The Place of Science in Modern Civilisation, and Other EssaysVeblen, Thorstein
Philosophy
The Place of Science in Modern Civilisation, and Other Essays
Veblen, Thorstein
Economics; Science
In a manner analogous to the old-fashioned capitalist-employer's
engrossing of the industrial community's technological efficiency does
the modern pecuniary magnate engross the business community's
capitalistic efficiency. This capitalistic efficiency lies in the
capitalist-employer's ability--by force of the ownership of the material
equipment--to induce the industrial community, through suitable
bargaining, to turn over to the owner of the material equipment the
excess of the product above the industrial community's livelihood. The
fortunes of the capitalist-employer are closely dependent on the run of
the market,--the conjunctures of advantageous purchase and sale; and it
is his constant endeavor to create or gain for himself some peculiar
degree of advantage in the market, in the way of monopoly, good-will,
legalised privilege, and the like,--something in the way of intangible
assets. But the pecuniary magnate, in the measure in which he truly
answers to the concept, is superior to the market on which the
capitalist-employer depends, and can make or mar its conjunctures of
advantageous purchase and sale of goods; that is to say, he is in a
position to make or mar any peculiar advantage possessed by the given
capitalist-employer who comes in his way. He does this by force of his
large holdings of capital at large, the weight of which he can shift
from one point of investment to another as the relative
efficiency--earning-capacity--of one and another line of investment may
make it expedient; and at each move of this kind, in so far as it is
effective for his ends, he cuts into and assimilates a fraction of the
invested wealth involved, in that he cuts into and sequesters a fraction
of the capital's earning-capacity in the given line. That is to say, in
the measure in which he is a pecuniary magnate, and not simply a
capitalist-employer, he engrosses the capitalistic efficiency of
invested wealth; he turns to his own account the capitalist-employer's
effectual engrossing of the community's industrial efficiency. He
engrosses the community's pecuniary initiative and proficiency. In the
measure, therefore, in which this relatively new-found serviceability of
extraordinarily large wealth is effective for its peculiar business
function, the old-fashioned capitalist-employer loses his discretionary
initiative and becomes a mediator, an instrumentality of extraction and
transmission, a collector and conveyer of revenue from the community at
large to the pecuniary magnate, who, in the ideal case, should leave him
only such an allowance out of the gross earnings collected and
transmitted as will induce him to continue in business.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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