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Internet Modern History Sourcebook
Thorstein Veblen:
Conspicuous Consumption, 1902
In what has been said of the evolution of the vicarious leisure class and its
differentiation from the general body of the working classes, reference has been made to a
further division of labour, --that between different servant classes. One portion of the
servant class, chiefly those persons whose occupation is vicarious leisure, come to
undertake a new, subsidiary range of duties--the vicarious consumption of goods. The most
obvious form in which this consumption occurs is seen in the wearing of liveries and the
occupation of spacious servants' quarters. Another, scarcely less obtrusive or less
effective form of vicarious consumption, and a much more widely prevalent one, is the
consumption of food, clothing, dwelling, and furniture by the lady and the rest of the
domestic establishment.
But already at a point in economic evolution far antedating the emergence of the lady,
specialised consumption of goods as an evidence of pecuniary strength had begun to work
out in a more or less elaborate system. The beginning of a differentiation in consumption
even antedates the appearance of anything that can fairly be called pecuniary strength. It
is traceable back to the initial phase of predatory culture, and there is even a
suggestion that an incipient differentiation in this respect lies back of the beginnings
of the predatory life. . . .
In the earlier phases of the predatory culture the only economic differentiation is a
broad distinction between an honourable superior class made up of the able-bodied men on
the one side, and a base inferior class of labouring women on the other. According to the
ideal scheme of life in force at that time it is the office of the men to consume what the
women produce. Such consumption as falls to the women is merely incidental to their work;
it is a means to their continued labour, and not a consumption directed to their own
comfort and fullness of life. Unproductive consumption of goods is honourable, primarily
as a mark of prowess and a perquisite of human dignity; secondarily it becomes
substantially honourable in itself, especially the consumption of the more desirable
things. The consumption of choice articles of food, and frequently also of rare articles
of adornment, becomes tabu to the women and children; and if there is a base (servile)
class of men, the tabu holds also for them. With a further advance in culture this tabu
may change into simple custom of a more or less rigorous character; but whatever be the
theoretical basis of the distinction which is maintained, whether it be a tabu or a larger
conventionality, the features of the conventional scheme of consumption do not change
easily. When the quasi-peaceable stage of industry is reached, with its fundamental
institution of chattel slavery, the general principle, more or less rigorously applied, is
that the base, industrious class should consume only what may be necessary to their
subsistence. In the nature of things, luxuries and the comforts of life belong to the
leisure class. Under the tabu, certain victuals, and more particularly certain beverages,
are strictly reserved for the use of the superior class.
The ceremonial differentiation of the dietary is best seen in the use of intoxicating
beverages and narcotics. If these articles of consumption are costly, they are felt to be
noble and honorific. Therefore the base classes, primarily the women, practise an enforced
continence with respect to these stimulants, except in countries where they are obtainable
at a very low cost. From archaic times down through all the length of the patriarchical
regime it has been the office of the women to prepare and administer these luxuries, and
it has been the perquisite of the men of gentle birth and breeding to consume them.
Drunkenness and the other pathological consequences of the free use of stimulants
therefore tend in their turn to become honorific, as being a mark, at the second remove,
of the superior status of those who are able to afford the indulgence. Infirmities induced
by over-indulgence are among some peoples freely recognised as manly attributes. It has
even happened that the name for certain diseased conditions of the body arising from such
an origin has passed into everyday speech as a synonym for "noble" or
"gentle." It is only at a relatively early stage of culture that the symptoms of
expensive vice are conventionally accepted as marks of a superior status, and so tend to
become virtues and command the deference of the community; but the reputability that
attaches to certain expensive vices long retains so much of its force as to appreciably
lessen the disapprobation visited upon the men of the wealthy or noble class for any
excessive indulgence. The same invidious distinction adds force to the current disapproval
of any indulgence of this kind on the part of women, minors, and inferiors. This invidious
traditional distinction has not lost its force even among the more advanced peoples of
to-day. Where the example set by the leisure class retains its imperative force in the
regulation of the conventionalities, it is observable that the women still in great
measure practise the same traditional continence with regard to stimulants.
