The Theory of the Leisure Class

Contents

1. Preface 3 min 4

   Veblen states his purpose: to examine the place and value of the leisure class as an economic factor in modern life, which requires tracing its origins and touching on features of social life not usually called economic. The theoretical premises are sketched in the introductory chapter and set out more fully in three papers in the American Journal of Sociology. He draws his evidence mainly from everyday observation rather than learned sources, asks pardon for his freedom with homely facts, and gives no citations, on the ground that his borrowings from ethnology are familiar enough to be traced.

2. I Introductory 37 min 11

   The leisure class is best developed in higher barbarism, as in feudal Europe and Japan, where the upper classes are excluded from industry and keep to government, war, religion and sport. Veblen traces this to a division between men's and women's work in lower barbarism, and further back to peaceable savage communities without a leisure class or individual ownership. A leisure class emerges with the shift to a predatory life, which requires a productive surplus. Its basis is an invidious distinction between honourable exploit and debasing drudgery, rooted in the instinct of workmanship and the barbarian equation of honour with force.

3. II Pecuniary Emulation 22 min 8

   Ownership and the leisure class arise together, the first property being women seized as trophies, later extended to slaves and goods. Veblen rejects the economists' view that the struggle for wealth is a struggle for subsistence or comfort: its motive is emulation, since wealth confers honour. As settled industry replaces predation, accumulated property becomes the conventional basis of esteem and self-respect, and inherited wealth becomes more honourable still. Because standing is relative, no increase of wealth can satisfy the desire for it. The chapter ends by defining “invidious” as a neutral, technical term for ranking persons by worth.

4. III Conspicuous Leisure 58 min 11

   Wealth confers esteem only when displayed, and the first means of display is conspicuous leisure, the visible abstention from productive work. Labour, associated since predatory times with subjection, becomes indecent for the well-to-do, producing even an impoverished gentry too proud to work. Leisure spent out of sight leaves evidence in accomplishments, manners and breeding. Servants and the wife perform vicarious leisure for the master, with trained, formal and often nominal service whose value lies in proving his ability to pay. Veblen names the quasi-peaceable stage of slavery and rank and finds its survivals in modern domestic service and social duties.

5. IV Conspicuous Consumption 1 h 0 min 13

   Servants and wife also consume vicariously for the master, in liveries, dress and household goods. Veblen traces the reservation of choice foods and stimulants to men of rank, the use of feasts and presents for display, and the descent of leisure-class standards through society, so that the middle-class wife performs leisure and consumption for a working husband and even the poorest keep some display. Consumption gains on leisure where populations are mobile and judged by strangers, as with city dwellers and printers. The instinct of workmanship forces make-believe usefulness, and conspicuous waste is defined as expenditure that does not serve human life as a whole.

6. V The Pecuniary Standard of Living 22 min 7

   Most people spend not to excel but to keep up a conventional standard of decency, which is set by emulation of the class above and ultimately by the leisure class. A standard of living is a habit: easy to raise and hard to lower, especially where it rests on the ancient propensity for emulation. Conspicuous waste therefore absorbs increases in productivity, which is why, as Mill said, machinery has not lightened anyone's toil. The same pressure makes domestic life shabby and private, lowers the birth rate of the respectable classes, and weighs most heavily on scholars, whose expected standard exceeds their income.

7. VI Pecuniary Canons of Taste 1 h 33 min 20

   Veblen traces how the requirement of conspicuous waste shapes moral, religious and aesthetic judgment. Respect for property, devout consumption and priestly ritual all bear its marks. In taste, people experience costliness as beauty: the hand-wrought silver spoon, the lawn kept by gardeners rather than cattle, the fancy-bred dog and the race-horse, the frail “lady” and the corseted waist. Hand-made goods are preferred to more perfect machine products for their honorific crudeness, as in Ruskin and Morris’s arts and crafts and the Kelmscott Press. Conspicuous waste does not create tastes; it selects among them.

8. VII Dress as an Expression of the Pecuniary Culture 38 min 12

   Dress is Veblen’s fullest illustration of his principles, because it is always on view. Clothing must show expense (conspicuous waste), show that the wearer does no productive work (conspicuous leisure), and be up to date. Fashion changes restlessly because each wasteful style soon offends an innate sense of futility and is replaced by another equally futile. Women’s dress, with the corset, high heel and skirt, goes furthest in showing disability, which marks the wearer as a dependent who displays her master’s ability to pay, like a liveried servant or a priest. As the rich class grows, display becomes subtler.

