The union has thus achieved a restrictionist wage rate. It can be achieved regardless of the shape of the demand curve, grant­ing only that it is falling. The demand curve falls because of the diminishing DMVP of a factor and the diminishing marginal utility of the product. But a sacrifice has been made—specifically, there are now fewer workers hired, by an amount CF. What hap­pens to them? These discharged workers are the main losers in this procedure. Since the union represents the remaining workers, it does not have to concern itself, as the monopolist would, with the fate of these workers. At best, they must shift (being a non­specific factor, they can do so) to some other—nonunionized—in­dustry. The trouble is, however, that the workers are less suited to the new industry. Their having been in the now unionized industry implies that their DMVP in that industry was higher than in the industry to which they must shift; consequently, their wage rate is now lower. Moreover, their entry into the other in­dustry depresses the wage rates of the workers already there.

     Consequently, at best, a union can achieve a higher, restric­tionist wage rate for its members only at the expense of lower­ing the wage rates of all other workers in the economy. Produc­tion efforts in the economy are also distorted. But, in addition, the wider the scope of union activity and restrictionism in the economy, the more difficult it will be for workers to shift their locations and occupations to find nonunionized havens in which to work. And more and more the tendency will be for the dis­placed workers to remain permanently or quasi-permanently un­employed, eager to work but unable to find nonrestricted op­portunities for employment. The greater the scope of unionism, the more a permanent mass of unemployment will tend to de­velop.

     Unions try as hard as they can to plug all the “loop-holes” of nonunionism, to close all the escape hatches where the dispos­sessed workmen can find jobs. This is termed “ending the un­fair competition of nonunion, low-wage labor.” A universal union control and restrictionism would mean permanent mass unem­ployment, growing ever greater in proportion to the degree that the union exacted its restrictions.

     It is a common myth that only the old-style “craft” unions, which deliberately restrict their occupational group to highly skilled trades with relatively few numbers, can restrict the sup­ply of labor. They often maintain stringent standards of mem­bership and numerous devices to cut down the supply of labor entering the trade. This direct restriction of supply doubtless makes it easier to obtain higher wage rates for the remaining workers. But it is highly misleading to believe that the newer-­style “industrial” unions do not restrict supply. The fact that they welcome as many members in an industry as possible cloaks their restrictionist policy. The crucial point is that the unions insist on a minimum wage rate higher than what would be achieved for the given labor factor without the union. By doing so, as we saw in Figure 69, they necessarily cut the number of men whom the employer can hire. Ergo, the consequence of their pol­icy is to restrict the supply of labor, while at the same time they can piously maintain that they are inclusive and democratic, in contrast to the snobbish “aristocrats” of craft unionism.

     In fact, the consequences of industrial unionism are more dev­astating than those of craft unionism. For the craft unions, be­ing small in scope, displace and lower the wages of only a few workers. The industrial unions, larger and more inclusive, de­press wages and displace workers on a large scale and, what is even more important, can cause permanent mass unemployment.[60]

     There is another reason why an openly restrictionist union will cause less unemployment than a more liberal one. For the union which restricts its membership serves open warning on workers hoping to enter the industry that they are barred from joining the union. As a result, they will swiftly look elsewhere, where jobs can be found. Suppose the union is democratic, however, and open to all. Then, its activities can be described by the above figure; it has achieved a higher wage rate 0W for its working members. But such a wage rate, as can be seen on the SS curve, attracts more workers into the industry. In other words, while 0A workers were hired by the industry at the previous (non­union) wage AB, now the union has won a wage 0W. At this wage, only WC workers can be employed in the industry. But this wage also attracts more workers than before, namely WE. As a result, instead of only CF workers becoming unemployed from the union’s restrictionist wage rate, more—CE—will be un­employed in the industry.

     Thus, an open union does not have the one virtue of the closed union—rapid repulsion of the displaced workers from the union­ized industry. Instead, it attracts even more workers into the in­dustry, thus aggravating and swelling the amount of unemploy­ment. With market signals distorted, it will take a much longer time for workers to realize that no jobs are available in the in­dustry. The larger the scope of open unions in the economy, and the greater the differential between their restrictionist wage rates and the market wage rates, the more dangerous will the unem­ployment problem become.

