The Theory of the Leisure Class

300 Pages·2007·0.72 MB·English

by  Thorstein Veblen

oxford world’s classics
THE THEORY OF THE LEISURE CLASS
Thorstein Veblenwas born in 1857on the Wisconsin frontier,
the sixth of twelve children of Thomas and Kari Veblen who emi-
grated from Norway in 1847. At 17Veblen was sent away from the
family farm to Carleton College Academy, where he received his BA
in1880. In the following years Veblen followed a largely unstruc-
tured life that included an early marriage, retirement to his wife’s
family farm, and on-and-off studies at Johns Hopkins, Yale, and
Cornell, before he picked up two doctoral degrees—one in philoso-
phy, the other in economics. He was 35when he procured his first
academic post in 1892at the newly established University of Chicago.
Although he had a reputation as an indifferent lecturer, a difficult
colleague, and a bit of a womanizer, he gained recognition as a man
with important new things to say about the relation of ever-evolving
cultural forces to current business transactions. Culled from the series
of papers he presented throughout the 1890s before academic audi-
ences,The Theory of the Leisure Classwas published in 1899. Received
with derision by those who clung to old-style formulas of economic
stability, it piqued the interest of members in the growing fields
of sociology, anthropology, and psychology, as well as the novelists
rising in protest against growing social inequities. Veblen went on to
write ten books and countless reviews and essays, to be dismissed
from the University of Chicago and Stanford University by admin-
istrators embarrassed over his romantic life, to remarry after his first
wife divorced him, and to venture into non-academic areas in efforts
to support himself. Finally, unemployable and in failing health, he
retired to a cabin in the California mountains where he died in 1929.
Martha Banta is Professor Emeritus, University of California,
Los Angeles. The author of six books and numerous essays on
American literature and cultural studies, she is the recipient of life-
time achievement awards from the Modern Language Association
and the American Studies Association. One True Theory & the Quest
for an American Aesthetic, her forthcoming book, treats in depth
Veblen’s role as the champion of new modes of scientific inquiry
that influenced many areas of social thought.
oxford world’s classics
For over 100years Oxford World’s Classics have brought
readers closer to the world’s great literature. Now with over 700
titles—from the 4,000-year-old myths of Mesopotamia to the
twentieth century’s greatest novels—the series makes available
lesser-known as well as celebrated writing.
The pocket-sized hardbacks of the early years contained
introductions by Virginia Woolf, T. S. Eliot, Graham Greene,
and other literary figures which enriched the experience of reading.
Today the series is recognized for its fine scholarship and
reliability in texts that span world literature, drama and poetry,
religion, philosophy, and politics. Each edition includes perceptive
commentary and essential background information to meet the
changing needs of readers.
OXFORD WORLD’S CLASSICS
THORSTEIN VEBLEN
The Theory of the
Leisure Class
Edited with an Introduction and Notes by
MARTHA BANTA
1
3
Great Clarendon Street, Oxford ox26dp
Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford.
It furthers the University’s objective of excellence in research, scholarship,
and education by publishing worldwide in
OxfordNew York
AucklandCape TownDar es SalaamHong KongKarachi
Kuala LumpurMadridMelbourneMexico CityNairobi
New DelhiShanghaiTaipeiToronto
With offices in
ArgentinaAustriaBrazilChileCzech RepublicFranceGreece
GuatemalaHungaryItalyJapanPolandPortugalSingapore
South KoreaSwitzerlandThailandTurkeyUkraineVietnam
Oxford is a registered trade mark of Oxford University Press
in the UK and in certain other countries
Published in the United States
by Oxford University Press Inc., New York
Editorial material © Martha Banta 2007
The moral rights of the author have been asserted
Database right Oxford University Press (maker)
First published as an Oxford World’s Classics paperback 2007
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced,
stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means,
without the prior permission in writing of Oxford University Press,
or as expressly permitted by law, or under terms agreed with the appropriate
reprographics rights organization. Enquiries concerning reproduction
outside the scope of the above should be sent to the Rights Department,
Oxford University Press, at the address above
You must not circulate this book in any other binding or cover
and you must impose the same condition on any acquirer
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
Data available
Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data
Veblen, Thorstein, 1857–1929
The theory of the leisure class / Thorstein Veblen; edited with an
Introduction and notes by Martha Banta.
p. cm. -- (Oxford world’s classics)
Originally published: New York : Macmillan, 1899.
