Jamal Awil

← The Road from Mont Pèlerin

Corporations can do no wrong. [fact]

Corporations can do no wrong, or at least they are not to be blamed if they do. This is one of the strongest areas of divergence from classical liberalism, with its ingrained suspicion of joint-stock companies and monopoly stretching from Adam Smith to Henry Simons. In the 1950s, the MPS set out entertaining suspicions of corporate power, with the ordoliberals especially concerned with the promotion of a strong antitrust capacity on the part of the state. But starting with the Chicago law and economics movement (see Van Horn, Chapter 6 in this volume) and then progressively spreading to treatments of entrepreneurs and the "markets for innovation," neoliberals began to argue consistently that not only was monopoly not harmful to the operation of the market, but in any event, it was an epiphenomenon attributable to the misguided activities of the state and interest groups.

Philip Mirowski & Dieter Plehwe (eds.), The Road from Mont Pèlerin, loc. 2133