     The unemployment and the misemployment of labor, caused by restrictionist wage rates need not always be directly visible. Thus, an industry might be particularly profitable and prosper­ous, either as a result of a rise in consumer demand for the prod­uct or from a cost-lowering innovation in the productive process. In the absence of unions, the industry would expand and hire more workers in response to the new market conditions. But if a union imposes a restrictionist wage rate, it may not cause the unemployment of any current workers in the industry; it may, instead, simply prevent the industry from expanding in response to the requirements of consumer demand and the conditions of the market. Here, in short, the union destroys potential jobs in the making and imposes a misallocation of production by pre­venting expansion. It is true that, without the union, the indus­try will bid up wage rates in the process of expansion; but if unions impose a higher wage rate at the beginning, the expan­sion will not occur.[61]

     Some opponents of unionism go to the extreme of maintain­ing that unions can never be free-market phenomena and are always “monopolistic” or coercive institutions. Although this might be true in actual practice, it is not necessarily true. It is very possible that labor unions might arise on the free market and even gain restrictionist wage rates.

     How can unions achieve restrictionist wage rates on the free market? The answer can be found by considering the displaced workers. The key problem is: Why do the workers let them­selves be displaced by the union’s WW minimum? Since they were willing to work for less before, why do they now meekly agree to being fired and looking for a poorer-paying job? Why do some remain content to continue in a quasi-permanent pocket of unemployment in an industry, waiting to be hired at the ex­cessively high rate? The only answer, in the absence of coercion, is that they have adopted on a commandingly high place on their value scales the goal of not undercutting union wage rates. Unions, naturally, are most anxious to persuade workers, both union and nonunion, as well as the general public, to believe strongly in the sinfulness of undercutting union wage rates. This is shown most clearly in those situations where union members refuse to continue working for a firm at a wage rate below a cer­tain minimum (or on other terms of employment). This situa­tion is known as a strike. The most curious thing about a strike is that the unions have been able to spread the belief through­out society that the striking members are still “really” working for the company even when they are deliberately and proudly refusing to do so. The natural answer of the employer, of course, is to turn somewhere else and to hire laborers who are willing to work on the terms offered. Yet unions have been remarkably successful in spreading the idea through society that anyone who accepts such an offer—the “strikebreaker”—is the lowest form of human life.

     To the extent, then, that nonunion workers feel ashamed or guilty about “strike-breaking” or other forms of undercutting union-proclaimed wage scales, the displaced or unemployed work­ers agree to their own fate. These workers, in effect, are being displaced to poorer and less satisfying jobs voluntarily and re­main unemployed for long stretches of time voluntarily. It is voluntary because that is the consequence of their voluntary ac­ceptance of the mystique of “not crossing the picket line” or of not being a strikebreaker.

     The economist qua economist can have no quarrel with a man who voluntarily comes to the conclusion that it is more impor­tant to preserve union solidarity than to have a good job. But there is one thing an economist can do: he can point out to the worker the consequences of his voluntary decision. There are un­doubtedly countless numbers of workers who do not realize that their refusal to cross a picket line, their “sticking to the union,” may result in their losing their jobs and remaining unemployed. They do not realize this because to do so requires knowledge of a chain of praxeological reasoning (such as we have been fol­lowing here). The consumer who purchases directly enjoyable services does not have to be enlightened by economists; he needs no lengthy chain of reasoning to know that his clothing or car or food is enjoyable or serviceable. He can see each perform its service before his eyes. Similarly, the capitalist-entrepreneur does not need the economist to tell him what acts will be profitable or unprofitable. He can see and test them by means of his profits or losses. But for a grasp of the consequences of acts of govern­mental intervention in the market or of union activity, knowl­edge of praxeology is requisite.[62]

     Economics cannot itself decide on ethical judgments. But in order for anyone to make ethical judgments rationally, he must know the consequences of his various alternative courses of ac­tion. In questions of government intervention or union action, economics supplies the knowledge of these consequences. Knowl­edge of economics is therefore necessary, though not sufficient, for making a rational ethical judgment in these fields. As for unions, the consequences of their activity, when discovered (e.g., displacement or unemployment for oneself or others), will be con­sidered unfortunate by most people. Therefore, it is certain that when knowledge of these consequences becomes widespread, far fewer people will be “prounion” or hostile to “nonunion” com­petitors.[63]

     Such conclusions will be reinforced when people learn of an­other consequence of trade union activity: that a restrictionist wage raises costs of production for the firms in the industry. This means that the marginal firms in the industry—the ones whose entrepreneurs earn only a bare rent—will be driven out of busi­ness, for their costs have risen above their most profitable price on the market—the price that had already been attained. Their ejection from the market and the general rise of average costs in the industry signify a general fall in productivity and out­put, and hence a loss to the consumers.[64] Displacement and un­employment, of course, also impair the general standard of liv­ing of the consumers.

