Author: Thorstein Veblen
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Education, Higher
Languages : en
Pages : 338

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Author: Joseph Dorfman
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 572

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Author: Charles Camic
Publisher: Harvard University Press
ISBN: 0674659724
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 505

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A bold new biography of the thinker who demolished accepted economic theories in order to expose how people of economic and social privilege plunder their wealth from society’s productive men and women. Thorstein Veblen was one of America’s most penetrating analysts of modern capitalist society. But he was not, as is widely assumed, an outsider to the social world he acidly described. Veblen overturns the long-accepted view that Veblen’s ideas, including his insights about conspicuous consumption and the leisure class, derived from his position as a social outsider. In the hinterlands of America’s Midwest, Veblen’s schooling coincided with the late nineteenth-century revolution in higher education that occurred under the patronage of the titans of the new industrial age. The resulting educational opportunities carried Veblen from local Carleton College to centers of scholarship at Johns Hopkins, Yale, Cornell, and the University of Chicago, where he studied with leading philosophers, historians, and economists. Afterward, he joined the nation’s academic elite as a professional economist, producing his seminal books The Theory of the Leisure Class and The Theory of Business Enterprise. Until late in his career, Veblen was, Charles Camic argues, the consummate academic insider, engaged in debates about wealth distribution raging in the field of economics. Veblen demonstrates how Veblen’s education and subsequent involvement in those debates gave rise to his original ideas about the social institutions that enable wealthy Americans—a swarm of economically unproductive “parasites”—to amass vast fortunes on the backs of productive men and women. Today, when great wealth inequalities again command national attention, Camic helps us understand the historical roots and continuing reach of Veblen’s searing analysis of this “sclerosis of the American soul.”

Author: Sidney Plotkin
Publisher: Anthem Press
ISBN: 1783088737
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 346

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Donald Trump’s astonishing rise to the US presidency challenges conventional understandings of American politics, yet he is distinctively American. His biography and family lineage reflect American traditions such as real estate hucksterism and buccaneering salesmanship. But Trump’s pugnacity also reflects the shadow of other darker American traditions of misogyny, racism and xenophobia, patterns that formed what Thorstein Veblen called a “sclerosis of the American soul.” Using Veblen’s theory of American development to explore the nation’s curious fusion of barbarism and liberal democracy, Veblen’s America taps the rich vein of the sociologist’s early twentieth-century insights to shed light on the Trump phenomenon that has overwhelmed and threatened early twenty-first-century American democracy.

Author: Thorstein Veblen
Publisher: Viking Adult
ISBN:
Category : Capitalism
Languages : en
Pages : 186

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Author: Thorstein Veblen
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 135153422X
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 470

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Absentee Ownership is an inquiry into the economic situation as it has taken shape in the twentieth century, particularly as exemplified in the case of America. According to Thorstein Veblen, absentee ownership is the main and immediate controlling interest in the life of civilized men. It is the paramount issue between the civilized nations, and guides the conduct of their affairs at home and abroad. World War I, says Veblen, arose out of a conflict of absentee interests and the peace was negotiated with a view to stabilize them. Part I of the book is occupied with a summary description of that range of economic circumstances and that sequence of economic growth and change that led up through the nineteenth century and have come to a head in the twentieth century. Part II is an objective, theoretical analysis of those economic circumstances described in the first part of the book. Marion Levy writes in his introduction about the phrase "absentee ownership" and how it has a definite connotation, representing a dark figure in the economic system, a frustration of desired levels of self-sufficiency. In the early days, the giants of business enterprise had faces--Rockefeller, Vanderbilt, Ford, Edison--but they all turned into faceless bureaucracies, says Levy. The giants may not have been nice, but they had faces and human traits. Absentee ownership wiped that out for the common man. Veblen's book continues to be of vital importance to the studies of economics, political theory, and sociology.

Author: Elizabeth Jorgensen
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1351539140
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 301

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A definitive biography of the man who coined the expression "conspicuous consumption". Based on newly released archival sources, this book sets the facts straight on more than 60 years of myths and misinformation concerning the highly regarded economist and sociologist.

Author: Thorstein Veblen
Publisher: Penguin UK
ISBN: 0141964316
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 83

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With its wry portrayal of a shallow, materialistic 'leisure class' obsessed by clothes, cars, consumer goods and climbing the social ladder, this withering satire on modern capitalism is as pertinent today as when it was written over a century ago.

Author: David A. Reisman
Publisher: Edward Elgar Publishing
ISBN: 0857932195
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 353

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'Fascination with the economics of Thorstein Veblen is today no less than it was fifty years ago. Many books have been written about his life and ideas. But David Reisman breaks new ground by providing one of the best and most comprehensive explainations of Veblen's thought. Written in a strikingly fresh and lucid style, this work is one of the landmarks of the literature on this great and enduringly relevant economist.' Geoffrey M. Hodgson, University of Hertfordshire, UK 'Considering the inability of conventional economics to comprehend the socio-economic convulsions over the past few years in so many countries, it is surely time to try something else. David Reisman's The Social Economics of Thorstein Veblen thus appears at a most opportune moment. This original analytical study is the best introduction into Veblen's work that I know of, and will, I trust, encourage a renewal of interest in possibly the most unjustly neglected of economists. Reisman's primary contention that there is despite obstacles to comprehension created by Veblen's personal idiosyncrasies and unconventional literary style a Veblen structure of thought, or general system, is fully confirmed by the evidence presented in his book. In this demonstration lies its great merit.' Samuel Hollander, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, Israel 'Veblen is a notoriously difficult economist to read and understand. He was, however, unequivocal in his scorn for neoclassical economics, whose demise he took pleasure in predicting. In light of the limp excuses offered by the economics profession for its failure to anticipate the current global financial crisis, Reisman's incisive analysis of Veblen's writings suggests that were Veblen alive today, he would be revelling in schadenfreude. This timely book will make uncomfortable reading for neoclassical economists.' Douglas Mair, Heriot-Watt University, UK 'Reisman offers a brilliant distillation of Veblen's jaundiced purview of the social, psychological and pecuniary motivations that have driven man the social animal in his economic life down the ages, from noble savage to predatory barbarian in his ancient, modern, and potential guises. Avoiding hagiography, this book exposes Veblen's exaggerations as well as his compelling institutional insights into the evolution of capitalism and socialism. Reisman's own intellectual sweep in explaining and criticising Veblen demonstrate political economy at its best.' Roger Sandilands, University of Strathclyde, UK Thorstein Veblen was a multidisciplinary social scientist whose original insights continue to inspire debate. Rather than focusing on allocation, markets and scarcity, his perspective on economics was rather one of Darwinian evolution and perpetual development, unfolding conventions and interpersonal constraints. This interdisciplinary and comprehensive book determines that Veblen's disparate theories of conspicuous consumption, imperial Germany, the giant corporation and the speculation-led cycle all add up to a consistent and coherent world-view. Veblen was a fascinating author who deserves to be read for himself. This penetrating new interpretation demonstrates that he also identified a serious threat to property and peace in the form of irresponsible finance and frustrated workmanship. He believed corporate capitalism was at risk from its internal contradictions. This lucid book assesses the logic behind Veblen's stark and apocalyptic vision. The Social Economics of Thorstein Veblen examines all of Veblen's books and articles, revealing that they are closely integrated to form an organic whole. It will prove valuable for scholars and students interested in sociological theory, politics and political economy, history and institutional economics.

Author: Thorstein Veblen
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Leisure class
Languages : en
Pages : 422

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