Search

A self-review of Teoria della classe disagiata (Minimum Fax, 2017) Main Content

La pregunta que planteo en este artículo es justamente la razón por la cual, desde sus fundamentos igualitarios, surgió la desigualdad. Hay buena información sobre cómo se ha defendido la desigualdad a lo largo de milenios, pero no hay respuesta sobre por qué, desde una base ideológica igualitaria, algunos comenzaron a ejercer una posición superior, mientras que otros -la gran mayoría de hecho- aceptaron esto. En este proceso histórico que conduce al período actual, parece que aquellos que asumen una posición superior son de naturaleza "honorable". Es decir, tienden a ser asesinos en masa, fundamentalmente deshonestos, hipócritas y generalmente antisociales. ¿Por qué es esto? ¿Por qué están estos "hombres honorables", del tipo Brutus, en la cima de la jerarquía social? Aunque Thorstein Veblen y Karl Marx desarrollaron análisis convincentes de la desigualdad en sí, no han explicado los orígenes de la desigualdad en su ruptura y separación del estado original de igualdad. Propongo que esta es una tarea para los institucionalistas, basando su argumento en la comprensión de Veblen de las "instituciones". Una primera versión fue publicada en la revista Journal of Economics Issues, junio 2017. Se publica en castellano en Ola Financiera con el permiso de la revista. Traducción del inglés al castellano de Wesley Marshall y Eugenia Correa

The early 20th century saw the first steps in a tradition of leading economists explaining the link between corporate finance, investment and capital valuation. The writings of Keynes, and Tobin deal with the development of an investment theory based on the financial structure. However there is no mention Veblen, whereas he made an early American analysis of corporate governance structure. Our work is based on a critical review of the literature, which is guilty of omissions, lack of accuracy and errors of formalization. So that, we focus on the reasons why Veblen's corporate financial analysis should not be forgotten. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In very broad terms, we can say that there are mainly three competing approaches to the examination of social phenomena in general and the economic phenomena in particular. One of them relies on the assumption that economic relations are governed by natural law-like regularities. In this approach, individuals as rationally motivated actors are regarded as agents of those economic relations. In this perspective, whether environment as the context of human agency may change is not a question that needs to be taken into account; hence, possible role of human agency in the change of environment is not also considered. Opposing to this position are materialist accounts that deal with the change of material conditions as the basis of human social relations. These materialist accounts do not grant human agency an autonomous role in the initiation of transformative processes of material context, and they construe human actions as motivated by the rational evaluations of existing material conditions, e.g. class actions motivated by class interests. Against these converging approaches in terms of their conception of rationalist human action, there are approaches that reject the assumption of rationalist human action as the basic form of human action. They argue for the need to explain how human beings develop particular forms of motives, if human agents are not rationally motivated by an external stimulus of the conditions. Therefore, there is also a need to give an account of how human actions and environment are interrelated in order to explain the change of environmental context. In this article, I aim to highlight the primacy of non-rationalist and non-teleological human action in the constitution of economic phenomena and economic change by discussing Veblen's social theory. I present Veblen's critiques of the marginalist utilitarian school and Marx (and Marxism). According to Veblen, both of these approaches conceive human actors as passively responding to the stimulus of environment by means of rational calculation of their economic interests. Thus, such approaches ignore the institutional conditioning of human actions, and therefore, within the terms of such approaches, economic change becomes unexplainable in terms of cause and effect relations in which human action has a place. On the basis of Veblen's criticisms of rationalist human agency, then, I argue that human action founded on the creative, active human agency is the central explanatory tool