Wednesday, May 13, 2015 © 2002-2006 by Ronald Keith Bolender1 SYA 3010 Sociological Theory: Thorstein Bunde Veblen

Tuesday, April 18, 2023

© 2002-2006 by Ronald Keith Bolender 1

SYA 3010 Sociological Theory:

Thorstein Bunde Veblen




ReferencesAshley, D., & Orenstein, D. M. (2001). Sociological theory: Classical

statements (5th ed.). Boston: Allyn and Bacon.Coser, L. A. (1971). Masters of sociological thought: Ideas in

historical and social context. New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich.

Coser, L. A. (1977). Masters of sociological thought: Ideas in historical and social context (2nd ed.). New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich.

Solomon, C. (1999, November 22). 'Leisure class' author/critic may have been on the money. The Seattle Times. Retrieved September 11, 2002 from http://archives.seattletimes.nwsource.com/cgi-bin/texis.cgi/web/vortex/display?slug=thor&date=19991122

Veblen, T. (1899). The theory of the leisure class.

http://archives.seattletimes.nwsource.com/cgi-bin/texis.cgi/web/vortex/display?slug=thor&date=19991122

http://archives.seattletimes.nwsource.com/cgi-bin/texis.cgi/web/vortex/display?slug=thor&date=19991122



Thorstein Bunde Veblen1857-1929

Born on July 30, 1857 in a log cabin on a small farm in the western Wisconsin frontier.

Grew up in Minnesota—in a Norwegian community.

Veblen attended Yale for graduate work. Developed a close

friendship with the sociology professor, William Graham Sumner

(Ashley & Orenstein, 2001, pp. 351-353)



Thorstein Bunde Veblen Throughout his life, Veblen saw himself as an

outsider, really neither a part of the Norwegian community in which he was born, nor a part of the larger U.S. society in which he spent his adult years.

He compared himself with the secularized European Jew, whom Veblen saw as fully at home neither in his culture nor in the larger society.

Nonetheless, Veblen believed it was precisely his partial distance from modern U.S. society that allowed him to see various aspects of social life of which others were not aware. The theorist, Ezra Park, would later term this sociological

phenomenon as the marginal manthe marginal man.



Thorstein Bunde VeblenThe Three Veblens

The seriously unserious, reverently irreverent, amoral moralist whose iconoclastic assault on the received pieties of America placed in the front ranks of social critics.

There is the economist whose institutional economics and meticulous anatomy of American high finance and business enterprise have earned him several generations of distinguished followers and a permanent niche among the greats of political economy.

There is the sociologist to whom we owe theories of socially induced motivations, of the social determinants of knowledge, and of social change.

(Coser, 1977: 263-264)




Veblen objected to the notion that the laws that economist had constructed were timeless in application.

In contrast to an obsolete economics that centers attention upon alleged transhistorical laws and utilitarian or hedonistic calculations, Veblen urged a new economics that is historical, or, to use his own terminology, evolutionary, and that is based on an activistic conception of man.




“It is the characteristic of man to do something…He is not simply a bundle of desires that are to be saturated…but rather a coherent structure of propensities and habits which seek realization and expression in an unfolding activity.” The economic life economic life historyhistory of the individual “is a cumulative process of adaptations of means to ends.” Any connection to the Socio-Autobiography

Project?




What is true of the individual is true of the community. It to is continually engaged in an active process of adaptation of economic means to economic ends. “Evolutionary economics must be the theory of a process of cultural growth as determined by the economic interests, a theory, of a cumulative sequence of economic institutions stated in terms of the process itself.”




Veblen conceived of the evolution of mankind in Spencerian or Darwinian fashion as a process of selective adaptation to the environment. According, to him, there was no goal to historical evolution as the Hegalians and Marxists had claimed, but rather “a scheme of blindly cumulative causation, in which there is no trend, no final term, no consummation.”



Thorstein Bunde VeblenHuman evolution, Veblen argued, involved

above all the invention and use of ever more effective technologies. “The process of cumulative changes that is to be accounted for is the sequence of change in the methods of doing things—the methods of dealing with the material means of life.” Hence, “the state of the industrial arts” ultimately determined the state of adaptation of man to his natural environment. Technology, moveover, likewise determined man’s adjustment to his social environment.




A man’s position in the technological and economic sphere, Veblen argued, determines his outlook and his habits of thought. Similarly, habits and customs, ways of acting and ways of thinking grow within communities as they are engaged in their struggle to wrest a livelihood from nature. Such habits and customs in their turn crystallize over time into institutional molds into which communities attempt to press their component members.



