Ordoliberals and Chicagoans irreconcilably diverged on economic power and monopoly

Evidence

The ordoliberals, however, held steadfast to their belief that monopoly, large corporations, exclusionary practices, and other concentrations of economic power or utilizations of economic power were harmful to the operation of the market. Like Simons, the ordoliberals feared that economic power perniciously threatened society’s freedom by eliminating competition: “For Eucken and his colleagues, history … had demonstrated that competition tended to collapse, because enterprises … were frequently able to acquire such high levels of economics power that they could eliminate competition” (Gerber 1998, 250). The Chicago neoliberals had no such reservations. In the 1960s and 1970s, when they turned their attention to other areas of law, they gave no weight to considerations of economic power in their analyses. — Philip Mirowski & Dieter Plehwe (eds.), The Road from Mont Pèlerin, 1154

Categorization

• ADDENDUM: Directly supports the competition-vs-power axis running through the Chicago/ordoliberal divide; could extend any framing of anti-monopoly policy history.
• XREF: connects to: Ordoliberalism grants the state a stronger role than Austrian or Chicago neoliberalism does — Philip Mirowski & Dieter Plehwe (eds.), The Road from Mont Pèlerin: The Making…, 503; Chicago and ordoliberal positions on monopoly were initially similar, not opposed — Philip Mirowski & Dieter Plehwe (eds.), The Road from Mont Pèlerin: The Making…, 1078; Chicago and ordoliberal monopoly views converged in the immediate postwar period — Philip Mirowski & Dieter Plehwe (eds.), The Road from Mont Pèlerin: The Making…, 1085 (+3 more)

Broader Connections

• Early Chicago economists saw private monopoly as a lesser evil than public regulation #exemplifies (0.85) — Philip Mirowski & Dieter Plehwe (eds.), The Road from Mont Pèlerin, 1186
• Neoliberalism inverted classical liberalism by defending monopoly and corporate power #expands (0.80) — Philip Mirowski, Never Let a Serious Crisis Go to Waste, 175