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tion for profit by that of production for use-which is to say, it is im–
possible to redirect the main flow of economic effort, away from the
pull of market considerations to areas established by public policy consid–
erations." But all production for consumption - whether consumption
by welfare administrations, the military, the scientific academy or ordinary
suburbia - is for use as well as profit; and a market pulls differently
according to whether it is free or managed - when the latter, the
results are very much like those derived from "public policy considera–
tions" even if not made by an officially constituted public government.
If
the alternative to the hoary capitalist presumption about the Profit
Motive is thought to be the immediate construction of the humanist
society of good will imagined by the classical socialists - then, sure, the
old crap will continue. But if the question for the next several decades
is, "Toward what and in consultation with whom will American business
busy itself?" then the old crap requires some new if-this, then-that kind
of analysis, which in all likelihood would be both interesting and com–
plicated. In any event, it would be political and psychological- as befits
the front-running technological society in major, not to say convulsive,
transition.
The Limits of American Capitalism
consists of two brief essays, the
first being a determinedly unimaginative depiction of the current cor–
porate economy, refracted through traditional economic notions, and the
second turning out to be a much more worthwhile effort to state - in
strophes of careful hesitation - the cataclysmic conflict between the
old business system and the new technological order. Now, please notice
the problem of critically evaluating a book like this: many educated
people do not know that the United States is a corporate society which
is not the same thing as a capitalist society; and many more are not as
deeply aware as they should be that business and technology, although
they sleep together every night, are (like many such) mortal enemies.
In the initial essay dealing with the first point, Mr. Heilbroner depicts
our present order in a flattened-out manner that is useful only if it is
news - and how am I to know? The second essay is very good no
matter who is reading it: the data and insights, the narrative line on the
subjects of poverty, the military and especially the new problems of
employment created by technological success are all interesting and pre–
sented with expert brevity. Even the downbeat tone is expressed with
more effect, as when he
~efers
to "the temptations of luxury consump–
tion, and the general lack of concern in a nation lulled by middle-class
images of itself," in telling us why the so-called problem of poverty is
not apt to be solved within the next generation, although he believes it
