Intellectual Significance
See also: Conspicuous consumption#Consumerism theoriesWhile Veblen was an economist and published this book as a treatise on economics, many modern classical economists take issue with some of his ideas. The primary reason for this appears to be his attack on the rational expectations theories that continue to dominate the discipline. Only in recent years, with the rise of such theories as Butterfly Economics, is Veblen being given serious consideration by economists.
In contrast, Veblen quickly became influential within the field of sociology. The classic Middletown studies made much use of Veblen's theories. More to the point, these and many other sociological studies supplied empirical evidence that confirmed Veblen's theories. In the Middletown studies, for example, researchers learned that lower-class families were willing to go without necessities such as food or new clothes to maintain a certain level of conspicuous consumption.
The concept of conspicuous consumption has been applied to advertising, and to explain why poorer classes have been unable to advance economically. Veblen's views on the uselessness of "businessmen", while usually discarded, have been adopted by Warren Buffett, who has criticized the growth of practices such as day trading and arbitrage which make money solely through abstract means, with no value being added. However, the technocratic society predicted by Veblen in later books has not come to pass.
Filmmaker Gabriel Bologna wrote and directed a film called The Theory of The Leisure Class in 2001 about the disintegration of American culture. The movie starred Christopher McDonald, Tuesday Knight, and Brad Renfro. The film received awards from The New York International Independent Film and Video Festival, the Milan International Film Festival, and the Los Angeles International Film Awards.
Read more about this topic: The Theory Of The Leisure Class
Famous quotes containing the words intellectual and/or significance:
“Was it an intellectual consequence of this ‘rebirth,’ of this new dignity and rigor, that, at about the same time, his sense of beauty was observed to undergo an almost excessive resurgence, that his style took on the noble purity, simplicity and symmetry that were to set upon all his subsequent works that so evident and evidently intentional stamp of the classical master.”
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“The hypothesis I wish to advance is that ... the language of morality is in ... grave disorder.... What we possess, if this is true, are the fragments of a conceptual scheme, parts of which now lack those contexts from which their significance derived. We possess indeed simulacra of morality, we continue to use many of the key expressions. But we have—very largely if not entirely—lost our comprehension, both theoretical and practical, of morality.”
—Alasdair Chalmers MacIntyre (b. 1929)