     Unions have had other important economic consequences. Unions are not producing organizations; they do not work for capitalists to improve production.[65] Rather they attempt to per­suade workers that they can better their lot at the expense of the employer. Consequently, they invariably attempt as much as possible to establish work rules that hinder management’s direc­tives. These work rules amount to preventing management from arranging workers and equipment as it sees fit. In other words, instead of agreeing to submit to the work orders of management in exchange for his pay, the worker now sets up not only mini­mum wages, but also work rules without which he refuses to work. The effect of these rules is to lower the marginal produc­tivity of all union workers. The lowering of marginal value­-product schedules has a twofold result: (1) it itself establishes a restrictionist wage scale with its various consequences, for the marginal value product has fallen while the union insists that the wage rate remain the same; (2) consumers lose by a general lowering of productivity and living standards. Restrictive work rules therefore also lower output. All this is perfectly consistent with a society of individual sovereignty, however, provided al­ways that no force is employed by the union.

     To advocate coercive abolition of these work rules would im­ply literal enslavement of the workers to the dictates of catal­lactic consumers. But, once again, it is certain that knowledge of these various consequences of union activity would greatly weaken the voluntary adherence of many workers and others to the mystique of unionism.[66]

     Unions, therefore, are theoretically compatible with the exist­ence of a purely free market. In actual fact, however, it is evi­dent to any competent observer that unions acquire almost all their power through the wielding of force, specifically force against strikebreakers and against the property of employers. An implicit license to unions to commit violence against strikebreakers is prac­tically universal. Police commonly either remain “neutral” when strikebreakers are molested or else blame the strikebreakers for “provoking” the attacks upon them. Certainly, few pretend that the institution of mass picketing by unions is simply a method of advertising the fact of a strike to anyone passing by. These matters, however, are empirical rather than theoretical questions. Theoretically, we may say that it is possible to have unions on a free market, although empirically we may question how great their scope would be.

     Analytically, we can also say that when unions are permitted to resort to violence, the state or other enforcing agency has im­plicitly delegated this power to the unions. The unions, then, have become “private states.”[67]

     We have, in this section, investigated the consequences of unions’ achieving restrictionist prices. This is not to imply, how­ever, that unions always achieve such prices in collective bargain­ing. Indeed, because unions do not own workers and therefore do not sell their labor, the collective bargaining of unions is an artificial replacement for the smooth workings of “individual bar­gaining” on the labor market. Whereas wage rates on the non­union labor market will always tend toward equilibrium in a smooth and harmonious manner, its replacement by collective bargaining leaves the negotiators with little or no rudder, with little guidance on what the proper wage rates would be. Even with both sides trying to find the market rate, neither of the parties to the bargain could be sure that a given wage agreement is too high, too low, or approximately correct. Almost invariably, furthermore, the union is not trying to discover the market rate, but to impose various arbitrary “principles” of wage determina­tion, such as “keeping up with the cost of living,” a “living wage,” the “going rate” for comparable labor in other firms or indus­tries, an annual average “productivity” increase, “fair differen­tials,” etc.[68]

B. Some Arguments for Unions: A Critique

      (1)  Indeterminacy[69]

     A favorite reply of union advocates to the above analysis is this: “Oh, that is all very well, but you are overlooking the in­determinacy of wage rates. Wage rates are determined by mar­ginal productivity in a zone rather than at a point; and within that zone unions have an opportunity to bargain collectively for increased wages without the admittedly unpleasant effects of un­employment or displacement of workers to poorer jobs.” It is curious that many writers move smoothly through rigorous price analysis until they come to wage rates, when suddenly they lay heavy stress on indeterminacy, the huge zones within which the price makes no difference, etc.

     In the first place, the scope of indeterminacy is very small in the modern world. We have seen above that, in a two-person barter situation, there is likely to be a large zone of indetermi­nacy between the buyer’s maximum demand price and the seller’s minimum supply price for a quantity of a good. Within this zone, we can only leave the determination of the price to bar­gaining. However, it is precisely the characteristic of an advanced monetary economy that these zones are ever and ever narrowed and lose their importance. The zone is only between the “mar­ginal pairs” of buyers and sellers, and this zone is constantly dwindling as the number of people and alternatives in the mar­ket increase. Growing civilization, therefore, is always narrowing the importance of indeterminacies.

