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Thorstein Veblen’s The Theory of the Leisure Class stands as a testament to both insightful social commentary and an unquestioning dogmatism of its contents in everyday academic discourse which verges on the commonsensical. Written at a time when the excesses of so-called late capitalism or postmodernity could scarcely be imagined by even the most gifted of social critics, Veblen’s belligerent and bombastic volume shatters the idyllic ambiance of the era with a scathing critique reaching back through the historical development of leisure and barbaric culture, as well as, unintentionally perhaps, into the future of consumer society. So powerful were his statements that one can even find mainstream media outlets parroting the famous concept of conspicuous consumption as they simultaneously peddle advertising slots to companies moving products through the ideological reflections of what consumption of these products might blissfully entail (a beautiful woman suddenly being interested in a geeky young chap just for using a body spray, for example). The empirical relevance of the concept in contemporary society is puzzlingly remarkable considering the original volume, as Veblen wrote it, is bereft of any empirical or theoretical citations, justified by the author by invoking the commonsensicality of the historical and empirical data, but also the onto-epistemological foundations on which Veblen’s thought rests.

Read more on Conspicuous Consumption of the Leisure Class: Veblen’s Critique and Adorno’s Rejoinder in the Twenty First Century…

Thorstein Veblen’s greatest conceptual achievement was conspicuous consumption, a term that has passed into general common sense. But on my reading, his discussion of conspicuous leisure resonated more with the contemporary moment. These terms are, of course, interrelated: for Veblen, conspicuous consumption serves to indicate one’s conspicuous leisure time, and therefore the absence of any need to produce. Both amount to displays of waste:

Read more on The Hipster Labor of Conspicuous Leisure…

Thorstein Veblen’s The Theory of the Leisure Class sets out very specific definitions of words that we think we understand, use on a regular basis, and for which believe we know the definitions. However, Veblen challenges these assumptions, providing us with a new set of terms such, as “conspicuous consumption” and “vicarious leisure” as well as new definitions for familiar words and phrases that we thought we understood.  One of these terms, and the definition that he gives for it, in many ways determines the entire text: “leisure.” The Oxford English Dictionary provides us with a definition of this word that would have been in place when Veblen was writing at the turn of the last century. The dictionary defines the word this way: “The state of having time at one’s own disposal; time which one can spend as one pleases; free or unoccupied time.” However, Veblen demonstrates how our society, in particular our capitalist, pecuniary society, has altered our understanding of this word as it has warped our understanding of what is often considered its opposite: work.

Read more on Leisure, the Sacred Gesture, and Human Dignity: Thorstein Veblen and Josef Pieper’s Understandings of Leisure…

Thorstein Veblen’s genealogy of leisure, echoing a method perfected by both Friedrich Nietzsche and Sigmund Freud, works to continually pull back into the domain of “vulgar” conditions and impulses–a general economy of bodies, forces and classes–all things high-flown, decent, and untouchable (vi, 1994). The ambit of Veblen’s theory is such that it allows him to economically determine or “vulgarize” a whole series of seemingly disparate hegemonic practices now suddenly clustered and nameable along the axis separating leisure from labour. War, marriage, priestly service, governance, manners, sport are all absorbed into the debasing mill of emulation, the putative nobility or highness of each revealed as one long extended variation on power, avarice, and “exploit”(12). The state, the rich, the church, to say nothing of inherited bourgeois mores and conventions, all discover their beginnings in a shared history of repressed status and envy. Like all creatively designed systems, this is a project as ingenious as it is limiting and clumsy. That which stands to be lost in terms of sociological nuance returns in the form of a certain satiric elegance and universality, a critical breadth and incisiveness that we have not seen since the likes of Buñuel’s The Discreet Charms of the Bourgeoisie, but which once characterized fully the rich power and sloppiness of the entire surrealist moment. It has not since been as easy as we might think to defrock pope, banker, bureaucrat and general all at once.

Read more on Poor Plenum: Veblen and The Economics of Philosophy…