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== An Introduction to Thorstein Veblen ==
==== Academic and unemployed ====

[[File:veblenchair.jpg|right|thumb|Thorstein Bunde Veblen]]

Veblen began his academic career as a philosophy major, focusing on economics as his minor study. He attended Carleton College, Johns Hopkins University, then completed a doctorate in philosophy at Yale (1884). After completing his doctorate, Veblen retreated to Minnesota for six or seven years. There he wrote, read, and occasionally worked, but was otherwise intellectually isolated from the rest of the world. During this period, Veblen became detached from "conventional viewpoints" (Horowitz 2002, 42) and from American mainstream society, allowing him the ability to observe the American economic system as an outsider, looking in.

Veblen entered Cornell as a graduate student in 1891. Veblen wrote his first real economics paper there, in which he analyzed "Some Neglected Points" of socialist theory. (Horowitz 2002, 43) This paper attracted the attention of Professor [[J. Laurence Laughlin]]. Laughlin, while at Cornell, was asked to head the newly formed Economics department at the [[University of Chicago]]. Laughlin decided to bring Veblen along with, providing him with his first of few jobs in formal academia. 

Veblen published his most famous essay, [[The Theory Of The Leisure Class (1899)]] , while in Chicago. He left Chicago for Stanford in 1906. Effectively fired Stanford - for 'amoral' behavior -  soon after arriving, he held his last formal academic position at the [[University of Missouri]] from 1911-1918. Veblen moved to New York and helped found [[The New School]]. He published a number of books and papers while in New York, but died in relative anonymity in 1929.

==== Economic thought - a primer ====
:“No substantial agreement upon a point of knowledge or conviction is possible between persons who proceed from disparate preconceptions.” – Thorstein Veblen

*Dichotic antagonism: Veblen saw the progression of history as a struggle between the invidious or selfish human traits and the non-invidious or economical.
*Conspicuous consumption: the wasteful act of consumption based on emulation or perceived necessity.
*He saw “systems as volitional rather than deterministic in character, formed by human beings rather than by actors playing out preordained scripts.” (ix,  Horowitz)
*The closest 20th century America came to producing a “freewheeling intellectual” -ix, Horowitz)
*Not defined by a specific college or university or system or departmental orthodoxy.
*“For all his faith in socialism as a system, it was individualism that clearly made him stand apart as a man.” (-ix, Horowitz)
*Veblen appealed directly to Darwinism, understanding that in post-evolutionary science there was "no definitive equilibrium." "Any evolutionary science, on the other hand, is a close knit body of theory. It is a theory of a process, of an unfolding sequence . . . The analysis does not run back to the same ground, or appeal to the same standard of finality or adequacy, in the one case as in the other." -''WIENAES'', Veblen 1989
*Up to 1989, there had been no adequate and comprehensive assessment of Veblen's primary intellectual antecedents. (Edgell and Tilman, 1989)

== Secondary Literature ==

=== Veblen as a Marxist / offering an updated Marxism ===

===== Arthur K. Davis =====
•	Given a broad conception of Marxism, “many if not most of Veblen’s apparent departures from Marxism (such as his criticism of Marx’s overemphasis on rational class conciousness in history) become either corrections of particular Marxian propositions or original contributions to that tradition.” -282, Radicals
•	Veblen’s ‘conspicuous consumption,’ Davis argues, was “a point Marx mentions but nowhere develops.” -282, Radicals
•	“The biographical evidence is overwhelming that Veblen became permanently and intensely interested in Marxism early in his career.” -282, Radicals
•	“The Marxian concept of change tended to overemphasize the rational change stemming from class-concious interest. Veblen’s correction of Marx on this point is one of his more important contributions to the Marxian tradition.” -283, Radicals

===== E.K. Hunt =====
•	“While Veblen cannot properly be considered a disciple of Marx, the parallels between the two great thinkers are striking.” 325, hunt’s book
o	“insisted on a historical approach to the study of capitalism; both saw capitalism as a historically unique and historically transient society based on the exploitation of the direct producers by a numerically small ruling class of parasitic owners.” 325, hunt’s book

===== Harvey Goldberg =====
•	“The core of Veblen's social theory is largely Marxian.” 280

=== Veblen's departure from Marxism / as a critic ===

===== Julie Townshend and John Edgell =====
:Marx and Veblen's Social Theories
Despite clear points of similarity, there are fundmental differences that persist between Marx and Veblen's social analysis. Differentiating between these two analysis of aspects of society, most notably of Capitalism, is only possible once their "dissimilar theoretical foundations" have been understood.
:Emerging Orthodoxy
A popular focus on comparing Veblen and Marx's analysis of Capitalism "obscures the irresolvable differences with respect to their ''methodological and substantive approaches to human nature''." Townshend and Edgell attack an orthodoxy growing in the late 1980s and early 1990s, emerging in opposition to the prevailing popular analysis distancing Veblen intellectually from Marx.

===== John Patrick Diggins (1999) =====
•	“Half a century separated Marx from Veblen. Thus when Marx studied the ideas and theoretical assumptions of capitalism, his economic analysis took its point of departure from the modern natural rights traditions... When Veblen studied economics toward the end of the nineteenth century, the discipline was in a state of ferment and confusion.” 43, Diggins
•	“A chief source of controversy was the theory of labor expounded by Marx himelf. “ -43, Diggins
•	Veblen on marx -45, Diggins

===== Michael G. Smith =====
"Ultimately, Marx sought to achieve efficient order in society by way of democratization of both the workplace and technical knowledge. Veblen wanted to make a better product; Marx a better man."

===== Joseph Dorfman (1934) =====
Joseph Dorfman lends an early analytical context of how Darwinian evolution factored into Veblen's economic thought. He discusses how Darwin's watershed in social sciences places Veblen and Marx's most basic ideologies at "irreconcilable" odds.

