Strong And Effective Leadership In Heilbroner's Theory Of The Market System

us survival. Tradition, in essence, enables the passing of jobs and responsibilities down from generation to generation. In society, we see how older individuals act as mentors and guides to their younger counterparts, serving as a means of passing knowledge to continue the facilitation of maintaining efficiency and productivity. Command, meanwhile, imposes that tasks get accomplished through the use of enforcement of absolute rule and strong leadership (Heilbroner, 19-20). Strong and effective leadership is key in society in order to effectively rally individuals under a common goal. The idea of the individual being a component of the whole is further illuminated in Heilbroner’s explanation of the market system. The market system, a system of trade between buyers and sellers with the goal of making profit, is essentially motivated by individual need for self-gain and the desire to acquire goods.

Not well-known, is the fact that the idea of personal gain is indeed a modern phenomenon. Trade and exchange between individuals created the market system, “a mechanism for sustaining and maintaining an entire society”, which took centuries to evolve (Heilbroner, 27). Ultimately, the issue of survival was solved by the “free action of profit-seeking men bound together only by the market itself” (Heilbroner, 37). Individualistic motivation contributes to what we now understand as capitalism. The idea of gain which underlays the system of capitalism “was to become so firmly rooted that men would soon vigorously affirm that it was an eternal and omnipresent part of human nature” (Heilbroner, 37-38). Within the market system, individuals are the workers, an essential unit that makes the entire system