1. The enterprise's characteristic is to buy to sell.
An individual who, on occasion, buys to sell thereby creates a business, however ephemeral it may be. Whether or not the tax authorities recognize it as such does not change anything. Non-profit associations which, in addition to their main activities, buy in order to resell operate a business in this capacity, as does a parish that buys candles and resells.
2. The enterprise's nature makes it a market.
This does not mean that every market is a business. The organization and policing of a market, whether local, national or international, is often the responsibility of the public authorities without being obliged to trade in it. The labor market and the placement markets are institutions of this kind because of the legislative provisions that govern them.
3. In the market that every enterprise constitutes, economic exchanges are between itself, the enterprise, and several economic roles.
These roles include that of capital providers, that of workers hired by the enterprise, those of other suppliers, and that of customers. This makes any enterprise destined to last a market hub.
4. At the head of an enterprise, there is a person, natural or legal: the entrepreneur.
When the entrepreneur is the sole owner of the enterprise, it is customary to say that the enterprise is either individual or in personal name. But the enterprise is often a legal person, i.e. a commercial association with an enterprise name (a name), a domicile, the capacity to sue in court and to acquire assets. In this case, the entrepreneur owns either nothing of the enterprise or only a greater or lesser share.
Entrepreneurs are individuals or ad hoc associations. Savers are individuals and other non-commercial associations, including families and foundations. Workers paid in wages in the full economic sense of the word (Chapter 9) are individuals, nothing but individuals.
5. The entrepreneur and the enterprise are not one.
The entrepreneur, whoever he or she may be, has goals and makes them evolve whenever he or she wants. The enterprise, which is one thing, does not have one. When it is said that it has them, it is always those of an individual or collective entrepreneur (enterprise), or those that are attributed, rightly or wrongly, to the entrepreneur.
I invested in shares in the capital of enterprise E. I am, virtually or really, a member of a social body which is the entrepreneur from whom all the delegations of power within enterprise E proceed. This social body, like the individual entrepreneur, has the goals that it decides and that it makes evolve as it sees fit. Economists who believe they are authorized to dictate to enterprises and to society as a whole the goals they assert are attacking a fundamental freedom, it can never be repeated too often as long as this abuse continues.
6. Enterprise S is the legal owner of an apple orchard.
The decision on the mode of operation is the responsibility of the shareholders of S's capital. The decision to sell the apple orchard is also theirs. The status of a legal person does not confer any autonomy in relation to the holders of the shares in its capital, in principle.
In principle only? An enterprise manager is recruited. A wage is negotiated with him. Delegation of powers is given to him. The effective powers of the members may be reduced as a result. But if this reduction becomes effective, it is the result of abandonment and abuse. The members will have abdicated some of their powers. The head of the enterprise will have abused the powers delegated to him. The rejection of an obligation of discipline will continue: that of full economic exchanges, a concept that the objective theory of prices identifies, as we will see later.
7. The enterprise is no more or less conducive to the pursuit of personal goals than the public administration and private non-profit associations.
The enterprise is just as conducive to the exercise of devotion as the public administration, including all of its elected staff, and as private associations whose main purpose is not commercial.