The Importance of Thorstein Veblen for Contemporary Marxism

The Darwinian Evolutionary Perspectives of Engels and Veblen

“…This perspective of Veblen's instincts was also adopted by Ayres. Ayres expressed no doubt as to Veblen's intent: "Clearly when he spoke of instincts, he had in mind culturally significant patterns of behaviour which have persisted from the earliest known cultures to the present" [16], see also [3], [17]. If Ayres was correct, then Veblen was an institutional economist as I have come to understand that designation.…”

Good for business, good without reservation? Veblen’s critique of business enterprise and pecuniary culture

“…Just as intellectual kinship may at times be overstated so too might differences. Notwithstanding reservations expressed by Veblen (2011c [1906]) about aspects of Marx’s work, the substantive analyses of capitalist economic life they provide have been judged ‘quite compatible’, as complementing one another in significant respects (Hunt, 1979: 114). Veblen viewed American capitalism ‘as an inherently crisis-ridden social system’ and his work has been considered to belong ‘in a broadly defined Marxian tradition’ (Davis, 1957: 52 ; 1991).…”

“…Veblen viewed American capitalism ‘as an inherently crisis-ridden social system’ and his work has been considered to belong ‘in a broadly defined Marxian tradition’ (Davis, 1957: 52 ; 1991). While they held different ideas about historical origins, both considered capitalism to be ‘characterized by an intense class struggle … waged primarily over the conditions of employment, wages, and general working conditions’ (Hunt, 1979: 124) and as another analyst notes: the ‘general framework of Veblen’s theory of capitalism is remarkably similar to Marx’s and was doubtless largely derived from that source … [the] Veblenian framework is fundamentally Marxian’ (Sweezy, 1958: 179–180). And on the eve of the 2008 global economic crisis, William Dugger (2007) observed, Both Marx and Veblen believed that the social system of which they were part was unjust and wasteful … [and] sought to explain how a minority of people could get away with taking advantage of the vast majority … the principal difference … is that Marx constructed a labour theory of value to explain how capitalists grew rich through exploiting the workers while Veblen constructed a theory of business enterprise to show how business people grew rich at the expense of the underlying population … Marx emphasized the exploitation of the working class through the capitalist class’s control of the production process; while Veblen emphasized the exploitation of the underlying population through the control of the market system by big business and big government.…”

Thorstein Veblen: A Marxist Starting Point

“…He does, however, wish to distinguish himself on the basis of what constitutes class, which he sees as "a question not of relative wealth, but of work" (Veblen [1904(Veblen [ ] 1975. Sweezy argues that while Veblen's notion of class comes "closer" to that of Marx in his later work Absentee Ownership, the Veblenian and Marxian notions of class are easily not only complementary to Marx's own ideas on the nature of labor, but as Hunt observes, adds an important dimension to Marxism with his thoroughgoing account of imperialism, nationalism, and emulative consumption 15 as factors that absorb this would-be radical aspect of society (Hunt 1979).…”

“…6 The first of these, developed in part by E.K. Hunt (1979), seeks to distance Marx's use of dialectics from that of Hegel. Drawing on the work of Lucio Colletti (1973), Hunt insists dialectics do not serve as an ontology of matter for Marx, but rather act as an epistemological device that reveals the 'paradoxical' nature of the human condition.…”