     Secondly, there is no reason whatever why a zone of indeter­minacy should be more important for the labor market than for the market for the price of any other good.

     Thirdly, suppose that there is a zone of indeterminacy for a labor market, and let us assume that no union is present. This means that there is a certain zone, the length of which can be said to equal a zone of the discounted marginal value product of the factor. This, parenthetically, is far less likely than the ex­istence of a zone for a consumers’ good, since in the former case there is a specific amount, a DMVP, to be estimated. But the maximum of the supposed zone is the highest point at which the wage equals the DMVP. Now, competition among employers will tend to raise factor prices to precisely that height at which profits will be wiped out. In other words, wages will tend to be raised to the maximum of any zone of the DMVP.

     Rather than wages being habitually at the bottom of a zone, presenting unions with a golden opportunity to raise wages to the top, the truth is quite the reverse. Assuming the highly un­likely case that any zone exists at all, wages will tend to be at the top, so that the only remaining indeterminacy is downward. Unions would have no room for increasing wages within that zone.

     (2)  Monopsony and Oligopsony

     It is often alleged that the buyers of labor—the employers—have some sort of monopoly and earn a monopoly gain, and that therefore there is room for unions to raise wage rates without injuring other laborers. However, such a “monopsony” for the purchase of labor would have to encompass all the entrepreneurs in the society. If it did not, then labor, a nonspecific factor, could move into other firms and other industries. And we have seen that one big cartel cannot exist on the market. Therefore, a “monopsony’‘ cannot exist.

     The “problem” of  “oligopsony”—a “few” buyers of labor—is a pseudo problem. As long as there is no monopsony, competing employers will tend to drive up wage rates until they equal their DMVPs. The number of competitors is irrelevant; this depends on the concrete data of the market. Below, we shall see the fal­lacy of the idea of “monopolistic” or “imperfect” competition, of which this is an example. Briefly, the case of “oligopsony” rests on a distinction between the case of “pure” or “perfect”com­petition, in which there is an allegedly horizontal—infinitely elas­tic—supply curve of labor, and the supposedly less elastic supply curve of the “imperfect” oligopsony. Actually, since people do not move en masse and all at once, the supply curve is never infinitely elastic, and the distinction has no relevance. There is only free competition, and no other dichotomies, such as between pure competition and oligopsony, can be established. The shape of the supply curve, furthermore, makes no difference to the truth that labor or any other factor tends to get its DMVP on the market.

     (3) Greater Efficiency and the “Ricardo Effect”

     One common prounion argument is that unions benefit the economy through forcing higher wages on the employers. At these higher wages the workers will become more efficient, and their marginal productivity will rise as a result. If this were true, how­ever, no unions would be needed. Employers, ever eager for greater profits, would see this and pay higher wages now to reap the benefits of the allegedly higher productivity in the future. As a matter of fact, employers often train workers, paying higher wages than their present marginal product justifies, in order to reap the benefits of their increased productivity in later years.

     A more sophisticated variant of this thesis was advanced by Ricardo and has been revived by Hayek. This doctrine holds that union-induced higher wage rates encourage employers to substi­tute machinery for labor. This added machinery increases the capital per worker and raises the marginal productivity of labor, thereby paying for the higher wage rates. The fallacy here is that only increased saving can make more capital available. Capital in­vestment is limited by saving. Union wage increases do not in­crease the total supply of capital available. Therefore, there can be no general rise in labor productivity. Instead, the potential supply of capital is shifted (not increased) from other industries to those industries with higher wage rates. And it is shifted to industries where it would have been less profitable under non­union conditions. The fact that an induced higher wage rate shifts capital to the industry does not indicate economic progress, but rather an attempt, never fully successful, to offset an economic retrogression—a higher cost in the manufacture of the product. Hence, the shift is “uneconomic.”