****
During the earlier stages of economic development, consumption of goods without stint,
especially consumption of the better grades of goods,--ideally all consumption in excess
of the subsistence minimum, --pertains normally to the leisure class. This restriction
tends to disappear, at least formally, after the later peaceable stage has been reached,
with private ownership of goods and an industrial system based on wage labour or on the
petty household economy. But during the earlier quasi-peaceable stage, when so many of the
traditions through which the institution of a leisure class has affected the economic life
of later times were taking form and consistency, this principle has had the force of a
conventional law. It has served as the norm to which consumption has tended to conform,
and any appreciable departure from it is to be regarded as an aberrant form, sure to be
eliminated sooner or later in the further course of development.
The quasi-peaceable gentleman of leisure, then, not only consumes of the staff of life
beyond the minimum required for subsistence and physical efficiency, but his consumption
also undergoes a specialisation as regards the quality of the goods consumed. He consumes
freely and of the best, in food, drink, narcotics, shelter, services, ornaments, apparel,
weapons and accoutrements, amusements, amulets, and idols or divinities. In the process of
gradual amelioration which takes place in the articles of his consumption, the motive
principle and the proximate aim of innovation is no doubt the higher efficiency of the
improved and more elaborate products for personal comfort and well-being. But that does
not remain the sole purpose of their consumption. The canon of reputability is at hand and
seizes upon such innovations as are, according to its standard, fit to survive. Since the
consumption of these more excellent goods is an evidence of wealth, it becomes honorific;
and conversely, the failure to consume in due quantity and quality becomes a mark of
inferiority and demerit.
This growth of punctilious discrimination as to qualitative excellence in eating,
drinking, etc., presently affects not only the manner of life, but also the training and
intellectual activity of the gentleman of leisure. He is no longer simply the successful,
aggressive male,--the man of strength, resource, and intrepidity. In order to avoid
stultification he must also cultivate his tastes, for it now becomes incumbent on him to
discriminate with some nicety between the noble and the ignoble in consumable goods. He
becomes a connoisseur in creditable viands of various degrees of merit, in manly beverages
and trinkets, in seemly apparel and architecture, in weapons, games, dancers, and the
narcotics. This cultivation of the aesthetic faculty requires time and application, and
the demands made upon the gentleman in this direction therefore tend to change his life of
leisure into a more or less arduous application to the business of learning how to live a
life of ostensible leisure in a becoming way. Closely related to the requirement that the
gentleman must consume freely and of the right kind of goods, there is the requirement
that he must know how to consume them in a seemly manner. His life of leisure must be
conducted in due form. Hence arise good manners in the way pointed out in an earlier
chapter. High-bred manners and ways of living are items of conformity to the norm of
conspicuous leisure and conspicuous consumption.
Conspicuous consumption of valuable goods is a means of reputability to the gentleman
of leisure. As wealth accumulates on his hands, his own unaided effort will not avail to
sufficiently put his opulence in evidence by this method. The aid of friends and
competitors is therefore brought in by resorting to the giving of valuable presents and
expensive feasts and entertainments. Presents and feasts had probably another origin than
that of naive ostentation, but they acquired their utility for this purpose very early, and they have retained that character to the present; so that their utility in this
respect has now long been the substantial ground on which these usages rest. Costly
entertainments, such as the potlatch or the ball, are peculiarly adapted to serve this
end. The competitor with whom the entertainer wishes to institute a comparison is, by this
method, made to sense as a means to the end. He consumes vicariously for his host at the
same time that he is a witness to the consumption of that excess of good things which his
host is unable to dispose of single-handed, and he is also made to witness his host's
facility in etiquette.
