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Conspiracy Nation -- Vol. 10 Num. 50
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("Quid coniuratio est?")
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THE ELITE CLASS (GENUS FACINUS)
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Notes from *The Theory of the Leisure Class* by Thorstein Veblen
(1899):
The rule holds with but slight exceptions that the upper classes
are exempt from industrial employments, and this exemption is the
economic expression of their superior rank. How did this come to
be? Veblen traces it to lower barbaric cultures, where women are
held to those employments out of which the industrial occupations
proper develop at the next advance in culture. Generally, in the
lower barbaric cultures, the men hunt and go to war and the women
do whatever other labor is required. Because the hunting/war
activities of the men are sporadic in their time requirements,
this class tends to have leisure time. The male employments of
hunting and war also are associated with greater status in the
group than are the female employments.
In the higher barbarian cultures, the line of demarcation of
employments comes to divide the industrial from the
non-industrial employments. Virtually the whole range of
industrial employments is an outgrowth of what is classed as
woman's work in the primitive barbarian community. The
institution of a leisure class is the outgrowth of an early
discrimination between employments, according to which some
employments are worthy and others unworthy.
The earliest form of ownership is an ownership of the women by
the able-bodied men of the community. (A vestige of this is seen
in the traditional wedding ceremony: "Who *gives* this woman to
be wed?") The ownership of women begins in the lower barbarian
cultures, apparently with the seizure of female captives as
trophies of war. This in turn leads to a form of
ownership-marriage. This is followed by an extension of slavery
to other captives and inferiors, besides women, and by an
extension of ownership-marriage to other women than those seized
from the enemy. The root cause for all this is the desire by the
successful men to put their exploitive prowess in evidence by
exhibiting some durable result of their exploits. Note this
well: Proof of the exploitive prowess is required; this
exploitive prowess is not demonstrated to the entire tribe when
the males are away engaged in hunting/war.
From the ownership of women the concept of ownership extends
itself to include the products of the women's, captives' and
other "inferiors" industry (the industrial, vulgar employments),
and so there arises the ownership of things as well as of
persons. Not noted by Veblen in his book is that proof of the
exploitive prowess is also demonstrated by so-called "trophies of
war," such as (for example) scalps. In this way also the
development of ownership of things may have been derived.
"Wealth" comes to serve as honorific evidence of the owner's
prepotence. Ownership began and grew into a human institution
not for mere subsistence; the dominant incentive was from the
outset the invidious distinction attaching to wealth. Wherever
the institution of private property is found, the economic
process bears the character of a struggle between men for the
possession of goods.
The initial phase of ownership, the phase of acquisition by naive
seizure and conversion, begins to pass into the subsequent stage
of an incipient organization of industry on the basis of private
property (in slaves); the horde develops into a more or less
self-sufficing industrial community; possessions then come to be
valued not so much as evidence of successful foray, but rather as
evidence of the prepotence of the possessor of these goods over
other individuals within the community. The invidious comparison
now becomes primarily a comparison of the owner with the other
members of the group. Property becomes a trophy of success
scored in the game of ownership. Wealth gains in importance as a
customary basis of repute and esteem. And it is even more to the
point that property now becomes the most easily recognized
evidence of a reputable degree of success as distinguished from
heroic or signal achievement. It therefore becomes the
conventional basis of esteem. Its possession in some amount
becomes necessary in order to any reputable standing in the
community. The possession of wealth becomes, in popular
apprehension, itself a meritorious act.
Those members of the community who fall short of the normal
trophy/wealth ownership suffer in the esteem of their fellow-men;
and consequently they suffer in their own esteem, since the usual
basis of self-respect is the respect accorded by one's neighbors.
Only individuals with an aberrant temperament can in the long run
retain their self-esteem in the face of the disesteem of their
fellows. Apparent exceptions to the rule are met with,
especially among people with strong religious convictions. (But
is the religious exception due merely to the formation of a
sub-group of like-minded believers, who offer esteem amongst
themselves based on something other than property?)
