Competition and Equality: A Republican Account

Abstract

This chapter contributes to the growing literature on competition, competition law and (in)equality by shedding light on the conceptual foundations of the relationship between competitive markets and equality. In so doing, the chapter makes four contributions to the literature. First, it proposes an intellectual history of the relationship between equality and competition in liberal economic and political thought about markets. It traces the idea that competitive markets promote equality back to early liberal 17 th and 18 th century thinkers who celebrated the emergence of competitive markets because of their conduciveness towards greater socio-economic and political equality and freedom. This egalitarian understanding of competitive markets, the chapter argues, was deeply rooted in a republican notion of economic liberty as non-domination and independence. Second, the chapter traces how this egalitarian and republican understanding of economic liberty and competition put the concern about the adverse effect of concentrated economic power on equality of opportunity and wealth at the heart of the formative era of US antitrust and the Ordoliberal foundations of EU competition law. Third, the chapter describes how the rise of the Chicago School and the consumer welfare standard displaced this republican understanding of economic liberty and competition with a narrow negative understanding of economic liberty that is largely indifferent about inequalities of economic opportunities, power, and wealth. Fourth, the chapter explores three pragmatic avenues to realign antitrust law with the republican ideal of economic liberty with a view to reincorporating concerns about equality of opportunity and distributive equality into antitrust analysis. Refrenate coemptiones istas diuitum, ac uelut monopolii exercendi licentiam.Suffer not thies ryche men to bye vp all, to ingrosse and forstalle, and with theyr monopolye to kepe the market alone as please them. 1