Abstract: Coase’s “Enterprise contract theory” is right only on the philosophy level of social “atomization”, however, this social economic view in such virtual context cannot rationally reflect the real world. Therefore, the discussion of the nature of enterprise needs to return to the practical context of “human social development”. In the human social development, people are in the pursuit of the two basic welfares: survival and freedom. The pursuit of the two basic welfares often makes people fall in a “dilemma”: to improve survival welfare, people need to join the organization to get cooperation surplus, but the organization would reduce the freedom welfare of people to some degree at the same time. Based on the methodology of unity of opposites of “individual-organization”, this paper discusses the reasons of the emergence of organization and the function of contract, then it puts forward the basic viewpoint that the economic organization which creates the cooperative surplus is the nature of enterprise.

Key words: freedom; contract; cooperative surplus; nature of enterprise