Theory of the Leisure Class (Penguin Classics)

Rating:
Summary: The leisure class is working harder than ever
Review: I have no idea whatsoever of how true Veblen's analysis of American social reality was one - hundred years ago, or how true it is today. No doubt he did see ' social phenomenom' that were emerging and succeeded in finding the 'name ' for them. 'Leisure class' and ' conspicuous consumption' are part of the everyday vocabulary of the description and analysis of 'social life'. I know that Veblen was particularly hard upon the nouveau riche, those trying to prove by buying and having more that they were as good or better than ' old money'. However I wonder if in ' work ethic' America there is not also another kind of phenomenom, of people of great wealth feeling a special social obligation, as multibillionaires Gates and whether for good purposes or not, Ted Turner have displayed in recent years. I also have a problem with making the concept of ' leisure' an entirely pejorative one. What about those ' surpluses' at the state of the agricultural age which Lewis Mumford said were so key in creating civilization? Isn't it true that in many societies those who do not have to do productive work were freed for higher work of mind and spirit? I wonder then that is whether Veblen's condemnation of the 'leisure class ' is too ' blanket' a one in many ways. And this without denying the truths that great wealth often corrupts, leads to arrogance, and indolence, folly and waste. For years the conception of the US was of a society in which the middle class element was predominant, a society reflecting an equality of opportunity and the fact that the majority of people had been able to in time and through work raise themselves to a good level of life. The decline of the middle class in the sense of the growing gap between very rich and very poor is a fact of life in America. Perhaps this makes Veblen's analysis of a certain part of American society more pertinent. But again I think that there is a counter- tradition emerging in which many of the very wealthy assume that the way to real respect in the eyes of the public is in doing good for others.


Rating:
Summary: Great Incoherent Fun
Review: I was extremely pleased with this book. It reduces the notion of society to a popularity contest in which fashion becomes the perfect expression of everyone's desire to be praised and noticed. As the American economy shifts from being a breadbasket to being the entertainment capital of a devil in blue jeans world, this book, from a much earlier historical period, shows how America always had the potential to achieve this kind of greatness. More than any other book, this one allows total enjoyment of the thoughts which it expresses. When a mind has been trained to blossom in this way, the greatest danger might be that it could be considered grandiose for daring to make such comments.

Rating:
Summary: Leisure as Disease
Review: Known by his contemporaries as the only social theorist to apply Darwin critically, in 1899 Thorstein Veblen published The Theory of the Leisure Class: A Economic Study of Institutions, which was to become the basis from which all further American leisure history and theory stemmed. In his study, Veblen is primarily concerned with the "new rich," whom he regards as social parasites that retard the growth of modern life. Thorstein Veblen wrote The Theory of the Leisure Class from a perspective that was largely isolated from his own culture, which either aided in his understanding of the Leisure Class or perhaps negatively influenced his opinions due to his exclusion from it. In The Theory of the Leisure Class, Veblen essentially confines man and woman's existence on the planet as a struggle to change and adapt with the growth of their communities. Through this belief, Veblen develops a theme that amounts to the idea of a certain "dominant" type of individual. This individual develops a social structure through dominance in which social advance is sought by others. She/he will feel the discrepancy between the modern life and traditional life during the process. Though Veblen's rhetoric is sometimes anxious, sometimes negative, he actively pursues a specific account of the origins of the Leisure Class through individuals. The struggle for individual advancement eventually expands to include society, and the more individual struggle for advancement in society leads to the accumulation of surplus goods.
Surplus of conspicuous consumption by the Leisure Class gives the class license to indulge shamefully in pure conspicuous consumption, where their occupations eventually become leisure itself. These "professions" of the Leisure Class by nature render it closed, and impenetrable by outsiders.
Thorstein Veblen wrote the Leisure Class represented the new phenomena of conspicuous consumption compared to pre-Industrialized wealthy communities as well as contemporary working-class ones. But as intellectual inquiry into the topic of leisure has progressed over the past one hundred years, leisure has come to hold a number of definitions and meanings.

Rating:
Summary: Theory of the leisure class
Review: Like the wealth of nations or Leviathon this book is both an economic, and social text. Very good perspective if somewhat harsh and disassociated. Percuinary emulation is something everybody should understand to avoid becoming a mindless yuppie clone - good advice.

