A lot of people haven’t heard of Thorstein Veblen although they might have heard of his most famous phrase: “conspicuous consumption,” from his 1899 book, “The Theory of the Leisure Class”. Veblen is one of the seminal economists of the late 19th century. I suppose you might argue that he was more radical than Karl Marx – or I suppose you might not. I first learned of him from Robert Heilbroner’s book about economists, “The Worldly Philosophers,” (highly recommended!) which I read in high school. According to Wikipedia,
The book [“The Worldly Philosophers”] was written in 1953 and has sold more than four million copies through seven editions. (The only other economics book to sell more copies is Paul Samuelson's textbook Economics.)
If you’d like to learn about Veblen, I’ll tell you more below the fold.
My Father’s Thoughts About Veblen
My Dad (who died a couple of years ago) was a college professor. One of his subjects was economics. After I read the Heilbroner book in high school, I asked my dad what he thought about Veblen. First, my Dad asked, “How the heck do you know about Thorstein Veblen?” I said, “Well, I just read a book that talked about Veblen. Have you heard of him?” I knew how to push his buttons. I was pretty sure that suggesting that he might not have heard of him would put him into his professorial lecture mode. I recall that my dad said three things:
1. First he said economists can be divided into two groups: mathematical people (guys who ponder numbers) and philosophical people (guys who ponder concepts). The math guys use calculus and charts and graphs to predict the future. They study the numerical values of inflation or unemployment or the velocity of money and believe that there’s knowledge and predictive value in the formulas. On the other hand, the economic philosophers think about the meaning of supply and demand. Or they talk about the concepts of unemployment or inflation. They don’t ignore the numbers, but they’d rather look at the broader question of the forces that push on or pull at the economy.
2. The second thing Dad said was this: The math guys tend to assume that consumers make rational choices based on numbers. So if one thing costs more, you’ll select the cheaper alternative. Or if one job pays more, you’ll choose the better paying job. But what if a coal miner makes more money than a college professor? You might still choose to be a college professor (because you’d have a higher status or because it’s better for your health or because your parents would be proud of you). What if asparagus costs more than broccoli? You might choose to serve asparagus at a dinner party (because asparagus is considered “fancier” and high class). When people make economic choices about jobs or dinner vegetables they aren’t always acting in a mathematical or rational way. This (in a simplified form) is part of what Veblen wrote about. This encouraged me to seek out and read Veblen (instead of just reading about him).
3. The third thing was a funny story. Dad thought it was great that when Veblen was a professor, his office hours started out as 10-11 am Monday to Friday. His office hours eventually shrank to 10:00-10:05 Mondays. My Dad (the professor) thought that was hilarious.
Enough about my father. Let’s look at a picture of Thorstein Veblen:
Veblen’s Background
Thorstein Veblen was born in Wisconsin in 1857 of Norwegian immigrant parents. He grew up speaking Norwegian and he apparently learned English when he went to school. He grew up and went to Carleton College. Full disclosure: My ancestors were Norwegian and I was the third generation (me and both parents and two grandparents) to graduate from St. Olaf College, which was and is the cross-town rival of Carleton (in Northfield, MN).
From the Wikipedia entry about Veblen:
He obtained his B.A. in economics at Carleton College (1880), under John Bates Clark, a leading economist in the emerging body of thought now identified as neoclassical economics. He then undertook graduate work at Johns Hopkins University under Charles Sanders Peirce, the founder of the pragmatist school in philosophy, and subsequently received his Ph.D. in 1884 at Yale University, under the direction of William Graham Sumner, a proponent of laissez-faire economic policies. His dissertation won the John Addison Porter Prize for that year. Perhaps the most important intellectual influences on Veblen were Charles Darwin and Herbert Spencer, whose work in the last half of the 19th century sparked an enormous interest in the evolutionary perspective on human societies.
Upon graduation from Yale, Veblen was unable to obtain an academic job, partly due to prejudice against Norwegians, and partly because most universities considered him insufficiently educated in Christianity — most academics at the time held divinity degrees. Veblen returned to his family farm — ostensibly to recover from malaria — and spent six years there reading voluminously. In 1891 he left the farm, to study economics as a graduate student at Cornell University under James Laurence Laughlin.
In 1892, he became a professor at the newly opened University of Chicago, simultaneously serving as managing editor of the Journal of Political Economy. In 1906, he received an appointment at Stanford University, where he left, it is often written, because of “womanizing.” The rumors of Veblen's womanizing probably followed him from the University of Chicago, where difficulties with his eccentric first wife had led some to see him, probably wrongly, as a lech. It is possible that these rumors were used as a reason to terminate the employment of a man who was widely regarded as a poor teacher and a radical critic.
Veblen reflected many of his views in his personal habits. To wit: Veblen's house was often a mess, with unmade beds and dirty dishes; his clothes were often in disarray; he was an agnostic; and he tended to be extremely blunt and rude while dealing with other people.
There was a prejudice against immigrant Norwegians? Because the immigrants were different? That could be a delicious topic for a future DKos diary. Hmmm. Back to Veblen.
”The Theory of the Leisure Class”
Veblen wrote several books, but the most well-known is “The Theory of the Leisure Class.” I recently re-read it. He wrote it in 1899, so it’s in the public domain and available from numerous websites (one of them is here: The Theory of the Leisure Class).
