The Neo-Brandeisian Attack on Big Business
The ghost of Louis Brandeis is back — and he’s angry. As Rob Atkinson and Michael Lind write in National Review, Brandeis, nominated to the Supreme Court in 1916 by Woodrow Wilson, was the leading opponent of corporate bigness in his era. As economic historian Thomas K. McCraw writes, “Brandeis decided that big business could become big only through illegitimate means. By his frequent references to the ‘curse of bigness,’ he meant that bigness itself was the mark of Cain, a sign of prior sinning.”
Today, many on the left want to revive Brandeis, arguing that corporations not only are bigger than ever but also have become sinners against the progressive goals of greater fairness and democracy. Yet as Atkinson and Lind write in their forthcoming book Big Is Beautiful: Debunking the Mythology of Small Business, not only are the progressives’ claims about increasing economic concentration mostly in error, but large corporations are vastly more “progressive” than small businesses are. Bigger companies provide higher-wage jobs, better workplace benefits, lower prices, stronger environmental protection, and greater workplace diversity, safety, and stability, while engaging in less tax evasion. Regardless, neo-Brandeisians want to go back to an economy in which most Americans are employed in small, locally owned firms or worker co-ops, and they want to use aggressive antitrust enforcement to get there.
