Antitrust and Global Capitalism, 1930}}}2004 [Hardcover]

This book describes how the international spread of antitrust suggested the historical process shaping global capitalism.Since the Great Depression , the influence of big business grew throughout the world. Americans sought to impose accountability on U.S. big business through a system of regulation they invented-antitrust. During the 1930s, Britain, France, and Australia, Germany, and Japan all rejected antitrust as unsuited to their institutions and cultures. After World War II, however, these same and other nations adopted antitrust. Why? This book employs history to reveal how antitrust fostered an international competition consciousness capable of curbing global capitalism.Since the Great Depression , the influence of big business grew throughout the world. Americans sought to impose accountability on U.S. big business through a system of regulation they invented-antitrust. During the 1930s, Britain, France, and Australia, Germany, and Japan all rejected antitrust as unsuited to their institutions and cultures. After World War II, however, these same and other nations adopted antitrust. Why? This book employs history to reveal how antitrust fostered an international competition consciousness capable of curbing global capitalism.The international spread of antitrust suggested the historical process shaping global capitalism. By the 1930s, Americans feared that big business exceeded the government's capacity to impose accountability, engendering the most aggressive antitrust campaign in history. Meanwhile, big business had emerged to varying degrees in liberal Britain, Australia and France, Nazi Germany, and militarist Japan. These same nations nonetheless expressly rejected American-style antitrust as unsuited to their cultures and institutions. After World War II, however, governments in these nations--as well as the European Community--adopted workable antitrust regimes. By the millennium antitrust was instrumental to the clash between state sovereignty andlS"