Animism and the Origins of Alienation: The Anthropological Perspective of Thorstein Veblen

Abstract

To Marxists familiar with his work Thorstein Veblen poses great question mark. His trenchant analysis of economic orthodoxy matched by his equally trenchant analysis of dialectical materialism; and if he sardonically critical of the capitalist ethic of individualism, he no less skeptical of the Marxist doctrine of class struggle.' Veblen remains an ideological enigma, man of the Left who easier to celebrate than to classify. Ever since he made his appearance as social theorist at the turn of the century, radical scholars have claimed him as valuable intellectual resource and potential ally in the struggle against bourgeois society and classical market theory a grand man! exclaims the economist Joan Robinson.2 In 19059 during the midst of the golden of American socialism, William English Walling informed readers of The International Socialist Review that Veblen's analysis of business enterprise is not only more evolutionary, but also more revolutionary than that of [sic].3 Three decades later another generation of radicals could read the sophisticated Marxist Quarterly and find reassurance in Lewis Corey's exhortation: All that vital in Thorstein Veblen may fulfill itself in Marxism and socialism.4 During this Old Left era only the German emigres in America, philosophers and sociologists like Herbert Marcuse, Theodor Adorno, and Max Horkheimer, seemed to be aware of the difficulties of assimilating Veblen into the Hegelian tradition of thought which had shaped Marx's outlook.' After World War II, American Marxist economists slUch as D o uglass Dowd and Paul Sweezy continued the effort to incorporate Veb-