that makes possible Veblen's non-teleological evolutionary theory. I claim that Veblen's notion of human action in terms of habituation allows us developing a conception of human action which shapes and is shaped by the physical and institutional complex. Thus, human evolution appears as a non-teleological, cumulatively caused process. Then, I explicate the primacy of human action and active human agency in Veblen's conception of technological change through a critique of David Seckler's behaviouralist interpretation of Veblen's social theory. Seckler claims that Veblen's understanding of human evolution depends on a unilinear causality flowing from thoughts to action via the mediation of technological change, in which "idle curiosity" is the primary instinct. In contrast to Seckler, I show that the instinct of idle curiosity actualizes itself within the processes of human action in continuum. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article analyzes the weak economic performance of Latin America since the end of the Import Substitution era, emphasizing the structural impediments that led to the dissipation of opportunities for viable economic policies that arose during the latest commodity boom, 2002-2012. The theoretical/analytical framework for this article derives from the developmental hypotheses of Veblen, Gerschenkron, Innis, Abramovitz, Amsden, and Chang. All addressed, in their related but varied approaches, the "catching-up" problématique—with Veblen and Abramovitz analyzing "falling-behind." In Latin America—the theoretical formulations regarding catching-up have had minimal explanatory power, for reasons explored in the text. Pioneering institutionalists, modern "revisionist" institutionalists (e.g., Amsden) and the Latin American Structuralists (e.g., Furtado and Prebisch) often converged regarding their confidence in the efficacy of rational, operative, developmentalist policies and programs. However, only those drawing from the work of Veblen—including Innis with his analysis of the "staples trap"—seriously considered the "falling-behind" hypothesis. During the latest commodity boom, Latin America's elite failed to exploit favorable circumstances to diversify from low-value added, volatile, commodity production due to pre-Import Substitution (i.e., nineteenth century) institutional legacies. Endogenous industrialization was fragile, while the agro-mineral-financial export elite was persistent. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the past, the standard discussions of market failures in economics textbooks confined themselves to issues involving externalities, public goods, and common property (open access). Subsequent to George Akerlof's famous article "The Market for 'Lemons,'" discussions of the problems created by asymmetric information gradually became standard fare, but the issues raised by thinking of asymmetric information in economic matters extend far beyond the used car and health insurance markets that are normally used as the paradigm cases. In fact, consideration of the problems of information will inevitably lead to an examination of the problems of market manipulation and fraud, especially in light of the 2008 financial crisis. Akerlof has travelled this path himself as indicated by his recent book with Robert Shiller, Phishing for Phools (2015). Akerlof and Shiller provide a litany of examples of manipulation and deception in advertising and in many markets including financial markets. They also have a chapter on "The Resistance and its Heroes" that highlights some of the people and agencies that have worked to expose and reduce phishing, but this chapter is remarkably sparse. What this article attempts to do is to fill out some of this history by focusing on the work of American institutional economists from Veblen to Galbraith, who critically examined the issues of manipulation and deception in advertising, salesmanship, and finance. Some general considerations relating to the problem of fraud are also discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Kurumsal ikisat iktisadi düşünce tarihinde oldukça önemli bir yere sahiptir. En önemli temsilcisi T.B.Veblen’dir. 20. yüzyılın başlarında ortaya çıkan bu düşünce okulunun kurucusu Veblen iktisadi düşünce tarihine kurumsal iktisatın yanısıra gösteriş tüketimi, aylak sınıf, kapitalizmin istikrarı …..vb pek çok kavramı kazandırmıştır. Bunların yanısıra, Mitchell, Commons, Galbraith gibi kurumculuğun teorik temellerini oluşturan ve Ortodoks teoriyi eleştiren iki önemli öğrenci ve düşüncelerini de düşünce tarihine