Thorstein Veblen - Böcker

This classic of economic thought is a scathing critique of American snobbery and wastefulness. Chief among the practices that Veblen so wittily satirizes is "conspicuous consumption", a pattern of behaviour that still flourishes among us.

Throughout history, some books have changed the world. They have transformed the way we see ourselves - and each other. They have inspired debate, dissent, war and revolution. They have enlightened, outraged, provoked and comforted. They have enriched lives - and destroyed them. Now Penguin brings you the works of the great thinkers, pioneers, radicals and visionaries whose ideas shook civilization and helped make us who we are.With its wry portrayal of a shallow, materialistic 'leisure class' obsessed by clothes, cars, consumer goods and climbing the social ladder, this withering satire on modern capitalism is as pertinent today as when it was written over a century ago.

'Conspicuous consumption of valuable goods is a means of reputability to the gentleman of leisure.'In The Theory of the Leisure Class Thorstein Veblen sets out 'to discuss the place and value of the leisure class as an economic factor in modern life'. In so doing he produced a landmark study of affluent American society that exposes, with brilliant ruthlessness, the habits of production and waste that link invidious business tactics and barbaric social behaviour. Veblen's analysis of the evolutionary process sees greed as the overriding motive in the modern economy; with an impartial gaze he examines the human cost paid when social institutions exploit the consumption of unessential goods for the sake of personal profit. Fashion, beauty, animals, sports, the home, the clergy, scholars - all are assessed for their true usefulness and found wanting. The targets of Veblen's coruscating satire are as evident today as they were a century ago, and his book still has the power to shock and enlighten. Veblen's uncompromising arguments and the influential literary force of his writing are assessed in Martha Banta's Introduction. ABOUT THE SERIES: For over 100 years Oxford World's Classics has made available the widest range of literature from around the globe. Each affordable volume reflects Oxford's commitment to scholarship, providing the most accurate text plus a wealth of other valuable features, including expert introductions by leading authorities, helpful notes to clarify the text, up-to-date bibliographies for further study, and much more.

Classic of economic and social theory offers a satiric examination of the hollowness and falsity suggested by the term "conspicuous consumption," exposing the emptiness of many cherished standards of taste, education, dress, and culture. Since first appearing in 1899, it has become a classic of social theory that has contributed to the modernization of economic policy.

Veblen's classic position on social status is intertwined with his interest in economic class and the political prospects of that class. The Vested Interests is squarely in that tradition. It aims to show how and why a discrepancy has arisen between the accepted principles of law and custom that underlie the business enterprise and the efficient management of industry. He also speculates on the civil and political difficulties inspired by this discrepancy between business civilization, and the social order.Many of the essays in this collection originally appeared in Dial from October 1918 to January 1919. The Vested Interests includes: "The Instability of Knowledge and Belief," "The Stability of Law and Custom," "The State of the Industrial Arts," "Free Income," "The Vested Interests," "The Divine Rights of Nations," "Live and Let Live," and "The Vested Interests and the Common Man."In his new introduction, Irving Louis Horowitz discusses Veblen as an economist turned sociologist. He explores the dichotomies in Veblen's approach, describing it as radical in input and conservative in outcome. Veblen was analytical in design, but ideological in rhetoric. He was materialist in his economic analysis, but idealistic in his emphasis on law and custom as regulatory mechanisms of the management of society. Horowitz also describes the difficulties Veblen experienced in placing his steadfastly nineteenth century ideals in the context of 1920s America. This is the final volume in Transaction's series of the essential works of Thorstein Veblen. It will be of central interest to sociologists as well as economists, particularly those interested in the history of ideas.

Veblen has been claimed and rejected both by sociologists and economists as being one of theirs. He enriched and attacked both disciplines, as he did so many others: philosophy, history, social psychology, politics, and linguistics. Because he took all knowledge as necessary and relevant to adequate understanding, Veblen was a holistic analyst of the social process.First published in 1904, this classic analysis of the U.S. economy has enduring value today. In it, Veblen posited a theory of business fluctuations and economic growth which included chronic depression and inflation. He predicted the socioeconomic changes that would occur as a result: militarism, imperialism, fascism, consumerism, and the development of the mass media as well as the corporate bureaucracy. Douglas Dowd's introduction places the volume within the traditions of both macroeconomics and microeconomics, tracing Veblen's place among social thinkers, and the place of this volume in the body of his work.

In his The Engineers and the Price System, originally published in 1921, Veblen observes that World War One demanded industrial innovations, and he was among the first to predict the need for changes in managerial struc-ture. Veblen saw that industrial output was more dependent upon techno-crats—managers and capital innova-tors—than financiers.In The Engineers and the Price System, Veblen applies economic theory to modern industrial society. He demon-strates that revolutionary change can be advanced by managers and engi-neers upon whose "brains and skills" the state of industrial arts depends.In his uniquely comprehensive in-troduction, Daniel Bell discusses the associations and attitudes which mark Veblen as the prophetic outsider he remained most of his life.

