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The Business of Commerce: Examining an Honorable Profession

Average customer rating:

Good conclusions, good points, BAD BAD BOOK.

The Business of Commerce: Examining an Honorable Profession
Tibor R. Machan , James Chesher , and James E. Chesher
Manufacturer: Hoover Institution Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

General | Business & Investing | Subjects | Books

Ethics | Business Life | Business & Investing | Subjects | Books
ASIN: 0817996222

Book Description

The authors of this book examine the prejudiced view that all business is inherently immoral and come to the conclusion that this view is dangerously wrong.

Explores the cultural, philosophical, and theological sources of the bad reputation suffered by business in Western culture

Samples prominent opinion, from Plato to Galbraith

Examines the fundamental dichotomies of a society that seeks prosperity, yet disdains the very processes by which prosperity is achieved

Traces the ideologies that undermine the moral standing of commerce

Builds the convincing case that antibusiness sentiment rises primarily from the belief that human nature and human life find their higher value in an otherworldly realm, that earthly life finds its unworthy equal in the struggle to improve life in the lower realm . . . the business of commerce

The Business of Commerce: Examining an Honorable Profession demonstrates why such a view is unreasonable, unwarranted, and unjust. It presents compelling evidence that the profession of business is no less worthy of respect than the professions of medicine, science, art, or education. Along the way this book explores a number of related subjects that lead to a sobering conclusion: Unless a positive attitude emerges, economic prosperity will elude the very societies that need it most.

Customer Reviews:

Good conclusions, good points, BAD BAD BOOK........2000-08-02

Tibor Machan has published many volumes, but I wonder whether he has ever written a *book*, i.e. a work evincing the architectural virtue of integrity which Howard Roark stands for in *The Fountainhead*. In my review of his *Ayn Rand*, I deplored a lack of system and hierarchy, attributing it to the fact that the volume is a hastily put together collection of disparate articles. As I opened *The Business of Commerce*, I expected to find a much more tightly organized work, deserving of a more glowing review. But what I realize now is that I have been much too generous with the former volume.

What Machan is trying to do, in effect, is to give us Objectivism without the structure. This he does by writing (or co-writing) volumes such as this one, which follow no logical pattern but circle round and round, coming back again and again to the same topics and quotes, always "suggesting" (a favorite verb of his) but never ever *establishing* anything.

*The Business of Commerce: Examining an Honorable Profession* is supposed to offer a panorama of business bashing in Western culture, together with an analysis of its roots and a refutation of its premises. There is indeed a kind of panorama, but it is at best impressionistic and widely scattered. There is an analysis, identifying a dualistic view of man as the basic root of hostility to business, but it is so rambling and redundant that it exasperates more than it enlightens. As for the refutation of the premises of business bashing, it is always tentative, hypothetical, referring the reader to other works or further chapters (where a point is said to be "discussed in greater detail"), never concluding anything and ultimately leaving the various remarks floating in some sort of undifferentiated intellectual goo.

Machan and Chester never really *develop* their arguments: they content themselves with accumulating (and reiterating) a series of unintegrated, out-of-context points which never definitively answer the positions they are supposed to be refuting- all this, I suppose, to avoid the ultimate intellectual sin of dogmatism, of which Machan probably considers more disciplined Objectivist philosophers, like Leonard Peikoff, to be guilty. The authors' recommendations for the teaching of business ethics seem to apply just as well to their own work: "Here some measure of thoroughness and even-handedness in the presentation and discussion is about all that can reasonably be achieved. It is improper to avoid this difficulty [i.e. the divergences between different moral systems] by simply becoming an advocate of one's own position..."

I am not saying that Machan and Chester are ever really *wrong* on any specific issue. As they are merely rewording Ayn Rand's conclusions and arguments, on the contrary, they are most often right. But the book is so unstructured that it is almost impossible to remain in focus while reading it- an impression I also got from Machan's *Ayn Rand*, but which I attributed to the fact that I was familiar with most of the material and hence was occasionally bored.

In addition, Machan and Chester seem to be reluctant to admit just how much their own philosophy owes to Rand. When stressing that values presuppose living entities, they quote Karl Popper. When asserting that man's basic freedom is the freedom to think or not, they quote Emerson. And when defending the value of money, they do not even quote Francisco d'Anconia's money speech in *Atlas Shrugged*, even though most of their points are in it.

My recommendation, therefore, is to save your time and money and go directly to the source.

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