Over the last decade, the once-sleepy field of antitrust has suddenly sprung to the forefront of public attention. The digitalization of the economy, the expansion of Big Tech, and the rise of platform monopolies have all raised deep questions about the nature of corporate power and law’s capacity to constrain it. Some scholars have argued that antitrust enforcement must be reinvigorated in substance and broadened in scope in order to combat rapidly rising economic inequality. Others have argued that antitrust law is ill-equipped to address these broad moral issues and instead must be re-focused on its traditional principles of consumer welfare maximization. Still others have argued for a mixed approach, asserting that antitrust law should be interpreted to protect a range of values, including political, economic, social, and moral goals. But despite their sharp disagreements, the dominant theories of antitrust share a common understanding about the proper means of achieving them: antitrust law is—and has always been—about promoting competition. The best way to pursue the ultimate goals of antitrust, this view holds, is to preserve rivalry between firms in the marketplace. In other words, the supreme evil of market regulation is cooperation, and antitrust regulators must do everything in their power to stop it.

But, as this Article shows, the conventional wisdom about the underlying principles of antitrust is based on a misunderstanding of history. In particular, the dominant accounts of antitrust today underestimate the role that economic cooperation played in informing legislators’ beliefs about how to regulate markets. Historically, politicians, legislators, and policymakers frequently voiced the opinion that capitalism required a careful balancing of competition with its counterpart, cooperation. Functioning markets required rivalrous behavior, to be sure, but they also required cooperative behavior. Corporations needed to raise capital, hire employees, and sign contracts. All of these actions involved the crafting of agreement between economic actors with diverse interests. They also, importantly, required the active intervention of the law. When the pillars of American antitrust law were being laid, this dynamic was well-recognized. From the Sherman Antitrust Act of 1890 to the Clayton Antitrust Act of 1914 to the Hart-Scott-Rodino Antitrust Improvements Act of 1976, market regulation was structured around a careful balancing of competing forces. Legislators did not wish to eliminate cooperation from the American economy—they wished to channel it. 

This lost history of antitrust law sheds light on the broader question of how corporate law both shapes and is shaped by beliefs about the ideal ordering of economic activity. Should a national economy be structured around large corporations or small ones? Should it be focused on increasing production or protecting resources? Should it balance incomes, or increase the rewards to success, or incentivize moral behavior, or something else entirely? These fundamental questions were all at play during the key moments of antitrust law, and the ways that society fashioned answers to them have had long-standing effects on the direction of the American economy. And while some would argue that one single principle (say, efficiency, or competition or sustainability) should triumph over others, these principles were never firmly established through legislation and remain deeply contested. More broadly, this Article aims to reignite a conversation about the purpose of markets and how we as a society should regulate them. Antitrust has played an outsized role in determining the way that citizens, firms, and regulators envision our economy. Indeed, it is the most axiomatic (if not the most enforced) tenet of economic regulation today that anti-competitive behavior is illegal. But it was not always so, and it might not be again.