The Story of Free Enterprise: A Course in Basic Americanism Paperback - 2016

The Story of Free Enterprise was published in 1963. Written for a mass audience, it is short, clear and very readable. Despite being six decades old, it is a fine primer on the values and ideas inherent in the original political-economic system of the United States. It tells why those ideas and values are vital to our survival. Joel Belknap was a successful West Virginia businessman. He tackles political "morality" on all levels. He offers lively discussions of incentive versus compulsion, the Social Security system, the threat of communism and Marxism, monopolies, inflation and the welfare state. Quoting many of our Founding Fathers, he shows there must be a spiritual concept or moral basis in our government if we are to succeed in preserving our free enterprise system. Proceeding on the theory that capitalism and democracy are sound, Belknap goes on to pinpoint what he considers fundamentally wrong with the welfare state, socialism and communism. "The best-intentioned social reforms," he says, "no matter how humanitarian or idealistic, when executed with political power, tend to degenerate into instruments of oppressions by a ruling class." He explains the structure of corporate organizations and how these, along with monopolies, are controlled by consumers in a free economy but how their powers increase and oppress when the State becomes not only the consumer, but the producer too.