****
As wealth accumulates, the leisure class develops further in function and structure,
and there arises a differentiation within the class. There is a more or less elaborate
system of rank and grades. This differentiation is furthered by the inheritance of wealth
and the consequent inheritance of gentility. With the inheritance of gentility goes the
inheritance of obligatory leisure; and gentility of a sufficient potency to entail a life
of leisure may be inherited without the complement of wealth required to maintain a
dignified leisure. Gentle blood may be transmitted without goods enough to afford a
reputably free consumption at one's ease. Hence results a class of impecunious gentlemen
of leisure, incidentally referred to already. These half-caste gentlemen of leisure fall
into a system of hierarchical gradations. Those who stand near the higher and the highest
grades of the wealthy leisure class, in point of birth, or in point of wealth, or both,
outrank the remoter-born and the pecuniarily weaker. These lower grades, especially the
impecunious, or marginal, gentlemen of leisure, affiliate themselves by a system of
dependence or fealty to the great ones; by so doing they gain an increment of repute, or
of the means with which to lead a life of leisure, from their patron. They become his
courtiers or retainers, servants; and being fed and countenanced by their patron they are
indices of his rank and vicarious consumers of his superfluous wealth. Many of these
affiliated gentlemen of leisure are at the same time lesser men of substance in their own
right; so that some of them are scarcely at all, others only partially, to be rated as
vicarious consumers. So many of them, however, as make up the retainers and hangers-on of
the patron may be classed as vicarious consumers without qualification. Many of these
again, and also many of the other aristocracy of less degree, have in turn attached to
their persons a more or less comprehensive group of vicarious consumers in the persons of
their wives and children, their servants, retainers, etc. ****
With the disappearance of servitude, the number of vicarious consumers attached to any
one gentleman tends, on the whole, to decrease. The like is of course true, and perhaps in
a still higher degree, of the number of dependents who perform vicarious leisure for him.
In a general way, though not wholly nor consistently, these two groups coincide. The
dependent who was first delegated for these duties was the wife, or the chief wife; and,
as would be expected, in the later development of the institution, when the number of
persons by whom these duties are customarily performed gradually narrows, the wife remains
the last. In the higher grades of society a large volume of both these kinds of service is
required; and here the wife is of course still assisted in the work by a more or less
numerous corps of menials. But as we descend the social scale, the point is presently
reached where the duties of vicarious leisure and consumption devolve upon the wife alone.
In the communities of the Western culture, this point is at present found among the lower
middle class.
And here occurs a curious inversion. It is a fact of common observation that in this
lower middle class there is no pretence of leisure on the part of the head of the
household. Through force of circumstances it has fallen into disuse. But the middle-class
wife still carries on the business of vicarious leisure, for the good name of the
household and its master . In descending the social scale in any modern industrial
community, the primary fact--the conspicuous leisure of the master of the household--
disappears at a relatively high point. The head of the middle-class household has been
reduced by economic circumstances to turn his hand to gaining a livelihood by occupations
which often partake largely of the character of industry, as in the case of the ordinary
business man of today. But the derivative fact--the vicarious leisure and consumption
rendered by the wife, and the auxiliary vicarious performance of leisure by
menials--remains in vogue as a conventionality which the demands of reputability will not
suffer to be slighted. It is by no means an uncommon spectacle to find a man applying
himself to work with the utmost assiduity, in order that his wife may in due form render
for him that degree of vicarious leisure which the common sense of the time demands.
The leisure rendered by the wife in such cases is, of course, not a simple
manifestation of idleness or indolence. It almost invariably occurs disguised under some
form of work or household duties or social amenities, which prove on analysis to serve
little or no ulterior end beyond showing that she does not and need not occupy herself
with anything that is gainful or that is of substantial use. As has already been noticed
under the head of manners, the greater part of the customary round of domestic cares to
which the middle-class housewife gives her time and effort is of this character. Not that
the results of her attention to household matters, of a decorative and mundificatory
character, are not pleasing to the sense of men trained in middle-class proprieties; but
the taste to which these effects of household adornment and tidiness appeal is a taste
which has been formed under the selective guidance of a canon of propriety that demands
just these evidences of wasted effort. The effects are pleasing to us chiefly because we
have been taught to find them pleasing. There goes into these domestic duties much
solicitude for a proper combination of form and colour, and for other ends that are to be
classed as aesthetic in the proper sense of the term; and it is not denied that effects
having some substantial aesthetic value are sometimes attained. Pretty much all that is
here insisted on is that, as regards these amenities of life, the housewife's efforts are
under the guidance of traditions that have been shaped by the law of conspicuously
wasteful expenditure of time and substance. If beauty or comfort is achieved,--and it is a
more or less fortuitous circumstance if they are,-- they must be achieved by means and
methods that commend themselves to the great economic law of wasted effort. The more
reputable, "presentable" portion of middle-class household paraphernalia are, on
the one hand, items of conspicuous consumption, and on the other hand, apparatus for
putting in evidence the vicarious leisure rendered by the housewife.