9. VIII Industrial Exemption and Conservatism 41 min 13

   Social evolution is a natural selection of institutions, which Veblen defines as prevalent habits of thought. Institutions are formed in the past and always lag behind present circumstances; they change only under economic pressure. The leisure class, sheltered from that pressure, is the conservative class, and its example makes conservatism respectable and innovation vulgar. Inequality also keeps the poor conservative by exhausting their energy. Economic institutions divide into pecuniary (business) and industrial ones; the leisure class’s relation to production is acquisitive and parasitic, though its routinisation of business may eventually make the captain of industry dispensable.

10. IX The Conservation of Archaic Traits 59 min 12

    The leisure-class scheme also shapes human character, by education and by selection. Veblen sketches an evolutionary history, using the now-discredited racial types of 1890s anthropology: a peaceable savage stage left traits of solidarity and workmanship, overlaid by predatory traits of force and fraud. Modern industry needs the older traits, but pecuniary success rewards the predatory ones. Pecuniary employments (ownership, finance, law) conserve the barbarian temperament; industrial employments wear it down. The pecuniary man resembles the delinquent. Class differences in temperament are blurred because leisure-class example and poverty spread pecuniary traits through the whole population.

11. X Modern Survivals of Prowess 54 min 13

    Veblen argues that the leisure class, living by industry rather than in it, preserves the fighting temper of the barbarian age. Martial spirit, the duel and the bellicose habits of boys survive chiefly among the hereditary gentry and the “lower-class delinquents”, while the industrial masses are war-averse except in passing fevers. Sport, with its make-believe, slang and swagger, is a boyish survival of predatory exploit; its defenders must apologise for it because it offends the older instinct of workmanship. Ferocity and astuteness, force and fraud, serve the competing individual but are of no use to the community.

12. XI The Belief in Luck 30 min 7

    The belief in luck, the root of the gambling habit, is traced to an archaic animism that imputes purpose and will to things, later elaborated into belief in a personal, preternatural agent. Veblen's interest is economic: modern machine industry demands thinking in terms of impersonal, quantitative cause and effect, and any animistic bias lowers a worker's and a community's efficiency. He extends the charge to natural-rights doctrine and evolutionary optimism, and concludes that predatory emulation, the system of status and the anthropomorphic cult are three expressions of one habit of invidious comparison.

13. XII Devout Observances 1 h 10 min 12

    Religious observance is analysed as a survival of the predatory culture. The sporting man's belief in luck shades into devotion; sportsmen, delinquents and college athletes favour strongly anthropomorphic creeds, and churches use sport and raffles to recruit. God is conceived as a barbarian lord, worship as homage, temples and vestments as conspicuous waste, priests and holidays as vicarious leisure. Devoutness persists among the leisure class, the very poor and sheltered women, and declines among mechanical workers, whose work enforces matter-of-fact habits of thought. Wealthy congregations drift toward ritual and spectacle.

14. XIII Survivals of the Non-Invidious Interest 55 min 9

    As the system of status decays, older non-invidious impulses (sympathy, sociability, workmanship) reappear, above all among leisure-class women and the clergy, who are barred from productive work. Veblen examines charity, settlements and reform societies: genuine motives are present, but pecuniary canons of reputability divert their efforts into status display and the teaching of upper-class consumption to the poor. The “New-Woman” movement, demanding emancipation and work, is a revolt against the vicarious life of the kept wife, a reversion to a peaceable human nature older than the predatory culture.

15. XIV The Higher Learning as an Expression of the Pecuniary Culture 1 h 6 min 14

    Learning began as a by-product of priestly vicarious leisure, and the higher schools keep its marks: ritual, cap and gown, degrees, reluctance to admit women, devotional affiliation and resistance to new science. American colleges grew ritualistic as their constituencies grew rich, and businessmen are replacing clergymen at their head. Modern science is a by-product of machine industry, entering the universities from outside and below. The classics hold their prestige as evidence of wasted time, now rivalled by athletics; archaic diction and English spelling are honoured for the same reason.