Includes bibliographical references.
ISBN 978–0–19–280684–0 (alk. paper)
1.Leisure class. I.Title.
HB831.V4 2007
305.5´201--dc22
2007008544
Typeset by Cepha Imaging Private Ltd., Bangalore, India
Printed in Great Britain
on acid-free paper by
Clays Ltd., St Ives plc
ISBN978–0–19–280684–0
13579108642
CONTENTS
Introduction vii
Note on the Text xxvii
Select Bibliography xxviii
A Chronology of Thorstein Bunde Veblen xxx
THE THEORY OF THE LEISURE CLASS 1
Explanatory Notes 260
This page intentionally left blank
INTRODUCTION
Veblen’s Pivotal Work
‘Everyone’ appears to acknowledge the importance of The Theory
of the Leisure Class, for has not Veblen’s 1899 analysis of the socio-
economics of affluent American societies introduced into the ver-
nacular provocative terms such as ‘conspicuous consumption’ still
operative in a world that embraces the notion that ‘greed is good’ and
celebrates the Donald Trumps and the Paris Hiltons who clutter our
‘pecuniary culture’? The question remains how well Veblen’s study
is really ‘known’—both for what it represents within the range of his
own long career and in the newly defined disciplines he guided into
the modern world that have had a major impact upon our understand-
ing of the relations between business, industry, and social mores.
When Maxwell Anderson, the well-known playwright, was asked if
he had read Veblen’s book, he replied ‘Why no. . . . why should I? All
my friends have read it. It permeates the atmosphere in which I live.’1
The Theory of the Leisure Classis indeed a pivotal work. It followed after
Veblen’s early essays promoting post-Darwinian methods of scientific
inquiry that replaced outmoded views of an unchanging universe with
theories capable of deciphering ever-evolving societies and institutions.
It began his championing of the heroic model of the engineer whose
selfless concern for the production of essential goods countered the
depredations of the predatory businessman solely interested in profits
gained through selling useless products. What may still matter most is
that it represents a major literary achievement, a work that rearranges
how we look at our social structures and everyday behaviours. Besides
being a very ‘good read’, its narrative techniques, its stylistic innova-
tions, its sheer guts raise The Theory of the Leisure Classwell beyond the
level of other writings of its time that tried to ignite awareness that too
much money was in the hands of too few people who had too limited a
notion of what to do with their barbaric booty.
Veblen’s masterwork is deeply sociological in its implications,
and his immersion in late nineteenth-century debates over economic
1 Joseph Dorfman, Thorstein Veblen and His America(New York, 1961),422.
viii Introduction
theories is searingly on view. Just as important is the fact of its nar-
rative force that places it in the illustrious company of contemporary
social critics such as Jane Addams, Herbert Croly, Eugene Debs, and
literaryfigures numbering Henry James, Edith Wharton, Mark Twain,
Theodore Dreiser, Frank Norris, and Abraham Cahan. Veblen was
(to borrow James’s term) a ‘restless analyst’ of the American scene
whose non-fiction study opened the way for the insistence by the
novelists that sociology, economics, and literature share (and must
share) a common aim to expose (through satire, wit, and passion) the
lopsided nature of social institutions of power.