     A related thesis is that higher wage rates will spur employers to invent new technological methods to make labor more efficient. Here again, however, the supply of capital goods is limited by the savings available, and there is almost always a sheaf of technologi­cal opportunities awaiting more capital anyway. Furthermore, the spur of competition and the desire of the producer to keep and increase his custom is enough of an incentive to increase produc­tivity in his firm, without the added burden of unionism.[70]

5. The Theory of Monopolistic or Imperfect Competition

A. Monopolistic Competitive Price

     The theory of monopoly price has been generally superseded in the literature by the theories of “monopolistic” or “imperfect” competition.[71] As against the older theory, the latter have the advantage of setting up identifiable criteria for their categories— such as a perfectly elastic demand curve for pure competition. Unfortunately, these criteria turn out to be completely fallacious.

     Essentially, the chief characteristic of the imperfect-competi­tion theories is that they uphold as their “ideal” the state of “pure competition” rather than “competition” or “free competi­tion.” Pure competition is defined as that state in which the de­mand curve for each firm in the economy is perfectly elastic, i.e., the demand curve as presented to the firm is completely horizon­tal. In this supposedly pristine state of affairs, no one firm can, through its actions, possibly have any influence over the price of its product. Its price is then “set” for it by the market. Any amount it produces can and will be sold at this ruling price. In general, it is this state of affairs, or else this state without uncer­tainty (“perfect competition”), that has received most of the elaborate analysis in recent years. This is true both for those who believe that pure competition fairly well represents the real economy and for their opponents, who consider it only an ideal with which to contrast the actual “monopolistic” state of affairs. Both camps, however, join in upholding pure competition as the ideal system for the general welfare, in contrast to various vague “monopoloid” states that occur when there is departure from the purely competitive world.

     The pure-competition theory, however, is an utterly fallacious one. It envisages an absurd state of affairs, never realizable in practice, and far from idyllic if it were. In the first place, there can be no such thing as a firm without influence on its price. The monopolistic-competition theorist contrasts this ideal firm with those firms that have some influence on the determination of price and are therefore in some degree “monopolistic.” Yet it is obvious that the demand curve to a firm cannot be perfectly elastic throughout. At some points, it must dip downward, since the increase in supply will tend to lower market price. As a mat­ter of fact, it is clear from our construction of the demand curve that there can be no stretch of the demand curve, however small, that is horizontal, although there can be small vertical stretches. In aggregating the market demand curve, we saw that for each hypothetical price, the consumers will decide to purchase a cer­tain amount. If the producers attempt to sell a larger amount, they will have to conclude their sale at a lower price in order to attract an increased demand. Even a very small increase in supply will lead to a perhaps very small lowering of price. The individual firm, no matter how small, always has a perceptible influence on the total supply. In an industry of small wheat farms (the implicit model for “pure competition”), each small farm contributes a part of the total supply, and there can be no total without a contribution from each farm. Therefore, each farm has a perceptible, even if very small, influence. No per­fectly elastic demand curve can, then, be postulated even in such a case. The error in believing in “perfect elasticity” stems from the use of such mathematical concepts as “second order of smalls,” by which infinite negligibility of steps can be assumed. But eco­nomics analyzes real human action, and such real action must always be concerned with discrete, perceptible steps, and never with “infinitely small” steps.

     Of course, the demand curve for each small wheat farm is likely to be very highly, almost perfectly, elastic. And yet the fact that it is not “perfect” destroys the entire concept of pure competition. For how does this situation differ from, say, the Hershey Choco­late Company if the demand curve for the latter firm is also elastic? Once it is conceded that all demand curves to firms must be falling, the monopolistic-competition theorist can make no further analytic distinctions.

     We cannot compare or classify the curves on the basis of degrees of elasticity, since there is nothing in the Chamberlin-­Robinson monopolistic-competition analysis, or in any part of praxeology for that matter, that permits us to do so, once the case of pure competition is rejected. For praxeology cannot estab­lish quantitative laws, only qualitative ones. Indeed, the only recourse of monopolistic-competition theorists would be to fall back on the concepts of “inelastic” vs. “elastic” demand curves, and this would precisely plunge them right back into the old monopoly-price vs. competitive-price dichotomy. They would have to say, with the old monopoly-price theorists, that if the demand curve for the firm is more than unitarily elastic at the equilibrium point, the firm will remain at the “competitive” price; that if the curve is inelastic, it will rise to a monopoly-price position. But, as we have already seen in detail, the monop­oly-competitive price dichotomy is untenable.

