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• Literature of Liberty a Review of Contemporary Liberal Thought
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• Bibliographical Essay: Henry B. Veatch, Natural Law: Dead Or Alive?
• I: Natural Law
• “nature” and “law” In Natural Law
• The Anatomy of Natural Rights
• Egoism and Rights
• The Is/ought Chimera
• Deriving “ought” From “is”
• Facts Vs. Value-laden Whims
• Is/ought and Probable Reasons
• Does Righteous Anger Imply Rights?
• Why Be Moral?
• Truth As an Objective Value
• Was the Revolution Objectively Necessary?
• Natural Law and State of Nature
• Natural Law and the State
• Natural Rights and Anarchism
• Dworkin On Rights
• Liberalism, Rights, and Abortion
• Rights and “mercy Killing”
• Rights and the “brain Drain”
• The Natural Law Right to Work
• Grotius: Contract and Natural Law
• Rights and Communication
• II: Autonomy, Privacy, and Authority
• Bureaucracy and “the Organization Man”
• Autonomy and Anarchism
• Autonomy and Taking Responsibility
• Autonomy, Motivation, and “buck-passing”
• Schooling For Conformity
• The Schoolroom Vs. Autonomy
• Obedience to Authority
• The Meaning of Privacy
• Privacy and Autonomy
• Privacy and Consent
• The Court and Privacy
• III: The Ambiguities of Liberty
• Clarifying Freedom
• Rehabilitating Mill's “harm Principle”
• Experiencing Freedom
• Do Offers Coerce Freedom?
• The Danger of “dangerousness”
• Freedom, Motivation, and Government Programs
• Freedom Vs. Determinism
• Negative Vs. Positive Freedom
• Smith and Utilitarian Economic Freedom
• Locke, Freedom, and Tacit Consent
• Religious Freedom
• Freedom, Existentialism, and Innocent Victims
• Does Censorship Harm Freedom?
• IV: Slavery
• Slavery, Ideology, and Subordination
• Slavery and Imperialist Ideology
• Enlightenment Liberalism Vs. Slavery
• The Anatomy of a Slave Revolt
• Colonial American Slave Law
• Jefferson On Slavery
• Slavery and the Poor
• V: Planning
• Regulation and the Warfare State
• Mail, Privacy, and Social Control
• Corporate State Capitalism: Coal
• French War “planification”: Chlorates
• Bureaucracy and British Regulation
• British Foreign Policy and Stagnation
• Political Decisions and the Economy
• Government, Labor, and Multinationals
• Black Markets Vs. Regulation
• Regulation Vs. Academic Autonomy
• Government Schools and Social Control
• The Economics of Charity
• International State Planning and Inflation
• Competition and Individual Knowledge

French War “Planification”: Chlorates

Henri Morsel

“Contribution à l'histoire des ententes industrielles (à partir d'un exemple, L'industrie des chlorates).” (A Contribution to the History of Industrial Alliances: The Chlorate Industry.) Revue d'histoire économique et sociale 54 (1976): 118–129.

The history of industrial alliances and cartels in connection with French government regulation of the chlorate industry in Europe repays study. International cartelization was part of the general movement toward protectionism which occurred in late nineteenth-century Europe.

In the late nineteenth century the French state exercised an important role in the market for chlorates through its demand for explosives and its monopoly of the manufacture and distribution of matches. More importantly, government customs barriers were essential in developing national monopolies which in turn developed into the international cartel. Customs barriers allowed the cartel to maintain coercively high profit levels which the cartel itself enjoyed rather than the individual manufacturers. This economic factor accounted for the continued strength of the cartel. Competitors were either co-opted into the cartel as junior partners or purchased outright. These were the favored tactics, since price cutting to force out competitors proved to be dangerous. Market forces—heavy speculative buying by chlorate consumers—tended to keep the price down.

After World War I, the growing trend toward national economic autarky ended the international cartel. National monopolies, however, grew stronger by the virtual elimination of international competition. In the international climate of the period, national cartels and the occasional alliances among them seem to have been less forms of regulation than weapons of war controlled by state policy.