Chapter Info (Click Here)
Book No. – 25 (Sociology)
Book Name – Masters of Sociological Thought
What’s Inside the Chapter? (After Subscription)
1. THE WORK
1.1. THE GENERAL APPROACH
1.2. THE ANATOMY OF COMPETITION
1.3. SOCIOLOGY OF KNOWLEDGE
1.4. FUNCTIONAL ANALYSIS
1.5. THE THEORY OF SOCIAL CHANGE
2. THE MAN
2.1. A MARGINAL NORWEGIAN
2.2. A MARGINAL STUDENT
2.3. A MARGINAL ACADEMIC
2.4. A MARGINAL FREELANCE
3. THE INTELLECTUAL CONTEXT
3.1. THE INFLUENCE OF BELLAMY, MARX, AND EVOLUTIONISM
3.2. THE DEBT TO PRAGMATISM
4. THE SOCIAL CONTEXT
4.1. THE GENERAL SCENE
4.2. A MARGINAL MAN
4.3. VEBLEN’S AUDIENCE AND COLLEAGUES
Note: The first chapter of every book is free.
Access this chapter with any subscription below:
- Half Yearly Plan (All Subject)
- Annual Plan (All Subject)
- Sociology (Single Subject)
- CUET PG + Sociology
LANGUAGE
Thorstein Veblen
Chapter – 7
Table of Contents
THE WORK
- There are at least three Thorstein Veblens:
- The seriously un-serious, reverently irreverent, amoral moralist, whose iconoclastic assault on American pieties places him among top social critics.
- The economist whose institutional economics and analysis of American high finance and business enterpriseearned him a distinguished following.
- The sociologist whose contributions include theories of socially induced motivations, the social determinants of knowledge, and social change.
- This account focuses mainly on the third Veblen (the sociologist).
- Summarizing Veblen’s thought is challenging because he wrote in a complicated, illusive, and polysyllabic style and lacked a systematic exposition.
- Veblen deliberately presented value judgments as statements of fact, making it difficult to separate scientific analysis from normative views.
- Unlike Marx, where it’s easier to distinguish analysis from prophecy and normative from scientific judgment, Veblen’s approach blurs these lines.
- Veblen’s statement, “We are interested in what is, not in what ought to be,” masks strong moral impulses underlying his work.
- His use of terms like “waste” was claimed to be neutral, but it carried moral implications, making it difficult to take his claims seriously.
- He often used perspective through incongruity (e.g., comparing livery of servants with vestments of priests) to make moral points under the guise of detached description.
- Veblen used terms like “trained incapacity,” “business sabotage,” “blameless cupidity,” and others to pass moral judgment under the appearance of neutral description.
- Veblen’s work shares qualities with both Swift and Marx, combining social criticism with a sharp moral outlook.
- The challenge in analyzing Veblen’s thought is separating its substantive content from its ethical undertones, which he often used deliberately.
- Veblen would likely have disapproved of any attempt to separate the ethical husk from the substantive content of his work.
THE GENERAL APPROACH
- Veblen’s point of departure was a critical dissection of the doctrines of classic economists using evolutionary and sociological reasoning.
- He objected to the idea that economic “laws” were timeless generalizations, instead arguing that economic behaviormust be analyzed in the context of social circumstances.
- Veblen criticized the classical economists for deriving economic behavior from alleged utilitarian and hedonisticpropensities of mankind.
- He argued that primitive economic behavior could not be understood through Ricardian notions, using the example of Aleutian Islanders to show the absurdity of applying these theories.
- Veblen criticized the hedonistic conception of man, which portrayed him as a calculating entity seeking to maximize happiness without historical context or real consequences.
- He emphasized that economic behavior should be viewed through an evolutionary and historical lens, in contrast to the outdated focus on transhistorical laws and utilitarian calculations.
- For Veblen, man was not just a bundle of desires but a coherent structure of propensities and habits seeking realization through active engagement in society.
- Economic life was seen as a cumulative process of adapting means to ends, both for individuals and communities.
- Veblen proposed evolutionary economics as a theory of cultural growth determined by economic interests and a cumulative sequence of economic institutions.
- He viewed human evolution in Darwinian/Spencerian terms, as selective adaptation to the environment, with no specific goal or final term.
- The evolution of mankind involved technological innovation, with technology playing a key role in determining man’s relationship to both his natural and social environments.
- A person’s position in the technological and economic sphere influences their outlook and habits of thought.
- Habits and customs form in communities as they work to extract a livelihood from nature, and these crystallize over time into institutions.
- Veblen defined institutions as habits and customs that have become axiomatic and indispensable through general acceptance.
- He believed human societies evolved through a process of natural selection of institutions, which reflect the prevailing attitudes and aptitudes of a society.
- Veblen outlined four main stages in human social evolution:
- The peaceful savage economy of the neolithic period.
- The predatory barbarian economy where institutions of warfare, property, and the leisure class originated.
- The premodern handicraft economy.
- The modern industrial economy dominated by the machine.
- Veblen’s distinction between savagery and barbarism was based on conjectural history, despite his critical remarks on such history.
- He humorously compared real history to conjectural history, stating the relationship was similar to that of a real horse to a sawhorse.
- Veblen’s theory of evolutionary stages may be outdated, but his theory of technological determination continues to influence contemporary social scientists.
- His work, especially on primitive cultures, emphasized the close relationship between material life (economic and domestic) and civic, domestic, and religious life, with myths and religion reflecting economic and domestic institutions.
- Veblen’s main contribution lies in his discussion of contemporary society, particularly the distinction between industrial and pecuniary types of employment.
- He argued that the modern capitalist world is based on an irreconcilable opposition between business and industry, ownership and technology, pecuniary and industrial employment.
- Veblen used this distinction to critique the prevailing system in America and challenge evolutionary doctrines of his time.
- He contended that businessmen and men of finance were not the fittest agents of evolutionary progress but were instead parasites benefiting from the technological work of others.
- Veblen believed the leisure class lived off the industrial community rather than contributing to it, and that the captains of industry did not promote evolutionary progress but instead distorted it.
- Veblen adapted Spencer’s distinction between militant and industrial societies, arguing that businessmen were pursuing the same predatory ways as their warrior ancestors, albeit in a new context.
- He criticized the price system for hampering industrial arts and creating crises and competitive anarchy, which led to the sabotage of production rather than its advancement.
- Veblen’s theory of technological determinism extended to the minds of those in industrial versus pecuniary employment.
- He argued that those in pecuniary employment were inclined towards animistic thinking, while those in industrial employment were conditioned to think rationally and in matter-of-fact terms.
- Magical and animistic thinking were seen as survival traits from earlier, barbaric times, and were incompatible with the rationality needed in modern industrial societies.
- Modern industry required rationality, which in turn fostered rational thinking, especially in industrial communitieswhere efficiency demanded freedom from bias.
- Veblen argued that the machine process of production was the major disciplining agent in modern society, promoting impersonal, material cause and effect thinking.
- The machine technology relied on knowledge of impersonal cause and effect, which contrasted with norms based on conventional standards.
- Veblen believed that future evolution depended on people disciplined by involvement in the industrial arts and the machine process, as it promoted rationality over predatory lifestyles and magical thinking.