For Christophers, capitalism is always poised on a knife edge “between the contradictory forces of competition and monopoly, and perennially in danger of lapsing too far to one side or the other” (9). Capitalism avoids disasters by deploying law—antitrust law (“competition law” in Europe)—to reduce monopolization to a tolerable level, and intellectual-property law to encourage innovation. These areas of law are intimately related conceptually, because intellectual-property law confers the power to prevent others from exploiting patents or trademarks, thus creating monopolies with respect to its subject.
Christophers paints with a broad brush, though, in passing, he concedes that he has simplified certain areas for purposes of clarification. Mapping large-scale economic developments from the late nineteenth century to the present and focusing on the United States and Great Britain, he identifies three periods of pendulum-like cycling (214). From the late nineteenth century to around 1946, a combination of strong intellectual-property rules...