The Crisis in Antitrust

Long-standing contradictions at the root of antitrust doctrine have today brought it to a crisis of policy. From its inception with the passage of the Sherman Act in 1890, antitrust has vacillated between the policy of preserving competition and the policy of preserving competitors from their more energetic and efficient rivals. It is the rapid acceleration of the latter protectionist trends in antitrust that has brought on the present crisis. Anti-free-market forces now have the upper hand and are steadily broadening and consolidating their victory. The continued acceptance and expansion of their doctrine, which today constitutes antitrust\u27s growing edge, threaten within the foreseeable future to destroy the antitrust laws as guarantors of a competitive economy