kazandırmıştır. Öğretileriyle T.B.Veblen isimli çalışmada kurumcu okulun Ortodoks teoriyi eleştiren ve kurumculuğun teorik temellerini oluşturan Veblen ve yanındaki diğer iktisatçıların öğretileri ve özellikle Veblenin yaşam hikayesinden yola çıkılarak düşünce dünyasına kazandırdığı kavramlar ve bu kavramların düşünce tarihinde farklı boyutlara nasıl taşındığı ve geliştirdikleri düşünsel gelişimin iktisadi boyutlarının öğreti anlamında günümüz iktisadi düşüncesine nasıl bir miras bıraktığının açıklandığı bir çalışma olmuştur..sonuçta görülmüştür ki Veblen genellikle eklektik düşünce yapısı yüzeysel fikirleri ile her ne kadar anlaşılması zor bir düşünür olarak kabul edilsede, Veblen’in yapmış olduğu çalışmalar asla küçümsenmemelidir. Çünkü interdisiplin çalışması ile iktisat tarihi incelemelerinde oldukça önem taşıyan konulardan biri olan ortodoks ve heteredoks ayrımında iktisadi düşüncede çok yönlü bir iktisatçı olarak heteredoks iktisat akımları içerisinde yer edinmiş ve düşünceleriyle geçmiş, şimdi ve gelecek dönemler için iktisat öğrencilerine düşünceleriyle bir rehber olmuştur. Sürekli bir değişim ve gelişim içerisinde olan yeni dünya düzeninde evrimsel iktisat anlayışı ile her zaman anılan Veblen’i öğrencisi Wesley Clair Mitchell’in, Veblen’in sosyal bilimler içerisindeki önemini açıklayan “Thorstein Veblen’in rahatsız edici bir etkisi vardı; döneminin en bildik düşünceleri, sanki dış güçler tarafından onun kafasında işlenen tuhaf ürünlermiş gibi, öğrencilerin bilinçsizce öğrendikleri basmakalıp sözleri didik didik eden, başka bir dünyadan gelmiş bir ziyaretçiydi o… Sosyal bilimlerde, aklı, koşulların açıklanamaz zorbalığından kurtaran başka hiçbir azat edici ve muhakeme diyarının sınırlarını bu kadar genişleten tek bir kimse yoktur” ifadesiyle Veblen’in iktisadi düşüncelerinin, düşünce dünyasını nasıl profesyonelleştirdiği de daha net bir şekilde anlatılmış olacaktır.

Veblen’s Imperial Germany is a theory of development and industrialization, and the role the business enterprise played in these processes. Through a reassessment of Veblen’s Imperial Germany, this paper explores the main aspects that Veblen considered about the industrialization of England and Germany, deriving theoretical implications for the preconditions of a successful industrialization and development, based on an evolutionary Institutional perspective. Veblen’s analysis is then used to analyze the current state of the industrialization of Latin America, evaluating the last two decades since the 1990s, and comparing the orthodox approach, the neostructural view and the Veblenian perspective, arguing for the validity of a policy framework not reduced only to targeted protectionism but emphasizing the necessity of generating the institutional preconditions suggested by Veblen in his seminal work. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article conducts groundwork for a discussion of Marx's influence through examining the boundaries of the specifically Marxian school of economics. This Marxian school extends well beyond the bounds of the self-identified Marxian school. Marx's influence, Marxian themes and effectively Marxian theory can be found in several important heterodox traditions of economics, though this is often unacknowledged. A consideration of the proper boundaries of the Marxian school of economics is essential for a full understanding of Marx's legacy and could contribute to the emergence of a more unified heterodoxy in economics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The aim of this paper is to provide a theoretical framework where, starting from the analysis of the behaviour of the firm in a Veblenian perspective, income distribution is primarily determined by technological factors, and where distributive conflicts (involving technicians vs. businessmen and workers vs. the leisure class) play a crucial role. The schema is intended to connect the works of Thorstein Veblen in the belief that the picture he presents in The theory of the leisure class is the “general case” with respect to the topics dealt with in his subsequent works [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We seek to expand and update Baldwin Ranson and Philip Klein’s articles on capital formation and power, published in the Journal of Economic Issues in 1987, by incorporating the importance of intangible assets in the process of capital formation, accumulation, and what we refer to as capital appropriation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This essay grew out of Thorstein Veblen’s observations on the struggle the19th century bourgeois had in maintaining an elegant appearance. This lead me to examine how dress adjectives such as such as elegant, smart and graceful play an important role imparting qualities to our varied forms of dress. The essay draws on Roland Barthes’ argument that without text an image would exist in a nameless zone, bereft of meaning. The essay traces the active role played by the ‘dress’ adjectives’ smart, elegant and graceful in securing the distinctive qualities- both material and immaterial-of different forms of dress. