Ron Peters's Reviews > The Theory of the Leisure Class

Veblen’s claim to fame today is to have coined the phrase “conspicuous consumption.” He wrote this book at the height of the Gilded Age; the last time inequality reached the same heights as today. So, his characterization of the social dynamics of Victorian-era economics bears a more than passing resemblance to our own.

A key idea here is that economics is strongly driven by social factors better described by sociologists, anthropologists, psychologists, and evolutionary theorists than by so-called objectively scientific economic principles. Indeed, Veblen would argue that the scientistic gloss of economics and its hand servant conservatism serve to disguise their primary function of maintaining the one percent in the style to which they are accustomed.

He foreshadows Wilkerson’s popular (2021) Caste (see https://is.gd/5lSZ6h) by arguing that the division of power between the haves and the have-nots bears historic comparison with the ancient division in India between the Brahman and Warrior castes and the rest of society.

Veblen also talks about the role of women in society as an outgrowth of the functions they serve as modified slaves or domestic servants to men. It would be interesting to hear what Veblen would have said about our post-industrial economy, where most people work in the ‘service sector’ – that is, where most workers are glorified domestics.

People today won’t agree literally with the details of Veblen’s evolutionary and sociological theories on the development of society, especially such rubbish as his observations about ‘breeding true to ethnic type.’ But his general analysis of social stratification and the idea that economics is as much a social as a scientific phenomenon is still highly pertinent for understanding the persistence of inequality today.