== Distinguishing Themes ==

===== Different Social and Historical Contexts =====
Marx worked "within the Enlightenment" and in a revolutionary and socially squirming Europe.

Veblen emerged from an the intellectual era of Darwinism and in an individualistic and self-confident America.

===== Theory of Capitalist Economic Crises =====

Conflicting analysis of the causes of crises: Marx - theory of exploitation... Veblen - attributes the inherent economic crises of capitalism to antagonistic conflicting forces of predatory institutions and workmanship institutions - respectively, profit oriented vs. production oriented.

Conflicting significance placed on the roles of crises: Veblen - his account of capitalist crises are intended to be "illustrative of his theory of history and human nature." (Edgell and T 1993, 732) Marx - the process of capitalist development and conflict was Marx's primary impetus for social revolution. As Marx wrote: a "casting-off [of the capitalist means of production] itself is the result of the mode of production corresponding to capital; the material and mental conditions of the negation of wage labour and of capital...are themselves results of its production process."

===== Theory of Labor Value =====
differentiation between marx and veblen

===== Evolutionary vs. Pre-Evolutionary preconceptions =====
"No substantial agreement upon a point of knowledge or conviction is possible between persons who proceed from disparate preconceptions." -Veblen

===== Capitalist Development =====
Marx and Veblen had superficially similar, though after some analysis - very different views of capitalist development, influenced by evolutionary (Veblen) vs. teleological (Marx) approaches to social theory.

“The advance of capitalist production develops a working class which by education, tradition and habit looks upon the requirement of that mode of production as self-evident natural laws. The organization of the capitalist process of production, once it is fully developed, breaks down all resistance.” –Marx, Capital, vol. 1, 899.

Veblen's view of capitalist development results from his antagonistic dichotomy, a conflict between the "predatory" owners of means of production and the "workmanship" of those who seek to sell their labor. These two "instincts" have become consolidated, socially accepted and self-fulfilling through "habits of thought, institutions, and whole cultures." (Edgell and T 1993, 729)

== References ==

THORSTEIN VEBLEN: THEORIST OF THE LEISURE CLASS
•	John Patrick Diggins
o	1999
o	pages 42-51
•	German “historicism,” pragmatism, Darwinism (specifically the evolutionary side), and Marxism – identified as the primary basis of Veblen’s economic ideas.

AMERICAN RADICALS: SOME PROBLEMS AND PERSONALITIES
•	Edited: Harvey Goldberg
•	1957
•	Section by Arthur K. Davis
•	Chapter 15, pp. 279-293

THORSTEIN VEBLEN AND HIS AMERICA
•	Joseph Dorfman
o	1934
o	pp. 240-286
•	pre-Darwinian character of Marxism, directly contrasts with Veblen’s post-Darwinism. (pp. 243, 264-268)
•	offers extensive biographical history of Veblen and his intellectual development, but does not help in identifying the strongest of these precedents in his economic theories.

THORSTEIN VEBLEN AND HIS CRITICS: 1891-1963
•	Rick Tilman
•	1991
•	Outline criticism of Veblen from conservatives to radicals and devotes two chapters discussing ideological use/abuse of Veblen’s work throughout more recent economic thought. 

HISTORY OF ECONOMIC THOUGHT: A CRITICAL PERSPECTIVE
•	E.K. Hunt, 1979
•	“His analysis, like Marx’s, was historically oriented in every aspect.” (300)
•	“Human history was, for Veblen, the history of the evolution of social institutions.” (301)
•	“In many of his writings Veblen referred to these common patterns of human behavior as ‘instincts’ “. (301)
•	“ ‘In economic life, as in other lines of human conduct, habitual modes of activity and relations have grown up and have by convention settled into a fabric of institutions. These institutions...have a prescriptive, habitual force of their own.’ “ 301 --[Veblen, “Fisher’s Rate of Interest,” in Essays in Our Changing Order]

VEBLEN’S CENTURY
•	Irving Louis Horowitz, ed. , 2002
•	Intro is of value, highlights importance of Veblen and lends interesting insight into his character.

Marx and Veblen on Human Nature, History, and Capitalism: Vive la Difference!
•	1993, Stephen Edgell and Jules Townshend
•	http://www.jstor.org/stable/4226715

Marx, Technocracy and the Corporatist Ethos
•	1988, Michael G. Smith
•	http://www.jstor.org/stable/20100377
•	”Ultimately, Marx sought to achieve efficient order in society by way of democratization of both the workplace and technical knowledge. Veblen wanted to make a better product; Marx a better man.” -235

Varieties of Capitalism from the Perspectives of Veblen and Marx
•	1995, Geoffrey M. Hodgson
•	http://www.jstor.org/stable/4226972

Veblen, Weber and Marx on Political Economy
•	1993, Michael W. Hughey and Arthur J. Vidich
•	http://www.jstor.org/stable/20007108

Intellectual Antecedents of Thorstein Veblen: A Reappraisal
•	Edgell and Tilman, 1989
•	http://www.jstor.org/stable/4226207
•	“To date, there is no adequate comprehensive assessment of Veblen’s primary intellectual antecedents. Consequently, the purpose of this article paper is to establish the main parameters of such an endeavor.” pp. 1004 

Varieties of capitalism and varieties of economic theory
•	G.M. Hodgson, 1996
•	http://www.jstor.org/stable/4224780
•	Refer to Hodgson 1995 work for a more extensive discussion. This, however, is a more concise and updated version of Hudson’s arguments. 

The Socialist Economics of Karl Marx and his Followers 
•	1906, Thorstein Veblen
•	http://www.jstor.org/stable/1882722