Thorstein Veblen and American Conservatism

Thorstein Veblen’s The Theory of the Leisure Class is certainly a product of its time period. The description of the high fashion of the leisure class consists of stovepipe hats, corsets and bonnets, which are outdated today. Veblen’s theory is as legitimate today as then, if not more so- advertising has taken notice of what Veblen refers to as pecuniary emulation, that is, the emulation of the class above one’s own by consumption. The emulation of the class above one’s own does not end with consumption. Class emulation takes many forms, all of which serve to advance the interest of the scheme of social life perpetuated by the leisure class for its own ends. Nowhere in today’s American life is the emulation more dangerous to those in the inferior classes than in the conservative political movement.

When the industrial revolution takes hold in a society, it changes the setup of interpersonal relationships within the social sphere. The leisure class, the class of society into which esteem and wealth is concentrated to the highest degree, has an interest in on the one hand encouraging the innovation of manufacture, as a way to make money in a pecuniary or monetary fashion through investment, but on the other hand an interest in, “[opposing] innovation because it has a vested interest of an unworthy sort, in maintaining the present conditions” (TV, Ch. 8). The “present conditions” Veblen is referring to are not the conditions of manufacture, the conditions of capitalist industry, but rather conditions of society which may leave the class worse off once they are implemented. Thus, in the desire to maintain the present circumstances which are in their favor, it is obvious and inevitable that, “the leisure class is the conservative class” (ibid.).

The political movement of conservatism is one which has its origins in the class of those who are the wealthiest in society, those who have the most to lose by change but are most insulated against it. Change is the watchword here, the change of circumstance through innovation and different social morays, and it is change that is resisted by the leisure class most of all, as, again, it will have the greatest effect on their status and pecuniary superiority. The leisure class has the advantage of being, if not resistant to, at the least above the necessity of accepting, change. “The members of the wealthy class do not yield to the demand for innovation as readily as other men because they are not constrained to do so” (ibid.), not constrained mainly by virtue of their wealth and the security therein.

“The conservatism of the wealthy class is so obvious a feature,” says Veblen, “that it has even come to be seen as a mark of respectability” (ibid.). Those in the lesser classes see conservatism in the same way as they see the conspicuous consumption of the wealthy- as something they do not completely understand, but look up to and emulate. This is the beginning of the concept of voting against one’s interest. Veblen- “since conservatism is a characteristic of the wealthier and therefore more reputable portion of the community, it has acquired a certain honorific or decorative value” (ibid.). With conservatism having a value of societal worth completely irrelevant to its actual principles, it comes to be seen as the most worthy of political beliefs, irrespective of actual policy, and in correlation, movements of the left to change society for the better are met with distaste.

The quest to change society for the better is often a protracted battle, mainly by virtue of the conservative movement’s pecuniary and conventional power. If one looks at any battle for rights and justice in the past century in the United States, this is obvious. Whether it be civil rights, anti-war or anti-globalization movements, the left had always had a difficult, uphill battle, even though these battles are fought for the good of society and are admitted as such by society itself. Conservatism’s nestling into the comfortable niche of respectability has put the movements of the left into peril for decades, if not longer, by shaping the perception of the left’s social innovation as “being a lower-class phenomenon [and] vulgar” (ibid.). In fact, “even in cases where one recognizes the substantial merits of the case for which the innovator is spokesman- as may easily happen if the evils which he seeks to remedy are sufficiently remote in point of time or space or personal contact- still one cannot but be sensible of the fact that the innovator is a person with whom it is at least distasteful to be associated, and from whose social contact one should shrink” (ibid.). Yes, even in cases in which the change requires nothing but attention and support, the activist becomes pariah.

It would be easy to dismiss conservatism as a political movement as a passing fad were it not for the most clever aspect of the scheming leisure class’ plan for political dominance. The division of labor, so heralded and celebrated by Adam Smith and damned by Karl Marx, has had an effect on the life of the worker unlike any other technical transformation in history. Where once the worker had a specialty and skill to rely on for pride and subsistence, now the worker finds herself struggling to keep up with the machines she uses and worked to the point of exhaustion. The point of the division of labor is not to make labor easier, but to squeeze every possible ounce of profit and surplus from the labor of the worker. After a day of this labor, the worker has only sleep and food to look forward to before he or she returns to the workspace to eke out a living for self and family. With such a full schedule, the worker has no time to strive for a change on conditions, rights or or quality of life. “The institution of a leisure class acts to make the lower classes conservative by withdrawing from them as much as it may of the means of sustenance, and so reducing their consumption [but not so much as they do not consume to emulate], and consequently their available energy, to such a point to make them incapable of the effort required for the learning and adoption of new habits of thought” (ibid.).

The comfort of regularity, no matter how antagonistic to the dignity of the worker, takes precedence for the poor, and for the rich, the regularity provides their subsistence and luxury. This “aversion to change is in large part an aversion to the bother of making the readjustment which any given change will necessitate; and this solidarity of the system of institutions of any given culture or any given people strengthens the instinctive resistance offered to change in men’s habits of thought” (ibid.). It is easier to be permanently sedentary and miserable, for the worker, than to suffer temporary inconvenience and discomfort in the pursuit of eventual greater rights and pleasure. For the wealthy, they “are conservative because they have small occasion to be discontented with the situation as it stands today” (ibid.). The rich see no reason for progressive legislation, no need for innovation. If any change, they wish for change that will thrust society back to the idyllic time when the poor had a social contract to remain so under a more feudalistic form of culture, when the lower classes knew their place and the left was not only non-existent but an impossibility.

Conservatism is a movement of political thought specifically and openly in favor of the rich and their interests. Conservatism exists as a political theory as a counter-balance to any attempts by the lower class to impinge on the dominance of the upper class. While government and the political system acts specifically to the end of “greater facility of peaceable and orderly exploitation” by the higher of the lower classes, the ideals of conservatism are invested in the status quo. Conservatism perpetually paints itself as “substantial and consistent resistance to innovation… the only result of which would be discontent and disastrous reaction”, while in reality it acts “to retard that adjustment to the environment which is called social advancement or development”(ibid.). The rich have a relation to society of “acquisition, not of production; of exploitation, not of serviceability” (ibid.), so it is no surprise their chosen political belief would propagate this relation. The real trick is the manipulation of the poor to vote in interest of the wealthy.