Tuesday, April 7, 2009

Veblen

On Honorable Occupations and Irksome Labour; a Glimpse of Veblen

Isaac Christiansen


Veblen examines the motives of the drive for perpetual accumulation of capital, goods and power of the bourgeoisie to be rooted in envy, and that their prestige and honor are best emphasized by ostentatious displays of wealth, which reflect their power. Traditionally we may tend to assume, as have others, as if the purpose of the accumulation of fortunes was to improve the standard of living so that the enriched enjoy more fully their lives and the comforts that society produces and perhaps more importantly to provide economic security to themselves and their heirs. However, it becomes apparent that once an individual accumulates more than is necessary to do all of these things, (opulent lifestyles included) that something more is afoot.
Veblen indicates that it all started in the transition from indigenous communal societies noted for a higher degree of economic and social equality, to societies that survived and thrived on war- acquiring wealth through pillage and taking women as booty (Veblen 1899: pg 24-25). In the communal societies that were not based on the ownership of private property, a person’s social status would not be based on their ownership of things. Then as human groups passed through different social stages characterized by different kinds of social organization, often differing in terms of the division of labor, their emerged groups of people who did not have to spend their days toiling alongside their compatriots due to an additional surplus extracted that could now support occupations that did not have to deal with food production or other subsistence requirements. These groups enjoyed more relative comforts, and higher social status.
Veblen divides these two new “honorable” professions as warriors and priests (ibid.: p21). By honorable, Veblen is in no way referring to the traditional concept of the word as we may envision it. He does not mean that these people have offered a worthwhile contribution towards uplifting their fellow man nor that they have conducted themselves in exceptionally honest and ethical ways. The meaning of honor, and particularly that of an “honorable occupation” is one in which one exploits as opposed to one in which one is exploited. “Those employments which are to be classed as exploit are worthy, honorable, noble; other employments, which do not contain this element of exploit, and especially those which imply subservience or submission, are unworthy, debasing, ignoble” (ibid. pg 29).
The amount of leisure in which one was able to engage, the amount of wealth that one was able to display, reflected their prestige and social standing. It reflected the power that an individual exercised over others in society. As societies changed forms from those that had classes that survived from physical plunder to those who have acquired wealth through the extraction of relative and absolute surplus value, the concepts of honor manifested in competition have been retained (at least in part). It is also true that profit from the spoils of war is still very much alive in our society, particularly if one looks at the motives behind the war in Iraq and the companies that stood to gain. This does not even begin to discuss the military/industrial complex.
Nevertheless, among the very wealthy we see the insane competition over who can acquire the most. Society takes part in it to a degree as a spectator. So we see that an internet site comments that the wealthiest CEO (Warren Buffet) “bested” the second wealthiest person by over 16 billion dollars, even though there is no more use value that one has access to that the other does not (13above, 2009). The mere fact that a single human being can acquire that degree of personal private acquisitive power is a reflection of a perverse social order. An order that values conspicuous consumption as if it reflected honor instead of shame, it is one that reflects an ability to waste and flaunt wealth in a world still full of poverty, misery and needless suffering.
Marx and Engels indicated that a better world was possible provided that the system that utilized social production for private profit was overturned for one in which both the energies of production were directed for the benefit of society (through the proletariat: the class to end all classes) and the profits of production be also for the benefit of the whole (Engels 1892 p.702). It is clear that Veblen essentially saw and was incensed by much of the same phenomena but what irked him most was that those who had accumulated the lions share were rewarded for being able to flaunt their indolence as long as they also flaunted coercive power, and those that produced societies wealth not only had to inhabit the slums of the world, but were stripped of their “dignity” as well.



References:

Engels, Friedrich. 1892. “Socialism: Utopian and Scientific” pp683-717 in The Marx-Engels Reader, 2nd edition, edited by Robert C. Tucker New York W.W. Norton and Company.
Veblen, Thorstein. 1899. “The Theory of the Leisure Class” Macmillan Company New York, NY
13 Above, “Top 10 Worlds Most Wealthiest CEOs” Accessed April 7th 2009 http://www.13above.com/2009/02/top-10-worlds-most-wealthiest-ceos.html