The requirement of vicarious consumption at the hands of the wife continues in force
even at a lower point in the pecuniary scale than the requirement of vicarious leisure. At
a point below which little if any pretence of wasted effort, in ceremonial cleanness and
the like, is observable, and where there is assuredly no conscious attempt at ostensible
leisure, decency still requires the wife to consume some goods conspicuously for the
reputability of the household and its head. So that, as the latter-day outcome of this
evolution of an archaic institution, the wife, who was at the outset the drudge and
chattel of the man, both in fact and in theory,--the producer of goods for him to
consume,--has become the ceremonial consumer of goods which he produces. But she still
quite unmistakably remains his chattel in theory; for the habitual rendering of vicarious
leisure and consumption is the abiding mark of the unfree servant.
This vicarious consumption practised by the household of the middle and lower classes
can not be counted as a direct expression of the leisure-class scheme of life, since the
household of this pecuniary grade does not belong within the leisure class. It is rather
that the leisure-class scheme of life here comes to an expression at the second remove.
The leisure class stands at the head of the social structure in point of reputability; and
its manner of life and its standards of worth therefore afford the norm of reputability
for the community. The observance of these standards, in some degree of approximation,
becomes incumbent upon all classes lower in the scale. In modern civilized communities the
lines of demarcation between social classes have grown vague and transient, and wherever
this happens the norm of reputability imposed by the upper class extends its coercive
influence with but slight hindrance down through the social structure to the lowest
strata. The result is that the members of each stratum accept as their ideal of decency
the scheme of life in vogue in the next higher stratum, and bend their energies to live up
to that ideal. On pain of forfeiting their good name and their self-respect in case of
failure, they must conform to the accepted code, at least in appearance.
The basis on which good repute in any highly organised industrial community ultimately
rests is pecuniary strength; and the means of showing pecuniary strength, and so of
gaining or retaining a good name, are leisure and a conspicuous consumption of goods.
Accordingly, both of these methods are in vogue as far down the scale as it remains
possible; and in the lower strata in which the two methods are employed, both offices are
in great part delegated to the wife and children of the household. Lower still, where any
degree of leisure, even ostensible, has become impracticable for the wife, the conspicuous
consumption of goods remains and is carried on by the wife and children. The man of the
household also can do something in this direction, and, indeed, he commonly does; but with
a still lower descent into the levels of indigence--along the margin of the Slums--the
man, and presently also the children, virtually cease to consume valuable goods for
appearances, and the woman remains virtually the sole exponent of the household's
pecuniary decency. No class of society not even the most abjectly poor, foregoes all
customary conspicuous consumption. The last items of this category of consumption are not
given up except under stress of the direst necessity. Very much of squalor and discomfort
will be endured before the last trinket or the last pretence of pecuniary decency is put
away. There is no class and no country that has yielded so abjectly before the pressure of
physical want as to deny themselves all gratification of this higher or spiritual need.
From the foregoing survey of the growth of conspicuous leisure and consumption, it
appears that the utility of both alike for the purposes of reputability lies in the
element of waste that is common to both. In the one case it is a waste of time and effort,
in the other it is a waste of goods. Both are methods of demonstrating the possession of
wealth, and the two are conventionally accepted as equivalents. The choice between them is
a question of advertising expediency simply, except so far as it may be affected by other
standards of propriety springing from a different source. On grounds of expediency the
preference may be given to the one or the other at different stages of the economic
development. The question is, which of the two methods will most effectively reach the
persons whose convictions it is desired to affect. Usage has answered this question in
different ways under different circumstances.
