The Theory of the Leisure Class

The Theory of the Leisure Class: An Economic Study of Institutions (1899), by Thorstein Veblen, is an economic treatise and detailed social critique of conspicuous consumption, as a function of social-class consumerism, which proposes that the social strata and the division of labor of the feudal period continued into the modern era. The lords of the manor employed themselves in the economically useless practices of conspicuous consumption and conspicuous leisure, whilst the middle and lower classes were employed in the industrial occupations that support the whole of society; economically wasteful activities are those activities that do not contribute to the economy or to the material productivity required for the fruitful functioning of society. Veblen's analyses of business cycles and prices, and of the emergent technocratic division of labor by speciality (scientists, engineers, technologists) at the beginning of the 20th century proved to be accurate predictions of the nature of an industrial society.

Background and reception

The Theory of the Leisure Class was based on a trio of articles published in the American Journal of Sociology in 1898, and contained most of the major themes Veblen would develop in his later works.

Upon its publication, one reviewer opined that the book "requires no other commendation for its scholarly performance than that which a casual reading of the work readily inspires", while

William Dean Howells devoted two long reviews to it, and overnight the book became the vade mecum of the intelligentsia of the day: as an eminent sociologist told Veblen, "It fluttered the dovecotes of the East."

This immediate success also came unexpectedly, including to Veblen.

Criticism

About author, book, and thesis of The Theory of the Leisure Class, the American intellectual H. L. Mencken said:

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?

- Mencken , Professor Veblen, Prejudices, First Series, 1919

Nonetheless, despite such disagreement, Mencken considered the game of golf to be a conspicuous leisure activity, of no useful function. Attempts at a definitive denotation of the theory of conspicuous consumption have been criticised as "élitist", most notably the pertinent works of Herbert Marcuse, wherein a group of hyper-educated people is empowered to define what items of consumption become luxury commodities. Robert Heilbroner said that, although valid for their late 19th-century time (the Gilded Age of the 1890s), the economic and sociological theories of Thorstein Veblen have limited, contemporary application, because the studies are specific to the societies of the U.S. and the city of Chicago.