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Veblen was one of the most famous founding fathers of institutionalism who, with his pioneering studies, revolutionized economics in all its intellectual and philosophical traditions of the late nineteenth and early twentieth century. His scientific works were so influential that there are still a lot of endeavors to find out his viewpoints. Considering the unparalleled role of him in the development of institutional economics, this paper will specifically study different aspects of his ideas and thoughts. In fact, the important point is that what are the main theories and ideas of this great savant? What aspects of conventional economics were insufficient that encouraged him to build a school with the name of institutional economics? What was his methodological approach to economics? What kind of transformations this approach has created in the scope of economic knowledge? Veblen's unique vision makes such questions regarding his thoughts as considerable important ones. For, in the history of economic thought, his attack to epistemological and methodological foundations of conventional economics is one of the most serious ones. In this context, this paper will address the above questions, and scrutinize a few aspects of his important achievements and will represent some of the epistemological, methodological and theoretical innovations of his works.

The purpose of this article will be in reading acts of prosumer behaviour in social networking environments through a Veblenian lens, supported in part by the post-Marxist insights of Guy Debord, especially with respect to the issue of celebrity emulation, conspicuous leisure as constructed by the labour of profile management and promiscuous online interactivity, and acts of status enhancement or aggrandizement. Such a discussion must be set in the current context of the normative frame of neoliberal ideology which champions the values of the entrepreneurial self, devolved competitiveness as a form of - in this case social rather than strictly economic - neo-Darwinism, and the touted virtues of speed and connectivity. Ultimately, it is our hope to link these conspicuous online practices to the ideological framework to demonstrate how prosumption plays an integral role in the quantification of the social economy as expressed as “social capital.” In order to achieve these objectives, strict and operational definitions of prosumption, conspicuity in the Veblenian literature, and neoliberalism will be required. The line between social and economic capital is not a definitive one, and that the behaviours and motives associated with increasing social capital may be weighted more to the individual and influenced by neoliberal values that recode the social as derivative of the economic.

The aim of this study is to analyse both the differences and the similarities between Marx and Veblen regarding historical specificity, evolution, and alienation. Starting with their discussions on these subjects, this article builds on the analyses of capitalism. The goal of this study is not to collapse Marx and Veblen into one another but rather to understand capitalism by presenting the complementary relationship of the two economists’ analyses and to introduce an appropriate analytical framework for understanding capitalism. This study consists of three parts. The first part examines how Veblen regarded Marx’s analysis, and how Marx especially viewed Darwin’s theory of evolution. Marx’s approach to evolution and Veblen’s criticism of Marx on this topic will constitute the general framework of this part. The second part of the study evaluates the level of agreement or disagreement between Veblen and Marx on the idea of historicism from the perspective of dialectical materialism. The last part analyses Marx and Veblen’s different ideas of the concept of alienation. The two economists’ views on the capitalist system will be determined based on these three concepts, introducing the similarities between them as well as the differences.

