THE THEORY OF THE LEISURE CLASS

BY PAUL A. BARAN

The Theory of the Leisure Class is Thorstein Veblen's first and

certainly his most popular major work. It not only contains nearly
all the notions that are now commonly associated with his name, it
also foreshadows much of what appears in a more developed form
in his subsequent writings. The scope of the present attempt to un-
dertake a brief evaluation of that book must therefore be both nar-
row and general. It must be narrow because it has to consider the
core of The Theory of the Leisure Class: the concepts of pecuniary
emulation, conspicuous leisure, and conspicuous consumption. It must
be general because it has to essay an at least tentative assessment of
what might be regarded as the central scaffolding of Veblen's
thought: his methodological approach and his principal results.*
The greatest obstacle to a proper appreciation of the theory of
pecuniary emulation, conspicuous leisure, and conspicuous consump-
tion is its tantalizing lack of precision. At the risk of gross misappre-
hension which Veblen's mode of presentation so stubbornly invites,
and at the cost of sacrificing the rich and frequently overwhelming
orchestration with which the main themes are habitually introduced,
the principal tenets of the doctrine may be outlined approximately
as follows: at the dawn of human history, under conditions of "prim-
itive savagery" or of a "peaceful habit of life," productivity of labor
was barely adequate to provide for the most elementary level of sub-
sistence. Consequently there was no surplus available for appropria-
tion and accordingly no possibility for exploitation of man by man.
Thus immune to crystallization of social classes and to emergence of
hierarchies of wealth and status, society lived under the benign reign
of Saturn so eloquently and nostalgically eulogized by Virgil:
No fences parted fields, nor marks nor bounds
Divided acres of litigious grounds,
But all was common,
At some point in time, this state of primitive communism yields
to the next historical phase to which Veblen refers as "barbarism"

'* This is not to imply by any means that an analysis and appraisal of Veb-
len's entire work is to be undertaken in this article. Indeed, interpreting the
invitation of the editors most literally, I confined myself to considering ex-
clusively The Theory of the Leisure Class without much reference to Veblen's
later writings which are dealt with elsewhere in this issue.

83
 MONTHLY REVIEW

or "consistently warlike habit of life." In that period the develop-

ment of productive resources is sufficiently advanced not only to sus-
tain the working population but also to permit its subjugation and
exploitation by an emerging upper class whose livelihood is hence-
forth derived from the appropriation of the fruits of the labor of
others, whose members are henceforth exempt from the burden of
toil and are enabled to enjoy ever higher standards of living. Indeed,
ample leisure and ample consumption become now the main char-
acteristic of those belonging to the upper stratum, and the public
display of the ability to work little and to consume much assumes
paramount importance as indicating an individual's (or a group's)
commanding position in society. Becoming thus vehicles of the com-
petitive striving for prestige and status, both consumption and leisure
tend to expand in scope and to gain conspicuousness in form.
Yet although it is the state of society in which this happens that
attracts Veblen's abiding interest, its contours and contents remain
distressingly hazy. Not merely is it left open what processes account
for the transition from "primitive savagery" to "barbarism," but what
is much more serious, no clear indication is given as to the particular
historical era to which the latter designation is supposed to apply.
There are numerous statements, in fact, suggesting that Veblen
thought of it as extending to his very days. To be sure, there is much
to be said for the view that ever since the disintegration of the early
communes barbarism and a consistently warlike habit of life marked
all of human history. It hardly needs stressing, however, that this
very applicability of the notions "barbarism" and "consistently war-
like habit of life" to nearly all of recorded history renders them
singularly useless as principles of periodization, let alone as keys to
the understanding of the actual historical process.
And this points directly to what I consider to be Veblen's funda-
mental weakness. While talking about history more than most other
writers in the field of social sciences, while most persistently and most
conspicuously flirting with what in his days was called the historical
school, Veblen remains actually a stranger to the historical method,
never truly committed to placing a thorough morphology of the his-
torical process at the center of his analytical effort. As "barbarism"
becomes to Veblen the dark night in which all cats are gray, so history
appears in his writings as an endless continuum in which the more
things change the more they remain the same. Indeed, fascinated by
what millennia apparently have in common, Veblen all but ignores
the far-reaching changes and transformations that set apart century
from century. For this failing he had to pay with a vengeance: it
not only prevented him from adequately comprehending the mechan-
ism of historical development, it robbed him even of the chance to

