The Theory of the Leisure Class

The Theory of the Leisure Class: An Economic Study of Institutions (1899), by

Originally published as The Theory of the Leisure Class: An Economic Study in the Evolution of Institutions, the book arose from three articles that Veblen published in the American Journal of Sociology between 1898 and 1899: (i) "The Beginning of Ownership" (ii) "The Barbarian Status of Women", and (iii) "The Instinct of Workmanship and the Irksomeness of Labour".^[5] These works presented the major themes of economics and sociology that he later developed in works such as: The Theory of Business Enterprise (1904), about how incompatible are the pursuit of profit and the making of useful goods; and The Instinct of Workmanship and the State of the Industrial Arts (1914), about the fundamental conflict between the human predisposition to useful production and the societal institutions that waste the useful products of human effort.^{[6][2]: 286–7}

Moreover, The Theory of the Leisure Class is a socio-economic treatise that resulted from Veblen's observation and perception of the United States as a society of rapidly developing economic and social institutions.

Concepts

In The Theory of the Leisure Class Veblen coined the following sociology terms:

• Leisure class — members of the upper class who are exempt from productive work.^[1]
• Pecuniary superiority — the leisure class demonstrate their economic superiority by not working.^[1]
• Pecuniary emulation — the economic effort to exceed someone else's socio-economic status.^[8]
• Pecuniary struggle — the acquisition and exhibition of wealth in order to gain social status.^[1]
• Vicarious leisure — the leisure of wives and servants as evidence of the wealth of the lord of the manor^[1]
• Estranged leisure — the leisure of servants is realised in behalf of the lord of the manor.^[1]

The stratified society

The Theory of the Leisure Class established that the

The leisure class engaged in displays of pecuniary superiority by not working and by the:[1]

1. Accumulation of property and material possessions
2. Accumulation of immaterial goods — high-level education, a
   family crest
3. Adoption of archaic social skills —
   manners and etiquette, chivalry and a code of conduct
4. Employment of
   servants

• The subjugation of women — Women originally were spoils of war captured by raiding barbarians. In contemporary society, the unemployed housewife is an economic trophy that attests to a man's socio-economic prowess. In having a wife without an independent economic life (a profession, a trade, a job) a man can display her unemployed status as a form of his conspicuous leisure and as an object of his conspicuous consumption.
• The popularity of sport — American football is sociologically advantageous to community cohesion; yet, in itself, sport is an economic side-effect of conspicuous leisure that wastes material resources.
• Devout observances — Organized religion is a type of conspicuous leisure (wasted time) and of conspicuous consumption (wasted resources); a social activity of no economic consequence, because a church is an unproductive use of land and resources, and clergy (men and women) do unproductive work.
• Social formalities — social manners are remnant barbarian behaviours, such as paying respect to one's socially powerful betters. In itself, etiquette has little value (practical or economic), but is of much social value as cultural capital, which identifies, establishes, and enforces distinctions of place (social stratum) within a social class.

Overview

Conspicuous economics

With The Theory of the Leisure Class: An Economic Study in the Evolution of Institutions (1899), Veblen introduced, described, and explained the concepts of "conspicuous consumption" and of "conspicuous leisure" to the nascent, academic discipline of sociology. Conspicuous consumption is the application of money and material resources towards the display of a higher social status (e.g. silver flatware, custom-made clothes, an over-sized house); and conspicuous leisure is the application of extended time to the pursuit of pleasure (physical and intellectual), such as sport and the fine arts. Therefore, such physical and intellectual pursuits display the freedom of the rich man and woman from having to work in an economically productive occupation.^[10]

Theses

• Chapter I: Introductory

The modern industrial society developed from the barbarian tribal society, which featured a leisure class supported by subordinated working classes employed in economically productive occupations. The people of the leisure class were exempted from manual work and from practicing economically productive occupations, because they belong to the leisure class.

• Chapter II: Pecuniary Emulation

The emergence of a leisure class coincides with the beginning of

• Chapter III: Conspicuous Leisure

Among the lower social classes, a man's reputation as a diligent, efficient, and productive worker is the highest form of pecuniary emulation of the leisure class available to him in society. Yet, among the

• Chapter IV: Conspicuous Consumption

Theoretically, the consumption of luxury products (goods and services) is limited to the leisure class, because the working classes have other, more important, things and activities on which to spend their limited income, their

A society develops through the establishment of institutions (social, governmental, economic, etc.) modified only in accordance with ideas from the past, in order to maintain societal stability. Politically, the leisure class maintain their societal dominance, by retaining out-dated aspects of the political economy; thus, their opposition to socio-economic progressivism to the degree that they consider political conservatism and political reaction as honorific features of the leisure class.

