gmt":"2019-09-26T14:56:34","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/johnniequezada.me\/jqme\/?p=1179"},"modified":"2023-11-26T08:50:20","modified_gmt":"2023-11-26T13:50:20","slug":"book-review-the-curse-of-bigness-antitrust-in-the-new-gilded-age","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/johnniequezada.me\/jqme\/2019\/09\/26\/book-review-the-curse-of-bigness-antitrust-in-the-new-gilded-age\/","title":{"rendered":"Book Review – The Curse of Bigness: Antitrust in the New Gilded Age"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"Paperback: 154 pages<\/span>
\nPublisher: Columbia Global Reports (Nov. 13, 2018)<\/span>
\nLanguage: English<\/span>
\nISBN-10: 0999745468<\/span>
\nISBN-13: 978-0999745465<\/span><\/p>\n

Tim Wu\u2019s book is one of many books published in recent years by mainstream publishers purporting to have answers to the malaise Capitalism is mired in. Naturally, being given the imprimatur, of a \u201crespectable\u201d publishing house, Wu\u2019s book suffers from the same weaknesses as all the others. Rather than name the system . . . Capitalism and confront it head on, they all do side swipes or drive bys. This, at best, comes off as long past its due date reformism or, at worst, a diversion from the burning issue of the day. Namely, how to get rid of Capitalism. <\/span><\/p>\n

I admit I did not read past the introduction to this book but that is because, like the last book \u201cThe Production of Money,\u201d I realized immediately from the thrust of the argument being made and the political\/ideological framework it was nested within, that little in this book would add to my understanding (there are writers and places out there with better analysis and more solid frameworks). Even as intellectual entertainment it hardly grabbed my attention.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Wu poses the problem well in noting that what we have witnessed in the last four decades is a return to the Gilded Age where rampant inequality and concentration of wealth has led us on to \u201cthe road to fascism and dictatorship.\u201d What we face, he quotes Louis Brandeis, is the \u201cCurse of Bigness.\u201d A situation where, he continues, \u201cthe rule of concentrated oligopolies and monopolies, in industries like finance, media, airlines and telecommunication . . . allows them to treat customers and competitors with impunity and . . . has helped transform and radicalize electoral politics.\u201d To this problem he proposes (which he explicitly admits is the prime goal of the book) a revitalized reintroduction of antitrust and anti-monopoly laws which he sees as the \u201cclassic antidote to bigness.\u201d He is perplexed that \u201cover the span of a generation, the law has shrunk to a shadow of itself, and somehow <\/i><\/b>ceased to have a decisive opinion on the core concern of monopoly.\u201d\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

