Economic Concentration and the Food Value Chain

The Legal Form of Climate Change Litigation: An Inquiry into the Transformative Potential and Limits of Private Law

“…At a more granular scale, however, it appears as the result of different and intertwined phenomena: for instance, the development of financialization (Durand 2014;Lapavitsas 2013), intellectual property, and digital economy (Durand 2020;Rikap 2021;Pagano 2014) plays a crucial role. Moreover, monopolization is deeply entangled with the development of global value chains in different sectors, such as garments (Kumar 2020) and food (Lianos and Katalevsky 2022). This monopolization modifies not only the socioeconomic relations that private law is deemed to regulate, but also the very assumptions that constitute its foundations: the competitive market where transactions should be at arm's length is swept away in manifold sectors.…”

“…The sectors of large-scale organized distribution and finance are two obvious examples in kind: different fractions of capital that, while commonly interested in the maintenance and reproduction of the system, are at the same time moved by contrasting and conflicting interests. Furthermore, because of the disruptions brought forth by the digital economy and the new modes of value capture, traditional competition law fails to counteract monopolization in this sector (Lianos 2022). This highlights an inherently contradictory dynamics of capitalism: on one side, competition is fundamental for the system; on the other, capitalists continually try to tame competition (Wood 2003, 22;Harvey 2014, 131-145).…”