     According to the monopolistic-competition theorists, the two influences sabotaging the possible existence of pure competition are “differentiation of product” and “oligopoly,” or fewness of firms, where one firm influences the actions of others. As to the former, the producers are accused of creating an artificial differ­entiation among products in the mind of the public, thus carving out for themselves a portion of monopoly. And Chamberlin origi­nally attempted to distinguish “groups” of producers selling “slightly” differentiated products from old-fashioned “industries” of firms making identical products. Neither of these attempts has any validity. If a producer is making a product different from that of another producer, then he is a unique “industry”; there is no rational basis for any grouping of varied producers, par­ticularly in aggregating their demand curves. Furthermore, the consuming public decides on the differentiation of products on its value scales. There is nothing “artificial” about the differen­tiation, and indeed this differentiation serves to cater more closely to the multifarious wants of the consumers.[72] It is clear, of course, that Ford has a monopoly on the sale of Ford cars; but this is a full “monopoly” rather than a “monopolistic” tendency. Also, it is difficult to see what difference can come from the number of firms that are producing the same product, particularly once we discard the myth of pure competition and perfect elasticity. Much ado indeed has been made about strategies, “warfare,” etc., be­tween oligopolists, but there is little point to such discussions. Either the firms are independent and therefore competing, or they are acting jointly and therefore cartelizing. There is no third alternative.

     Once the perfect-elasticity myth has been discarded, it becomes clear that all the tedious discussion about the number and size of firms and groups and differentiation, etc., becomes irrelevant. It becomes relevant only for economic history, and not for eco­nomic analysis.

     It might be objected that there is a substantial problem of oligopoly: that, under oligopoly, each firm has to take into ac­count the reactions of competing firms, whereas under pure com­petition or differentiated products without oligopoly, each firm can operate in the blissful awareness that no competitor will take account of its actions or change its actions accordingly. Hiram Jones, the small wheat farmer, can set his production policy without wondering what Ezra Smith will do when he discovers what Jones’ policy is. Ford, on the other hand, must consider General Motors’ reactions, and vice versa. Many writers, in fact, have gone so far as to maintain that economics can simply not be applied to these “oligopoly” situations, that these are indeter­minate situations where “anything may happen.” They define the buyers’ demand curve that presents itself to the firm as as­suming no reaction by competing firms. Then, since “few firms” exist and each firm takes account of the reactions of others, they proceed to the conclusion that in the real world all is chaos, in­comprehensible to economic analysis.

     These alleged difficulties are nonexistent, however. There is no reason why the demand curve to a firm cannot include ex­pected reactions by other firms.[73] The demand curve to a firm is the set of a firm’s expectations, at any time, of how many units of its product consumers will buy at an alternative series of prices. What interests the producer is the hypothetical set of consumer demands at each price. He is not interested in what consumer de­mand will be in various sets of nonexistent situations. His expec­tations will be based on his judgment of what would actually happen should he charge various alternative prices. If his rivals will react in a certain way to his charging a higher or a lower price, then it is each firm’s business to forecast and take account of this reaction in so far as it will affect buyers’ demand for its particular product. There would be little sense in ignoring such reactions if they were relevant to the demand for its product or in including them if they were not. A firm’s estimated demand curve, therefore, already includes any expected reactions of rivals.

     The relevant consideration is not the fewness of the firms or the state of hostility or friendship existing among firms. Those writers who discuss oligopoly in terms applicable to games of poker or to military warfare are entirely in error. The funda­mental business of production is service to the consumers for monetary gain, and not some sort of “game” or “warfare” or any other sort of struggle between producers. In “oligopoly,” where several firms are producing an identical product, there cannot persist any situation in which one firm charges a higher price than another, since there is always a tendency toward the forma­tion of a uniform price for each uniform product. Whenever firm A attempts to sell its product higher or lower than the previously­ ruling market price, it is attempting to “discover the mar­ket,” to find out what the equilibrium market price is, in accord­ance with the present state of consumer demand. If, at a certain price for the product, consumer demand is in excess of supply, the firms will tend to raise the price, and vice versa if the pro­duced stock is not being sold. In this familiar pathway to equi­librium, all the stock that the firms wish to sell “clears the mar­ket” at the highest price that can be obtained. The jockeying and raising and lowering of prices that takes place in “oligopolis­tic” industries is not some mysterious form of warfare, but the visible process of attempting to find market equilibrium—that price at which the quantity supplied and the quantity demanded will be equal. The same process, indeed, takes place in any mar­ket, such as the “nonoligopolistic” wheat or strawberry markets. In the latter markets the process seems to the viewer more “im­personal,” because the actions of any one individual or firm are not as important or as strikingly visible as in the more “oligopo­listic” industries. But the process is essentially the same, and we must not be led to think differently by such often inapt meta­phors as the “automatic mechanisms of the market” or the “soul­less, impersonal forces on the market.” All action on the market is necessarily personal; machines may move, but they do not pur­posefully act. And, in oligopoly situations, the rivalries, the feel­ings of one producer toward his competitors, may be historically dramatic, but they are unimportant for economic analysis.

