The Theory of the Leisure Class

Background

The Theory of the Leisure Class (1899) was published during the Gilded Age (1870–1900), the time of the robber baron millionaires John D. Rockefeller, Andrew Carnegie, and Cornelius Vanderbilt, at the end of the 19th century. Veblen presents the evolutionary development of the social and economic institutions of society, wherein technology and the industrial arts are the creative forces of economic production. In the economics of the production of goods and services, the social function of the economy was to meet the material needs of society and to earn profits for the owners of the means of production. Sociologically, the industrial production system required the workers (men and women) to be diligent, efficient, and co-operative, whilst the owners of the factories concerned themselves with profits and with public displays of wealth; thus the contemporary socio-economic behaviours of conspicuous consumption and of conspicuous leisure survived from the predatory, barbarian past of the tribal stage of modern society.

The sociology and economics reported in The Theory of the Leisure Class show the influences of Charles Darwin, Karl Marx, Adam Smith, and Herbert Spencer; thereby Veblen's socio-economic theory emphasizes social evolution and development as characteristics of human institutions. In his time, Veblen criticised contemporary (19th-century) economic theories as intellectually static and hedonistic, and that economists should take account of how people actually behave, socially and culturally, rather than rely upon the theoretical deduction meant to explain the economic behaviours of society. As such, Veblen's reports of American political economy contradicted the (supply and demand) neoclassical economics of the 18th century, which define people as rational agents who seek utility and maximal pleasure from their economic activities. In contrast, Veblen's economics defines people as irrational economic agents who disregard personal happiness in the continual pursuit of the social status and the prestige inherent to having a place in society (class and economic stratum). Veblen concluded that conspicuous consumption did not constitute social progress because American economic development was unduly influenced by the static economics of the British aristocracy; therefore, conspicuous consumption was an un-American activity contrary to the country's dynamic culture of individualism.

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". 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.

Thesis

Concepts

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

Leisure class — members of the upper class who are exempt from productive work.

Pecuniary superiority — the leisure class demonstrates their economic superiority by not working.

Pecuniary emulation — the economic effort to exceed someone else's socio-economic status.

Pecuniary struggle — the acquisition and exhibition of wealth to gain social status.

Vicarious leisure — the leisure of wives and servants as evidence of the wealth of the lord of the manor

Estranged leisure — the leisure of servants is realised on behalf of the lord of the manor.

The stratified society

The Theory of the Leisure Class established that the political economy of a modern society is based upon the social stratification of tribal and feudal societies, rather than upon the merit and social utility and economic utility of individual men and women. Veblen's examples indicate that many economic behaviours of contemporary society derive from corresponding tribal-society behaviours, wherein men and women practiced the division of labor according to their status group; high-status people practiced hunting and warfare, which are economically unproductive occupations, whilst low-status people practiced farming and manufacturing, which are economically productive occupations. In a socially stratified society, the leisure class are members of the upper class who are exempt from productive work.

The concepts of dignity and self-worth and honour are the bases of the development of social class and distinctions of type among the social classes; thus, by way of social stratification, productive labor came to be seen as disreputable. Therefore, the accumulation of wealth does not confer social status, whereas evidence of wealth, such as leisure, does. In a stratified society, the division of labor inherent to the barbarian culture of conquest, domination, and the exploitation of labour featured labour-intensive occupations for the conquered people, and light-labour occupations for the conquerors, who thus became the leisure class. In that societal context, although low-status, productive occupations (tinker, tailor, chandler) were of greater economic value to society than were high-status, unproductive occupations (the profession of arms, the clergy, banking, etc.), for social cohesion, the leisure class occasionally performed productive work that was more symbolic than practical.

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

Accumulation of property and material possessions

Accumulation of immaterial goods — high-level education, a family crest

Adoption of archaic social skills — manners and etiquette, chivalry and a code of conduct

Employment of servants

Contemporary consumerism

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 use of money and material resources to display a higher social status (e.g., silver flatware, custom-made clothes, an oversized house). 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.

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 exempt from manual work and economically productive occupations.

Chapter II: Pecuniary Emulation

The emergence of a leisure class coincides with the beginning of ownership, initially based upon marriage as a form of ownership — of women and their chattel property — as evidence of prowess. As such, the material consumption of the leisure class has little to do with either comfort or subsistence, and much to do with social esteem from the community, and thus with self-respect.

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 social strata of the leisure class, manual labor is perceived as a sign of social and economic weakness; thus, the defining social characteristics of the leisure class are the exemption from useful employment and the practice of conspicuous leisure as a non-productive consumption of time.

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 wages. Yet, such is not the case, because the lower classes consume expensive alcoholic beverages and narcotic drugs. In doing so, the working classes seek to emulate the standards of life and play of the leisure class, because they are the people at the head of the social structure in terms of reputability. In that emulation of the leisure class, social manners are a result of the non-productive consumption of time by the upper social classes; thus, the social utility of conspicuous consumption and of conspicuous leisure lies in their wastefulness of time and resources.

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.

In contrast, Veblen used objective language in The Theory of Business Enterprise (1904), which analyses the business-cycle behaviours of businessmen. In his introduction to the 1973 edition, the economist John Kenneth Galbraith said that The Theory of the Leisure Class is Veblen's intellectual put-down of American society. That Veblen spoke satirically to soften the negative implications of his socio-economic analyses of the U.S. social-class system, facts that are more psychologically threatening to the American ego and the status quo than the negative implications of Karl Marx's analyses. That, unlike Marx, who asserted capitalism as superior to feudalism in providing products (goods and services) for mass consumption, Veblen did not recognise such a distinction. For him, capitalism was one form of economic barbarism, and that goods and services produced for conspicuous consumption are fundamentally worthless.

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.

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. 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.

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. 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.

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:

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.

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?

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 Robert Benchley addressed the subject of who are readers to whom Veblen speaks, that:the Doctor has made one big mistake, however. He has presupposed, in writing this book, the existence of a [social] class with much more leisure than any class in the world ever possessed—for, has he not counted on a certain number of readers?

In the introduction to the 1934 edition, the economist Stuart Chase said that the Great Depression (1929–1941) had vindicated Veblen the economist, because The Theory of the Leisure Class had unified "the outstanding economists of the world". In the foreword to the 1953 edition, sociologist C. Wright Mills said that Veblen was "the best critic of America that America has ever produced". In the Introduction to the 1973 edition of the book, economist John Kenneth Galbraith addressed the author as subject, and said that Veblen was a man of his time, and that The Theory of the Leisure Class—published in 1899—reflected Veblen's 19th-century world view. That in his person and personality, the social scientist Veblen was neglectful of his grooming and tended to be disheveled; that he suffered social intolerance for being an intellectual and an agnostic in a society of superstitious and anti-intellectual people, and so tended to curtness with less intelligent folk.

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."