BOOK REVIEW
Alternating Pressures of Antitrust
and Intellectual Property
Thomas E Weisskopf
B
rett Christophers has written a
stimulating, if at times repetitive,
book that underlines the impor-
tance of intellectual property (IP) law and
antitrust (AT) law in shaping the
institutional structure of capitalist econ-
omies. Among the strengths of The Great
Leveler is its detailed description of how IP
lawsprotecting patents, copyrights, and
trademarksand AT laws have evolved
in the United States (US) and the United
Kingdom (UK) since the 19th century. He
shows convincingly that they have alter-
nated between periods in which (via
stronger IP and weaker AT) they have
promoted greater monopolisation, and
periods in which (via weaker IP and
stronger AT) they have promoted greater
competition. His analysis of how IP laws
in recent decades have been increasingly
harmonised at an international level to
favour corporate capitalists is compelling.
And, he presents evidence that overall
measures of profitability are higher when
a capitalist economy is in a relatively
monopolistic phase, than when it is in a
relatively competitive phase.
Christopherss emphasis on the impact
of IP and AT laws on the extent of monopoly
62
The Great Leveler: Capitalism and Competition
in the Court of Law by Brett Christophers; Cambridge,
Mass: Harvard University Press, 2016; pp 360, $46.50.
versus competition is insightful, though
he tends to downplay other factors that
have surely also affected the extent of
monopoly. And, there can be no doubt
that greater monopoly tends to lead to
higher profits. However, Christopherss
attempt to explain the alternating pat-
tern of laws, monopoly, and profitability
that he observes in the US and UK econo-
mies is unpersuasive. In the first two
chapters of the book, he develops a dia-
lectical theory inspired by his reading of
Karl Marx,1 in which the alternation of IP
and AT laws is attributed to a purported
need of capitalism to avoid excessive mo-
nopoly or excessive competition in order to
successfully reproduce itself. In building
his argument, he cites the work of many
Marxist scholars, from Marx himself to
David Harvey, but in so doing he does not
provide much evidence for his case.
Throughout the book, Christophers
presses the claim that as a capitalist econ-
omy evolves away from a knife edge be-
tween monopoly and competition, it veers
june 24, 2017
into an existential crisis that it can sur-
mount only by turning the tables and mov-
ing in the opposite direction. This knife
edge analogy is really not inappropriate:
a coin collapses away from the knife edge,
but a capitalist economy does not collapse
away from some central balance between
monopoly and competition. On the con-
trary, there is a wide range of monopo-
listic competition (to use Edward Cham-
berlins term) across which capitalism can
thrive. A better term for Christopherss
analogy would have been a pendulum:
as it swings away from an intermediate
position, pressures build up that eventu-
ally reverse the direction of its swing.
More importantly, however, Christo-
pherss pendulum theory of alternating
pressures on capitalism to become more
monopolistic and more competitive is
much too functionalist. He does not ad-
equately address the way in which capi-
talisms needs are actually translated into
actions that serve those needs. It would
not be hard to show how individual capi-
talists, at a time of excessive competi-
tion, could and would act to bring about
a higher degree of monopoly. At a time
of excessive monopoly, however, it is not
at all clear whether individual capitalists
would actually seek to bring about more
competition, nor how they would do so.
Presumably, government actors would
play an important role, but Christophers
does not analyse the processes by which
capitalists influence the development of
laws and of economic policy.
vol lii nos 25 & 26 EPW Economic & Political Weekly

A related problem is that Christophers
fails to distinguish clearly and consist-
ently bet ween product-market monopoly
power, relating to a firms ability to shape
its immediate economic environment,
and aggregate-level monopoly power,
relating to a firms ability to influence
government policy as it affects the
firms broader economic environment.
It would have been very helpful for him
to provide at the outset a clear definition
of the extent of monopoly (as opposed
to competition), as well as a clear idea
of how to measure that extent; if not
also a rough time series of how it has
evolved over time in the US and the UK.
At various points he suggests that he has
in mind Michal Kaleckis concept of the
degree of monopoly, which approxi-
mates to the factor share of capital in
national income. But, that would link the
extent of monopoly definitionally, rather
than causally, to overall profitability.