The article aims to contribute to the convergence between institutional and neo-Schumpeterian evolutionary economics. It intends to help unify the behavioral foundations of these two strands of thought by returning to the original views of their main historical inspirations. It thus proposes a comparative analysis of the theory of human behavior developed by Thorstein Veblen and Herbert Simon, respectively. The article notably discusses how Simon's early work links together the notions of habit, rationality, and the decision-making process, and explores the extent to which his views are consistent with, complementary to, or divergent from Veblen's. The article highlights several commonalities between Simon and Veblen's views on habits. However, Simon departs from Veblen in developing a dual model of human behavior which clearly differentiates habit-based from decision-based behaviors. The article argues that neo-Schumpeterian evolutionary economists should go beyond this binary model and build on the pragmatist-Veblenian approach, in which these two dimensions are intimately entangled. This process could allow the economists in question to take advantage of the most valuable insights of institutional economics regarding the interactions between individual choices and habits and institutions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this article, I provide a detailed examination of Thorstein Veblen’s conception of instincts, what he believed were the “prime movers in human behavior.” I outline the meaning of his division of instincts into simple and complex forms, and also document his account of their operational function and evolutionary origins. I then evaluate this understanding in relation to the new field of evolutionary psychology, and demonstrate how Veblen conceived of these instincts as interacting with habits and institutions. Finally, I illustrate one method of how the bio-cognitive level of behavioral reality could be integrated with the socio-institutional level of behavioral reality, and how an intermediate-interactive level between these two could have been generated. By doing so, I emphasize the need for scientifically accurate cognitive foundations to evolutionary-institutional economics (EIE) [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The British historian Edward P. Thompson ([1971, 1991] 1993) developed the concept of “moral economy” to analyze the food riot in eighteenthcentury England. I aim to elaborate on the concept of moral economy of the common people by combining Thompson’s insights with those developed by Veblenian institutional economists. I highlight the commonalities between Thompsonian history and Veblenian economics in terms of both questions addressed and methodological principles endorsed. Finally, I emphasize the complementarities between these two bodies of work, and suggest some ways to exploit them in order to better understand the evolution of the moral economy of the common people over time. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This article explores two conflicting ethical systems: neoliberalism and institutionalism. Neoliberalism’s foundations support an overarching ethic of individual autonomy and individual responsibility. Institutionalism contrasts this conception with a view of human beings as relational. The ethical foundation of such a view requires a meta-ethic of interpersonal responsibility that supports an ethic of care. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Thorstein Veblen’s theory of the business enterprise holds that business interests come to dominate industrial interests, with pecuniary returns being the dominant mindset under which economic activity is conducted. Under moneymanager capitalism, this is reflected in the increasing importance of profits from financial channels and the accumulation of intangible rent-generating assets to serve as the basis for capitalization — a process known as financialization. I examine this process of intangible asset accumulation within the context of the American pharmaceutical industry using Veblen’s theory of the business enterprise as a lens. I show that intangible assets have come to dominate productive capital on pharmaceutical enterprise balance sheets, suggesting that pharmaceutical profits are accumulated through rent-seeking channels rather than productive ones, in line with Veblen’s theory, and provide evidence of the financialization of this industry. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Education policy has been guided by two seemingly opposing forces: (i) broadening access to the community’s knowledge base and (ii) privatizing the costs of that access. Broadening access entails helping marginal students — the poor, minorities, single women, veterans, and so on. Privatizing access involves government-provided loans and grants totaling $138 billion from 2010 to 2016 to students attending for-profit schools. This policy resulted in low graduation rates, while still enriching stock holders, giving them “something for nothing.” Addressing low graduation rates requires changing the accreditation of for-profit schools, a change that affects the allocation of federal funds, changes that the Obama administration tried to implement. The issue raises several questions. First, how would Thorstein Veblen view efforts to expand educational opportunities for students? Second, what factors gave rise to for-profit schools? And third, what policies can we enact to provide students with access to higher education? [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The question I pose in this article is just why, from its egalitarian foundations, inequality first arose. There is good information regarding how inequality has been defended over the millennia, but no answer as to why, from an egalitarian ideological foundation, some began to assert a superior position, while others — the vast majority, in fact — accepted this. In this historic process that leads to the current period, it appears that those asserting a superior position are of an “honorable” nature. That is, they tend to be mass murderers, fundamentally dishonest, hypocrites, and generally anti-social. Just why is this? Why are these “honorable men” of the Brutus type at the top of the social hierarchy? While Thorstein Veblen and Karl Marx have developed cogent analyses of inequality itself, neither has explained the origins of inequality in its break and separation from the original state of equality. I propose that this is a task for institutionalists, basing their argument on Veblen’s understanding of “institutions.” [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