• Chapter IX: The Conservation of Archaic Traits

The existence of the leisure class influences the behaviour of the individual man and woman, by way of social ambition. To rise in society, a person from a lower class emulates the characteristics of the desired upper class; he or she assumes the habits of economic consumption and social attitudes (archaic traits of demeanour in speech, dress, and manners). In pursuit of social advancement, and concomitant social prestige, the man and the woman who rid themselves of scruple and honesty will more readily rise into a stratum of the leisure class.

• Chapter X: Modern Survivals of Prowess

As owners of the means of production, the leisure class benefit from, but do not work in, the industrial community, and do not materially contribute to the commonweal (the welfare of the public) but do consume the goods and services produced by the working classes. As such, the individual success (social and economic) of a person derives from his or her astuteness and ferocity, which are character traits nurtured by the pecuniary culture of the consumer society.

• Chapter XI: The Belief in Luck

The belief in the concept of 'luck' (Fortuna) is one reason why people gamble; likewise follows the belief that luck is a part of achieving socio-economic success, rather than the likelier reason of social connections derived from a person's social class and social stratum. Within the social strata of the leisure class, the belief in luck is greater in the matter of sport (wherein physical prowess does matter) because of personal pride, and the concomitant social prestige; hence, gambling is a display of conspicuous consumption and of conspicuous leisure. Nonetheless, gambling (the belief in luck) is a social practice common to every social class of society.

• Chapter XII: Devout Observances

The existence, function, and practice of religion in a socially-stratified society, is a form of abstract conspicuous consumption for and among the members of the person's community, of devotion to the value system that justifies the existence of his or her social class. As such, attending church services, participating in religious rites, and paying tithes, are a form of conspicuous leisure.

• Chapter XIII: Survivals of the Non-invidious Interest

The clergy and the women who are members of the leisure class function as objects of vicarious leisure, thus, it is morally impossible for them to work and productively contribute to society. As such, maintaining a high social-class is more important for a woman of the leisure class, than it is for a man of the leisure class. Women, therefore, are the greatest indicators of a man's socio-economic standing in his respective community. In a consumer society, how a woman spends her time and what activities she does with her time communicate the social standing of her husband, her family, and her social class.

• Chapter XIV: The Higher Learning as an Expression of the Pecuniary Culture

Education (academic, technical, religious) is a form of conspicuous leisure, because it does not directly contribute to the economy of society. Therefore, high-status, ceremonial symbols of book-learning, such as the gown and mortar-board-cap of the university graduate educated in abstract subjects (science, mathematics, philosophy, etc.) are greatly respected, whereas certificates, low-status, ceremonial symbols of practical schooling (technology, manufacturing, etc.) are not greatly respected to the same degree, because the contemporary university is a leisure-class institution.

Criticism and critique

Literary style

In The Theory of the Leisure Class, Veblen used idiosyncratic and satirical language to identify, describe, and explain the consumerist mores of American modern society in the 19th century; thus, about the impracticality of etiquette as a form of conspicuous leisure, Veblen said:

A better illustration [of conspicuous leisure], or at least a more unmistakable one, is afforded by a certain King of France who was said to have lost his life in the observance of good form. In the absence of the functionary whose office it was to shift his master's seat, the King sat uncomplaining before the fire, and suffered his royal person to be toasted beyond recovery. But, in so doing, he saved his Most Christian Majesty from menial contamination.^[11]

In contrast, Veblen used

In the Introduction to the 1967 edition of The Theory of the Leisure Class, economist Robert Lekachman said that Veblen was a misanthrope:

As a child, Veblen was a notorious tease, and an inveterate inventor of malicious nicknames. As an adult, Veblen developed this aptitude into the abusive category and the cutting analogy. In this volume [The Theory of the Leisure Class] the most striking categories are four in number: [i] Conspicuous Consumption, [ii] Vicarious Consumption, [iii] Conspicuous Leisure, and [iv] Conspicuous Waste. It is amazing what a very large proportion of social activity, higher education, devout observance, and upper-class consumer goods seemed to fit snugly into one, or another, of these classifications.

— Robert Lekachman, Introduction to The Theory of the Leisure Class (1967 ed.)