From Theory to History
Christopherss analysis evokes comparison
with other schools of thought that theorise
capitalist economies as moving in time
through successive long waves, each char-
acterised by a period of successful perfor-
mance that ultimately yields to economic
crisis, which in turn set the stage for a suc-
ceeding long wave. In this context, he dis-
cusses the French school of regulation
theory, but he ignores entirely the North
American school of social structure of
accumulation (SSA) theory (Bowles et al
1983; McDonough et al 2010). This is re-
grettable, because the SSA theory poses an
interesting challenge to Christopherss
theory. Whereas he theorises continuous
alternation of monopolistic and competi-
tive capitalist regimes, the SSA theory
envisages a succession of SSAs whose
unique features are more significant than
any similarities with previous SSAs. There
can be no doubt that capitalist economies
are prone to enter into periodic economic
crises, and it is certainly plausible that re-
emergence from such crises requires sub-
stantial restructuring. But, why must the
restructuring always serve fundamentally
to restore a balance between excessive
monopoly and excessive competition?
In Part II of the book, Christophers
turns from theory to history, and here he
Economic & Political Weekly EPW june 24, 2017
adduces strong empirical evidence in
support of the alternation of relatively
monopolistic and relatively competitive
periods in the history of the US and the
UK since the mid-19th century.2 SSA the-
orists largely agree with Christophers
that a crisis in US capitalism in the late
19th century was brought on by exces-
sive competition and requiredand re-
sultedin greater monopolisation as a
solution. But, they do not agree that the
economic crisis of monopolistic US capi-
talism in the first part of the 20th century
required a restoration of greater compe-
tition. Christophers is persuasive in ar-
guing that changes in the application of
AT and IP laws in both the US and the UK
played a major role in creating a more
competitive economic environment dur-
ing the first three post-war decades, but
his claim that this was essential for
capitalist reproduction at the time rests
only on rather nebulous theorising.
Furthermore, SSA theorists do not agree
with Christophers that excessive competi-
tion in the post-war golden age was the
main cause of the US economic crisis of
the 1970s, requiring more monopolisation
as a solution. Instead, they argue that
Keynesian economic policies played a
much larger role in the golden age
than Christophers allows, and that the
growing strength of groups opposed to
US capitallabour, citizens, and foreign
competitorsplayed a more critical role
than excessive domestic competition in
bringing about the economic crisis of the
1970s. Christophers also argues that the
emergence of the US economy from the
stagflation of the 1970s, and the resultant
rise in profitability in the following dec-
ades was due to the re-assembly of dwin-
dling monopoly powers. It seems more
likely that what dragged the US economy
out of stagflation was the strangling of
inflation by very tight Federal Reserve
monetary policy that resulted in a deep
recession, after which expansive fiscal
policy could generate an economic boom.
And, to explain the rise in the profit share
of national income and the staggering
increase in inequality over the following
decades, there are many plausible factors
other than increasing monopolisation of
product markets, notably the increasing
ability of capitalists to steer government
vol lii nos 25 & 26
BOOK REVIEW
economic policy, as well as growing
economic globalisation and worker-
unfriendly changes in technology.
The evidence that Christophers pre-
sents from the history of the US and the
UK is simply not sufficient to demon-
strate that an alternating monopoly
competition dialectic has been at work
in these two countries, much less that
such a dialectic constitutes a fundamen-
tal law of motion of capitalism. To make
the latter case, one would need to go be-
yond the English-speaking domain and
undertake a comparative analysis of
more of the major capitalist economies
of the world.
In a coda at the end of the book,
Christophers declares that excess mo-
nopoly is now capitals existential prob-
lem. One would have expected him to
foresee a growing economic crisis lead-
ing ultimately to the restoration of great-
er competition. Yet he goes on to suggest
instead that the increasingly global na-
ture of monopoly power may well result
in a transition to an entirely new stage of
capitalism, one characterised above all
by the crystallisation of commanding
monopoly powers at the international
scale. This sounds much like the ever-
greater monopolisation hypothesis that
Christophers had earlier rejected. It is a
frightening prospect, and not an unreal-
istic hypothesis; but his own analysis im-
plies that it would not be sustainable.
Thomas E Weisskopf (tomw@umich.edu) is
Professor Emeritus of Economics at the University
of Michigan, Ann Arbor, Michigan, US.
Notes
1 It should be noted that Brett Christophers is
also quite critical of some aspects of Karl
Marxs economic thinking, in particular his
privileging of the sphere of production over the
sphere of circulation.
2 Among other things, he uses this evidence to
reject the views of Marxist scholars, such as
Rudolf Hilferding, Paul Baran and Paul
Sweezy, who expected modern capitalism to
remain highly monopolistic.
References
Bowles, S, D Gordon and T E Weisskopf (1983):
Beyond the Waste Land: A Democratic Alterna-
tive to Economic Decline, Doubleday & Co.
McDonough, T, M Reich and D M Kotz (eds)
(2010): Contemporary Capitalism and Its Cri-
ses: Social Structure of Accumulation Theory
for the 21st Century, Cambridge University
Press.
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