Economics and the public purpose C.5

THIS book is in descent, the last in the line, from two earlier volumes - The Affluent Society and The New Industrial State. There are also some genes, though not many, from yet another volume - American Capitalism. The principal precursors each dealt with a part of the economic system; this one seeks to put it all together, to give the whole system. The earlier volumes were centrally concerned with the world of the great corporations - with the decisive part of the economy which the established or neo-classical economics has never ingested. There is also the world of the farmer, repairman, retailer, small manufacturer, plumber, television repairman, service station operator, medical practitioner, artist, actress, photographer and pornographer. Together these businesses supply about half of all we use or consume. This book seeks to bring them fully into the scene. In economics as in anatomy the whole is much more than the sum of the parts. This is certainly so when the parts are in support of each other or in conflict with each other or are otherwise shaped by the fact of their common existence. Also, a lesser point, the earlier books stopped at the water's edge. This one gives the first elements of the international system.

The New Industrial State pictures the world of the large cor poration as the outgrowth of the neo-classical world of mono poly and oligopoly. At least by implication what was left behind was the world of the competitive market. That also I here cor rect; what is left behind is, in fact, something resembling the neo-classical admixture of entrepreneurial monopoly, oligopoly and competition. The consequence of so seeing matters is a better explanation of the behaviour of the entrepreneurial firm and what I here call the market system. It shows, also, that the world of the large corporation is something new - that it is a clear break with what is described by traditional doctrine.