It is sad to see the government and leftist party campaigns on numerous occasions of widespread disqualification of entrepreneurial activity, confusing speculation with true entrepreneurial spirit, and cash and financial economy with real economy. Without entrepreneurial mentality deployed throughout the whole of social activity, no one works towards the setting in motion of the future projects that are so necessary to recuperate from the current serious dazed economic state.

The different goods that form a part of raw materials are intrinsically complementary between each other. A complementariness exists in turn between tangible assets, production instruments and above all, human work. In turn, vertical complementariness to the goals freely manifested in the market by the economic agents is necessary. These goals, not only one's own ones, but especially other people's ones, become engines and managers of all productive activity. Well then, to managerial activity that as such is work and at the same time a guiding force, the decisive task is assigned of conjugating horizontally and vertically the different forces of economic value. The entrepreneur invents the product or service pattern that should guide the subordinate work in the putting into effect of his work. It projects determining the species and characteristics of the future effect. The rest of the organization tends to capture the pre-conceived pattern in concrete materials and assisted by appropriate instruments. Entrepreneurial work in this way becomes an exemplary force in the creation and increment of economic value. In the entrepreneur, the paradigms of diverse managerial productions are gestated. The entrepreneur's work is not only that of conceiving those paradigms, but also of transmitting them appropriately to those who have to carry them out, and it implies a game of freedoms that must be coordinated. He will try to make the subordinate work productive, looking for its serviceability to future end users and increasing the value of the goods or services produced in this way.

This complementary directive task that assumes the risks of its own freedom and responsibility at the same time, in success as well as in failure, is already found in the beginnings of 19th century entrepreneurial theory. It was Say who gave greater impetus to entrepreneurial theory, in the beginnings of economic theory. He pointed out that "It is the entrepreneur who estimates the necessities and above all the means to satisfy them; it is he who compares the goal with these means. Hence his main quality should be the possession of an impartial opinion. He can lack a personal knowledge of science, using judiciously others' knowledge, he can avoid getting his hands dirty, using others' hands; but what he cannot lack is good judgement, since then he runs the risk of producing something that lacks value, with high costs for himself."

But the company has taken exclusive possession of that entrepreneurial mentality and activity when in fact it is the vital characteristic of all economic entities. The same entrepreneurial mentality is applicable to the worker as soon as he tries to make the most of his human resources, or to the landowner with his lands or the capitalist and his capital. The economic world is integrated fundamentally by a multitude of economic units of decision, of domestic economies - some of them formed by a single individual -, owners, each one of them of a totally original combination of physical and human resources on which he can and should act with free and responsible power of disposition and assignment with regard to the increment of its value.

The economic system arises from the constructive and helpful interrelation between these basic units of the economic universe. The exchanges between them shape the exchange value monetary network, so thoroughly dealt with in economic literature. In many cases the economic environment has been reduced to the exclusive consideration of monetary and exchange phenomena. But exchanges, as we saw, obey the guiding impetus of increasing use values, increasing the human suitability of all material and human resources. The exchange value network is a sign of another superior framework formed by use values. The disparity of performance and function criteria has overshadowed this essential human unit from the economic world. Managerial activity, widespread among all economic agents, is configured as a creative force that sprouts from the basic dynamism of the interconnection between human freedom and its serviceability.

We find the key statement again that the scholastics help to develop starting from ancient Greek thought, that wealth and economic value is not condemnable, but rather it is licit to try to increase it exactly. This common reference in the beginnings of economic thought that transformed the medieval isolationist economic system into a system of enormous commercial strength, needs to be reconsidered in our current economic panorama.

Economic value and profit understood as the theme of these considerations, the principle of attainment of maximum profit is not condemnable and licit, but rather it constitutes an unavoidable duty, if we are speaking about economic performance. What is condemnable is not trying to increase the economic value of our physical and human patrimony, falling asleep at the task of making the most of that which is at our disposal and depends on us.

Joseph John Franch Menéu
Gaceta de los Negocios, Friday May 28th 1993