Thorstein Veblen
Born
in Cato, Wisconsin, The United States
July 29, 1857
Died
August 03, 1929
Genre
The Theory of the Leisure Class
by
651 editions
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published
1899
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Conspicuous Consumption
11 editions
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published
1899
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The Theory of Business Enterprise
108 editions
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published
1968
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The Engineers and the Price System
79 editions
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published
1921
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The Higher Learning in America
80 editions
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published
1992
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The Portable Veblen
by
16 editions
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published
1948
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Absentee Ownership: Business Enterprise in Recent Times - The Case of America
21 editions
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published
1971
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The Vested Interests and the Common Man
42 editions
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published
2001
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The Instinct of Workmanship and the State of the Industrial Arts
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An Inquiry into the Nature of Peace
129 editions
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published
1919
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“The quasi-peaceable gentleman of leisure, then, not only consumes of the staff of life beyond the minimum required for subsistence and physical efficiency, but his consumption also undergoes a specialisation as regards the quality of the goods consumed. He consumes freely and of the best, in food, drink, narcotics, shelter, services, ornaments, apparel, weapons and accoutrements, amusements, amulets, and idols or divinities.”
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“The ceremonial differentiation of the dietary is best seen in the use of intoxicating beverages and narcotics. If these articles of consumption are costly, they are felt to be noble and honorific. Therefore the base classes, primarily the women, practice an enforced continence with respect to these stimulants, except in countries where they are obtainable at a very low cost. From archaic times down through all the length of the patriarchal regime it has been the office of the women to prepare and administer these luxuries, and it has been the perquisite of the men of gentle birth and breeding to consume them. Drunkenness and the other pathological consequences of the free use of stimulants therefore tend in their turn to become honorific, as being a mark, at the second remove, of the superior status of those who are able to afford the indulgence. Infirmities induced by over-indulgence are among some peoples freely recognised as manly attributes. It has even happened that the name for certain diseased conditions of the body arising from such an origin has passed into everyday speech as a synonym for "noble" or "gentle". It is only at a relatively early stage of culture that the symptoms of expensive vice are conventionally accepted as marks of a superior status, and so tend to become virtues and command the deference of the community; but the reputability that attaches to certain expensive vices long retains so much of its force as to appreciably lesson the disapprobation visited upon the men of the wealthy or noble class for any excessive indulgence. The same invidious distinction adds force to the current disapproval of any indulgence of this kind on the part of women, minors, and inferiors. This invidious traditional distinction has not lost its force even among the more advanced peoples of today. Where the example set by the leisure class retains its imperative force in the regulation of the conventionalities, it is observable that the women still in great measure practise the same traditional continence with regard to stimulants.”
― The Theory of the Leisure Class
― The Theory of the Leisure Class
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