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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.

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The Theory Of Business Enterprise

and the pursuit of the material sciences will be

definitively superseded, for the reason, among

others, that any community which loses these

elements of its culture thereby loses that brute

material force that gives it strength against its

rivals. And it is equally difficult to imagine how

any one of the communities of Christendom can

avoid entering the funnel of business and dynaatic

politica, and so running through the process whereby

^ :> the materialistic animus is eliminated. Which of

^(A^ the^o antagonistic factors may prove the stronger

in the long run is something of a blind guess ; but

the calculable future seema to belong to the one or

the other. It seems possible to say this much,

that the full dominion of business enterprise is

I " necessarily a transitory dominion. It stands to

V lose in the end whether the one or the other of the

(jp* <©' two divergent cultural tendencies wins, because it

, WflV is incompatible with the ascendancy of either.

Sm CbftpWt Vm. pp. SI7-3U.

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