Abstract
The reigning antitrust paradigm has turned the notion of competition into a talisman, even as antitrust law in reality has functioned as a sorting mechanism to elevate one species of economic coordination and undermine others. Thus, the ideal state idea of competition and its companion, allocative efficiency, have been deployed to attack disfavored forms of economic coordination, both within antitrust and beyond. These include horizontal coordination beyond firm boundaries, democratic market coordination, and labor unions. Meanwhile, a very specific exception to the competitive order has been written into the law for one type of coordination, and one type only: that embodied by the traditionally organized, top-down business firm.
This Article traces the appearance of this legal preference and reveals its logical content. It also explains why antitrust’s firm exemption is a specific policy choice that cannot be derived from corporate law, contracts, or property. Indeed, because antitrust has effectively established a state monopoly on the allocation of coordination rights, we ought to view coordination rights as a public resource, to be allocated and regulated in the public interest rather than for the pursuit of only private ends. Intrafirm coordination is conventionally viewed as entirely private, buoyed up by the contractarian theory of the firm. But the contractarian view of the firm cannot explain antitrust’s firm exemption and is inconsistent with the conventional justifications for it. This Article also briefly sketches policy choices that flow from the recognition that coordination rights are a public resource, focusing upon expanding the right to engage in horizontal coordination beyond firm boundaries.
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