     To those who are still tempted to make the number of pro­ducers in any field the test of competitive merit, we might ask (setting aside the problem of proving homogeneity): How can the market create sufficient numbers? If Crusoe exchanges fish for Friday’s lumber on their desert island, are they both benefiting, or are they “bilateral monopolists” exploiting each other and charging each other monopoly prices? But if the State is not justi­fied in marching in to arrest Crusoe and/or Friday, how can it be justified in coercing a market where there are obviously many more competitors?

     Economic analysis, in conclusion, fails to establish any criterion for separating any elements of the free-market price for a product. Such questions as the number of firms in an industry, the sizes of the firms, the type of product each firm makes, the personali­ties or motives of the entrepreneurs, the location of plants, etc., are entirely determined by the concrete conditions and data of the particular case. Economic analysis can have nothing to say about them.[74]

[55]See the reference to Abbott, Quality and Competition, in note 28 above.

[56]On “natural monopoly” doctrine as applied to the electrical industry, see Dean Russell, The TVA Idea (Irvington-on-Hudson, N.Y.: Foundation for Economic Education, 1949), pp. 79–85. For an excellent discussion of the regulation of public utilities, see Dewing, Financial Policy of Corporations, I, 308–68.

[57] See Mises:

Prices are a market phenomenon. . . . They are the resultant of a certain constellation of market data, of actions and reactions of the members of a market society. It is vain to meditate what prices would have been if some of their determinants had been different. . . . It is no less vain to ponder on what prices ought to be. Everybody is pleased if the prices of things he wants to buy drop and the prices of the things he wants to sell rise. . . . Any price determined on a market is the nec­essary outgrowth of the interplay of the forces operating, that is, de­mand and supply. Whatever the market situation which generated this price may be, with regard to it the price is always adequate, genuine, and real. It cannot be higher if no bidder ready to offer a higher price turns up, and it cannot be lower if no seller ready to deliver at a lower price turns up. Only the appearance of such people ready to buy or sell can alter prices. Economics . . . does not develop formulas which would enable anybody to compute a “correct” price different from that estab­lished on the market by the interaction of buyers and sellers. . . . This refers also to monopoly prices. . . . No alleged “fact finding” and no armchair speculation can discover another price at which demand and supply would become equal. The failure of all experiments to find a satisfactory solution for the limited-space monopoly of public utilities clearly proves this truth. (Mises, Human Action, pp. 392–94; italics added)

[58]The first to point out the error in the common talk of “monopoly wage rates” of unions was Professor Mises. See his brilliant discussion in Human Action, pp. 373–74. Also see P. Ford, The Economics of Col­lective Bargaining (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1958), pp. 35–40. Ford also refutes the thesis advanced by the recent “Chicago School” that unions perform a service as sellers of labor:

But a union does not itself produce or sell the commodity, labour, nor receive payment for it. . . . It could be more fitly described as . . . fixing the wages and other conditions on which its individual members are permitted to sell their services to the individual employers. (Ibid., p. 36)

[59]A restrictionist, rather than a monopoly, price can be achieved because the number of laborers is so important in relation to the possible varia­tion in hours of work by an individual laborer that the latter can be ignored here. If, however, the total labor supply is limited originally to a few people, then an imposed higher wage rate will cut down the number of hours purchased from the workers who remain working, per­haps so much as to render a restrictionist price unprofitable to them. In such a case it would be more appropriate to speak of a monopoly price.

[60]Cf. Mises, Human Action, p. 764.

[61]See Charles E. Lindblom, Unions and Capitalism (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1949), pp. 78ff., 92–97, 108, 121, 131–32, 150–52, 155. Also see Henry C. Simons, “Some Reflections on Syndicalism” in Eco­nomic Policy for a Free Society (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1948), pp. 131f., 139ff.; Martin Bronfenbrenner, “The Incidence of Collective Bargaining,” American Economic Review, Papers and Proceedings, May, 1954, pp. 301–02; Fritz Machlup, “Monopolistic Wage Determination as a Part of the General Problem of Monopoly” in Wage Determination and the Economics of Liberalism (Washington, D.C.: Chamber of Commerce of the United States, 1947), pp. 64–65.

