Thorstein Bunde Veblen is a economist and American sociologist - born in 1857 and deceased in 1929. He was member of the technical Alliance founded in 1918-19 by Howard Scott, which gave rise to the technocratic Mouvement.

Biography

Veblen is born with the the United States in the Wisconsin in an rural family from Norwegian immigrants . The language of use at the house was Norwegian. It on several occasions kept contacts with the Scandinavian culture while remaining there and by translating into Icelandic English sagas. Born in an austere practicing family Lutheran, Veblen became atheistic. It changed university and of city to many recoveries partly because of its agitated love life.

Conspicuous consumption

Extremely caustic spirit, it was interested in the hidden part of the economic iceberg: the Motivation S of the purchasers. Considering the class with the shelter of the immediate material needs and constraint of work other than desired (the class of leisure , thus names it), it found there primarily vanity and the desire to dissociate itself from its neighbor. It notes that by its consumption the elite wastes time and goods. It makes wasting of time, either the leisure, and wasting of the goods, or the conspicuous consumption, its priorities. For example, one of its unforgettable pages in its Théorie of the class of leisure (1899) relates to the gloss fabric, appraisal in the hats because being used to show that they are often changed, and considered unfavourably for the pants because it shows that on the contrary it for a long time was not changed. Whereas it is about the even gloss! There are not thus according to him an esthetic in the business, but simply an emission of meaning power which is the raison d'être of the conspicuous Consumption ( conspicuous consumption ). This concept is founder in sociology and one finds it in a form or another in sociology of Pierre Bourdieu, Robert K. Merton and in another measure to the work of Jean Baudrillard.

The Veblen effect

One will deduce from the concepts of wasting of time and goods the Veblen effect. In economy, this effect refers to a paradox, plus the price of a good increases more its consumption also increases. This effect concerns before all the higher classes, but the example of clothing of mark near the less favoured young people is also a good illustration of the Veblen effect.

American institutionalism

Beyond its sarcastic and caustic tone, Veblen is also the founder of the current of economic thinking called of the American Institutionnalisme, whose theses will be dominating in the United States in the years 1920 and 1930. Its article Why is Economics not year Evolutionary Science? , published in 1899, can be regarded as the text founder of the thought of Veblen but also of the whole of the thought institutionnalist, in what it states the great principles of an economy évolutionnaire being opposed to the theses marginalists. Several points, that Veblen will develop during its posterior writings, arise clearly: the rejection of the design hedonist of the individual proposed by the marginalism, the critic of the “preconceptions of normality” whereby the evolution tends necessarily towards a preset steady balance, the need for starting from a study of the human behavior, factors the determinant and of their evolution etc

Evolutionism

Veblen is especially the first economist to have tried to integrate in social sciences the contributions of the Darwin ism, while dissociating social Darwinism radically. In addition to the Darwinism, Veblen also drew the essence of sound epistemology in philosophy American pragmatist, in particular that of Charles Sanders Peirce, and was also based strongly on the contributions of the social psychology of its time, such as it arises from the writings of William James (in addition philosophizes pragmatist and friend of Peirce) and of William McDougall.

Social development and engineers

For Veblen, the economy can explain social development. Thus, the institutions of the economy are crossed by two basic instincts, the instinct craftsman and the predatory instinct. By the instinct craftsman, the man grows rich through his work, the rational domestication of nature. However, by its predatory instinct, mankind wants to dispossess others of its goods and the results of its work.

Contrary to much of other economists, Veblen does not see in the industrial middle-class woman an engine for the company. Those live success of industry, but they do not use these profits in a socially durable way. But Veblen thinks that the change can despite everything come from industry, it is potentially incarnated by the engineers. These experts should take the control of the industry which is in the hands the irresponsible ones, the owners.

The university

From its analysis of the academic institution, Veblen is also regarded as one of the founders of the Sociologie of sciences. For Veblen, the university is used for the reproduction of the social classes rather than to knowledge. In its work The Higher Learning In America , Veblen denounces the undue influence of the religion and the preserving thought within an institution that he would like to be dedicated to the culture of the knowledge. The university corrupts values, orientations and ideals which the company étasunienne had given him. This corruption of teaching is introduced by the fraud and the financial speculations operated by the administrations of the universities.

Some works of Veblen

(Nonexhaustive List)

• Theory off the Leisure Class (1899)

• Theory off Business Enterprise (1904)
• The Instinct off Workmanship and the State off Industrial Art (1914)
• The Higher Learning In America (1918)
• The Engineers and the Price System (1921)

On Veblen

• David Seckler: Thorstein Veblen and the Institutionalists. With study in the social Philosophy off economics . London, Mac Milan 1975.

Quotations

• “the theory of the natural rights of property makes productive effort of a self-sufficing and isolated individual, the base of the property that one allots to him. By doing this she forgets that there is neither insulation nor self-sufficiency of the individual. All the production is, in fact, a production thanks to the community, and the richness is not such as in company. ” The American Newspaper off Sociology , November 1898.

• “In the first decades of the era of the machines, those of the precursors, it was true, approximately, as it is seen, than the usual routine of the administration of industry consisted in seeking new methods and accelerating the production to the maximum of its capacities. ” The Engineers and the Price System .

• “the experts, technicians, engineers constitute the essential staff of the industrial system. Without their immediate control and their possible corrections, the industrial system does not function. Up to now they are not grouped yet even by far in an autonomous labor force but they are in position to take the following step” ibid

• “the desire to have a greater comfort and to take cover from the need, here is a mobile which is at all the stages of the process of accumulation in a modern industrial society; however, which one can call in this respect the level of sufficiency is in its deeply affected turn by the practices of pecuniary competition. ” Theory off the Leisure Class .

Related articles

• conspicuous Consumption

• Positivism
• Sociology of the leisure
• neo-classic Institutionalism
• School (Thorstein Veblen constitutes an alternative of it)
• in the USA during the the Twenties.

External bonds

• Card of reading of " theory of the class of loisir" of Thorstein Veblen, for a course of DEA to the CNAM (www.cnam.fr)

• The Veblen Project many works and texts of Veblen available in a numerical format (de.geocities.com)
• Why is Economics not year Evolutionary Science? , Quarterly Newspaper off Economics, volume 12,1898 (etext.lib.virginia.edu)
• The Vested Interests and the Common Man (www.livropolis.com)