As fast as a person makes new acquisitions, and becomes
accustomed to the resulting new standard of wealth, the new
standard forthwith ceases to afford appreciably greater
satisfaction than the earlier standard did. The tendency in any
case is constantly to make the present pecuniary standard the
point of departure for a fresh increase in wealth; and this in
turn gives rise to a new standard of sufficiency and a new
pecuniary classification of one's self as compared with one's
neighbors. A satiation of the average or general desire for
wealth is out of the question: the ground of this need is the
desire of everyone to excel everyone else in the accumulation of
goods (trophies). Since the struggle is substantially a race for
reputability on the basis of an invidious comparison, no approach
to a definitive attainment is possible.
When the lower barbarian culture emerges into the predatory
stage, where self-seeking in the narrower sense becomes the
dominant note, this trait shapes the scheme of life. Relative
success, tested by an invidious pecuniary comparison with other
men, becomes the conventional end of action. Purposeful effort
comes to mean, primarily, effort directed to or resulting in a
more creditable showing of accumulated wealth.
The trophy or booty taken by the predatory class is tangible
exhibition of its exploits. At a later stage, it is customary to
assume some badge or insignia of honor that serves as a
conventionally accepted mark of exploit, and which at the same
time indicates the quantity or degree of exploit. As the
population increases in density, and as human relations grow more
complex and numerous, all the details of life undergo a process
of elaboration and selection; and in this process of elaboration
the use of trophies develops into a system of rank, titles,
degrees and insignia.
With the exception of the instinct of self-preservation, the
propensity for emulation is probably the strongest and most alert
and persistent of the economic motives proper. In an industrial
community this propensity for emulation expresses itself in
pecuniary emulation. As increased industrial efficiency makes it
possible to procure the means of livelihood with less labor, the
energies of the industrious members of the community are bent to
the compassing of a higher result in conspicuous expenditure
(thus emulating the elite class habits and, by imputation,
associating oneself with that class with consequent
"reputability"), rather than slackened to a more comfortable
pace. It is owing chiefly to this element that J.S. Mill was
able to say that "hitherto it is questionable if all the
mechanical inventions yet made have lightened the day's toil of
any human being."
The accepted standard of expenditure in the community or in the
class to which a person belongs largely determines what his
standard of living will be. It does this directly by commending
itself to his common sense as right and good, through his
habitually contemplating it and assimilating the scheme of life
in which it belongs; but it does so also indirectly through
popular insistence on conformity to the accepted scale of
expenditure as a matter of propriety, under pain of disesteem and
ostracism. The standard of living of any class is commonly as
high as the earning capacity of the class will permit -- with a
constant tendency to go higher. The effect upon the serious
activities of men is therefore to direct them with great
singleness of purpose to the largest possible acquisition of
wealth.
The thief or swindler who has gained great wealth by his
delinquency has a better chance than the small thief of escaping
the rigorous penalty of the law. True, the sacredness of
property is one of the salient features of the community's code
of morals. However due to the implied honorific value associated
with great wealth, the big-time crooks normally are less severely
punished (if at all) than the common criminal.
Conspicuous and Vicarious Consumption
The utility of consumption as an evidence of wealth is an
adaptation of a distinction previously existing and well
established in men's habits of thought. In the earlier phases of
the predatory culture the only economic differentiation is a
broad distinction between an honorable superior caste of the
able-bodied men and an inferior class of laboring women. The men
consume what the women produce and the women consume only what is
incidentally necessary. What the women consume in this phase is
only a means to their continued labor and is not a consumption
directed to their own comfort and fulness of life. The greater
consumption of goods by the superior class, in the earlier
predatory culture, becomes honorable in itself.
When the quasi-peaceable stage of industry is reached, the
general principle is that the base, industrious class should
consume only what may be necessary to their subsistence.