[62]See Murray N. Rothbard, “Mises’ Human Action: Comment,” Ameri­can Economic Review, March, 1951, pp. 183–84.

[63]The same is true, to an even greater extent, of measures of govern­mental intervention in the market. See chapter 12 below.

[64]See James Birks, Trade Unionism in Relation to Wages (London, 1897), p. 30.

[65]See James Birks, Trades’ Unionism: A Criticism and a Warning (Lon­don, 1894), p. 22.

[66]We can deal here only with the directly catallactic consequences of labor unionism. Unionism also has other consequences which many might consider even more deplorable. Prominent is the fusing of the able and the incompetent into one group. Seniority rules, for example, are invariable favorites of unions. They set restrictively high wages for less able workers and also lower the productivity of all. But they also reduce the wages of the more able workers—those who must be chained to the stultifying march of seniority for their jobs and promotions. Seniority also decreases the mobility of workers and creates a kind of industrial serfdom by establishing vested rights in jobs according to the length of time the employees have worked. Cf. David McCord Wright, “Regulat­ing Unions” in Bradley, Public Stake in Union Power, pp. 113–21.

[67]Students of labor unions have almost universally ignored the systematic use of violence by unions. For a welcome exception, see Sylvester Petro, Power Unlimited (New York: Ronald Press, 1959). Also cf. F.A. Hayek, “Unions, Inflation, and Profits,” p. 47.

[68]On the nature and consequences of these various criteria of wage de­termination, see Ford, Economics of Collective Bargaining, pp. 85–110.

[69]See the excellent critique by Hutt, Theory of Collective Bargaining, passim.

[70]On the Ricardo effect, see Mises, Human Action, pp. 767–70. Also see the detailed critique by Ford, Economics of Collective Bargaining, pp. 56–66, who also points to the union record of hindering mechanization by imposing restrictive work rules and by moving quickly to absorb any possible gain from the new equipment.

[71]In particular, see Edward H. Chamberlin, Theory of Monopolistic Competition, and Mrs. Joan Robinson, Economics of Imperfect Competition. For a lucid discussion and comparison of the two works, see Robert Triffin, Monopolistic Competition and General Equilibrium Theory (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1940). The differences between the “monopolistic” and the “imperfect” formulations are not important here.

[72]Recently, Professor Chamberlin has conceded this point and has, in a series of remarkable articles, astounded his followers by repudiating the concept of pure competition as a welfare ideal. Chamberlin now declares: “The welfare ideal itself . . . is correctly described as one of monopolistic competition. . . . [This] seems to follow very directly from the recognition that human beings are individual, diverse in their tastes and desires, and moreover, widely dispersed spatially.” Chamberlin, Towards a More General Theory of Value, pp. 93–94; also ibid., pp. 70–83; E.H. Chamberlin and J.M. Clark, “Discussion,” American Economic Review, Papers and Proceedings, May, 1950, pp. 102–04; Hunter, “Product Differentiation and Welfare Economics,” pp. 533–52; Hayek, “The Meaning of Competition” in Individ­ualism and the Economic Order, p. 99; and Marshall I. Goldman, “Prod­uct Differentiation and Advertising: Some Lessons from Soviet Experi­ence,” Journal of Political Economy, August, 1960, pp. 346–57. See also note 28 above.

[73]This definition of the demand curve to the firm was Mrs. Robinson’s outstanding contribution, unfortunately repudiated by her recently. Triffin castigated Mrs. Robinson for evading the problem of “oligopolistic indeterminacy,” whereas actually she had neatly solved this pseudo problem. See Robinson, Economics of Imperfect Competition, p. 21. For other aspects of oligopoly, see Willard D. Arant, “Competition of the Few Among the Many,” Quarterly Journal of Economics, August, 1956, pp. 327–45.

[74]For an acute criticism of monopolistic-competition theory, see L.M. Lachmann, “Some Notes on Economic Thought, 1933–53,” South African Journal of Economics, March, 1954, pp. 26ff., especially pp. 30–31. Lachmann points out that economists generally treat types of “perfect” or “monopolistic” competition as static market forms, whereas competi­tion is actually a dynamic process.

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