Chapter Review: Introductory

CONTEXT

Introductory is Chapter 1 of Thorstein Veblen’s influential 1899 book, The Theory of the Leisure Class. It is a mere 9 pages long in the version of the book I bought that Compass Circle published on May 7, 2020. Although Veblen, an American living in Minnesota, is considered to be an economist, his take on it is from a psychological and sociological point of view. In this regard, he predates the rise of the new disciplines of behavioral economics and behavioral finance by about 110 years. Those new disciplines try to model messy humans beings as they really behave in the real world, not as some mythical rational creature in some mythical market.

Introductory reads much like a sociology text. For me, Introductory is distinctly reminiscent of Peter Berger's 1963 masterpiece, Introduction to Sociology (reviewed here). From what I understand of modern cognitive and social science, his take on the human condition is amazingly accurate, at least in the first 9 pages. Maybe modern science has debunked at least some of what he believed or postulated, but from what I know, Veblen probably seems to have gotten things surprisingly right.

The Theory of the Leisure Class presents a devastating criticism of the super wealthy class he observed in the late 1800s. Veblen coined the term conspicuous consumption to highlight the psychological and sociological aspects of how people like John D. Rockefeller lived their super wealthy lives. In his view, the super wealthy were modern equivalents of primitive tribal chiefs.

The book is short, 170 pages in my version, but it is not easy (for me) to read. Veblen's prose is ponderous and convoluted. I had to read some passages four or five times before what he was saying became clear. For people comfortable with this sort of dense writing, the book will probably be a breeze to get through. But for others, this will be a slog.

Chapter review

Veblen starts by asserting that barbarian cultures of feudal Europe and feudal Japan were marked by rigid class distinctions in the kinds of work or activities that people engaged in. Engaging in warfare and priestly activities were honorable and reserved for the elites or the leisure class. The more mundane and less honorable or even dishonorable work was for the inferior classes. Servants of the elites were often held in higher esteem than most other occupations. In this view, one can see class differences and how society valued people based on what they did. This was not necessarily a meritocracy. Titles and positions were often hereditary.

In earlier stages of barbarism, Veblen asserts that the leisure class was sometimes less differentiated in situations where each individual have more impact on people’s lives. The inferior classes generally constituted slaves, manual laborers, women and dependents, presumably mostly children. Upper class men were often proscribed by custom or social norm from engaging in manual labor or industry. That attitude lasted through the 1800s and 1900s. It still exists to a non-trivial extent today. Veblen comments on the rise of the leisure class as he saw it:

“The evidence afforded by the usages and cultural traits of communities at a low stage of development indicates that the institution of a leisure class has emerged gradually during the transition from primitive savagery to barbarism; or more precisely, during the transition from a peaceable to a consistently warlike habit of life. The conditions apparently necessary to its emergence in a consistent form are: (1) the community must be of a predatory habit of life (war or the hunting of large game or both); that is to say, the men, who constitute the inchoate leisure class in these cases, must be habituated to the infliction of injury by force and stratagem; (2) subsistence must be obtainable on sufficiently easy terms to admit of the exemption of a considerable portion of the community from steady application to a routine of labour. The institution of leisure class is the outgrowth of an early discrimination between employments, according to which some employments are worthy and others unworthy. Under this ancient distinction the worthy employments are those which may be classed as exploit; unworthy are those necessary everyday employments into which no appreciable element of exploit enters. 

But the change of standards and points of view is gradual only, and it seldom results in the subversion of entire suppression of a standpoint once accepted. A distinction is still habitually made between industrial and non-industrial occupations; and this modern distinction is a transmuted form of the barbarian distinction between exploit and drudgery. Such employments as warfare, politics, public worship, and public merrymaking, are felt, in the popular apprehension, to differ intrinsically from the labour that has to do with elaborating the material means of life. The precise line of demarcation is not the same as it was in the early barbarian scheme, but the broad distinction has not fallen into disuse.”

A couple of observations on that come to mind. First, Veblen apparently considered his time to to be a period of consistently warlike barbarism. That barbarism significantly retained the ancient distinctions about honorable vs dishonorable work and the corresponding attitudes toward the people in those occupations.

Second, although Veblen refers to earlier cultures as ‘peaceable’ and modern cultures as ‘consistently warlike’, peaceable does not mean non-violent. He takes pains to point out that the evidence available to him in 1899 indicated that human cultures were always violent and brutal. By consistently warlike, Veblen argues that the modern warlike situation arises once society has progressed to to point where society passes from primitive ‘peaceable savagery’ to ‘a predatory phase of life’ dominated by exploitation of people and groups both inside and outside the culture. In this, he seems to be at least somewhat equating warlike with predatory or exploitative:

“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. Booty, trophies of the chase or of the raid, come to be prized as evidence of pre-eminent force. Aggression becomes the accredited form of action, and booty serves as prima facie evidence of successful aggression. 

Under this common-sense barbarian appreciation of worth or honour, the taking of life -- the killing of formidable competitors, whether brute or human -- is honourable in the highest degree. And this high office of slaughter, as an expression of the slayer's prepotence, casts a glamour of worth over every act of slaughter and over all the tools and accessories of the act. Arms are honourable, and the use of them, even in seeking the life of the meanest creatures of the fields, becomes a honorific employment. At the same time, employment in industry becomes correspondingly odious, and, in the common-sense apprehension, the handling of the tools and implements of industry falls beneath the dignity of able-bodied men. Labour becomes irksome.”

On Veblen’s view, what elevates society from peaceable savagery to the modern barbaric predatory phase is acquisition of technical knowledge and industrialization. Material circumstances change and sufficient wealth is created by industrialization that it makes endless predation and war worth the cost. In other words, when there is enough to fight over, humans will fight over it. Assuming that correctly states the argument, it is an interesting observation to say the least. Is that still a dominant cultural norm in today?

In Chapter 1, a person can see important but unpleasant aspects of Western society in 2020 that Veblen saw in 1899. At least that what it looks like to this novice.

For people who are interested, some or all of the book is available for free online. The copyright expired. Chapter 1 is here.