19th century

The success of The Theory of the Leisure Class (1899) derived from the fidelity, veracity, and accuracy of Veblen's reportage about the socio-economic behaviours of the American system of social classes.^[12] Additional to the success (financial, academic, social) accrued to him by the book, a social-scientist colleague told Veblen that the sociology of gross consumerism catalogued in The Theory of the Leisure Class had much "fluttered the dovecotes of the East", especially in the Ivy League academic Establishment.^[13]

In the two-part book review "An Opportunity for American Fiction" (April–May 1899), the critic William Dean Howells made Veblen's treatise the handbook of sociology and economics for the American intelligentsia of the early 20th century.^[13] Reviewing first the economics and then the social satire in The Theory of the Leisure Class, Howells said that social-class anxiety impels American society to wasteful consumerism, especially the pursuit of social prestige. That despite social classes being alike in most stratified societies, the novelty of the American social-class system was that the leisure class had only recently appeared in U.S. history.^[14]

Asking for a novelist to translate into fiction what the social-scientist Veblen had reported, Howells concluded that a novel of manners was an opportunity for American fiction to accessibly communicate the satire in The Theory of the Leisure Class:^[15]

It would be easy to burlesque [the American leisure class], but to burlesque it would be intolerable, and the witness [Veblen] who did this would be bearing false testimony where the whole truth and nothing but the truth is desirable. A democracy, the proudest, the most sincere, the most ardent that history has ever known, has evolved here a leisure class which has all the distinguishing traits of a patriciate, and which by the chemistry of intermarriage with European aristocracies is rapidly acquiring antiquity. Is not this a phenomenon worthy the highest fiction? Mr. Veblen has brought to its study the methods and habits of scientific inquiry. To translate these into dramatic terms would form the unequalled triumph of the novelist who had the seeing eye and the thinking mind, not to mention the feeling heart. That such a thing has not been done hitherto is all the stranger, because fiction, in other countries, has always employed itself with the leisure class, with the aristocracy; and our own leisure class now offers not only as high an opportunity as any which fiction has elsewhere enjoyed, but by its ultimation in the English leisure class, it invites the American imagination abroad on conditions of unparalleled advantage.

In the Journal of Political Economy (September 1899), the book reviewer John Cummings said:

As a contribution to the general theory of sociology, Dr. Veblen's The Theory of the Leisure Class requires no other commendation for its scholarly performance than that which a casual reading of the work readily inspires. Its highly original character makes any abridgement of it exceedingly difficult and inadequate, and such an abridgement cannot be even attempted here ... The following pages, however, are devoted to a discussion of certain points of view in which the author seems, to the writer [Cummings], to have taken an incomplete survey of the facts, or to have allowed his interpretation of facts to be influenced by personal animus.^[16]

20th century

In the essay "Prof. Veblen" (1919) the intellectual H. L. Mencken addressed the matters of Americans' social psychology reported in The Theory of the Leisure Class (1899), by asking:

Do I enjoy a decent bath because I know that John Smith cannot afford one—or because I delight in being clean? Do I admire Beethoven's Fifth Symphony because it is incomprehensible to Congressmen and Methodists—or because I genuinely love music? Do I prefer terrapin à la Maryland to fried liver, because plowhands must put up with the liver—or because the terrapin is intrinsically a more charming dose?^[17][18]

In the essay "The Dullest Book of The Month: Dr. Thorstein Veblen Gets the Crown of Deadly Nightshade" (1919), after addressing the content of The Theory of the Leisure Class, the book reviewer

John Dos Passos writes of Veblen in his trilogy novel U.S.A, in the third novel (1933), The Big Money. There, as one of Passos' highly subjective portraits of historical figures throughout the trilogy, Veblen is bio-sketched in THE BITTER DRINK in about 10 pages, referring presumably in that title to the hemlock Socrates was forced to drink for his supposed crimes. The portrait ends with these three final lines: "but his memorial remains/riveted into the language/the sharp clear prism of his mind."

In The Worldly Philosophers: The Lives, Times, and Ideas of the Great Economic Thinkers (1953), the historian of economics Robert Heilbroner said that Veblen's socio-economic theories applied to the Gilded Age (1870–1900) of gross materialism and political corruption in the U.S. of the 19th century, but are inapplicable in 21st-century economics, because The Theory of the Leisure Class is specific to U.S. society in general, and to the society of Chicago in particular.^[23] In that vein, in No Rest for the Wealthy (2009), the journalist Daniel Gross said:

In the book, Veblen—whom C. Wright Mills called "the best critic of America that America has ever produced"—dissected the habits and mores of a privileged group that was exempt from industrial toil and distinguished by lavish expenditures. His famous phrase conspicuous consumption referred to spending that satisfies no need other than to build prestige, a cultural signifier intended to intimidate and impress. In this age of repossessed yachts, half-finished McMansions and broken-down leveraged buyouts, Veblen proves that a 110-year-old sociological vivisection of the financial overclass can still be au courant. Yet, while Veblen frequently reads as still 100 percent right on the foibles of the rich, when it comes to an actual theory of the contemporary leisure class, he now comes off as about 90 percent wrong.^[4]

See also

References

Notes

Bibliography

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