Thorstein Veblen: The Last Viking

Abstract

kind of patron saint. He was a home-grown social theorist whose ironic thrusts at American capitalism seemed to grow more and more relevant in the chaos of depression. Every shade of leftist opinion could find something to admire in Veblen. To a radical individualist like the Dos Passos of U.S.A., Veblen was a spiritual father. To the technocrats, his vision of an aristocracy of engineers provided the basis of a new programme. To orthodox Marxists, his analysis seemed close enough to Marxism to be generally acceptable. Perhaps few of these young radicals read the prolific writings of Veblen with great care; it was not necessary; many of his insights were common currency. Everybody was talking about conspicuous consumption, captains of industry, robber barons and even pecuniary canons of taste. Veblen's odd but striking terminology provided many battle cries for the age. Today, however, reading Veblen is necessarily a different experience. The dust of battle has settled, and Veblen's theories can be regarded for their own sake. David Riesman, hardly a radical, has taken some of Veblen's most original and perceptive ideas and applied them with great success to contemporary society. He has been particularly interested in Veblen's belief that a great transformation has taken place in capitalism: the change in emphasis from production to consumption and the replacement of the captain of industry by the captain of finance. This was a part of Veblen's doctrine that did not greatly interest the 1930's. In his study of Veblen's ideas (Thorstein Veblen, New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1953), David Riesman has recognized the unique qualities of Veblen's thought. He has recognized implicitly that Veblen's ideas are substantially different from other theorists of his time to whom superficial similarities might be drawn-men like Ely, Ward, Dewey or Beard. Ries-