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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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Table of Contents

Introductory

(he directiou of movement for the rest. Hia control in those portions of the field that are not immediately under his hand is, no doubt, somewhat loose and uncertain ; but in the long run hia discretion is in great measure decisive even for these outlying portions of the field, for he is the only large self-directing economic factor. His control of the motions of other men is not strict, for they are not imder coercion from him except through the coercion exercised by the exigencies of the situation in which their lives are cast; but as near as it may be said of any human power in modem times, the large business man controls the exigencies of life under which the community lives. Hence, upon him and his fortunes centres the abiding interest of civilized mankind.

For a theoretical inquiry into the course of civilized life as it runs in the immediate present, therefore, and as it is running into the proximate future, no single factor in the cultural situation has an importance equal to that of the business man and hia work.'

' " Dem unbeteiligten Beobachter drliiigt slch die Erkentmaa auf, dassin deia Pliiinoinen Jpa HandelH [here equivalent to "buaioess"] ein eoMcheideuder allgeTneiner (ledauke enthali^n imd sine der miichtlgBlen TbalsBi^hSD der Guaubiubte gegeben lat, mit der jede Zeit geEwungen wird, sich noh loder libel abzuflnden. , . . Der Handel lat in lolgerichtiger and unanfhaltaamer Enlwicklaug das fiihrende Gewerbe gewarden. Ea isi fUi die anderen Gewerbe ein viMig auBsiuhuloaer Vennich, ihn vi bemmen uod durcb Zwangsmittel in acloe ' dienende BtelluDg' Eunickzudrttngea."— K. Th. Relnbold, Arbeil und Werk-

•MV. PP- "t S-

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