ABSTRACT
T H I S book on the central problems of American industrial society rests on the one assumption that nothing could induce the overwhelming majority of the American people to give up the belief i n a free-enterprise economic system except a major catastrophe such as a new total war or a new total depression. This does not mean that history w i l l necessarily prove the American people r ight or make their beliefs prevail . But i t means that there is only one course open to American pol i t i cal and economic statesmanship: the attempt to make a freeenterprise system work. For i t is obvious that any attempt at organizing our economic and social system on another than the free-enterprise basis-either because the free-enterprise system fails to work or because i t is considered undesirablew i l l introduce into American society a tension between pol i t i cal belief and social reality, between the w i l l of the people and their actions, which would compromise our national unity and paralyze our poli t ical and economic faculties. The central questions of American statesmanship must thus be: how does the free-enterprise system function and what are its problems; what can i t do, what can i t not do ; and what are the questions yet to be answered?
