ABSTRACT
This chapter provides a constructive critical analysis of Thorstein Veblen’s theory of the system of business enterprise. It explains to the reader’s attention the conceptually converging contributions of four ingenious economists highly sympathetic towards Veblenian institutional economics – Karl William Kapp, Philip Mirowski, James Galbraith, and Michael Hudson – in order to analytically develop and refresh Veblen’s theory of social costs of business enterprise. Veblen offers a rather succinct representation of the specific subject of social costs of unrestrained free market competition in sphere of production. Veblen illustrates how the “peculiar institution” of Negro slavery established in the South supported the institutionalization of plantations, large-scale absentee enterprises, with forced labor as favored and prevailing means to exploit the private usufruct of soil. Veblen deals extensively with the policy designed and implemented to transfer the unique natural resources of America to absentee ownership through “a settled practice of converting all public wealth to private gain on a plan of legalized seizure”.