After the disintegration of the Soviet Union, the Central Asian countries have been faced with numerous development challenges in agriculture, especially those related to water use. Well-intentioned foreign donors and development agencies have stepped in to support local farmers, research centers, and public authorities in devising innovative solutions. Yet, development aid projects have borne fruit only partially. Paradoxically, innovative and apparently useful technologies proposed by foreign donors have rarely and only partially succeeded in taking root in the local institutional contexts. To explain this paradox, this paper draws on the institutional approach which shows the possibility of technological innovations being encapsulated by dysfunctional institutions. Reviewing recent studies of water-related projects in Central Asia, the paper shows this encapsulation to be at the core of the development project failures pervasive both in the Soviet period and today. If the concept of encapsulation is valid, then the current development efforts can be made more effective by detecting and counteracting the structures of vested interest on the part of all the actors involved, such as foreign donors, public authorities, research centers and local farmers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A relationship exists between the political orientation and program of the Industrial Workers of the World and the attempt to forge a "heterodox economics." In past years, such a relationship was best exemplified by the work of Thorstein Veblen. In the current period, the individual best representing this relationship is Fred Lee, a member of the IWW and a leading heterodox economist. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper has two purposes. The first is to explore Thorstein Veblen's contention that the theory of discounted earnings streams is inexorably linked to monopoly power. This contention has contemporary relevance. Modern price theory follows Irving Fisher's original claim that discounted streams has universal application and is consequently divorced from any explicit reference to industrial structure. The second purpose is to examine Veblen's anthropological claim that the transformation of discounted “make-believe” streams into present values reinforces a spiritual aura surrounding financial elites and their social standing. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

In a series of articles Gowdy and Krall (2013, 2016a, 2016b) framed the process of cumulative social change as a codevelopment of hyper-individualism and ultrasociality. They argue that at the macro level the ‘global economic system’ behaves as a superorganism which has co-opted human beings' cooperative propensity in order to continuously expand its surplus value, appropriating an ever-larger share of natural resources. At the micro level, the neoliberal era has legitimized increased competition among individuals and has led to a hyper focus on the maximization of individual consumption. In their social context individuals appear to be largely oblivious or dismissive of the growing superorganism as is evidenced by public unwillingness to address situations of global environmental stress. In the context of Veblen's evolutionary thinking, this paper comments on Gowdy and Krall's articles by discussing two potential venues to ‘tame’ the superorganism: de-growth and post-nationalism. It is argued that the former may be a solution only as a result of a severe (ecological) collapse scenario. Thus if the social desire to modify the superorganism exists it will have a greater chance to succeed as a post-national project that would provide a structural scaffolding to place the superorganism within human control. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article contends that, in their treatments of worker cooperatives, the predominant theories of the firm adhere to the logic of technological determinism, and can accordingly be evaluated using the ideas of Thorstein Veblen and Karl Marx. Invoking these patriarchs’ respective distinctions between instrumental and ceremonial institutions and between the technical and social relations of production, the article argues that, contrary to contemporary theories of the firm, worker cooperatives possess an inherent but often latent advantage in implementing bureaucratic organizational structures, enjoying their instrumental/technical benefits for technology and coordination without incurring their ceremonial/social drawbacks for behavior and cooperation. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Long before the emergence of the modern brand economy, Thorstein Veblen elaborated an economic theory centered on symbolic entities. Based on his thought, this article pursues a view of the brand which escapes both sociological and economic approaches to the phenomenon. Views of the brand as a meaningful object and of the trademark as a signal of product quality omit the simple possibility that the brand, to some extent, is a symbol turned into a commodity. The article develops this possibility using Veblen’s economic theory of display, which can be read as revolving around the notion of a ‘costly symbol’. Things which necessitate waste, and thus materially attest to wealth, enter Veblen’s economy of display insofar as they become valued for their own sake. His theory thus foretells the basic transformation that characterizes the emergence of modern brand economy, where symbols which ostensibly qualified commodities became by themselves economic objects. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This project recommences an underdeveloped conversation between the sociology of technology and classical sociology. There was a vibrant and consistent interest in technology among sociology's founders between Marx and Ogburn and revisiting this tradition is beneficial for contemporary sociological studies of technology. In addition to functioning as exemplars of excellence for the sociology of technology, classical sociology provides distinctive and important considerations and contributions, including: the potential benefits of borrowing technology (Veblen), the ecological influences on technological development and use (Cooley), the impact of technology on science (Mauss), and the rationalization of technology (Weber). Most importantly, classical sociology offers partial though unique frameworks for examining technology in society and vice versa, frameworks that are novel precisely because they are out of sync with recent trends. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The purpose of this article is to provide an exposition of Thorstein Veblen’s contribution to financial macroeconomics. I argue that Veblen conceptualizes and contextualizes how the financial structure of effective demand is predisposed to endogenous non-sustainable leverage processes, manipulation, and speculation. I stress that Veblen advances a cultural-financial theory of investment and brings forward the role that pecuniary and emulation instincts play in institutionalizing predatory and fraudulent activities which destabilize the macroevolution of monetary production economies. I underline that Veblen patterns financial macroeconomic fragility and instability within the institutions of the business enterprise system. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Megaspectacles are theorized as markets for a special economic object: trophies of surplus enjoyment. Attendees at megaspectacles were found to focus their activity upon trophy markets, trophy hunting and anticipated trophy display rather than spontaneous enjoyment of the staged event. Veblen’s theory of trophies as invidious objects, and insights from Goffman, Lacan and Žižek, are used to explain these counterintuitive findings. Trophies function as distorting mirrors, reflective surfaces in which viewers misrecognize the trophy owner’s apparent experience of legendary pleasures as their own dispossessed surplus enjoyment. Megaspectacles produce and sustain envy inducing legends and ritually load trophies with three forms of potential envy: status trophies (envy of symbolic prowess), action trophies (envy of imaginary risk taking) and trophies of jouissance (envious yet repressed desire for libidinal pleasure). Megaspectacles do not directly pleasure their attendees, but provide them with trophies of surplus enjoyment to disturb and disrupt the pleasure of others. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Neoliberalism has come out of the financial crisis unscathed. Moreover, it has further asserted its dominance over geopolitical discourse and ideology worldwide. I contend that neoliberal supremacy in the policy arena and upon domestic and international institutions has been largely uncontested because it has penetrated all aspects of life to the extent that it now represents what Thorstein Veblen referred to as "the modern point of view." Understanding the global power of neoliberalism requires examining not only its well-established hegemony over institutions as social constructs, but also its impact on habits of thought as mental constructs. From a Veblenian perspective, I argue that the neoliberal doctrine generates habits of thought which legitimize the transformation of a marketoriented economy into a full-fledged market society. The impact of the normalization of the neoliberal mode of behavior may, in the end, worsen the fracture between nation and state and unravel the fabric of society by justifying fully detached, emotion-free, and self-centered actions that crowd-out pro-social behaviors and challenge any social conception of the common good. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As capitalism unfolds, continual technological advance -- in combination with the relentless accumulation imperative -- serves to amplify material progress. The expanding economic sphere begins to pervade the everyday lives and thinking of the individual. The institutionalization of the market fundamentally changes the structure of society and, in so doing, fundamentally changes the institutional structure through which individuals are socialized. The social dislocation generated therein prompts Karl Polanyi's protective response. Despite this market intensification, the existence of the economic surplus undermines the syllogistics of market-determined pricing. Evidence of the economic surplus and Veblenian waste as well as of the fact that the competitive law of value is not operable under neoliberalism is found in the lobby industry and campaign contributions. This research seeks to explicitly connect the concepts of Polanyi's protective response with Veblenian waste and the economic surplus in order to better understand how the irrational system of neoliberalism continues to evolve. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]