Thorstein Bunde Veblen Institutions are clusters of habits and customs that

are sanctioned by the community. An institution “is the nature of a usage which has become axiomatic and indispensable by habituation and general acceptance.” The evolution of human societies, contend Veblen, must be seen as “a process of natural selection of institutions.” “Institutions are not only themselves the result of a selective and adaptive process which shapes the prevailing or dominant types of spiritual attitude and aptitudes; they are at the same time special methods of life and human relations.”



Thorstein Bunde VeblenHence, the scheme of man’s social evolution is

to Veblen essentially a pattern of institutional change rooted in the development of the industrial arts. Four main stages of evolution are distinguished: The peaceful savage economy of neolithic times The predatory barbarian economy in which the

institutions of warfare, property, masculine prowess and the leisure class originated

The premodern period of handicraft economy The modern era dominated by the machine

[Veblen’s modern time period]



Thorstein Bunde Veblen Veblen’s theory of evolutionary stages may well be relegated

to the museum of antiquities [especially the two early stages based on conjectural history], but his more general theory of technological determination, though often blended with one or another form of Marxism, has continued to exert influence among contemporary social scientists. Much current work in anthropology is still informed by his view—for example, that “A study of …primitive cultures…shows a close correlation between the material (industrial and pecuniary) life of any given people and their civic, domestic, and religious scheme of life; the myths and the religious cult reflect the character of these other—especially the economic and domestic—institutions in a peculiarly naïve and truthful manner.” How would this concept be useful in the analysis portion

of the Socio-Autobiography Project?



Thorstein Bunde Veblen The main thrust of Veblen’s work, however, does not

come in his anthropological studies but rather in his discussion of contemporary or near-contemporary society. Here his distinction between industrial and pecuniary types of employment is crucial.

Veblen’s central idea in regard to the modern capitalist world is that it is based on an irremediable opposition between: Business and Industry Ownership and Technology Pecuniary and Industrial Employment

Between those who who make money and those who make goods

Workmanship and Salesmanship




This distinction served Veblen as a major weapon in his attack against the prevailing scheme of things in America, and against prevailing evolutionary doctrine. His fellow evolutionists, men like his former teacher William Graham Sumner, argued that the leading industrialists and men of finance, having shown in the competitive struggle that they were “the fittest,” had to be regarded as the flowers of modern civilization. Veblen argued that, far from being the fittest agents of evolutionary advancement, men engaged in pecuniary activities were parasites growing fat on the technological leadership and innovation of other men. “The leisure class lives by the industrial community rather than in it.” The “captains of industry” made no industrial contribution and therefore had no progressive function in the evolutionary process; rather, they retarded and distorted it.




Veblen adapted the Spencerian (Herbert Spencer) distinction between militant and industrial societies to his own uses. Whereas Spencer had argued that businessmen were engaged in a peaceful way of life, which stood in opposition to that of the militant warrior, Veblen insisted that the “captains of industry” were only pursuing the predatory ways of their militant forebears under new circumstances. American robber barons were as eager to exploit the underlying population as had been their medieval ancestors.



Thorstein Bunde Veblen The price system in which businessmen and speculators

were involved only hampered and impeded the system of industrial arts and so delayed the forward course of mankind’s evolutionary advancement. The differential income businessmen derive from their position in the price system is far from a reward for creative entrepreneurship but rather a ransom exacted from the underlying productive population. The institution of absentee ownership, the foundation of the modern price system, creates perpetual crises and competitive anarchy leading to the “sabotage” rather than the advancement of production.

Does any of this sound familiar in the modern situations of the dot.coms, telecoms, and/or Enrons?




Competition Veblen’s work is especially noteworthy when he analyzes

and dissects the habits of thought and modes of conduct that underlie competitive relations between social actors. He advanced a sophisticated theory of the social sources of competitiveness in human affairs. Self-esteemSelf-esteem, he argued, is only a reflection of the esteem accorded by one’s fellows. Consequently, when such esteem is not forthcoming because a person failed to excel in prized competitive endeavors, he suffers from a loss of self-esteem. The drive for ever-renewed exertion in a The drive for ever-renewed exertion in a

competitive culture is therefore rooted in the fear competitive culture is therefore rooted in the fear of loss of self-esteem.of loss of self-esteem.



