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The Political Ideas of Thorstein Veblen*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  07 November 2014

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Extract

Partly because of the extensive range of his thought and partly because of the diffuseness of his style, Veblen is a difficult thinker to classify. Several writers have made passing references to traces of anarchism in his works but most of them consider it a minor aspect of his thought. The thesis of this paper is that Veblen's political and social thought can be most clearly understood and evaluated in terms of philosophical anarchism.

Anarchism is as old as society itself; at least it has been traced back to Zeno of Citium, the founder of Stoic philosophy. The Greek derivation of the word is “without a ruler,” not “without order.” Elements of anarchism form a more important part of many political theories than is sometimes recognized, and it has found able exponents in Bakunin, Kropotkin, Tolstoy, Thoreau, and Whitman. What distinguishes the anarchists from other political philosophers is the degree to which they carry their attack on existing institutions and believe in a principle of harmony in nature or human nature which will emerge if these institutions are eliminated. This principle, if followed, will eliminate the need for coercion and the state which they think is based on coercion. Only voluntary functional associations will remain in the anarchist's society but the principle of harmony will prevent the emergence of chaos. Quite clearly this is a philosophy of extremes and suffers the advantages and disadvantages of such a philosophy. In a unique way it forces its critics to examine their fundamental assumptions afresh. But because of the extreme assumptions made, anarchists' writings in general, and Veblen's in particular, abound in contradictions between freedom and authoritarianism.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © Canadian Political Science Association 1956

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Footnotes

*

An earlier version of this paper was presented at the annual meeting of the Canadian Political Science Association in Toronto, June 1, 1955. The author is preparing an expanded version in a thesis on Veblen for Professor C. J. Friedrich, Harvard University.

References

1 The main exception is Friedrich, C. J., who has made illuminating comments on Veblen in The New Image of the Common Man (Boston, 1950)Google Scholar, and Inevitable Peace (Cambridge, Mass., 1948).Google Scholar Teggart, R. V. has made thoughtful comments on Veblen and his anarchism in Thorstein Veblen: A Chapter in Economic Thought (Berkeley, Calif., 1932).Google Scholar Dorfman's, J. monumental Thorstein Veblen and His America (New York, 1934)Google Scholar, is indispensable to the student of Veblen, but the book is diffuse. Riesman's, D. Thorstein Veblen (New York, 1953)Google Scholar, is a very useful general book with interesting insights into Veblen's personality. There are quite a number of works treating particular aspects of Veblen's thought. Useful comments on anarchism may be found in Read, Herbert Sir, Anarchy and Order (London, n.d.)Google Scholar, and Camus, Albert, L'Homme révolté trans. The Rebel (London, 1953).Google Scholar

2 Veblen's life itself was replete with evidences of anarchism and its paradoxes, for example, his inability to identify himself with any university for very long, his ménage, and his relations with women: when chided about one relation, he replied, “What do you do when the woman moves in on you?” Note the interesting comments of Duffus, W., The Innocents at Cedro (New York, 1944)Google Scholar, and Riesman, Thorstein Veblen.

3 See Dorfman, J., “The ‘Satire’ of Thorstein Veblen's Theory of the Leisure Class,” Political Science Quarterly, XLVII, 1932, 363409.CrossRefGoogle Scholar This method also gives Veblen the opportunity to display some conspicuous erudition.

4 Modern Library ed., 1934, 171–2.

5 Similarly, in the history of political philosophy, theories of the state of nature might best be regarded as myths and approached from an analytical point of view, rather than taken as accurate historical statements.

6 See The Place of Science in Modern Civilization (New York, 1942)Google Scholar, passim.

7 See “The Socialist Economics of Karl Marx” in The Place of Science in Modern Civilization.

8 "New York, 1949.

9 See Innis, H. A., “The Bibliography of Thorstein Veblen,” Southwestern Political and Social Science Quarterly, X, 1929, 5668.Google Scholar

10 See Hofstadter, R., Social Darwinism in American Thought (Philadelphia, 1945).Google Scholar

11 The influence of Comte's positive philosophy is clearly apparent.

12 Revised ed., New York, 1950, xi-xiii.

13 Schumpeter, Joseph A., Ten Great Economists (New York, 1951 ), 260–91.Google Scholar

14 The Theory of Business Enterprise (New York, 1904)Google Scholar, and Absentee Ownership and Business Enterprise in Recent Times (New York, 1923).Google Scholar

15 See Vining, R., “Suggestions of Keynes in the Writings of Veblen,” Journal of Political Economy, 10, 1939, 692714.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

16 See Innis, H. A., “Penetrative Powers of the Price System” and “Liquidity Preference as a Factor in Canadian Economic History” in Political Economy in the Modern State (Toronto, 1946).Google Scholar

17 See A Memorandum on a Practicable Soviet of Technicians” in The Engineers and the Price System (New York, 1921).Google Scholar

18 It is interesting to compare Veblen and Lenin on this problem. In The State and Revolution, Lenin says: “Capitalist culture has created large-scale production, factories, railways, the postal service, telephones, etc., and on this basis the great majority of functions of the old ‘state power’ have become so simplified and can be reduced to such simple operations of registration, filing and checking that they will be well within the reach of every literate person, and it will be possible to perform them for ‘workingmen's wages’, which circumstance can (and must) strip these functions of every shadow of privilege, and of every appearance of Official grandeur'.” Veblen places more emphasis on engineering skills and the importance of knowledge of scientific procedures. See Reinhard Bendix, “Socialism and the Theory of Bureaucracy,” this Journal, XVI, no. 4, Nov., 1950, 501–14.

19 New York, 1918.

20 Dorfman, , Thorstein Veblen and His America, 407.Google Scholar

21 Imperial Germany and the Industrial Revolution (London, 1939), 86.Google Scholar

22 Ibid., 107.

23 Ibid., 160.

24 See Veblen, , An Inquiry into the Nature of Peace and the Terms of its Perpetuation (New York, 1945), 112.Google Scholar “So, the development and elaboration of these modern principles of civic liberty-and this elaboration has taken on formidable dimensions—under the hand of the German Intellectuals has uniformly run out into Pickwickian convolutions, greatly suggestive of a lost soul seeking a place to rest.”

25 Imperial Germany, 154.

26 Ibid., 216.

27 Ibid., 220.

28 Ibid., 142. Note the critical comments of A. Brady in “The British Governing Class and Democracy,” this Journal, XX, no. 4, Nov., 1954, 405–20.

29 One thing to note in passing is the quite minor importance attributed to races in this work. Cp. Toynbee, A.,The World and the West (London, 1953).Google Scholar

30 Cp. Daugert, M., The Philosophy of Thorstein Veblen (New York, 1950).Google Scholar

31 The Nature of Peace, viii.

32 Ibid., 68.

33 Ibid., 249–50.

34 Ibid., 207.

35 See the illuminating comments of Heilbroner, R. L. in The Worldly Philosophers (New York, 1953)Google Scholar, chap. VIII.

36 See Friedrich, The New Image of the Common Man, for an analysis of the implications for democracy of these ideas.