84
 THE THEORY OF THE LEISURE CLASS

visualize clearly some of the most important real similarities of con-

secutive historical periods.
Thus having observed correctly that since time immemorial an
upper class has been in a position to appropriate a more or less siz-
able share of the social product, Veblen never tires of stressing that
the existence of that class has been always based on exploitation,
that its rich endowment with leisure and worldly goods has been
always secured by fleecing the underlying population. In his morbid
engrossment in this sameness of iniquity he never attempts, however,
to distinguish clearly between different upper classes that at different
times appropriated, on the basis of different social relations, different
shares of different social outputs produced in different stages of the
development of productive resources. Sparing no effort in tracing
and interrelating the manifold forms in which the privileged classes
have enjoyed their ill-gotten freedom from want and freedom from
toil, Veblen hardly pays any attention to many much more impor-
tant, and much more pernicious, aspects of the part played by the
ruling classes in the course of historical development.
Nor could it be otherwise. For the counterpart, or indeed com-
ponent part, of Veblen's reluctance to examine concretely the forces
propelling the historical process is his thinly veiled ambivalence with
regard to the significance to be assigned to the development of pro-
ductive resources and productive relations. Although here too there
is no shortage of remarks and allusions suggesting a strong emphasis
on the evolution of society's mode of production as the factor deter-
mining the mechanism and direction of historical change, Veblen's
"economic determinism" is of a peculiarly vacillating, bloodless na-
ture. Fairly unambiguous passages that could be (and frequently
were) looked upon as commitments to a somewhat crudely con-
ceived historical materialism appear next to sentences ascribing cru-
cially important kinks in the evolution of society to changes in "spir-
itual attitudes," with those changes no more explained than they are
in the works of idealist historians such as Weber, Sombart, or Toyn-
bee. Even his most famous analytic tool, the concept of "institution"
so often celebrated as a sharp, materialistic stylet cutting deeply below
the surface of ideologies and appearances, turns out upon examina-
tion to be a slippery psychological notion of "habits of thought" no
more profound than Weber's "attitude of rationality and calcula-
tion" or Sombart's "spirit of capitalism."
Like other bourgeois theorists who are unable to comprehend
aspects of reality in their concrete interdependence with all the other
components of the continually changing socioeconomic totality, Veb-
len has recourse to invoking dei ex machina as ultimate means of in-
terpretation. And again, as in the case of most bourgeois historians,

85
 MONTHLY REVIEW

Veblen's wisdoms of last resort are always of a biological or psycho-

logical nature, have always something to do with "basic" racial
characteristics of men or with the no less "fundamental" structure
of their motivations. Leaning heavily on the psychology of William
James, he conjures up a number of "instincts" conveniently tailored
to suit his particular requirements, and treats them as permanent
characteristics of the human race.
Veblen never relinquishes his biological-psychological apparatus,
applies it indefatigably to the study of various aspects of social life,
and decries scornfully the ever-increasing extent to which "bad"
instincts overpower the "good" ones, and "bad" people assert their
exploitative dominance over the "good." Relentlessly confronting the
actual course of historical development with his normative yardstick,
he bitterly denounces the shortcomings of the concrete world, the in-
sufficient "adjustment" of one aspect of reality to another-and all
the barbarism and all the waste that he ascribes thereto.
This yardstick-in concrete terms-is productivity and frugality
and it is this specific content of Veblen's norms as well as the way
in which he employs them that determined the character of his work,
its impressive strength and its no less serious limitations. The ideal by
which he was inspired is the image of the artisan, mechanic, farmer
-the simple commodity producer, in fine-who emerged as the
characteristic figure of the waning Middle Ages and the waxing
capitalist era. That simple commodity producer was to him the em-
bodiment of an exceptional mode of existence that he apparently
considered vastly superior to all that preceded it and to all that
has come thereafter. Neither a chattel continually mutilated, de-
praved and degraded by slavery, nor a predatory slave driver robbed
of all human dignity by basking in luxury based on the blood, sweat,
and toil of others-that prototype of what eventually came to be
called a petty bourgeois seemed to have overcome the limitations of
the dark ages and to have entered the road to a bright future. For
at the same time his life was not yet squashed by the steamroller of
capitalist development. He was still intimately related to the process
and the product of his labors, still intensely experiencing the joys of
a gratified "instinct of workmanship," still untouched by the per-
vasive mechanism of alienation that was to dominate all of the sub-
sequent capitalist development. That honorable man consuming with
genuine satisfaction the bread that he earns in the sweat of his
brow and using his sparse leisure for well-deserved rest, that idealized
silhouette from capitalism's glorious adolescence reappears in Veb-
len's vision as the no less frugal, no less productive modern factory
workman and technician and serves as a standard of comparison
with both the pre-capitalist past and the late capitalist present. And

