The Theory of the Leisure Class by Thorstein Veblen (phonics readers TXT) 📕
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1899 was the tail end of the Gilded Age, a time in America of rapid economic expansion that caused a select few to become ultra-wealthy, while millions of commoners struggled in abject poverty. It was against this backdrop that Veblen, an economist and sociologist at the University of Chicago, wrote The Theory of the Leisure Class, a book that brought the phrase “conspicuous consumption” into the modern vocabulary.
Veblen’s thesis centers on the definition of what he calls the “leisure class,” the upper social class consisting of wealthy individuals who are socially exempt from productive work. Their work instead becomes what he calls “conspicuous consumption”: spending their wealth in increasingly ostentatious ways in order to preserve their class status. Meanwhile, the lower and middle classes are the ones actually engaged in work that is productive to society—manufacturing and industry—with the goal of eventually being able to emulate the social status afforded by the conspicuous consumption of their leisure class masters.
Along the way, Veblen links these behaviors with social strictures left over from feudal society, arguing that contemporary human society has not evolved far beyond our medieval peasant-and-lord forefathers. In those ancient societies, productive labor came to be viewed as disreputable and dirty; thus, status is won not by accumulating wealth, but by displaying the evidence of wealth. He argues that many of what some would consider society’s ills are linked to this fundamental concept: for example, the mistreatment of women—forcing them into constricting clothing, preventing them from participating in independent economic life—is a way for their husbands to show off their unemployed status as a kind of conspicuous leisure; or society’s obsession with sports, celebrity, and organized religion, all forms of conspicuous leisure that bring no productive benefit to society, and on the contrary waste time and resources, but whose practitioners—superstars and clergy—maintain a high social status.
Though it was written over a hundred years ago when industrial society was just getting its footing, Veblen’s thesis predicts much of the social stratification we recognize today. Practical labor continues to be viewed as basically demeaning, while people struggle in vain to chase a glimmer of the vast wealth that celebrities, investors, bankers, hedge fund managers, and C-suite dwellers—the conspicuously-consuming leisure class of today—openly flaunt. As such, The Theory of the Leisure Class might be one of the most prescient and influential books of economic and social science of the 20th century.
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- Author: Thorstein Veblen
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It will be to the point, however, to note the general economic character of devout consumption, in comparison with consumption for other purposes. An indication of the range of motives and purposes from which devout consumption of goods proceeds will help toward an appreciation of the value both of this consumption itself and of the general habit of mind to which it is congenial. There is a striking parallelism, if not rather a substantial identity of motive, between the consumption which goes to the service of an anthropomorphic divinity and that which goes to the service of a gentleman of leisure—chieftain or patriarch—in the upper class of society during the barbarian culture. Both in the case of the chieftain and in that of the divinity there are expensive edifices set apart for the behoof of the person served. These edifices, as well as the properties which supplement them in the service, must not be common in kind or grade; they always show a large element of conspicuous waste. It may also be noted that the devout edifices are invariably of an archaic cast in their structure and fittings. So also the servants, both of the chieftain and of the divinity, must appear in the presence clothed in garments of a special, ornate character. The characteristic economic feature of this apparel is a more than ordinarily accentuated conspicuous waste, together with the secondary feature—more accentuated in the case of the priestly servants than in that of the servants or courtiers of the barbarian potentate—that this court dress must always be in some degree of an archaic fashion. Also the garments worn by the lay members of the community when they come into the presence, should be of a more expensive kind than their everyday apparel. Here, again, the parallelism between the usage of the chieftain’s audience hall and that of the sanctuary is fairly well marked. In this respect there is required a certain ceremonial “cleanness” of attire, the essential feature of which, in the economic respect, is that the garments worn on these occasions should carry as little suggestion as may be of any industrial occupation or of any habitual addiction to such employments as are of material use.
This requirement of conspicuous waste and of ceremonial cleanness from the traces of industry extends also to the apparel, and in a less degree to the food, which is consumed on sacred holidays; that is to say, on days set apart—taboo—for the divinity or for some member of the lower ranks of the preternatural leisure class. In economic theory, sacred holidays are obviously to be construed as a season of vicarious leisure performed for the divinity or saint in whose name the taboo is imposed and to whose good repute the abstention from useful effort on these days is conceived to inure. The characteristic feature of all such seasons of devout vicarious leisure is a more or less rigid taboo on all activity that is of human use. In the case of fast-days the conspicuous abstention from gainful occupations and from all pursuits that (materially) further human life is further accentuated by compulsory abstinence from such consumption as would conduce to the comfort or the fullness of life of the consumer.
It may be remarked, parenthetically, that secular holidays are of the same origin, by slightly remoter derivation. They shade off by degrees from the genuinely sacred days, through an intermediate class of semi-sacred birthdays of kings and great men who have been in some measure canonized, to the deliberately invented holiday set apart to further the good repute of some notable event or some striking fact, to which it is intended to do honor, or the good fame of which is felt to be in need of repair. The remoter refinement in the employment of vicarious leisure as a means of augmenting the good repute of a phenomenon or datum is seen at its best in its very latest application. A day of vicarious leisure has in some communities been set apart as Labor Day. This observance is designed to augment the prestige of the fact of labor, by the archaic, predatory method of a compulsory abstention from useful effort. To this datum of labor-in-general is imputed the good repute attributable to the pecuniary strength put in evidence by abstaining from labor. Sacred holidays, and holidays generally, are of the nature of a tribute levied on the body of the people. The tribute is paid in vicarious leisure, and the honorific effect which emerges is imputed to the person or the fact for whose good repute the holiday has been instituted. Such a tithe of vicarious leisure is a perquisite of all members of the preternatural leisure class and is indispensable to their good fame. Un saint qu’on ne chôme pas is indeed a saint fallen on evil days.
Besides this tithe of vicarious leisure levied on the laity, there are also special classes of persons—the various grades of priests and hierodules—whose time is wholly set apart for a similar service. It is not only incumbent on the priestly class to abstain from vulgar labor, especially so far as it is lucrative or is apprehended to contribute to the temporal well-being of mankind. The taboo in the case of the priestly class goes
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