He starts out in chapter one by talking about barbarian or savage or primitive cultures (he mentions feudal Japan, feudal Europe, and Brahmin India, among others). Before you object to calling a culture “barbaric” or “primitive,” I’ll remind you that he wrote this in 1899, when such ideas were commonplace. Also, I think he was well aware of the irony of using such words, because he brilliantly slammed modern culture, suggesting that we’re not as advanced or civilized as we might think we are.
The Predatory Class and the Productive Class
I love the sound of those words. Veblen said the productive class did all the work. Nowadays we’d call them “working class” or “blue collar.” The productive class grows the wheat and bakes the bread. They spin the wool and sew the clothes. They lay the bricks and nail the wood to create buildings.
The predatory class owns the land, owns the factories, runs the military, preaches the sermons, and thinks they’re somehow superior to the people who do the real (productive) work.
If you’re rich (in money or land or slaves), wouldn’t that make you happy? Not a chance. Because there’s probably another guy who’s richer than you. Here’s what Veblen says:
“In the nature of the case, the desire for wealth can scarcely be satiated in any individual instance, and evidently a satiation of the average or general desire for wealth is out of the question. However widely, or equally, or "fairly", it may be distributed, no general increase of the community's wealth can make any approach to satiating this need, the ground of which approach to satiating this need, the ground of which is the desire of everyone to excel everyone else in the accumulation of goods. If, as is sometimes assumed, the incentive to accumulation were the want of subsistence or of physical comfort, then the aggregate economic wants of a community might conceivably be satisfied at some point in the advance of industrial efficiency; but since the struggle is substantially a race for reputability on the basis of an invidious comparison, no approach to a definitive attainment is possible.”
He uses 19th century academic words and phrasing, and he’s less opaque than Shakespeare, but you do have to think a bit while you’re reading him.
It’s not enough to be rich...
...you also have to act like you’re rich. Veblen’s words:
“During the predatory culture labour comes to be associated in men's habits of thought with weakness and subjection to a master. It is therefore a mark of inferiority, and therefore comes to be accounted unworthy of man in his best estate. By virtue of this tradition labour is felt to be debasing, and this tradition has never died out. On the contrary, with the advance of social differentiation it has acquired the axiomatic force due to ancient and unquestioned prescription.”
In other words, if you’re rich, you hire people to do the real work: cooks, maids, chauffeurs. You’re too good to do those things. If you’re rich, you don’t want to get your hands dirty. Honest work would contaminate you.
“In order to gain and to hold the esteem of men it is not sufficient merely to possess wealth or power. The wealth or power must be put in evidence, for esteem is awarded only on evidence.”
One example he gives is that an aluminum fork works as well as a silver fork, if your goal is to transport food from the plate to your mouth. But if you’re rich and you want people to know that you’re rich, then you must have silverware that’s made out of silver. Or you own a pocket watch instead of a wristwatch (because carpenters and other laborers have wristwatches, so they can use both hands). In the 19th century, rich people were fat – like Grover Cleveland – and poor people were thin. In the 21st century, rich people want to be thin – like Paris Hilton – and poor people are fat. In the 19th century, farmers and laborers worked outdoors and had tans. In those days, rich white people didn’t want to have a tan. Nowadays, rich people (John Boehner!) like to have tans because poor people work in offices indoors and don’t have tans.
We’re getting closer to figuring out the predatory class.
“The normal and characteristic occupations of the class in this mature phase of its life history are in form very much the same as in its earlier days. These occupations are government, war, sports, and devout observances.... These occupations are of the nature of predatory, not of productive, employment.
So, for instance, in our time there is the knowledge of the dead languages and the occult sciences; of correct spelling; of syntax and prosody; of the various forms of domestic music and other household art; of the latest properties of dress, furniture, and equipage; of games, sports, and fancy-bred animals, such as dogs and race-horses.
Such are what is known as manners and breeding, polite usage, decorum, and formal and ceremonial observances generally.”
Conspicuous Stuff
Veblen came up with the phrases “conspicuous consumption,” “conspicuous leisure,” and “conspicuous waste” to describe things done by the leisure (predatory) class. Rich men own yachts and country estates and racehorses and beautiful wives. And they make sure they have expensive cars and expensive clothes.
Two more quotes
If you’re in the predatory class, you’ll be nicer to your butler and maid (the house slaves) than you will be to your factory workers (the field slaves):
“A division of labour presently sets in, whereby personal service and attendance on the master becomes the special office of a portion of the servants, while those who are wholly employed in industrial occupations proper are removed more and more from all immediate relation to the person of their owner. At the same time those servants whose office is personal service, including domestic duties, come gradually to be exempted from productive industry carried on for gain.”
One more quote, about rich people being hunters and athletes:
“It is noticeable, for instance, that even very mild-mannered and matter-of-fact men who go out shooting are apt to carry an excess of arms and accoutrements in order to impress upon their own imagination the seriousness of their undertaking. These huntsmen are also prone to a histrionic, prancing gait and to an elaborate exaggeration of the motions, whether of stealth or of onslaught, involved in their deeds of exploit. Similarly in athletic sports there is almost invariably present a good share of rant and swagger and ostensible mystification -- features which mark the histrionic nature of these employments. In all this, of course, the reminder of boyish make-believe is plain enough. The slang of athletics, by the way, is in great part made up of extremely sanguinary [bloody] locutions borrowed from the terminology of warfare. Except where it is adopted as a necessary means of secret communication, the use of a special slang in any employment is probably to be accepted as evidence that the occupation in question is substantially make-believe.”
There’s a lot more -- “The Theory of the Leisure Class” contains insights into class that are still true 100 years later. I hope you enjoyed my disquisition about Thorstein Veblen. I had fun writing it.