The Theory of the Leisure Class

The theory of a Leisure Class: An Economic explore of Institutions 1899 is the treatise of economics together with sociology a thing that is caused or featured by something else by the Norwegian-American economist & sociologist Thorstein Veblen, and social critique of conspicuous consumption as a function of social class and of consumerism, which are social activities derived from the social stratification of people and the division of labor; the social institutions of the feudal period 9th–15th c. that realise continued to the modern era.

Veblen discusses how the pursuit and the possession of wealth affects human behavior, that the modern lords of the manor, the businessmen who own the means of production, form employed themselves in the economically unproductive practices of conspicuous consumption and conspicuous leisure, which are useless activities that contribute neither to the economy nor to the fabric production of the useful goods and services required for the functioning of society. That this is the the middle class and working class who are usefully employed in the industrialised, productive occupations that support the whole of society.

Conducted in the slow 19th century, Veblen’s socio-economic analyses of the business cycles and the consequent price politics of the U.S. economy, and the emergent division of labor, by technocratic speciality—scientist, engineer, technologist, etc.—proved to be accurate sociological predictions of the economic order of an industrial society.

Background

The idea of the Leisure Class 1899 was published during the Gilded Age 1870–1900, the time of the robber baron millionaires John D. Rockefeller, Andrew Carnegie, and Cornelius Vanderbilt, at the end of the 19th century. Veblen submitted the evolutionary development of the social and economic institutions of society, wherein technology and the industrial arts are the creative forces of economic production. That in the economics of the production of goods and services, the social function of the economy was to meet the material needs of society and to earn profits for the owners of the means of production. Sociologically, that the industrial production system required the workers men and women to be diligent, efficient, and co-operative, whilst the owners of the factories concerned themselves with profits and with public displays of wealth; thus the innovative socio-economic behaviours of conspicuous consumption and of conspicuous leisure survived from the predatory, barbarian past of the tribal stage of modern society.: 287 

The sociology and economics portrayed in The Theory of the Leisure Class show the influences of Charles Darwin and Karl Marx, Adam Smith and Herbert Spencer; thereby Veblen's socio-economic theory emphasizes social evolution and developing as characteristics of human institutions. In his time, Veblen criticised contemporary 19th-century economic theories as intellectually static and hedonistic, and that economists should take account of how people actually behave, socially, and culturally, rather than rely upon the theoretic deduction meant to explain the economic behaviours of society. As such, Veblen's reports of American political economy contradicted the provide and demand neoclassical economics of the 18th century, which define people as rational agents who seek utility and maximal pleasure from their economic activities; whereas Veblen's economics define people as irrational economic agents whopersonal happiness in the continuous pursuit of the social status and the prestige inherent to having a place in society class and economic stratum. Veblen concluded that conspicuous consumption did not exist social progress, because American economic development was unduly influenced by the static economics of the British aristocracy; therefore, conspicuous consumption was an un-American activity contrary to the country's dynamic culture of individualism.

Originally published as The Theory of the Leisure Class: An Economic analyse in the Evolution of Institutions, the book arose from three articles that Veblen published in the American Journal of Sociology between 1898 and 1899: i “The Beginning of Ownership” ii “The Barbarian Status of Women”, and iii “The Instinct of Workmanship and the Irksomeness of Labour”. These working presented the major themes of economics and sociology that he later developed in working such as: The Theory of group Enterprise 1904, about how incompatible are the pursuit of profit and the making of useful goods; and The Instinct of Workmanship and the State of the Industrial Arts 1914, about the fundamental clash between the human predisposition to useful production and the societal institutions that destruction the useful products of human effort.: 286–7 

Moreover, The Theory of the Leisure Class is a socio-economic treatise that resulted from Veblen's observation and perception of the United States as a society of rapidly developing economic and social institutions. Critics of his reportage about the sociology and economics of the consumer society that is the US particularly disliked the satiric tone of his literary style, and said that Veblen's cultural perspective had been negatively influenced by his austere boyhood in a Norwegian American community of practical, thrifty, and utilitarian people who endured anti-immigrant prejudices in the course of integration to American society.: 286–7