ABSTRACT
In his preface, the author states that the goal of ‘modern economies’ is to ‘overcome the Classical School, ‘to go beyond it, break free of it, because as a whole it no longer has any relevance to modern socio-economic problems’, and so on. For him, there is therefore no question of continuing to build, in a spirit of gratitude, on the existing foundations; what is needed is a whole new creation. On what basis is not stated directly, but perhaps it can be guessed from the heavy emphasis the author places on the personal element in production, from his view of profit-and if I have understood him correctly, also of rent, though he is somewhat vaguer on this point-as ‘a reward for services to society’. On p. 151 he claims it is ‘simply incontestable that in the very branches of business where free competition has been
established most fully, the personality of the entrepreneur is decisive for the profitability of the enterprise’. If this is to be taken literally-and if it were true-the profit outlook for, e.g., shareholders in a stock corporation, would be very dim; for the competition for those talented managers who alone would be capable of saving the enterprises in question from ruin, would probably mean that the entire profit from the business would be swallowed up by gigantic manager’s commissions, leaving next to nothing for the shareholders. But perhaps these extraordinary talents are also endowed with an abnormally large share of modesty, so that they do not even think of claiming the wages that are their due.