Even today there are those who do not know how to deal with all
the implications of Veblen’s classic study. Perhaps their quandary is
caused by the fact, as one observer has stated, ‘no one remotely like
Thorstein Veblen can ever be expected to appear again’.2 Certain
economists and sociologists prefer to look away from this volume,
finding themselves more at home with Veblen’s weighty series of art-
icles on political economy, land systems, finance, business manage-
ment, and the industrial arts. On the other hand, cultural historians
tend to focus on this single work as though it stands alone like a tall
tree in an empty clearing. More often than not it was the novelists of
Veblen’s day who cut to the core of the book’s insights, taking away
from it the impetus to make similar claims about socio-economic
structures after their own manner. But one way or another, the key
distinctions Veblen made between wasteful profit-making and
effective productivity still apply to the lives we live.
Critical Appraisals
It is both salutary and amusing to reflect upon the first, highly
negative reactions to any book that eventually gains fame over
2 Bernard Rosenberg, Thorstein Veblen(New York, 1963),1. It is heady to realize that
dealing with Veblen’s career prompts paying attention to the disparate work of (among
others) Lester Ward, Jacques Loeb, William James, William McDougall, James Frazer,
Franz Boas, Margaret Mead, Ruth Benedict, Edward Tylor, Lewis Mumford, Max Weber,
Karl Marx, Sigmund Freud, John Maynard Keynes, Charles S. Peirce, George Mead,
and John Dewey. Rick Tilman’s The Intellectual Legacy of Thorstein Veblen: Unresolved
Issues(Westport, Conn., 1996) makes this point very well, since ‘legacy’ is the key word
when it comes to assessing Veblen’s influence over the developing fields of biology, soci-
ology, evolutionary psychology, physiology, political science, and anthropology.
Introduction ix
the years.3Veblen’s book is a fine example. At the time of its publi-
cation in 1899 the reviewer in the Yale Review contemptuously
viewed it as the work of a dilettante that brought sociology into ‘dis-
repute among careful and scientific thinkers’. Its pronouncements on
economics were judged to be ‘ill-considered and vicious’, ‘crowded
with ex-cathedra propositions, often of a revolutionary and startling
nature’. The reviewer concluded that The Theory of the Leisure Class
was no more than a ‘collection of “things that are not so”’. Its most
‘vicious distinction is that between pecuniary [i.e. business] and
industrial economic institutions’, by which ‘the ideal pecuniary man’
is compared to ‘the ideal delinquent, i.e. criminal’. This volley from the
Yale Reviewwas followed by a thirty-page dismissal in the Journal of
Political Economy that argued that the links Veblen made between
the getting of wealth and the acts of ‘predatory’ men made Veblen
‘a master of sophistical dialectic’. Yet it is typical of the ironies that
fostered irate evaluations by American conservatives that, in the decades
to come, Veblen’s quasi-socialist views were under attack by European
radicals. Theodor Adorno rebuked Veblen for his so-called nostalgic
desire to return to a golden age, his anti-intellectualism, and his reac-
tionary inability to hold out future possibilities for social change.4
Despite the critical snipings made against Veblen by fellow aca-
demics in the first months after the publication of The Theory of the
Leisure Class, there was room for praise midst the bafflement of some
reviewers over the unusual manner in which he mounted his unset-
tling arguments.5To this day it is necessary to grapple with what had
been set in motion by Veblen’s long, contentious career as a particu-
lar, peculiar student of the modes of modern barbaric practices.
Continuing fascination with Veblen’s thoughts are attested to by
heated discussions held by the members of the International Veblen
Association and by scholars inspired (and sometimes exasperated)
by Veblen’s continuing dominance over their diverse disciplines.
3 The following comments from the Yale Reviewand the Journal of Political Economy
are cited in Dorfman’s Thorstein Veblen and His America,191–2.
4 Adorno, ‘Veblen’s Attack on Culture’ (1941), cited in Rick Tilman and Jo Lo
Simich (eds.), Thorstein Veblen: A Reference Guide(Boston,1985),50.
5 After Veblen’s death in 1929, a tabulation of the sales of his ten books over his
lifetime revealed that only 40,000copies were ever sold. Of that number, one-half had
resulted from sales of The Theory of the Leisure Class. The ongoing publication of reprints
of this seminal work attest to its continuing popularity.