CRITIQUES OF IDEOLOGY, MYTHS

AND BELIEFS

THORSTEIN VEBLEN (1857-1929)

The Leisure Class and Conspicuous Consumption

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“When the community passes from peaceable savagery to a predatory phase of life, the conditions of emulation change. The opportunity and the incentive to emulate increase greatly in scope and urgency. The activity of the men more and more takes on the character of exploit; and an invidious comparison of one hunter or warrior with another grows continually easier and more habitual. Tangible evidences of prowess - trophies - find a place in men's habits of thought as an essential feature of the paraphernalia of life… Aggression becomes the accredited form of action, and booty serves as prima facie evidence of successful aggression. As accepted at this cultural stage, the accredited, worthy form of self-assertion is contest; and useful articles or services obtained by seizure or compulsion, serve as a conventional evidence of successful contest. Therefore, by contrast, the obtaining of goods by other methods than seizure comes to be accounted unworthy of man in his best estate. The performance of productive work, or employment in personal service, falls under the same odium for the same reason. An invidious distinction in this way arises …Labor acquires a character of irksomeness by virtue of the indignity imputed to it.” (Introduction, Theory of the Leisure Class)

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HUSTLING AS STRUCTURE & STRATEGY

(LOIC WACQUANT)• “To hustle denotes a field of activities which have in common

the fact that they require mastery of a particular type of symbolic capital, namely, the ability to manipulate others, to inveigle and deceive them, if need be by joining violence to chicanery and charm, in the pursuit of immediate pecuniary gain.”

• “The world of hustling stands in structural opposition to that of wage labor in which, at least in theory, everything is legal, recognized, regular and regulated, recorded and approved by the law…”

(Loic Wacquant, The Weight of the World, pp. 142-143)

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THE THEORY OF THE LEISURE CLASS: AN ECONOMIC STUDY OF

INSTITUTIONS (1899)• An early critique of consumerism; also a critique of utilitarianism

• Economic life is not driven by notions of utility, but by social vestiges from pre-historic times (e.g., honor)

• There’s always been a division of labor - along status lines • high-status groups monopolized war and hunting• low-status groups tasked with farming & cooking

• “Primitive” cultures featured status rankings for tribes• Conquerors gave menial, labor-intensive jobs to subjugated people,

while retaining warlike and violent work • Members of inferior groups emulated those of higher-status

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LEISURE CLASS

• Leisure class: emerging ruling class that benefits most from a capitalist economic system built on “waste”• When they “worked” it was largely symbolic and peripheral

• Leisure class retained its position through coercion, direct & indirect, e.g., • reserved for itself the honor of warfare, often prevented lower

classes from owning weapons or learning how to fight• fostered sense of dependency among rest of the tribe on the leisure

class due to fear of hostilities from other tribes or, as religions began to form, hostility of imagined deities• Veblen characterizes the first priests and religious leaders as members of

the leisure class

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CONSPICUOUS CONSUMPTION & CONSPICUOUS LEISURE

• conspicuous consumption: the use of money or other resources to display a higher social status, e.g., • “Veblen goods” refers to commodities for which people's demand

increases as their price increases, since greater price confers greater status, instead of decreasing according to the law of demand – handbags, watches, etc.

• conspicuous leisure: time given to certain pursuits in return for higher status, e.g., • to be a “gentleman” one must study things like the fine arts &

philosophy, which have little economic value in themselves but display freedom from economic necessity

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LEISURE CLASS & CONSPICUOUS CONSUMPTION

• Members of all classes “waste” both time & money as means to improve self-esteem & elevate status

• “Parasitic” business leaders “sabotaged” the industrial system in their personal quest for profit

• Modern-day conflict is between: • “business” - those who make money • “industry” - those who make things

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SOCIAL IMPLICATIONS

• Subjugation of women• “Trophy wife” shows off a man’s success like barbarians’ “trophies of war” • By not allowing his wife to work outside the home, a man could show off

her conspicuous leisure as proof of his status and spend money on his wife through conspicuous consumption

• Growth of sports such as football• Used to display conspicuous leisure

• Religion as an expression of both conspicuous leisure and conspicuous consumption • From an economic point of view, churches are a waste of building space,

the clergy a group paid to do nothing “useful”• Manners and etiquette become practices of conspicuous leisure with

no practical value

ANTONIO GRAMSCI

(1891-1937)

Hegemony and the Ruling Ideas

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HEGEMONY

• Hegemony refers to ideological domination over subordinate classes

• Bourgeoisie maintained dominance not primarily through coercion or force but through spontaneous consent of the ruled

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IDEOLOGICAL SUPERSTRUCTURE HAS TWO LEVELS

• political society: “the State;” the police, the army, legal system, etc., which dominates directly and coercively

• civil society: the family, the education system, trade unions, etc., where leadership is constituted through ideology or by means of consent

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WHY DID EUROPE’S WORKING CLASS ACT AGAINST ITS OWN CLASS INTERESTS BY

SUPPORTING FASCISM?

• Proletariat adopts as its own the values, beliefs & attitudes that serve the interests of the ruling class• It’s socialized – esp. through educational system – into accepting

bourgeois ideology as an unquestioned commonsense view of the world and their place in it

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COUNTER-HEGEMONY IS REQUIRED TO SPARK UNIFIED POPULAR REVOLT

• Counter-hegemony or “organic” consciousness would unmask the real sources of workers’ oppression and articulate the real interests and needs of the masses

• Praxis: connects theoretical insights to active attempts to create a more just society