Vague questions pertaining to Thorstein Veblen’s Theory of the Leisure Class

            Even if I get his ideas wrong let that serve as a catalyst for expressing my own.  Thorstein Veblen has been an ever present theorist, his views relating to early 20^th century America being brought to bear on all times afterward.  Conspicuous consumption is employed to show one’s status according to his Theory of the Leisure Class.  To demonstrate your riches you buy luxury goods which is effectively like flipping off those you have beaten in the race to riches – Thomas Frank covers this ground in his book Pity the Billionaire.

            Was there a shift from wanting to emulate the rich at rest to emulating the rich at work?  This is an abstract question, hopefully interesting enough.  Does some, perhaps nonexistent, average person look to hard working traits of the rich since they have grown unfamiliar with rich people’s leisure (“pleasure in other people’s leisure”)?  My response is that, with an increase in people working over the last 40 years, people would start to emulate the traits of people that earn money.  Check out Prof. Richard Wolff’s excellent summation here.  We focus more on putting in the hours instead of some supposed leisure time.  The only time we drive the luxury vehicle is to and from work.

            A failure in this line of thinking is that the reason we work is for the accumulation of material objects which is, in many cases I would argue, conspicuous consumption.  If we emulate the rich who work then we still emulate a supposed ideal of using that money to buy things.  But hark!  Perhaps my argument is saved if you consider that most of what we buy is only faux luxury items.  The world of the rich – its structures and the actual power that the rich wield – is obscured to us, our knowledge limited to salacious gossip presented in tabloids.  Like so much else we buy into simulacra. 

            So, yeah, why not?  I’m of the perspective that acquiring things just for the sake of showing up others is a false way of living so why not describe everything within this social mechanism as being illusory?  However it plays out people are working towards false ideals.  Thorstein Veblen updated post-millennium.