Book Reviews

• Author: Corwin D. Edwards
• Published date: 01 June 1974
• Date: 01 June 1974
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1177/0003603X7401900221
• Subject Matter: Book Reviews

BOOK

REVIEWS

44f)

Helmut

Arndt,

Morkt

und

Macht, Tiibingen:

J.

C. B. Mohr

(1973), 195 pp., 29 German marks.

This, the first volume of what is

planned

as a two-volume

work, is intended to

set

forth

the basic concepts of a

theory

of

market

power. As a

professor

in Berlin,

Professor

Arndt

lives amid the swirl of conflict between

the

ideas of com-

munism

and

capitalism. He believes

that

both

bodies of ideas

have obscured the

true

relationship between markets and

power. On the one hand, classical and neo-classical economists

are

wrong

in thinking

that

the

market

is

an

institution

that

inhibits possession

and

abuse of power. On the other hand,

communists

are

wrong in thinking

that

exploitation is a

necessary consequence of a

market

economy. Possession

and abuse of economic power

are

not limited to

any

particular

economic system. Such phenomena can exist both in

private

economies

and

in economies directed by the state.

What

hap-

pens in

markets

is the result of public laws

that

can be so

devised as to preclude or

foster

exploitation. To counteract

abuse of power is a problem

for

every society.

The

first

part

of this book is an effort to

set

forth

the con-

cepts of the functioning of the

market

that

are

valid

for

both

capitalist

and

communist

markets

and

that

can be used in

subsequent analyses of

market

power. Since the exposition

is intended as

that

appropriate

to an

introductory

textbook,

much of

it

seems elementary.

Its

novelties consist in avoiding

formulations

that

Professor

Arndt

considers

inappropriate

for subsequent discussion of economic power.

The second

part

attempts

adefinition

and

analysis of eco-

nomic power.

It

begins with assertion

that

analyses of eco-

nomic power

and

its

abuse were precluded

both

by the classi-

cal economists, who saw the relevant phenomena as expres-

sions of

natural

law,

and

by

Marx

and

his successors, who,

seeing monopoly as

the

inescapable

result

of capitalism,

ignored phenomena of the exercise of power

that

their

theory

could not explain. Much of the subsequent exposition of

Pro-

fessor

Arndt's

theory consists of analytical differentiation