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ISBN 978–0–19–280684–0 (alk. paper) 1. Leisure class. I. Title. HB831.V4 2007 305.5’201–dc22 2007008544 Typeset by Cepha Imaging Private Ltd., Bangalore, India Printed in Great Britain on acid-free paper by Clays Ltd., St Ives plc ISBN 978–0–19–280684–0 1 3 5 7 9 10 8 6 4 2 OXFORD WORLD’S CLASSICS For over 100 years Oxford World’s Classics have brought readers closer to the world’s great literature. Now with over 700 titles—from the 4,000-year- old myths of Mesopotamia to the twentieth century’s greatest novels—the series makes available lesser-known as well as celebrated writing. The pocket-sized hardbacks of the early years contained introductions by Virginia Woolf, T. S. Eliot, Graham Greene, and other literary figures which enriched the experience of reading. Today the series is recognized for its fine scholarship and reliability in texts that span world literature, drama and poetry, religion, philosophy, and politics. Each edition includes perceptive commentary and essential background information to meet the changing needs of readers. Refer to the Table of Contents to navigate through the material in this Oxford World’s Classics ebook. Use the asterisks (*) throughout the text to access the hyperlinked Explanatory Notes. OXFORD WORLD’S CLASSICS THORSTEIN VEBLEN The Theory of the Leisure Class Edited with an Introduction and Notes by MARTHA BANTA OXFORD WORLD’S CLASSICS THE THEORY OF THE LEISURE CLASS THORSTEIN VEBLEN was born in 1857 on the Wisconsin frontier, the sixth of twelve children of Thomas and Kari Veblen who emigrated from Norway in 1847. At 17 Veblen was sent away from the family farm to Carleton College Academy, where he received his BA in 1880. In the following years Veblen followed a largely unstructured life that included an early marriage, retirement to his wife’s family farm, and on-and-off studies at Johns Hopkins, Yale, and Cornell, before he picked up two doctoral degrees—one in philosophy, the other in economics. He was 35 when he procured his first academic post in 1892 at the newly established University of Chicago. Although he had a reputation as an indifferent lecturer, a difficult colleague, and a bit of a womanizer, he gained recognition as a man with important new things to say about the relation of ever- evolving cultural forces to current business transactions. Culled from the series of papers he presented throughout the 1890s before academic audiences, The Theory of the Leisure Class was published in 1899. Received with derision by those who clung to old-style formulas of economic stability, it piqued the interest of members in the growing fields of sociology, anthropology, and psychology, as well as the novelists rising in protest against growing social inequities. Veblen went on to write ten books and countless reviews and essays, to be dismissed from the University of Chicago and Stanford University by administrators embarrassed over his romantic life, to remarry after his first wife divorced him, and to venture into non-academic areas in efforts to support himself. Finally, unemployable and in failing health, he retired to a cabin in the California mountains where he died in 1929. MARTHA BANTA is Professor Emeritus, University of California, Los Angeles. The author of six books and numerous essays on American literature and cultural studies, she is the recipient of lifetime achievement awards from the Modern Language Association and the American Studies Association. One True Theory & the Quest for an American Aesthetic, her forthcoming book, treats in depth Veblen’s role as the champion of new modes of scientific inquiry that influenced many areas of social thought. CONTENTS Introduction Note on the Text Select Bibliography A Chronology of Thorstein Bunde Veblen THE THEORY OF THE LEISURE CLASS Explanatory Notes INTRODUCTION Veblen’s Pivotal Work ‘Everyone’ appears to acknowledge the importance of The Theory of the Leisure Class, for has not Veblen’s 1899 analysis of the socioeconomics of affluent American societies introduced into the vernacular provocative terms such as ‘conspicuous consumption’ still operative in a world that embraces the notion that ‘greed is good’ and celebrates the Donald Trumps and the Paris Hiltons who clutter our ‘pecuniary culture’? The question remains how well Veblen’s study is really ‘known’—both for what it represents within the range of his own long career and in the newly defined disciplines he guided into the modern world that have had a major impact upon our understanding of the relations between business, industry, and social mores. When Maxwell Anderson, the well-known playwright, was asked if he had read Veblen’s book, he replied ‘Why no.… why should I? All my friends have read it. It permeates the atmosphere in which I live.’1 The Theory of the Leisure Class is indeed a pivotal work. It followed after Veblen’s early essays promoting post-Darwinian methods of scientific inquiry that replaced outmoded views of an unchanging universe with theories capable of deciphering ever-evolving societies and institutions. It began his championing of the heroic model of the engineer whose selfless concern for the production of essential goods countered the depredations of the predatory businessman solely interested in profits gained through selling useless products. What may still matter most is that it represents a major literary achievement, a work that rearranges how we look at our social structures and everyday behaviours. Besides being a very ‘good read’, its narrative techniques, its stylistic innovations, its sheer guts raise The Theory of the Leisure Class well beyond the level of other writings of its time that tried to ignite awareness that too much money was in the hands of too few people who had too limited a notion of what to do with their barbaric booty. Veblen’s masterwork is deeply sociological in its implications, and his immersion in late nineteenth-century debates over economic theories is searingly on view. Just as important is the fact of its narrative force that places it in the illustrious company of contemporary social critics such as Jane Addams, Herbert Croly, Eugene Debs, and literary figures numbering Henry James, Edith Wharton, Mark Twain, Theodore Dreiser, Frank Norris, and Abraham Cahan. Veblen was