Luxuries and the comforts of life belong to the elite class; they
consume freely and of the best, in food, drink, narcotics,
shelter, services, ornaments, apparel, weapons and accoutrements,
amusements, amulets, etc. Since the consumption of these more
excellent goods is an evidence of wealth, it becomes honorific;
and conversely, the failure to consume in due quantity and
quality becomes a mark of inferiority and demerit.
At a later stage, further distinctions in class occur. Those who
are associated with the higher grades of the elite class (e.g.,
by marriage, birth, or as servants) gain in repute. Being fed
and countenanced by their patron, they are indices of his rank
and vicarious consumers of his wealth. This vicarious
consumption must be performed in some such manner as shall
plainly point to the master from whom it originates, and to whom
therefore the resulting increment of good repute inures. The
dependant who is first delegated the duty of vicarious
consumption is the wife, or the chief wife. In the less wealthy
classes a curious inversion occurs. In these classes there is no
pretence of leisure on the part of the head of the household.
But the middle-class wife still carries on the business of
vicarious consumption, for the good name of the household and its
master.
Pecuniary Canons of Taste
As noted, the industrious class is allowed to consume only at a
subsistence level in the later phase of the predatory culture.
And the elite class consumes the best in food, drink, shelter,
apparel, ornaments, amusements, etc. The growth of punctilious
discrimination as to qualitative excellence in eating, drinking,
etc., presently affects not only the manner of life, but also the
training and intellectual activity of the elite class. It now
becomes incumbent on them to discriminate with some nicety
between the noble and the ignoble in consumable goods. They
become "cultured."
The requirements of pecuniary decency influence the sense of
beauty and of utility in articles of use or beauty. The superior
gratification derived from the use and contemplation of costly
and supposedly beautiful products is, commonly, in great measure
a gratification of our sense of costliness masquerading under the
name of beauty. Our higher appreciation of the superior article
is an appreciation of its superior honorific character, much more
frequently than it is an unsophisticated appreciation of its
beauty.
By further habituation to an appreciative perception of the marks
of expensiveness in goods, and by habitually identifying beauty
with reputability, it comes about that a beautiful article which
is not expensive is accounted not beautiful. In this way it has
happened, for instance, that some beautiful flowers pass
conventionally for offensive weeds; others that can be cultivated
with relative ease are accepted and admired by the lower middle
class, who can afford no more expensive luxuries of this kind;
but these varieties are rejected as vulgar by those people who
are better able to pay for expensive flowers and who are educated
to a higher schedule of pecuniary beauty in the florist's
products; while still other flowers, of no greater intrinsic
beauty than these, are cultivated at great cost and call out much
admiration from flower-lovers whose tastes have been matured
under the critical guidance of a polite environment.
Everyday life offers many curious illustrations of the way in
which the code of pecuniary beauty in articles varies from class
to class. Such a fact is the lawn, or the close-cropped yard or
park, which appears especially to appeal to the tastes of the
well-to-do classes. The lawn is a cow pasture without cows, or
crop-yielding land left fallow. It presumably begins with one
fellow not planting corn on his land, thereby showing that, "You
see, I am so well off, I need not grow crops on this land."
Soon, not to be left behind, his neighbors do likewise. The next
one-upsmanship is to not only let the land lie fallow, but to
exquisitely manicure the lawn, showing perhaps that not only does
the land lie fallow now, but that it will in the future. Why
such a fancy manicure of the lawn if it is soon to be ploughed
and seeded? Then all in the neighborhood do likewise; they
exquisitely manicure their lawns. And woe to the fellow who does
not! Disesteem! Ostracism! We all laugh at the "Beverly
Hillbillies" when, upon arriving at their new mansion, they
immediately begin ploughing their acres. Yet underneath is a
clue to a deeper meaning.
