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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.

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Table of Contents

The Theory Of Business Enterprise

guide the institutional growth back into the arcliaic conventional ways and give the cultural structure something of that secure dignity and stability which it had before the times, not only of socialistic vapors, but of natural rights as well, Then, too, the rest of the spiritual furniture of the ancient regime shall presumably be reinstated ; materialistic scepticism may yield the groimd to a romantic philosophy, and the populace and tliu scientists alike may regain something of that devoutness and faith in preternatural agencies which they have recently been losing. As the discipline of prowess again comes to its own, conviction and contentment with whatever is authentic may return to distracted Christendom, and may once more give something of a sacramental serenity to men's outlook on the present and the future.

But authenticity and sacramental dignity belong neither with the machine technology, nor with modem science, nor with business traffic. In so far as the aggressive politics and the ariiitocratic ideals currently furthered by the biuineiw community are worked out freely, their logical outcome is an abatement of those cultural features that d' .tinguijsh modern times from what

went before, including a decline of business enterprise itself-' *'x

How imminent auch a conaummation is to be

accounted is a question of how far the unbusineaa-

like and unscientiSc discipline brought in by

aggresaive politics may be expected to prevail

over the discipline of the machine industry. It

is difficult to believe that the machine technology

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