The Theory of the Leisure Class
Thorstein Veblen, 1899
Why are people ready to freeze just to look respectable, and why does a pay rise please for only a few months? In 1899 the American economist Thorstein Veblen explained this with one rule: respect is given only on evidence, and the most convincing proof of plenty is wastefulness. You will see how this rule governs our spending, our taste and our fashions, and learn to notice it in your own purchases.
Who it is for
For anyone who wants to understand why new purchases stop pleasing so quickly, where the shame before the “cheap” comes from, and why it is so hard to step out of the race for other people’s approval.
To win and keep people’s respect, it is not enough simply to own wealth or power. It must be displayed, for respect is given only on evidence.
Freezing, but looking respectable
Thorstein Veblen noticed something that everyone walks past without thinking. In cold climates people often go out dressed in a way that does not suit the weather. They are cold, but they look respectable. To look well dressed, they agree to be cold, and almost nobody finds this strange.
Veblen, an American economist, asked a simple question in 1899: why do people spend money on things that make life neither warmer nor more comfortable? He looked at his own society the way an anthropologist looks at a foreign tribe. He studied its silver spoons and lawns, its top hats, butlers and Latin. And about every custom he asked what it proves about its owner.
His answer became the basis of the book. Respect goes to those who have wealth, but only if the wealth is visible. The most convincing proof of plenty is what a person can afford to lose: time and things. The leisure class, in Veblen’s view, is made up of wealthy people who are free of useful work, and their way of life serves as a model of respectability for everyone else.
In this book you will see where the shame before plain work comes from, why a new salary stops pleasing so quickly, why the expensive looks beautiful and why those who are doing well do not need change. Veblen writes dryly and mockingly, but he does not condemn: he explains. Let us begin with how work became humiliating.
Why simple work became shameful
Among many hunting peoples, Veblen writes, a man must not carry home the animal he has killed himself. He sends a woman for the game. Killing a dangerous beast is honourable, but dragging the carcass is humiliating. In this small custom Veblen sees a division that has outlived millennia: there are worthy deeds, such as heroic feats, and there are low deeds, such as everyday routine.
The mechanism he describes goes like this. When a community begins to live by war and by hunting large game, honour goes to the one who has proved strength. The trophy becomes evidence of strength. And work that proves nothing seems to be the lot of the weak and the subordinate. Then a short mental shortcut sets in: if work is a sign of low standing, then it is low in itself.
Veblen gives extreme cases. Polynesian chiefs, he says, preferred to go hungry rather than bring food to their mouths with their own hands. He honestly adds that a taboo on a chief’s touch may have played a part. Of one French king it was told that he sat by the fire until he was burned so badly that he never recovered. The servants whose job it was to draw back the royal chair were not at hand, and doing it himself was beneath his dignity.
All this history of early stages remains a hypothesis for Veblen: he admits that he leans more on psychology than on ethnography. But the trace he points to is easy to find in yourself. It is the familiar aversion to “dirty” work. Serving, clearing up and repairing still seem to be something below one’s dignity, although almost nobody can explain clearly why.
It is worth noticing when you give up a task not because it is unnecessary but because it is “not in keeping with your status”. Behind that feeling may stand not your own choice but a very old habit of telling the honourable from the low.
About the author
Thorstein Veblen (1857-1929), an American economist and sociologist, son of Norwegian immigrants. “The Theory of the Leisure Class” was his first and best-known book: it was there that he introduced the phrase “conspicuous consumption”.
All books by this author: Thorstein Veblen
Terms from the book
- leisure class: Veblen’s term: people whom wealth frees from productive work and whose way of life serves as a model of respectability for the rest of society. This is a term of his theory, not a strict sociological category.
- pecuniary emulation: Veblen’s name for the struggle for respect through wealth, where what matters is not how much you have but how much more or less than those you compare yourself with.
- invidious comparison: Veblen’s term: comparing people in order to rank them, who is higher and who is lower. The author stresses that he uses the word technically, without condemnation.
- Mill: John Stuart Mill (1806-1873), English philosopher and economist, author of “Principles of Political Economy”. Veblen quotes his words that machines have not lightened people’s daily toil.
- conspicuous leisure: Veblen’s term: a display that a person can afford not to do useful work. Leisure here is not laziness but time spent unproductively and on show.
- dead languages: Languages that nobody any longer speaks as a native tongue, such as Latin and Ancient Greek. For Veblen, knowing them is evidence of time free from earning money.
- vicarious leisure: Veblen’s term: leisure carried out on the master’s behalf by servants or family members, so that it brings him honour. This book renders the term as “leisure by proxy”.
- instinct of workmanship: Veblen’s term: an innate inclination to value what is useful and effective and not to bear pointless effort. For the author this is a force that argues against conspicuous waste.
- conspicuous consumption: Veblen’s best-known term: spending on goods and services whose main value is that others see them and judge the owner’s wealth by them.
- conspicuous waste: The general principle in Veblen: both leisure and consumption bring honour because they contain something superfluous, spending beyond need. The author uses “waste” as a term, not as a reproach.
- frock coat: A long men’s double-breasted jacket, a required part of a respectable suit in the nineteenth century.
All terms
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