Feminism
The concept of feminine beauty has evolved in accord with
pecuniary canons of taste. In the stage of economic development
at which women are valued by the upper class for their service,
the ideal of female beauty is a robust, large-limbed woman. In
the succeeding phase, when, in the conventional scheme, the
office of the high-class wife comes to be a vicarious leisure,
this concept of beauty changes. The new ideal dwells on the
delicacy of the face, hands, and feet, the slender figure, and
especially the slender waist. In modern (ca. 1899) communities
which have reached the higher levels of industrial development,
the upper leisure class has accumulated so great a mass of wealth
as to place its women above all imputation of vulgarly productive
labor. The ideal of feminine beauty has therefore shifted from
the woman of physical presence, to the lady, and has begun to
shift back again to the woman -- and all in obedience to the
changing conditions of pecuniary emulation.
How does the recent "women's liberation" movement fit into all
this? Writing at the turn of the century, Veblen offers some
clues. Before the predatory culture, what Veblen calls an
"ante-predatory culture" existed. Because this barbarian
community was not notably warlike, aptitudes for peace and
good-will were economically supported. In all classes,
recurrence of these traits occurs, from time to time, with
certain individuals in the predatory culture. However due to
harsh economic realities, a sort of natural selection inhibits
the survival of these traits in the poorer classes. But the
sheltered position of the elite class favors the survival of
these traits, even though these aptitudes do not receive the
affirmative sanction of the elite's code of proprieties. In
other words, while need of physical survival does not kill off
the sporadic reversion of traits of good-will, still, such traits
are frowned upon by the elite of the predatory culture. By
reason of their exemption from the usual process of natural
selection, ante-predatory, co-operative impulses survive more in
the case of leisure class women. These impulses must seek
expression: if the predatory outlet (e.g., invidious
distinction) fails, relief is sought elsewhere. The tendency to
some other than an invidious purpose in life works out in a
multitude of organizations, the purpose of which is some work of
charity or of social amelioration. In the late 19th century such
social improvement organizations would have been, for example,
temperance groups and groups working for women's suffrage.
Extending from this can be seen that, after women's suffrage the
logical next social improvement is equality for women.
As can be seen, the so-called women's movement originates with
the elite class. This editor has noted that today's feminists
tend to favor their own class interests above and beyond their
push for the interests of women in general. Such, for example,
can be seen in the case of Paula Jones who, when she first
bravely went public with her accusation of having been sexually
harassed by then-Governor Bill Clinton, was laughed at. She was
called "trailer park trash." What is more, the ridicule directed
at Jones first came at the original press conference, from a
press which represents and loosely belongs to the elite class.
This same press, when flimsy charges of sexual harassment came
from one identified with the upper classes (Anita Hill), was
"outraged" -- there was no laughing then. In "Silence of the
Beltway Feminists" (New York Times, Jan. 17, 1997), Barbara
Ehrenreich calls the class bias in the Jones case "American
feminism's darkest hour."
Clothing and the Pecuniary Culture
Expenditures on clothing put one's pecuniary standing in evidence
most effectually. Our apparel is always in evidence and gives an
indication of our pecuniary standing to all observers at first
glance. The greater part of the expenditure incurred by all
classes for apparel is incurred for the sake of a respectable
appearance rather than for the protection of the person. The
commercial value of the goods used for clothing is made up to a
much larger extent of the fashionableness, the reputability of
the goods than of the mechanical service they render in clothing
the wearer.
The function of dress as an evidence of ability to pay does not
end with simply showing that the wearer consumes valuable goods
in excess of what is required for physical comfort. Dress has
subtler possibilities: it can also show that the wearer is not
of the lower, industrious class. A detailed examination of what
passes in popular apprehension for elegant apparel will show that
it is contrived at every point to convey the impression that the
wearer does not habitually put forth any useful effort. It goes
without saying that no apparel can be considered elegant if it
shows the effect of manual labor on the part of the wearer, in
the way of soil or wear. Much of the charm that invests the
patent leather shoe, the stainless linen, the lustrous
cylindrical hat, and the walking stick comes of their pointedly
suggesting that the wearer cannot when so attired engage in
industrial employments. So too with the modern suit and tie:
silly clothing that soils and tears easily, but proclaims
distance from vulgar employments by its very impracticability.
