Enjoy fast, free delivery, exclusive deals, and award-winning movies & TV shows with Prime
Try Prime
and start saving today with fast, free delivery
Amazon Prime includes:
Fast, FREE Delivery is available to Prime members. To join, select "Try Amazon Prime and start saving today with Fast, FREE Delivery" below the Add to Cart button.
Amazon Prime members enjoy:- Cardmembers earn 5% Back at Amazon.com with a Prime Credit Card.
- Unlimited Free Two-Day Delivery
- Streaming of thousands of movies and TV shows with limited ads on Prime Video.
- A Kindle book to borrow for free each month - with no due dates
- Listen to over 2 million songs and hundreds of playlists
- Unlimited photo storage with anywhere access
Important: Your credit card will NOT be charged when you start your free trial or if you cancel during the trial period. If you're happy with Amazon Prime, do nothing. At the end of the free trial, your membership will automatically upgrade to a monthly membership.
Buy new:
$16.39$16.39
FREE delivery: Thursday, April 25 on orders over $35.00 shipped by Amazon.
Ships from: Amazon Sold by: CE_BOOKHOUSE
Buy used: $8.32
Other Sellers on Amazon
FREE Shipping
97% positive over last 12 months
FREE Shipping
Download the free Kindle app and start reading Kindle books instantly on your smartphone, tablet, or computer - no Kindle device required.
Read instantly on your browser with Kindle for Web.
Using your mobile phone camera - scan the code below and download the Kindle app.
Systems of Survival: A Dialogue on the Moral Foundations of Commerce and Politics Paperback – January 13, 1994
Explore your book, then jump right back to where you left off with Page Flip.
View high quality images that let you zoom in to take a closer look.
Enjoy features only possible in digital – start reading right away, carry your library with you, adjust the font, create shareable notes and highlights, and more.
Discover additional details about the events, people, and places in your book, with Wikipedia integration.
Purchase options and add-ons
In Systems of Survival, Jane Jacobs identifies two distinct moral syndromes—one governing commerce, the other, politics—and explores what happens when these two syndromes collide. She looks at business fraud and criminal enterprise, government’s overextended subsidies to agriculture, and transit police who abuse the system the are supposed to enforce, and asks us to consider instances in which snobbery is a virtue and industry a vice. In this work of profound insight and elegance, Jacobs gives us a new way of seeing all our public transactions and encourages us towards the best use of our natural inclinations.
- Print length256 pages
- LanguageEnglish
- PublisherVintage
- Publication dateJanuary 13, 1994
- Dimensions5.15 x 0.55 x 7.98 inches
- ISBN-100679748164
- ISBN-13978-0679748168
Frequently bought together

Similar items that may ship from close to you
Editorial Reviews
From Publishers Weekly
Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Review
“[With] piercing analysis, crystalline prose and [a] finely-honed sense of morality, Jacobs covers an amazing amount of ground.” —Cleveland Plain Dealer
“Superb . . . Cobbling together a little urban anthropology, a little economic history, and a vast store of highly nuanced personal observations . . . Jacobs is an indispensable provocateur.” —Village Voice Literary Supplement
From the Publisher
From the Inside Flap
About the Author
Jane Jacobs was the legendary author of The Death and Life of Great American Cities, a work that has never gone out of print and that has transformed the disciplines of urban planning and city architecture. Her other major works include The Economy of Cities, Systems of Survival, and The Nature of Economies. She died in 2006.
Product details
- Publisher : Vintage; First Edition (January 13, 1994)
- Language : English
- Paperback : 256 pages
- ISBN-10 : 0679748164
- ISBN-13 : 978-0679748168
- Item Weight : 7.6 ounces
- Dimensions : 5.15 x 0.55 x 7.98 inches
- Best Sellers Rank: #1,120,739 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #548 in Sociology of Social Theory
- #1,772 in Economic Conditions (Books)
- #3,954 in Philosophy of Ethics & Morality
- Customer Reviews:
About the author

Discover more of the author’s books, see similar authors, read author blogs and more
Customer reviews
Customer Reviews, including Product Star Ratings help customers to learn more about the product and decide whether it is the right product for them.
To calculate the overall star rating and percentage breakdown by star, we don’t use a simple average. Instead, our system considers things like how recent a review is and if the reviewer bought the item on Amazon. It also analyzed reviews to verify trustworthiness.
Learn more how customers reviews work on Amazon-
Top reviews
Top reviews from the United States
There was a problem filtering reviews right now. Please try again later.
As in her masterpiece "The Life and Death of American Cities," Jacobs has wonderful insights which she proceeds to exaggerate, take beyond the realm where they are correct, and thus leave plenty of openings for a critic's "now wait just a minute, there..." No matter. This little book is well worth a read. Fortunately, I expect it appeals to an older audience than Ayn Rand's romantic tracts on individualism and the free market, and so is unlikely to attract fools who want to go all the way, or even further, with it. Anyway, thanks to the late lady from Scranton!
The book explains why a carefully placed lie from a politician or policeman is to be expected because we know that policemen and politicians are expected to use prevarication to stay true to the fundamental character of these professions. When caught in a constructive lie to "outsiders", these professions have no repercussions. In this moral syndrome, a constructive lie can be honored more than the truth itself. But lying to an "insider", someone you are closely allied with, can end either of these careers. Disloyalty to the team is unforgivable on teams, whereas lying to the public is the opposite: forgivable when protecting what you have been entrusted with protecting. Jacobs' guardianship syndrome is present to the degree that the responsibility to protect is part of the job.
Compare this to the consequences for a scientist lying to the public or a businessman selling slipshod merchandise, violating their clients' trust. In lying, the scientist and the businessman jeopardize their ability to make a living because their success is built entirely on being trusted by "outsiders".
I deeply appreciate this book because the problems that demand my professional participation involve coming to terms with physical and natural facts. But solving the problems driving my involvement requires getting people from both syndromes described in the book to work together. People are more challenging to understand than the physical and natural processes I study.
The main theme is that humanity has implemented two systems for survival. One, guardianship, that seems to spring from our DNA and is practiced by many social animals on our planet. The other, trade or commerce, that appears to be uniquely human. These are not competing systems, they are complementary. They each have their place and they each have their rules. These rules are often, when not directly opposed, not aligned.
For me, the insight that there are two systems at work in our society and that they have different goals and require different rules has made it much easier for me to analyze and understand the forces at work in my environment. It has also made it easier to understand why some things feel "right" while other similar things don't. For example, it seems desirable to have a company creating a competing bank, but not desirable to have the state or federal government creating a competing bank.
One of the criticisms of this book is the choice to write this as a Socratic dialog. I regard this approach as superior to the typical academic approach. Stories are easier to remember and often easier to understand, but I respect the views of those that don't. If you don't like something, then it is a fact that you don't like it. It is irrelevant that I think you should. Further, other readers of these comments may feel as you do--so it is a valid criticism. Just be aware that it will not be true for everyone.
Another criticism is that Jacobs didn't explore concepts or provide guidance that they expected. While I cannot argue that their expectations were met and they just missed it, I can argue that the expectations of the critics are owned by the critics and that there is no evidence that Jacobs promised to meet those expectations. I would also add that just the fact that her book created the desire to have additional ideas covered and guidance provided is a positive thing--not a negative.
Top reviews from other countries
Unfortunately todays global circumstances trump all issues for me so even though the book has an optimistic take-away it did not reflect reality enough.
Still a good read delivering great moral thoughts and discussions.








