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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

Business Principles

becomes the law of the nert. If positive law Is the basis of order, Ideal right U the active factor in progress."— H. 8. Foiwell, IntrodnctloD to IMetiger's Bight to the Whole Produee of Labor, p. XL Ct. the entire passage.

) See the easaf , 0/ Ci-oil Government, cb. V.

rived his views, would lead too far afield. The theory is sufficiently familiar, for in substance it is, and for the better part of two centuries has been, held as an article of common sense by nearly all men who have spoken for the institution of property, with the exception of some few and late doubters.'

\ This modem European, coramon-sense theory jsaya that ownership is a " Natural Right." What I a man has made, whatsoever " he hath mixed jhis labor with," that he has thereby made his I property. It is hia to do with it as he will. He has extended to the object of his labor that discretionary control which in the nature of things he of right exercises over the motions of his own person. It is his in the nature of things by virtue of his having made It. "Thus labor, in the beginning, gave a right of property." The per-

■ Apart from tbe familiar historical maUriala (or the study of the groH'th of nnturaJ rights, iucluding the right of property, there are a nntnbpr nf late nritlnge ika,t may be coneulud ; e.g. JelUnek, Declaration of iht Rights of Man and of the Citiien; Ritchie, Kaltirat Bighlt; Bonar, cbapten relating to thia topic in Philosophy and Political Economy; n^Sding, Higtory of Modem Philiitophy, vol, I.; Albee, History of English Utilitarianism ; and, lately come to hand, Scherger, Evolution of Modem Libtrty. These and other writers treat of oatutal lighlji and the law of nature chiefly in other bearings than that of

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