The dress of women goes even farther than that of men in the way
of demonstrating the wearer's abstinence from productive
employment. The woman's shoe adds the so-called French heel,
because this high heel obviously makes any manual work extremely
difficult. The like is true of the skirt and the rest of the
drapery which characterises woman's dress. The substantial
reason for the skirt is that it hampers the wearer and
incapacitates her for all useful exertion. The like is true of
the feminine custom of wearing the hair excessively long.
Women's wear also adds a peculiar feature from that of the men:
changing fashions. If each garment serves for only a brief time,
that equals consumption in excess of what is required for
physical comfort. Purpose? To show, by vicarious consumption,
that the wife's owner is well-to-do.
Modern Survivals of Prowess
The elite class lives by the industrial class rather than in it.
Admission to the elite class is gained by exercise of the
pecuniary aptitudes -- aptitudes for acquisition rather than for
serviceability. The scheme of life of the class is in large part
a heritage from the past, and embodies much of the habits and
ideals of the earlier predatory culture. The enthusiasm for war,
and the predatory temper of which it is the index, prevail in the
largest measure among the upper classes. Moreover, the
ostensible serious occupation of the upper class is that of
government, which, in point of origin and developmental content,
is also a predatory occupation. Government is an exercise of
control and coercion over the population from which the elite
class draws its sustenance.
Manifestations of the predatory temperament include sports of all
kinds. Sports shade off from the basis of hostile combat,
through skill, to cunning and chicanery, without its being
possible to draw a line at any point. Addiction to athletic
sports, either directly or vicariously, is characteristic of the
elite class; and it is a trait which that class shares with the
lower-class delinquents, and with such atavistic elements
throughout the body of the community as are endowed with a
dominant predaceous trend. Of course, few individuals among the
populations of Western civilised countries are so far devoid of
the predaceous instinct as to find no diversion in contemplating
athletic sports and games.
As it finds expression in the life of the barbarian, prowess
manifests itself in two main directions: force and fraud. In
varying degrees these two forms of expression are similarly
present in modern warfare, in the pecuniary occupations, in
sports and games, and in politics. In all of these employments
strategy tends to develop into finesse and chicane.
The two barbarian traits, ferocity and cunning, go to make up the
predaceous temper. Both are highly serviceable for individual
expediency in a life looking to invidious success. Both are
fostered by the pecuniary culture.
The Town
(Notes from *Absentee Ownership and Business Enterprise in Recent
Times: The Case of America* by Thorstein Veblen (1923)).
The location of any given town has commonly been determined by
collusion between "interested parties" with a view to speculation
in real estate. The town continues basically as a real estate
"proposition." Its municipal affairs, its civic pride, its
community interest, converge upon its real estate values, which
are invariably of a speculative character, and which all its
loyal citizens are intent on "booming" and "boosting." Real
estate is the one community interest that binds the townsmen with
a common bond; and it is highly significant that those
inhabitants of the town who have no holdings of real estate and
who never hope to have any will commonly also do their little
best to inflate the speculative values by adding the clamor of
their unpaid chorus to the paid clamor of the professional
publicity agents.
Real estate is an enterprise in "futures," designed to get
something for nothing from the unwary. Townsmen are pilgrims of
hope looking forward to the time when the community's advancing
needs will enable them to realize on the inflated values of their
real estate, or looking more immediately to the chance that some
sucker may be so ill advised as to take them at their word and
become their debtors in the amount which they say their real
estate is worth.
The town is a retail trading-station, where farm produce is
bought and farm supplies are sold, and there are always more
traders than are necessary to take care of this retail trade.
There is always more or less active competition between traders,
often underhanded. But this does not hinder collusion between
the competitors with a view to maintain and augment their
collective hold on the trade with their farm population.