It is here Wu loses me. While his description of the problem, again, is accurate enough, the political framework in which he operates within as well as his prescription or solution to the problem of rule by Monopoly Finance Capital is lacking and unoriginal. No surprise there since his arguments or positions flow naturally from, on the one hand, Hegelian Idealism, where it is ideas and mental states (in this case taking the form of laws and decisions by Man, to use a dated term) that are at issue and on the other, his implicit, even if not baldly stated, placing of\u00a0 the changing material conditions driving wealth inequality and concentration of political power in the back seat of history. Just to make sure we know that this is indeed Hegelian Idealism that he is channeling, he doubles down and blames the influence of Robert Bork and others from the Chicago School for the diminution and watering down of antitrust law and that industrialized nation have forgotten the lessons of the 1930s. The solution now, he proposes, is for \u201cAmerican antitrust . . . to return to its broader goals and upgrade its capacities. It needs better tools to assess new forms of market power, to assess, macroeconomic arguments, and to take seriously the link between industrial concentration and political influence.\u201d Afterall, he asks, quoting Louis Brandeis again, \u201cshall the industrial policy of America be that of competition or that of monopoly?\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0Wu admits that antitrust law alone will not cure \u201cthe curse of bigness\u201d but thinks it nevertheless \u201cstrikes at the root\u201d and that it represents a middle path to economic restructuring. To that I say, been there and done that. If you believe as Hegel that ideas, in whatever form they may take in society, be it law, custom, culture and so on, drive history then yes he is right. However, even before the 1st Gilded Age was over, Calvin Coolidge in 1925 replied to Louis Brandeis stating unequivocally that \u201cthe chief business of the American people is business.\u201d In other words, considering he was speaking well within the period of the 1st Gilded Age, let monopoly reign and concentrated wealth expand. Forgetting Marx for the moment, who turned Hegel Right side up, I wonder if Wu has read works such as \u201cMonopoly Capital\u201d by Paul Baran and Paul Sweezy and\/or its more well-known sequel \u201cLabor and Monopoly Capital\u201d by Harry Braverman. Reading either or both works would compel Wu to come to terms with the essential fact that the immiseration of labor, the concentration of wealth and, it follows, of political power is endemic to Capitalism. No amount of \u201cre-democratization of economic policy\u201d nor \u201cpolitics of wealth redistribution,\u201d even when implemented, will stand the test of time. The \u201cmaterial forces\u201d described in detail in the works of Baran, Sweezy and Braverman will always come to the fore and override any social, legal, economic or political controls on Capital much like a bucking bronco eventually throws off its rider.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0Sure, in the post WW2 period the western middle and working classes saw their lot improve so that \u201cby the 1960s the share of national income going to the top 1% had fallen to 8%\u201d But this was due to a number of factors, some of which were historically unique and are not reproducible. Out of the ashes of the war the United States rose to a pre-eminent position (enshrined by the establishment of the Bretton Woods) in world affairs and could afford to extend the wealth blanket as it were to the lower classes. In any case, the Western ruling classes were left with little choice as the example of the Soviet Union along with the labor movements of the 1930s and 1940s followed by the various movements of the 1960s made clear the working classes wanted their piece of the economic pie. The ruling classes seeing their apple cart (overflowing at the time) roiled thus decided that discretion is the better part of valor. For its part, however, the global South remained largely excluded from the bonanza which saw the rise of various anti-colonial struggles and independence movements following the war.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0In his idealism, Wu seems to lose this history and believes that reinvented and strengthened antitrust and anti-monopoly laws will right the ship. It will not. Nixon closed the gold window in 1973 and the dollar morphed in the fiat Petro-dollar. This essentially was the death knell for the Bretton Woods order whose coffin was later nailed shut by the election of Reagan and the opening salvos in the counter-offensive against labor combined with the race to deregulation which, from the standpoint of law, culminated with Clinton who put Glass-Steagall permanently to bed. Combine all of that with the fall of the Soviet Union and Nixon\u2019s opening to China (allowing the flood of US jobs to that country) and it\u2019s easy to draw a line between the ending of the golden era, at least in the US, of Capitalism and the rancid, putrefying finance capital ruled order we now suffer under. Personified, in the most fitting way, by the current occupant of the White House.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Wu wants to proceed via a middle way which, unsurprisingly, caters to his target audience and keeps him out of harm’s way while appearing progressive. But it is power, who has it is and why is what Wu and others like him need to grapple with. Not laws, as Wu argues, which reflects who has power rather than having power over.\u00a0 In sum, if antitrust and\/or anti-monopoly laws have historically been part of the solution, it has not been because of the beneficence of the rulers or simply the ideas in their heads. It has come about through struggle and contestation of power from below. It is in the arena of the street where power is contested not in the legislative or judicial halls of the bourgeois state. For the system\u2019s part, it, unlike the immediate post war years, finds itself in a downward spiral it has no progressive solution for. For it, austerity, monopoly, militarism, nationalism and many of the other ills Wu mentions is<\/i><\/b> going back to its roots. That makes Wu\u2019s project of a middle way a non-starter. That ship has long sailed and disappeared over the horizon of the possible.<\/span><\/p>\n

Postscript<\/b><\/span><\/p>\n

Reading the conclusion only reinforced what I thought of the book just by reading the introduction.\u00a0 Policy wonkishness at its best . . . or, maybe, worst depending on how you look at it. The question I’d have for him is how are “we” going to rebuild the country along these, at least partly mythical, ideals of the past over the violent, and I mean that literally, violent objections of the entrenched interests. If they treated Epstein, one of their own, the way they did what do you think they’d do to us? Gillens and Page<\/a> have already shown that we, the people, have essentially Zero effect on public policy. The elites do what the hell they want and everything else be damned. Laws no matter how robust are only as good as their mechanism of enforcement. Even in 2008 after years of rollbacks on banking regulations, there was still enough laws on the books to nail these corrupt banksters. What happened? Obama simply opened the vaults to the treasury while slapping down homeowners. Many of whom were people of color, now utterly ruined. Glad that the book was a gift; it saved me eight bucks.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Paperback: 154 pages Publisher: Columbia Global Reports (Nov. 13, 2018) Language: English ISBN-10: 0999745468 ISBN-13: 978-0999745465 Tim Wu\u2019s book is one of many books published in recent years by mainstream publishers purporting to have answers to the malaise Capitalism is mired in. Naturally, being given the imprimatur, of a \u201crespectable\u201d publishing house, Wu\u2019s book suffers […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14,13,110],"tags":[241,239,85,87],"class_list":["post-1179","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-eco","category-pol","category-society","tag-capitalism","tag-law","tag-politics","tag-society","post-preview"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/johnniequezada.me\/jqme\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1179","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/johnniequezada.me\/jqme\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/johnniequezada.me\/jqme\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/johnniequezada.me\/jqme\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/johnniequezada.me\/jqme\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1179"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"https:\/\/johnniequezada.me\/jqme\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1179\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2135,"href":"https:\/\/johnniequezada.me\/jqme\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1179\/revisions\/2135"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/johnniequezada.me\/jqme\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1179"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/johnniequezada.me\/jqme\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1179"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/johnniequezada.me\/jqme\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1179"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}