The Theory of the Leisure Class

The Theory of the Leisure Class: An Economic Study of Institutions (1899), by Thorstein Veblen, is a treatise of economics and sociology, and a critique of conspicuous consumption as a function of social class and of consumerism, which are social activities derived from the social stratification of people and the division of labor; the social institutions of the feudal period (9th–15th c.) that have continued to the modern era. Veblen discusses how the pursuit and the possession of wealth affects human behavior, that the contemporary lords of the manor, the businessmen who own the means of production, have employed themselves in the economically unproductive practices of conspicuous consumption and conspicuous leisure, which are useless activities that contribute neither to the economy nor to the material production of the useful goods and services required for the functioning of society. Instead, it is the middle class and working class who are usefully employed in the industrialised, productive occupations that support the whole of society. Background The Theory of the Leisure Class (1899) was published during the Gilded Age (1870–1900), the time of the robber baron millionaires John D. Rockefeller, Andrew Carnegie, and Cornelius Vanderbilt, at the end of the 19th century. Veblen presents the evolutionary development of the social and economic institutions of society, wherein technology and the industrial arts are the creative forces of economic production. That in the economics of the production of goods and services, the social function of the economy was to meet the material needs of society and to earn profits for the owners of the means of production. Sociologically, that the industrial production system required the workers (men and women) to be diligent, efficient, and co-operative, whilst the owners of the factories concerned themselves with profits and with public displays of wealth; thus the contemporary socio-economic behaviours of conspicuous consumption and of conspicuous leisure survived from the predatory, barbarian past of the tribal stage of modern society. The sociology and economics reported in The Theory of the Leisure Class show the influences of Charles Darwin and Karl Marx, Adam Smith and Herbert Spencer; thereby Veblen's socio-economic theory emphasizes social evolution and development as characteristics of human institutions.