So long as the community or social group is small enough and compact enough to be
effectually reached by common notoriety alone,-- that is to say, so long as the human
environment to which the individual is required to adapt himself in respect of
reputability is comprised within his sphere of personal acquaintance and neighbourhood
gossip, --so long the one method is about as effective as the other. Each will therefore
serve about equally well during the earlier stages of social growth. But when the
differentiation has gone farther and it becomes necessary to reach a wider human
environment, consumption begins to hold over leisure as an ordinary means of decency. This
is especially true during the later, peaceable economic stage. The means of communication
and the mobility of the population now expose the individual to the observation of many
persons who have no other means of judging of his reputability than the display of goods
(and perhaps of breeding) which he is able to make while he is under their direct
observation.
The modern organisation of industry works in the same direction also by another line.
The exigencies of the modern industrial system frequently place individuals and households
in juxtaposition between whom there is little contact in any other sense than that of
juxtaposition. One's neighbours, mechanically speaking, often are socially not one's
neighbours, or even acquaintances; and still their transient good opinion has a high
degree of utility. The only practicable means of impressing one's pecuniary ability on
these unsympathetic observers of one's everyday life is an unremitting demonstration of
ability to pay. In the modern community there is also a more frequent attendance at large
gatherings of people to whom one's everyday life is unknown; in such places as churches,
theatres, ballrooms, hotels, parks, shops, and the like. In order to impress these
transient observers, and to retain one's self-complacency under their observation, the
signature of one's pecuniary strength should be written in characters which he who runs
may read. It is evident, therefore, that the present trend of the development is in the
direction of heightening the utility of conspicuous consumption as compared with leisure.
It is also noticeable that the serviceability of consumption as a means of repute, as
well as the insistence on it as an element of decency, is at its best in those portions of
the community where the human contact of the individual is widest and the mobility of the
population is greatest. Conspicuous consumption claims a relatively larger portion of the
income of the urban than of the rural population, and the claim is also more imperative.
The result is that, in order to keep up a decent appearance, the former habitually live
hand-to-mouth to a greater extent than the latter. So it comes, for instance, that the
American farmer and his wife and daughters are notoriously less modish in their dress, as
well as less urbane in their manners, than the city artisan's family with an equal income.
It is not that the city population is by nature much more eager for the peculiar
complacency that comes of a conspicuous consumption, nor has the rural population less
regard for pecuniary decency. But the provocation to this line of evidence, as well as its
transient effectiveness, are more decided in the city. This method is therefore more
readily resorted to, and in the struggle to outdo one another the city population push
their normal standard of conspicuous consumption to a higher point, with the result that a
relatively greater expenditure in this direction is required to indicate a given degree of
pecuniary decency in the city. The requirement of conformity to this higher conventional
standard becomes mandatory. The standard of decency is higher, class for class, and this
requirement of decent appearance must be lived up to on pain of losing caste.
Consumption becomes a larger element in the standard of living in the city than in the
country. Among the country population its place is to some extent taken by savings and
home comforts known through the medium of neighbourhood gossip sufficiently to serve the
like general purpose of pecuniary repute. These home comforts and the leisure indulged
in--where the indulgence is found--are of course also in great part to be classed as stems
of conspicuous consumption; and much the same is to be said of the savings. The smaller
amount of the savings laid by by the artisan class is no doubt due, in some measure, to
the fact that in the case of the artisan the savings are a less effective means of
advertisement, relative to the environment in which he is placed, than are the savings of
the people living on farms and in the small villages. Among the latter, everybody's
affairs, especially everybody's pecuniary status, are known to everybody else. Considered
by itself simply--taken in the first degree--this added provocation to which the artisan
and the urban labouring classes are exposed may not very seriously decrease the amount of
savings; but in its cumulative action, through raising the standard of decent expenditure,
its deterrent effect on the tendency to save cannot but be very great.
