Thorstein Veblen
Thorstein Bunde Veblen (born
Tosten Bunde Veblen July 30,
1857 â€"
August 3,
1929) was a Norwegian-American
sociologist and
economist and a leader of the
Efficiency Movement, most famous for his
Theory of the Leisure Class (1899). He was also part of the
Technical Alliance, created in 1918-19 by
Howard Scott and which became the
Technocratic movement.
Veblen was born in
Cato, Wisconsin, of Norwegian immigrant parents; his nephew
Oswald Veblen became a famous
mathematician. He spoke only Norwegian at home and did not learn English until he was a teenager.
He obtained his
B.A. at
Carleton College (1880), under
John Bates Clark, a leading neoclassical economist, but rejected his ideas. Later he did his graduate work at
Johns Hopkins University under
Charles Sanders Peirce, the founder of the pragmatist school in
philosophy, and
Ph.D.(1884) at
Yale University, under laissez-faire proponent
William Graham Sumner. He repudiated their views as well. At
Yale University, Veblen took
Moral Philosophy as his
Ph.D. major and wrote his doctoral thesis on
Immanuel Kant.
From 1891 to 1892, after six years of unemployment, Veblen continued studying as a graduate student, now in economics, at
Cornell University under
James Laurence Laughlin.
In 1892, he became a professor at the newly-opened
University of Chicago, simultaneouly serving as managing editor of the
Journal of Political Economy. In 1906, he received an appointment at
Stanford University, which he left quickly due to scandal. In 1911, he went to the
University of Missouri-Columbia, due at least in part to support from
Horace Davenport, the head of the the economics department. Veblen was not fond of
Columbia, Missouri, but remained there through 1918. In 1919, Veblen, along with
Charles Beard,
James Harvey Robinson and
John Dewey, helped found the New School for Social Research (known today as
The New School).
Veblen made his home in
Nerstrand, Minnesota.
Veblen became well known through his book
The Theory of the Leisure Class (
1899), a
satiric look at American society written while he taught at the
University of Chicago. He coined the widely-used phrases "
conspicuous consumption" and "
pecuniary emulation".
Thorstein Veblen's career began amidst the growth of the disciplines of
anthropology,
sociology, and
psychology. He argued that culture inevitably shaped economics and that no universal "human nature" could possibly explain the variety of norms and behaviors discovered by the new science of anthropology.
An important analytical contribution became associated with Veblen: what became known as the "ceremonial / instrumental dichotomy". Veblen saw that although every society depends on tools and skills to support the "life process", every society also appeared to have a stratified structure of status ("invidious distinctions") that ran contrary to the imperatives of the "instrumental" (read: "technological") aspects of group life. This gave rise to the dichotomy: the "ceremonial" related to the past, supporting the tribal legends; the "instrumental" oriented itself toward the technological imperative to judge value by the ability to control future consequences. The "Veblenian dichotomy" formed a specialized variant of the "instrumental theory of value" of
John Dewey, with whom Veblen would make contact briefly at
The University of Chicago.
The Theory of the Leisure Class and
The Theory of Business Enterprise together constitute an alternative construction on the
neoclassical marginalist theories of consumption and production, respectively. Both works clearly have their basis in the application of the "Veblenian dichotomy" to cultural patterns of behavior and therefore implicitly but unavoidably express a critical stance; one cannot read Veblen with any understanding while failing to grasp that the dichotomy is a valuational principle at its core. The ceremonial patterns of activity do not relate to just any past, but rather to the one that generated a specific set of advantages and prejudices that underlie the current structure of rewards and power. Instrumental judgments create benefits according to an entirely separate criterion, and therefore act inherently subversively.
Clarence E. Ayres of the
University of Texas at Austin developed this line of analysis more fully and explicitly from the 1920s.
In addition to these two books, Veblen's monograph
Imperial Germany and the Industrial Revolution and the essay entitled "
Why Economics is not an Evolutionary Science" became influential in shaping the research agenda for following generations of social scientists, including the
technocratic movement.
The Instinct of Workmanship and the Irksomeness of Labor, 1898
The Theory of the Leisure Class: an economic study of institutions, 1899
The Theory of Business Enterprise, 1904
The Instinct of Workmanship and the State of the Industrial Arts, 1914
Imperial Germany and the Industrial Revolution, 1915
An Inquiry into the Nature of Peace and the Terms of Its Perpetuation, 1917
The Higher Learning In America: A Memorandum On the Conduct of Universities By Business Men, 1918
The Vested Interests and The Common Man, 1919
The Engineers and the Price System, 1921
Absentee Ownership and Business Enterprise in Recent Times, 1923
The Laxdaela Saga, 1925
* Dorfman, Joseph.
Thorstein Veblen and His America 1961.
* Janet T. Knoedler; "Veblen and Technical Efficiency" in
Journal of Economic Issues, Vol. 31, 1997
* Hodgson, G. "On the Evolution of Thorstein Veblen's Evolutionary Economics" in
Cambridge Journal of Economics, Vol. 22, Issue 4, pp. 415-431
The Theory of the Leisure Class*
Technocratic movement*
Veblen good*
Free ebook of Thorstein Veblen at
Project Gutenberg**
Project Gutenberg e-text of
The Theory of the Leisure Class* e-texts
(Complete Works, as far as not copyright-protected, biography, bibliography and related materials)
* Books and Translations [
1]
* Essays in Economics [
2]
* War Essays, Memoranda, Suggestions [
3]
* Miscellaneous Papers, Reviews [
4]
* facsimile
An inquiry into the nature of peace and the terms of its perpetuation ...
**Publisher: New York, B.W. Huebsch, 1919
* facsimile
The place of science in modern civilisation and other essays**Publisher: New York, B.W. Huebsch, 1919
* facsimile
The Vested Interests and the Common Man ("The modern point of view and the new order").
**Publisher: New York, B.W. Huebsch, 1919
* Othercanon: Biological Metaphor shift in Economics [
5]
