The Portable Veblen

by Thorstein Veblen, Max Lerner (Editor)

Editor's Introduction
Note on Selection
Theory of the leisure class
In dispraise of economists
The roots of institutions
The case of America
Marginal notes: religion, education and economics
On war and peace
A List of Veblen's Books
Further Reading on Veblen

Genres: Economics, Philosophy, Nonfiction, Essays

632 pages, Mass Market Paperback

First published April 1, 1948

About the author

Thorstein (born 'Torsten') Bunde Veblen was a Norwegian-American economist and sociologist. He was famous as a witty critic of capitalism.

Veblen is famous for the idea of "conspicuous consumption". Conspicuous consumption, along with "conspicuous leisure", is performed to demonstrate wealth or mark social status. Veblen explains the concept in his best-known book, The Theory of the Leisure Class (1899). Within the history of economic thought, Veblen is considered the leader of the institutional economics movement. Veblen's distinction between "institutions" and "technology" is still called the Veblenian dichotomy by contemporary economists.

As a leading intellectual of the Progressive Era, Veblen attacked production for profit. His emphasis on conspicuous consumption greatly influenced the socialist thinkers who sought a non-Marxist critique of capitalism.

Reviews

[Rachel · Rating 3 out of 5]

If you can comprehend Veblen's sesquipedalian style and get past his alienating lack of common moral sensibilities, you may enjoy this introduction to an American economist who (unlike many economists)recognized that man "is not simply a bundle of desires...but rather a coherent structure of propensities and habits which seeks realization and expression in an unfolding activity."

[Peter Aronson · Rating 3 out of 5]

The Editor's Introduction to the 1948 edition of The Portable Veblen (not to be confused with the novel of the same name by Elizabeth Mckenzie) talks about how well Veblen (who had died in 1929) had worn, how little it was dated. However, 68+ years later this is a largely unsupportable view. Veblen's view on race seem peculiar in this day and age, and although he made a real effort at understanding Darwin and Mendel and applying them scientifically, he appears to have been undermined by his day and age's views on race, both overestimating the genetic variability within groups and overestimating that within the entire human species. His essay on The Technicians and Revolution is risible to anyone who has spent much time around actual engineers, and his essay on The Intellectual Pre-eminence of Jews in Modern Europe shows an equal lack of experience (or experience overridden by expectations) with actual European Jewish culture. He seems to lack any but the most superficial knowledge of any culture but that of Western Europe, and what he had was has gained by reading secondary and tertiary sources (in fact he appears to make very limited use of primary sources at all). He was a poor prophet (very little of what he predicts has come to pass), and is attempts to delve into the past are little more than "just so" stories (even he admits at one point in The Theory of the Leisure Class that "The evidence for the hypothesis that there has been such a peaceable state of primitive culture is in great part drawn from psychology rather than from ethnology", not that the ethnology of the time when he wrote that sentence was all that reliable or unbiased).

So, if he was a poor prophet and a poor ancient historian and apparently lacked any deep knowledge of any culture other than his own, why read Thorstein Veblen today? Because he was a clear-sighted (if not unbiased), merciless, extremely well-read and witty observer of his times and culture. A lot of The Theory of the Leisure Class still applies wonderfully, and explains far too much to be comfortable about Western Civilization's fetishization of both wealth and property, both then and now. And there is still much painful truth today in The Higher Learning clearly evident to anyone who knows anything about University fund raising. And his critiques of the economics of his day were apparently devastating in their time and are still a snarky good read. Even his more off-the-wall essays, such as Patriotism, Peace and the Price System have some painful truth (along with the strange predictions of a mechanistic frame of mind resulting from modern industrial work leading to the abandonment of religion and private property) about how the rich use patriotism and the threat of war to keep the rest of the populace in-line and distracted.

I do find myself wondering what Veblen could have done with the modern idea of cultural evolution combined with physical evolution and the with the more nuanced interpretations of Darwin since his time. I suspect it would have challenging to read, but very, very interesting.

The Portable Veblen seems to provide a good selection of his work.