The Instinct of Workmanship and the State of the Industrial Arts, originally issued in 1914, is described by Murray Murphey as his "most important work." In this volume that the theoretical foundations are put forth on full display. Veblen's juxtaposition of the instinctive values of community welfare in contrast to the pecuniary values of commercial exchange was the basis of his later, more famous works. The book makes plain Veblen's basic dichotomy between technological institutions for making goods and the pecuniary institutions for making money.Veblen's book is taken up with the casual processes in the history of culture centered on human instincts and habits. For him, a change in the natural or social conditions produces effects only by changing the behavior of people. The whole panoply of habits, instincts, and motives, points to a theory of social and cultural change which substantially differs from the pragmatic tradition that swept America in the early decades of this century. Veblen makes so many unique contributions and insights that his work outlives the limitations of its theoretical shell.As is the case for most Veblen's works, footnotes and references are sparse, no index is provided, and the reader is left to fill in the missing paraphernalia the way one does with a novel. Indeed, the reader is swept along Veblen's captivating rhetoric in seven brilliant chapters moving from the instincts in primitive technology, to the current state of industrial arts, to the examination of predatory culture invited to the civilizational table by the competitive system, and finally into a contrast of handicrafts and machine industry.Veblen offers a dramaturgy and a morality of the industrial order of his time: much has changed, but a great deal remains the same and is easily identifiable by the discerning reader. In this passage through text and time, Murphey is the perfect guide, displaying a keen knowledge of philosophy, psychology, and the American context in which Veblen worked. Here we have a companion essay worthy of The Instinct of Workmanship and its author.

On its original publication in 1919, The Place of Science in Modern Civilization was recognized as a major contribution, and today Veblen continues to command attention and respect. This volume includes some of his most seminal work, essays that have critical, almost devastating implications for capitalist society and mainstream economic theory as well as Marxism and socialism in general.The continuing power of Veblen's work derives both from the penetration and range of his analysis and the arguable failure of modern society and social science theory to change in any material respect since he worked. The continuing relevance of his topics and ideas is manifest. In this volume in particular, Veblen addresses controversies over the relations of deduction and induction and efforts to produce truth, belief systems, and language, disputes about the significance of business mergers and acquisitions, and questions about the historical meaning and status of socialism. All of these are subjects of continuing interest and concern.The first six essays are fundamental contributions to the study of the preconceptions that drive thought and modern science and their origins. The next nine essays apply Veblen's thinking to critiques of other economists and capitalism. Three of these nine essays represent fundamental components of Veblen's view of capitalism and its problems are of lasting interpretive and analytic value. The final three essays in the book, and in particular the last two, are examples of a genre of thinking which, while not uncommon among social scientists of the period in which Veblen worked haven been discredited and certainly have no lasting value, being conjectural history using such concepts as natural selection.As Warren Samuels notes in his stimulating introduction to this new edition, "Veblen was heterodox, iconoclastic, sardonic, caustic, and satiric. He also was brilliant, penetrating, original, courageous, literarily dramatic, and unique, as well as intellectually distant." This collection will be of interest to economists and other social scientists interested in the specific topics addressed here, as well as researchers in the history of ideas.

Although Imperial Germany was begun before the United States entered World War I, little in the book however relates to that particular conflict. Rather, this is in large part a study of the divergencies in cultural development between the English-speaking peoples and the German-speaking peoples, and of the consequences this produced in economic and social spheres. Suppressed by war censors, Imperial Germany was again released after the war, and has assumed a place as a major contribution to economics and sociology alike.The comments on the book have scarcely been altered by time. Charles A. Beard noted that "Veblen wrote for the centuries, not for the days, and his Imperial Germany ranks with his immortal Theory of Business Enterprise." Wesley C. Mitchell, reflecting on the book during World War II, wrote that "the natural causes that made Imperial Germany efficient are still at work under the Nazi regime, and the forecast that proved sound once may do so again." Lewis Mumford called Imperial Germany "still the best picture of the residual barbarisms in German civilization; the soil out of which Nazism grew."This new edition is graced with a brilliant and insightful opening essay that is at once a commentary on Veblen's volume, and a statement of the historic status of the German economy and society. Written by Otto G. Mayer, director in a leading German "Think Tank," HWWA-Institut fur Wirtschaftsforschung-Hamburg, editor of Intereconomics, a journal issued in English, and an author of major policy statements on economic and social issues, the new opening statement underscores the view of those who came before, that Veblen's book is "a treasure chest of knowledge."

Should corporations seek to alleviate social inequalities? Or should they, rather, aim solely for profit maximization? Most social thinkers writing on the topic of corporate social responsibility have assumed that the question has been settled, that indeed, corporations ought to act as mere trustees for society's wealth because they exist at the pleasure of society, and so should do its bidding.