Summary Record of the Discussion — Session VIII

Abstract

Mr. Kaser observed that the Conference had so far pointed to a number of concepts common to Eastern and Western economics, even where the words used had differed. The contrary was the case in dealing with the theory of the enterprise. In all three working languages of the Conference, the root of the word ‘enterprise’, describing the basic decision-making unit, was the same, derived from the ‘undertaking’ of the classical economists. But there was a fundamental divergence in the form an enterprise took under capitalism and socialism.