Thorstein Veblen: Review of Veblen’s "The Theory of the Leisure Class," by Charles R. Henderson. The Dial. Semi-Monthly Journal of Literary Criticism, Discussion, and Information. Chicago. The Dial Company, 1900 Vol. XXVIII (January 1 to June 16, 1900) The Dial. June 1, 1900, pp. 437-438. -------------------------------------------------------------------------- [437] In "The Theory of the Leisure Class," Mr. Thorstein Veblen discusses the place and value of the leisure class as an economic factor in modern life. The grounds of class distinctions are sought in primitive institutions. Property and ownership had their origin in emulation during a period of predatory acquisition. The enslavement of women was a part of the process. Economic production, useful drudgery, fell to women and other slaves. Exploitation became the business of nobles and the reputable. The productive industries became shameful. Possession of wealth without labor marked the superior race and the ruling class. Government was instituted, and is still maintained, as the means of keeping the exploiters in possession. The conventional marks of this superiority are conspicuous leisure and conspicuous consumption. The author distinctly disavows any purpose to test the canons of taste, art, fashion, and ceremony by any standard except the economical; and the reader must, in fairness, bear this claim in mind. The author proceeds with the cool temper of pure intelligence, the calculation of an "economic man." We should give him credit for absolute sincerity when he affirms repeatedly that he has no ethical, aesthetical, or transcendental criterion in mind. His style is chilled steel: hard, cold, and sharp. Its light is dry and frosty. The word "socialism" is scrupulously avoided, but the arguments made familiar by socialists gleam through the sentences of every chapter. The sole test of institutions, in this book, is their economic or industrial usefulness. Usefulness, apparently, is nowhere defined; but we may get light from the definition of "waste": "It is not to be taken in an odious sense, as implying an illegitimate expenditure of human products or life. In the view of economic theory the expenditure in question is no more and no less legitimate than any other expenditure. It is here called 'waste' because this expenditure does not serve human life or well-being on the whole, not because it is waste or misdirection of effort or expenditure from the standpoint of the individual consumer who chooses it." That is "waste" which does not enhance well-being on the whole; which fails to promote the generically human, the collective good. An impartial judgment of the conclusions would be easier if the author had given us a nearer view of his standard of usefulness. While we must accept his disclaimer that he does not mean to apply any but strictly "economic" texts to contemporary customs, those who practice [438] these customs must be very thick-skinned if they can read his pages without wincing or revolt. The hook is too strong to be thrust aside. It is an academic, subtle, and acute phrasing of what the working men, "conscious of their goal," are saying about us in every shop and Sunday trades council. Here lies a great merit of the book, in spite of a somewhat evasive manner of approach: it compels the "respectable" class to see themselves as others see them, if they care for that accomplishment. A banker, on reading about himself here, will perhaps not like to be classed among the "predatory" classes even if nothing "odious" is intended. A lawyer will hardly look a second time for the Pickwickian sense of this characterization: "The profession of the law does not imply large ownership; but since no taint of usefulness, for other than the competitive purpose, attaches to the lawyer's trade, it grades high in the conventional scheme. The lawyer is exclusively occupied with the details of predatory fraud, either in achieving or in checkmating chicane, and success in the profession is therefore accepted as marking a large endowment of that barbarian astuteness which has always commanded men's respect and fear." In the most polite way a comparison is set up between delinquents, gamblers, and business men. "Patriotism" is identified with the martial spirit, and this with the barbarian virtues of ferocity and pitilessness. Boys' brigades and athletic sports are explained by the leisure-class morality of barbarian love of cruelty and fraud. The training for foot-ball leads to a "rehabilitation and accentuation of those ferine traits which make for damage and desolation." Truculence and clannishness are the marks of the athlete. There is one more mark, common to criminals, gamblers, and classical scholars, anthropomorphic worship, which is part of the leisure class machinery for holding up the regime of status and subservience, although this is without conscious purpose. After reading many pages devoted to this scalping and skinning process, a priest, a captain of industry, or a classical scholar may be soothed and mollified by reading (p. 265): "The exigencies of the language make it impossible to avoid an apparent implication of disapproval of the aptitudes, propensities, and expressions of life here under discussion. It is, however, not intended to imply anything in the way of deprecation or commendation of any one of these phases of human character or of the life process." Grim pleasantry aside, we have here to deal with a man who cuts deep and means to be true and candid. Many who need his message will not read it, or will throw it aside in anger and contempt. It is one-sided. It confessedly leaves in the background the values of the higher existence, and discusses chiefly the proximate means of welfare. The definition of the "economic man" seems, save from the author's standpoint, a very low and narrow one to one of the "respectable" class. The omission of the real aesthetic, ethical, and spiritual elements of welfare seems to leave even industry without an explanation. Yet here is a quiet, stern, honest man, who compels the reader to face reality in one of its aspects. Better to "pick out treasure from an earthen pot" than miss the gem through pride or fear or prejudice. Professor Veblen has stated with unusual clearness the explanation of the familiar fact that many reforms have been started from the "lower classes"; ideas of betterment which seemed revolutionary and even absurd to educated and cultivated men, yet were finally accepted by all as reasonable. The demands of the peasants in Luther's day; the claims of the Chartists in England; the propositions for factory legislation which were commonly rejected by upper class economists and statesmen, these may be taken as examples. Christianity may offer parallels: "Do any of the rulers believe?" The explanation seems reasonable and adequate: the poor feel the pressure of new conditions long before the stress comes upon the sheltered leisure class. Professor Veblen illustrates, by this book, a new element in the movement of our day, the intense and profound revolt of scholars and independent thinkers against the dictation of the money power in the field of thought. The force of literary sarcasm may come to be felt, and the attempt to suppress it by arts known to the rulers must provoke a worse reaction. It is fortunate for the general reader that he has a reliable and readable translation of that one of Tarde's recent discussions which presents his views of social psychology in a somewhat systematic form, under the title "Social Laws." The heads of the treatise are the repetition of phenomena, the opposition of phenomena, and the adaptation of phenomena. The speculations are very suggestive, and the clear and brilliant style of the author should win for him a wide reading. Charles R. Henderson. --------------------------------------------------------------------------