The multi-national corporations: Considerations for a scenario

Although multi-national corporations have been one of the main customers for future-oriented activities such as technological forecasting, precious little attention has been paid to their development either in the work of the so-called establishment futurists or in the work of their more ‘radical’ colleagues. It is argued that these companies will be increasingly free of control at the international level though under greater scrutiny at the national level. It is likely that they will become increasingly intertwined with both national and international governing bodies, and be seen as arms of these governing bodies rather than as the traditional profit-maximising organisations.     

A modified collective agriculture in rural growth-with-equity: Reconsidering the private,unimodal solution

This paper identifies limitations of an agricultural structure of small, private farms as a basis for rural growth with distributive equity, and points out potential advantages of democratically-managed collectives characterized by flexibility with respect to production scale, group checks on inequality in land use, and avoidance of the underemployment-generating tendencies of large-scale non-collective agriculture. After a critique of recent literature on scale economies and a discussion of stratification tendencies in private agriculture, a model of democratic rural collectives incorporating features of Chinese and Tanzanian precedents is introduced and evaluated. Political feasibility is considered in a concluding discussion.     

Rx small retailer survival: Community demand analysis

The sole proprietorship form of retailing organization comprises 60% of all retailers. Their average annual sales amounts to $31,600 while their average annual profit (including provision for salary) is $2,700. This group constitutes the poverty segment of the business community. Most in government and business consider the plight of the small retailer to be unsolvable. This article suggests a plan which could represent a major advance to improve the small retailers economic position. Means are presently available to determine community requirements for goods and services. The author contends that community demand analysis is a major key to the problem. The article outlines what is needed and how the plan could be implemented.     

Instrumentalism, the Principle of Continuity and the Life Process

A bstract . Instrumentalism and the instrumental logic , as developed and reconstructed by John Dewey, Clarence Ayres , and Jacob Bronowski , is a mode of philosophy exceedingly critical of dualistic, teleological, tautological, and atomistic individualistic biases in philosophy and in economic theory. Instead, it has emphasized processual, contextual, and evolutionary systems of analysis, accentuating conceptual linkages, topological connectivity and joint relationships as a basis of rejecting conceptions of scientific neutrality and intellectual "instruments" forged in an insulating and compartmentalizing style. The principle of continuity becomes the key to the truth process and its directly associated theory of instrumental value. Applying this instrumental philosophy to the critical analysis of the utility theory of value underpinning orthodox economic theory not only exposes the theoretical and philosophical failures of the utility approach but also highlights the strengths of the instrumental logic as a reconstructive tool. The "life process of mankind" is most enhanced by distinguishing truth from falsity and by applying warranted knowledge to the examination of social and economic problems and the power institutions which give them an exacerbated life.