86
 THE THEORY OF THE LEISURE CLASS

naturally enough, both are found wanting: exploitative, immoral,

and profligate.
Yet he nowhere undertakes a searching inquiry into the historical
ramifications and functions of those ubiquitous deviations from his
basic standard, or into the particular historical circumstances and
exigencies that gave rise to his own "system of values" which he en-
dows with absolute validity. Had he seriously embarked upon such
an investigation, he would have found that the frugality and ab-
stemiousness of capitalism's "founding fathers" were the indispensable
accompaniment of primary accumulation of capital, were indeed
enforced by its implacable requirements and by the no less implacable
logic of capitalism's early competitive structure. He would have also
discovered that the ethos of frugality and productivity that he so
wholeheartedly embraced was no more an outgrowth of an "instinct
of workmanship" than the accumulation of capital was the result
of William James' "instinct of ownership." He would have seen that
this glorification of both frugality and productivity constituted an
ideology making a virtue of a necessity, a means of asserting the pre-
ponderance of a social class whose rise to affluence and power was
inseparably bound up with austerity and hard work-at first of itself
and its hired help, before too long of the hired help alone.
And looking back at the more remote past, he could also have
established that the pomp and circumstance of the feudal courts,
the castles, fortifications, monuments, and palaces of worship erected
at the behest of worldly and ecclesiastic potentates, far from con-
stituting an expression of a mysteriously evolving "habit of thought,"
reflected the hard, stubborn demands of the economic and social
systems rooted in slavery and serfdom.
What applies to pre-capitalist ages or to early capitalism, applies
even more patently to monopoly capitalism, the formative decades
of which were observed and studied by Veblen. The display and
waste of wealth on the part of the ruling class that reflect the un-
precedented volume of output produced and reproduced on the basis
of modern technology is wholly inevitable in a society the governing
principle of which is market valuation, in which even the notions
of good and evil, of beauty and justice are replaced by the concept
of "values." Thus the upper stratum of a big-business-dominated
social order is bound to engage in sumptuous living, to entertain
and to travel on a lavish scale-in order to cultivate the necessary
connections, in order to be acceptable and to belong to the exclusive
circles important in terms of business, financial influence, and po-
litical power. Nor can this upper stratum be divided-as Veblen
frequently suggests-into an "industrial" and a "financiering" group
with the former considered to be morally superior to the latter. For

