… is from page 122 of the 1976 Liberty Fund edition of John Chamberlain’s excellent 1959 volume, The Roots of Capitalism:
Once capitalism is seen as a profit-and-loss system, with everyone at the mercy of the sovereign consumer’s whims as he balances one marginal desire against another, the incidence of anticapitalistic criticism must shift. The capitalist who can make money in a consumer-oriented system is the one who shrewdly anticipates the customer’s desires, and under such a dispensation profit – far from being “surplus value” – becomes the deserved reward for acumen.
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