From an early point in the life-history of such a town collusion
habitually becomes the rule, and there is commonly a well
recognized ethical code of collusion governing the style and
limits of competitive maneuvers. In effect, the competition
among business concerns is kept well in hand by a common
understanding, and the traders as a body direct their collective
efforts to getting what can be got out of the underlying farm
population. Harking back to the earlier distinction between the
so-called vulgar, industrial employments and the elite class
pecuniary employments, it can be seen how the elite, predatory
class exploits the industrial class by means of cunning and
chicanery.
Toward the close of the 19th century, and increasingly since the
turn of the century, the trading community of the small towns has
by degrees become tributary to the great vested interests that
move in the background of the market. In a way the small towns
have fallen into the position of tollgate keepers for the
distribution of goods and collection of customs for the large
absentee owners of the business. Grocers, hardware dealers,
meat-markets, druggists, shoe-shops, are more and more
extensively falling into the position of local distributors for
jobbing houses and manufacturers. They increasingly handle
"package goods" bearing the brand name of some (ostensible)
maker, whose chief connection with the goods is that of
advertiser of the copyright brand which appears on the label.
The bankers work by affiliation with and under surveillance of
their correspondents in the sub-centers of credit, who are
similarly tied in under the credit routine of the associated
banking houses in the great centers.
All this reduction of the retailers to simpler terms has by no
means lowered the overhead charges of the retail trade as they
bear upon the underlying farm population; rather the reverse.
Inasmuch as their principals back in the jungle of Big Business
cut into the initiative and the margins of the retailers with
"package goods," brands, advertising, and agency contracts, the
retailers are provoked to retaliate and recoup where they see an
opening -- that is, at the cost of the underlying farm
population.
The town and the business of its substantial citizens are and
have ever been an enterprise in salesmanship; and the beginning
of wisdom in salesmanship is equivocation. The rule of life in
the town's salesmanship is summed up in what the older logicians
have called suppressio veri et suggestio falsi (suppress truth
and suggest the false). One must eschew opinions, or
information, which are not acceptable to the common run of those
who have or may conceivably come to have any commercial value.
The town is reactionary; aggressively and truculently so, since
any assertion or denial that runs counter to any appreciable set
of respectable prejudices would come in for some degree of
disfavor, and any degree of disfavor is intolerable to men whose
business would presumably suffer from it. But there is no
(business) harm done in assenting to, and so in time coming to
believe in, any or all of the commonplaces of the day before
yesterday. In this way, the truth eventually does get
acknowledged, though it may take decades or centuries. (This
principle is seen, for example, when Larry Nichols was going
public with information he had on Bill Clinton et al. Nichols
was reportedly contacted by Wall Street types who urged him to be
quiet for fear that the dollar-yen ratio might suffer.)
Conclusion
"Veblen," (writes Max Lerner in his Editors Introduction to The
Portable Veblen) "had been writing not of the social aristocracy
but of the business power-group of the middle class which aped
the ways of an aristocracy... When he used terms like
'barbarian' and 'predatory,' they were synonyms for 'business'
and 'capitalist.' ... when he spoke of the head of the household
who dressed his wife and daughters with a conspicuous display of
waste consumption, kept his sons at archaic studies, hired
servants as vicarious signs of his leisure, kept a large number
of people uselessly engaged in devout observances, took part in
sports whose principal elements were guile, fraud, and predation,
surrounded himself with subservient animals, and organized his
whole world to show off his prowess: of all this Veblen might
have said to his American era -- de te fabula [of you it is
spoken]." Veblen saw conventional economics as a system of
apologetics for the going system of economic power. He thought
that each new batch of economists merely accepted the
preconceptions of the previous economists, built on them, and
enabled the idea that wealth and poverty were part of the fitness
of things, a sort of natural selection.
Yet what sort of "natural selection" rewards fraud, predation,
and chicanery and punishes useful industry? What sort of
"natural selection" rewards pecuniary predators and their
sycophants?
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