CodalSearch this book — or all of Codal…⌘K
nydus/The Theory of Business EnterprisePublic

Thorstein Veblen examines the modern industrial system as a structure defined by the machine process and investment for profit. He analyzes how business enterprise and the pursuit of financial gain serve as the primary forces directing contemporary economic organization.

Page 304 of 422
Table of Contents

Business In Law And Politics

thought (perhaps better, habits of mind) runs back to the discipline of early barbarism, through tlie feudal days of fealty to the earlier days of clan life and clannish animosity. It has therefore the deep-rooted strength given by an extremely protracted discipline of predation and servitude. Under modem conditions it is to be rated as essentially an institutional survival, so ingrained in the populace as to make any appeal to it secure of a reaponse irrespective of the material merits of the contention in whose behalf the appeal is made.'

■ Tbe line ol deacent of tbe preconeeption of patrloUam or chiuTfniain, m it flnda eipression In tbia livel; seiiBe <A pecimiftr; BolU darlty, tnby be ouUined as (ollowa : Under tbe clan (geallle or tribal) ■jitem out ot which the WcBt-Earopean peoples paBsed into tbe r^ma of feodal Christendom, a gireu group stood together In ft luioa of

BUSINESS IN LAW ASD POLITICS 289

By force of this happy knack of clannish fancy the common man is enabled to feel that he has some sort of metaphysical share in the gains which accrue to the business men who are citizens of the same "commonwealth"; so that whatever policy furthers the commercial gains of those business men whose domicile is within the national boundaries is felt to be beneficial to all the rest of the population.'

offence and defence, warlilce and economic, on the hasla of a putative blood reiaiionsbip. When tbe manor or the (esseallally servile) mark came to replace the cUn ^oup u Uie economic and civil nnit, the bond uf putative blood relationship peniated in a sligbtl; modified form and (orce, the incidence of the aeoae of eolidarity, the " consclouaneaa ot kind," then shifting to the new group onit, with allegiance centring on the feudal head of the group, lnHt«ad ot, as lortnerly, on tbe senior line of putative descent. When the state came forward in mediraval and earl;

304