Thorstein Bunde Veblen This type of competition leads to a never-ending cycle of aspiring

to outdo neighbors an other significant others. “As fast as a person makes new acquisitions, and becomes

accustomed to the new standard of wealth, the new standard forthwith ceases to afford appreciably greater satisfaction than the earlier standard did…the end sought by accumulation is the end sought by accumulation is to rank high in comparison with the rest of the to rank high in comparison with the rest of the community in point of pecuniary strength.community in point of pecuniary strength. So long as the So long as the comparison is distinctly unfavorable to himself, the comparison is distinctly unfavorable to himself, the normal, average individual will live in chronic normal, average individual will live in chronic dissatisfaction with his present lot;dissatisfaction with his present lot; and when he has and when he has reached what may be called the normal pecuniary reached what may be called the normal pecuniary standard of the community, or of his class in the standard of the community, or of his class in the community, this chronic dissatisfaction will give place to community, this chronic dissatisfaction will give place to a restless straining to place a wider and ever widening a restless straining to place a wider and ever widening pecuniary interval between himself and the average pecuniary interval between himself and the average standard.”standard.”




Veblen is at his best when he analyzes the various means by which men attempt to symbolize their high standing in the continuous struggle for competitive advantage. Conspicuous Consumption Conspicuous Leisure Conspicuous Display of Symbols of High

Standing




“High-bred manners and ways of living are items of conformity to the norm of conspicuous leisure and conspicuous consumption…Conspicuous consumption of valuable goodsvaluable goods is a means of reputability to the gentlemen of leisure…With the inheritance of gentility goes the inheritance of obligatory leisure.”




Now, Veblen contended, that the ways of the leisure class permeate the whole social structure. Each class copies the lifestyles of its superordiantes to the extent of its ability.

“The result is that the member of each stratum accept as their ideal of decency the scheme of life invoked in the next higher stratum, and bend their energies to live up to that ideal.”

“The canon of reputability” must adapt itself to the economic circumstances and the traditions of each particular class, but it permeates all society to greater or less degrees.



Thorstein Bunde VeblenThough originating among the leisure class, it

characterizes the total culture and shapes its characteristic lifestyle. This is why even the poor, though they are physically better off in modern society than their forbears where in their time, suffer more. “The existing system has not made…the industrious

poor poorer as measured absolutelyabsolutely but it does tend to make them relativelyrelatively poorer, in their own eyes…and…that is what seems to count.”

Clearly, Veblen, like others before and after him, had in effect come upon the idea of “relative deprivation.”




In Veblen’s opinion the simplistic notions of human motivation on which classical economics rest cannot serve to explain the springs of action of man in modern pecuniary civilization. It is not the propensity to save It is not the propensity to save or to truck and barter that animates man or to truck and barter that animates man in the modern world, but the propensity in the modern world, but the propensity to excel his neighbor.to excel his neighbor. The struggle for competitive standing becomes a basic datum if one is to understand the institutional framework of modern economic behavior.




Solomon’s (1999) Summary of Veblen’s Theory of the Leisure Class

The day's marauding captains of industry - the Morgans, Rockefellers and Vanderbilts - had their roots in prehistory. In the earliest societies man worked in groups to survive. Class distinction didn't exist. Work was shared and not frowned upon. Men strove to outdo each other in activities such as hunting. Those who (literally) brought home the bacon were held in high esteem by others. Their prowess granted them privileges, women and other rewards.




Eventually, Veblen argued, cultures developed so that those with prowess simply took from others, either by tribute or by vanquishing the enemy. Physical labor became declasse, a sign of inferiority.

"Labor acquires a character of irksomeness by virtue of the indignity imputed to it," Veblen wrote. (Today think of the term "blue collarblue collar," and its often negative associations.) Thus a leisure class was born.




Wealth soon became shorthand for social Wealth soon became shorthand for social superioritysuperiority, Veblen said. And more wealth meant even more regard. People respected the banker more than the garbage man, even though the latter might work harder. Does this have any similarities with Harriet

Martineau’s sociology of slavery and the impact it had on the moral significance of work?



Thorstein Bunde Veblen But since status is relative, one person's gain is another's

loss. A spiraling contest develops, Veblen said. Being bank-rich quickly becomes a poor way to broadcast one's superiority. Money is only worth anything if it's flaunted - that is, spent on things beyond basic needs.

"No merit would accrue from consumption of the bare necessities of life," Veblen wrote. "In order to be reputable it must be wasteful."

In a nutshell, more expensive became another way of saying "better"; a cultured person presented with a silver spoon and one made from common metal will always find the silver one superior, Veblen pointed out.