87
 M 0 NTH 1,v REV lEW

neither could exist without the other: without the prince of haute
finance there could be no captain of large-scale industry, and with-
out the genius of production there could be no genius of enterprise-
merging, amalgamating, and combining various undertakings into
vast monopolistic and oligopolistic empires. At the same time, the
underlying population, brought up to emulate the leaders of the Big
Business world, is rendered a "captive consumer" helplessly exposed
to the incessant barrage of a gigantic advertising industry hammering
into the minds of people patterns of living and structures of wants.
Deprived by the process of alienation of all bases for self-esteem and
security derived from accomplishments at work and from genuine,
non-exploitative relations of solidarity with others, the ordinary man
and woman are driven into the sphere of consumption for such a
measure of confirmation and self-assurance as it may provide. A
modern house with a well-groomed lawn, the newest model auto-
mobile, up-to-date kitchen appliances, and stylish clothing become
the nearly exclusive means for proving to oneself and to others one's
success in life, one's respectability, one's worth in the market. Veblen
senses all of this, of course, but he does not see that it has very little
to do with biotic and psychic "instincts" and with the "basic" nature
of man. It is clearly a product of an economic and social order which
is rent by the irreconcilable conflict between accumulation of capital
and its very opposite: consumption of goods and services. It is the
outgrowth of a system which cannot accumulate if it does not
sufficiently consume, and which cannot sufficiently consume because
it is compelled to accumulate. Both the nature and the measure of
the resulting rationality and madness, economy and waste, profligacy
and miserliness, can be adequately visualized only as the outcome of
those antagonistic drives: the never-ceasing battle for maximum
profits and the no-less feverish campaign against the perennially
reappearing threat of underconsumption.

But unless filled with concrete, historical meaning, notions such

as productivity, frugality, waste, conspicuous consumption, and the
like tend to become interesting-looking but actually empty boxes.
Worse still, they may easily lead astray both social analysis and social
criticism. It was mentioned already that productivity and frugality,
for instance, served consistently in the course of the last few cen-
turies as an "opiate for the masses," as an apology for a socioeco-
nomic system built upon exploitation and directed towards maximi-
zation of surplus accruing to the property-owning, neither produc-
tive nor frugal, ruling class. Accepting these slogans and lending
them the dignity of universal maxims of human conduct-as was
done by Veblen and is repeated in our day by various counselors
of "peace of mind" -amounts to swallowing one of the principal

88
 THE THEORY OF THE LEISURE CLASS

components of bourgeois ideology and to helping to perpetuate a

mentality conducive to the continuation of capitalist rule.
From this it does not follow, needless to say, that indolence
and profligacy represent the battle cry of progress, and that produc-
tivity and frugality have already turned into barbaric relics of a
dark age. Quite on the contrary, both productivity and frugality
were enlightened and forward-moving principles at the outset of the
capitalist age, and are today even more so in that part of the still
economically underdeveloped world where tremendous efforts are
being made to secure economic growth within the framework of a
socialist society. Since the question is always and inexorably: pro-
ductivity for whom? frugality for what?-the call for productivity
and frugality in socialist societies has a radically different meaning
and plays an altogether different role than in the advanced capitalist
countries where the development of productive resources has prog-
ressed so far that meaningful leisure could be substituted for a good
part of currently enforced toil and that plenty could take the place
of artificially maintained want.
On the other hand, there is no more justification for considering
all conspicuous consumption and luxury to be the inventions of the
devil. For in the first place all consumption is, and always was, not
merely (and not even primarily) private business but a social act.
Being always in society, with society, and of society, consumption has
always been conspicuous, that is, shown to many, observed by many,
shared by many, deriving indeed a vast share of its pleasurability
from being an aspect of the individual's social existence. What mat-
ters, in other words, is not the conspicuousness of consumption but
its concrete contents, not that it takes place in society but the kind
of society in which it takes place. In fact, there is nothing unpardon-
able in people's vying to keep up with the Joneses! The question is
"merely" who are the Joneses and what is it that people are seeking
to emulate them in. There surely would be nothing to deplore if
people were habitually endeavoring to excel their neighbors in reason,
knowledge, appreciation of arts and sciences, devotion to the com-
monweal, and solidarity in collective efforts!
Equally uncritical, because representing the natural consequence
of his idolization of productivity and frugality, is Veblen's treatment
of all forms of unproductive resource utilization under the joint
heading of waste. Lumping Egyptian pyramids, Hellenic objects of
art, Gothic cathedrals, and princely castles together with gambling
casinos, night clubs, and the pompous residences of the modern
nouveaux riches, and denouncing them all as manifestations of
abominable abuse of wealth, Veblen resembles an embittered shop-
keeper irate about his burden of taxation and therefore decrying

