ABSTRACT
As with social efficiency, and its neglect of technical dynamics, the paradox of the unexercised power of the large corporation begins with an important oversight in the underlying economic theory. In the competitive model — the economy of many sellers each with a small share of the total market — the restraint on the private exercise of economic power was provided by other firms on the same side of the market. The operation of countervailing power is to be seen with the greatest clarity in the labor market where it is also most fully developed. Because of his comparative immobility, the individual worker has long been highly vulnerable to private economic power. The labor market serves admirably to illustrate the incentives to the development of countervailing power and it is of great importance in this market. Countervailing power in the retail business is identified with the large and powerful retail enterprises.