Rating:
Summary: Vanitas, vanitatis!!
Review: Mr. Veblen is a refined person in the use of the words he uses to address and explain the economic habits of the refined people of the upper-class of the beginning of the last century. He spares no expenses in detailing in a very polite manner the idiossincracies of the noble and very rich when deciding what to buy, what to use and how to behave, going also to all lenghts explainning how these habits mold and form the habits of the not so rich and noble strata of the society. His theory of the leisure class reachs significance when compared to the rationality which some economists, classics and neo-classics, ascribe to the human being as an economic agent. I was quite surprised by the elegant style of Mr.Veblen and the fine irony (which he does not admit) with which he treats the rich and noble of his time. Sure, this is a book which could be also serve well times ahead and before Veblen's time.

Rating:
Summary: Like Butter, Baby
Review: Sad to say, the Dover durables of midcentury and beyond are gone (if not forgotten); but when this value-price line was introduced in the mid-'90s, this book in particular was very welcome. Herein (though not exclusively) we find Veblen supplying an alternative to Nietzsche, specifically *Beyond Good and Evil*. This is a book about morals, or the lack of them; but coming from a man who all-but-assaulted his estranged wife with "notions" one ought not to expect a rousing defense of bourgeois morality. Rather an unstinting defense of some other way of life (such as is provided in his impossibly rare *Instinct of Workmanship*) what we have here is a Grand-Guignol treatment of the "life-lie" Veblen calls conspicuous consumption, which just might happen to exclude Symbolist "vitalism" (and as to the provenance of the concept "dolicho-blond", consult Veblen's essay on the American small town). One of Marx's more assiduous Edwardian readers, such that people who can stand to consider social life in widest compass can stand to plunk down three dollars for this (rather fragile) volume.

Rating:
Summary: Like Butter, Baby
Review: Sad to say, the Dover durables of midcentury and beyond are gone (if not forgotten); but when this value-price line was introduced in the mid-'90s, this book in particular was very welcome. Herein (though not exclusively) we find Veblen supplying an alternative to Nietzsche, specifically *Beyond Good and Evil*. This is a book about morals, or the lack of them; but coming from a man who all-but-assaulted his estranged wife with "notions" one ought not to expect a rousing defense of bourgeois morality. Rather an unstinting defense of some other way of life (such as is provided in his impossibly rare *Instinct of Workmanship*) what we have here is a Grand-Guignol treatment of the "life-lie" Veblen calls conspicuous consumption, which just might happen to exclude Symbolist "vitalism" (and as to the provenance of the concept "dolicho-blond", consult Veblen's essay on the American small town). One of Marx's more assiduous Edwardian readers, such that people who can stand to consider social life in widest compass can stand to plunk down three dollars for this (rather fragile) volume.

Rating:
Summary: Viva Veblen!!!
Review: This is one of the most thought provoking books I have read in a long time. Veblen leaves no stone unturned in his dissection of America's upper class and the unconscious traditions that lead them, and us. It is not hard to understand the volcano that erupted with this books publication. The Penguin edition is also set in an elegant Caslon typeface that reads beautifully.

Rating:
Summary: Viva Veblen!!!
Review: This is one of the most thought provoking books I have read in a long time. Veblen leaves no stone unturned in his dissection of America's upper class and the unconscious traditions that lead them, and us. It is not hard to understand the volcano that erupted with this books publication. The Penguin edition is also set in an elegant Caslon typeface that reads beautifully.

Rating:
Summary: VERY FRESH 100 YEARS OLD BOOK
Review: This opus by Veblen exposes the real meaning of the pecuniary advancement of the working and merchant classes, and the formation of elites based mostly upon money and asset valuation. The transfiguration of the traditional social and individual ethical values that this phenomenon produced, is portraited with clarity and sarcastic intelligence by the author in the book, first published in 1899.
Now a classic of economic theory, as well as a text book of social science, it describes the tendencies of consumerism, leisure and the "materialization" of the ideals of the aspiring new princes (or noveau rich) of society. Veblen's vibrant satire of the tendency of the modern individual to believe that real accomplishment is all about aquiring a condition of ostentatious wealth and status, and his analisis of the inception of modern class structure in America, still stand, a century after, as recommended reading for historians and economists.
If you are a fervent follower of advertisement, fashion, "glamour" and other modern expressions of consumerism , then you will find a surprisingly fresh portrait of yourself in this book. It worries me that the leisure class and its shallow views and values as described by Veblen, may still today represent elites in America and their religion, as analyzed by professor Lash in his last book "The Revolt of the Elites". I highly recommend Veblen's best book, to scholars and sociologists at large.