To Veblen, this runaway conspicuous consumption that ensued was the irrational driver of his time. What's worse, he thought, the disease didn't just confine itself to the rich. In Karl Marx's theory of communism, workers would eventually rebel against the rich owners of capital.

But that rarely happened, Veblen pointed out. The poor do not want to fight those above them, they want to be like them. Given this unquenchable desire to be top dog, people of all classes will forever try to live beyond their means: "No class of society, not even the abjectly poor, foregoes all customary conspicuous consumption."




America was Veblen's evidence. Fashions, church rituals, college sports, philanthropy, even pet dogs - to Veblen, almost every aspect of American society could be explained by man's drive for status. A gentleman holding a walking stick not only clutched a weapon, but a symbol that his hands were not gainfully employed.




Theory of Social Change Veblen's theory of social change is essentially a

technological theory of history. He believed that in the last analysis the"state of the industrial arts," that is, the technology available to a society, determines the character of its culture. Invention was the mother of necessity.

Yet this influence of technology, while crucial, was to Veblen by no means immediate and direct. A new technology A new technology does not automatically bring forth new systems of does not automatically bring forth new systems of laws, new moral attitudes, or new types of education. laws, new moral attitudes, or new types of education. Rather, it challenges old institutions and evokes their Rather, it challenges old institutions and evokes their resistance.resistance. "Institutions are products of the past process, are adapted to past circumstances, and are therefore never in full accord with the requirements of the present."




Those who have a "vested interest'' in the old order will bend every effort to maintain old institutions even when they are no longer in tune with technological developments. The characteristic attitude of those advocates of the status quo "may be summed up in the maxim: 'Whatever is, is right;' whereas the law of natural selection as applied to human institutions, gives the axiom: 'Whatever is, is wrong."

In the end, Veblen believed, a new technology erodes vested ideas, overcomes vested interests, and reshapes institutions in accord with its own needs. But this process may take considerable time, and in that time lag--when, for example, an industrial society is still governed by legal and moral rules dating from the handicraft era--society suffers from the waste that is brought about by the lack of correspondence between its institutions and its technology. Does this similar to the cultural lag theory by William Ogburn?



Thorstein Bunde Veblen In periods of transition between an old order and one

about to be born, social conflicts are likely to be accentuated. In contrast to Marx, Veblen did not In contrast to Marx, Veblen did not conceive of the class struggle as the motor of conceive of the class struggle as the motor of history.history. He saw as the shaping force of history He saw as the shaping force of history the clash between advancing technology and the clash between advancing technology and retarding institutions.retarding institutions. Only during periods when this clash was particularly acute did he expect an exacerbation of class antagonisms between those engaged in the pecuniary employments, who had vested interest in things as they were, and those in industrial employments who were in tune with the technological demands of the hour.




Society and the Sociology of Knowledge Veblen’s definition of a society is ultimately grounded

in a materialistic focus on labor activity. According to Veblen, any particular type of productive labor that characterizes a group of people will produce a repeated occurrence of particular activities by the members of that group. Such repetitious activity will, in turn, produce typical ways of thinking and feeling about oneself, other people, and the world in general. Thus any persistent labor activity will result in characteristic habitual ways of thinking and feeling—what Veblen termed “habits of the mind.”

(Ashley & Orenstein, 2001, p. 359)



Thorstein Bunde VeblenVeblen’s reference to cognitive and emotive

forms as “habit” was to convey three basic ideas: They occur without rational reflection (they are

assumed and not questioned in the course of such reflection).

They appear to be in congruity with, and, in fact, form the basis of, commonsense understanding among the people in question.

They are resistant to change and tend to persist for a time even after the material conditions (forms of labor activity) that gave rise to them have disappeared.




Veblen believed that habits of the mind are not mentally stored in a random or haphazard way but, rather in consistency with the overall adaptive nature of human mental abilities; furthermore, they are organized around a people’s particular, usual, and typical activities. They thus come to support, cognitively and emotionally, typical ways of behaving and oppose violations of the usual. In other In other words, a people’s habits of the mind form the basis words, a people’s habits of the mind form the basis of cultural norms.of cultural norms. Thus culturally normative views of what is acceptable

and unacceptable are grounded in mental habits that have emerged from repetitive productive activityrepetitive productive activity.

Think reflectively about this concept.

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Wednesday, May 13, 2015 © 2002-2006 by Ronald Keith Bolender1 SYA 3010 Sociological Theory: Thorstein Bunde Veblen