89
 MONTHLY REVIEW

violently each and every kind of government spending. Yet there is

good government spending and bad, there are outlays on hospitals,
and roads, and TV As as well as expenditures on armaments, on im-
perialist intrigues, on the support of foreign and domestic parasites.
Ranting against both types of government activity is tantamount to
criticizing neither, just as attacking as waste all forms of consumption
except the knife-and-fork variety destroys all possibility of exposing
effectively the prevailing system of irrational and destructive em-
ployment of human and material resources.
For irrational and destructive is every use of productive re-
sources that is not conducive to the growth, development, and hap-
piness of men. Armament falls into this category no less than adver-
tising, phony product differentiation no less than artificial obsolescence
of durable consumer goods, crop restriction in agriculture no less than
monopolistic output curtailment in industry. It should be obvious,
however, that the mere fact that all of these forms of resource utili-
zation (or squandering) constitute a waste of society's economic sur-
plus (or a reduction of society's aggregate output) does not imply
that all forms of resource utilization that draw on the economic sur-
plus or that lead to smaller output are necessarily irrational and
wasteful. Holding that would mean nothing less than viewing all of
human culture as an involved and protracted process of waste and
profligacy, nothing less than considering all the paintings, music,
literature, architecture created in the course of millennia by the
genius of mankind to be but a series of violations of the principle
of productivity and frugality. Once more, what is decisive is not
that an activity is supported out of economic surplus, that an ac-
tivity detracts from the process of production, or even that an ac-
tivity is rewarded in what might be considered an excessive way.
What is decisive is the content of that activity, the nature of the
performance to which it leads, the impact that its results have on the
unfolding and enrichment of human potentialities. Just as living off
the economic surplus does not render Leonardo or Michelangelo,
Rembrandt or Picasso, Mozart or Prokofieff embodiments of "waste,"
10 are the toil and frugality of a construction worker building a race
track for a successful gambler no marks of the rationality and pro-
ductivity of his employment.
Revolted and disgusted with all that goes by the name of
culture in the society of monopoly capitalism-how horrified he
would have been today!-Veblen neglected to draw clearly these
vital distinctions. A passionate critic of capitalism, single-minded in
his prodigious effort to discern, interconnect, and expose all the as-
pects of venality, cruelty, moral and cultural degradation that he
observed on every side, he was incapable nevertheless of grasping

90
 THE POSTWAR ESSAYS

the totality of the social order that he so profoundly and so uncom-

promisingly abhorred. Like a number of social critics before him
and after him, he saw the existing misery without fully realizing at
the same time that it is that very misery that carries in itself the ob-
jective chance of its abolition. Witnessing orgies of profligacy, idle-
ness, and waste in the midst of squalor, disease, and exploitation, he
inveighed against excess consumption and luxury and raised against
them the banner of productivity and abstemiousness. He did not see
that what squandering, waste, and snobbery call for is not a proscrip-
tion of consumption or a condemnation of luxury but an effort to
ascertain and to establish the conditions in which abundance will
supersede both want and waste, in which on the basis of greatly
transformed needs poverty will become a fossil of the past, and a
measure of luxury will become attainable to all.
In one of his later books Veblen wrote: "The historical argu-
ment does not enjoin a return to the beginning of things, but rather
an intelligent appreciation of what things are coming to." This in-
sight, combined with his implacably critical attitude towards a per-
niciously organized society, render him a towering figure in American
social science. Although he did not manage to attain a full under-
standing of the process of historical change, he frequently came close
to it. Had he gone further, he would have transcended himself and
taken the decisive step to materialism and to dialectic.

THE POSTWAR ESSAYS

BY ARTHUR K. DAVIS

Three volumes of Veblen's essays were published after World

War I: The Vested Interests and the Common Man (1919), The
Engineers and the Price System (1921), and Essays in Our Chang-
ing Order (1934). For the most part they were written after Veblen
had left the shadowy academic world in 1918. They are consequently
more direct and outspoken than the bulk of his previous writings.
They often contain abbreviated and mature restatements of ideas
originally formulated in earlier books. And they have a contemporary

91