****
But there are other standards of repute and other, more or less imperative, canons of
conduct, besides wealth and its manifestation, and some of these come in to accentuate or
to qualify the broad, fundamental canon of conspicuous waste. Under the simple test of
effectiveness for advertising, we should expect to find leisure and the conspicuous
consumption of goods dividing the field of pecuniary emulation pretty evenly between them
at the outset. Leisure might then be expected gradually to yield ground and tend to
obsolescence as the economic development goes forward, and the community increases in
size; while the conspicuous consumption of goods should gradually gain in importance, both
absolutely and relatively, until it had absorbed all the available product, leaving
nothing over beyond a bare livelihood. But the actual course of development has been
somewhat different from this ideal scheme. Leisure held the first place at the start, and
came to hold a rank very much above wasteful consumption of goods, both as a direct
exponent of wealth and as an element in the standard of decency, during the
quasi-peaceable culture. From that point onward, consumption has gained ground, until, at
present, it unquestionably holds the primacy, though it is still far from absorbing the
entire margin of production above the subsistence minimum. ****
Throughout the entire evolution of conspicuous expenditure, whether of goods or of
services or human life, runs the obvious implication that in order to effectually mend the
consumer's good fame it must be an expenditure of superfluities. In order to be reputable
it must be wasteful. No merit would accrue from the consumption of the bare necessaries of
life, except by comparison with the abjectly poor who fall short even of the subsistence
minimum; and no standard of expenditure could result from such a comparison, except the
most prosaic and unattractive level of decency. A standard of life would still be possible
which should admit of invidious comparison in other respects than that of opulence; as,
for instance, a comparison in various directions in the manifestation of moral, physical,
intellectual, or aesthetic force. Comparison in all these directions is in vogue to-day;
and the comparison made in these respects is commonly so inextricably bound up with the
pecuniary comparison as to be scarcely distinguishable from the latter. This is especially
true as regards the current rating of expressions of intellectual and aesthetic force or
proficiency; so that we frequently interpret as aesthetic or intellectual a difference
which in substance is pecuniary only.
The use of the term "waste" is in one respect an unfortunate one. As used in
the speech of everyday life the word carries an undertone of deprecation. It is here used
for want of a better term that will adequately describe the same range of motives and of
phenomena, and it is not to be taken in an odious sense, as implying an illegitimate
expenditure of human products or of human life. In the view of economic theory the
expenditure in question is no more and no less legitimate than any other expenditure. It
is here called "caste" because this expenditure does not serve human life or
human well-being on the whole, not because it is waste or misdirection of effort or
expenditure as viewed from the standpoint of the individual consumer who chooses it. If he
chooses it, that disposes of the question of its relative utility to him, as compared with
other forms of consumption that would not be deprecated on account of their wastefulness.
Whatever form of expenditure the consumer chooses, or whatever end he seeks in making his
choice, has utility to him by virtue of his preference. As seen from the point of view of
the individual consumer, the question of wastefulness does not arise within the scope of
economic theory proper. The use of the word "waste" as a technical term,
therefore, implies no deprecation of the motives or of the ends sought by the consumer
under this canon of conspicuous waste.
****
It is obviously not necessary that a given object of expenditure should be exclusively
wasteful in order to come in under the category of conspicuous waste. An article may be
useful and wasteful both, and its utility to the consumer may be made up of use and waste
in the most varying proportions. Consumable goods, and even productive goods generally
show the two elements in combination, as constituents of their utility; although, in a
general way, the element of waste tends to predominate in articles of consumption, while
the contrary is true of articles designed for productive use. Even in articles which
appear at first glance to serve for pure ostentation only, it is always possible to detect
the presence of some, at least ostensible, useful purpose; and on the other hand, even in
special machinery and tools contrived for some particular industrial process, as well as
in the rudest appliances of human industry, the traces of conspicuous waste, or at least
of the habit of ostentation, usually become evident on a close scrutiny. It would be
hazardous to assert that a useful purpose is ever absent from the utility of any article
or of any service, however obviously its prime purpose and chief element is conspicuous
waste; and it would be only less hazardous to assert of any primarily useful product that
the element of waste is in no way concerned in its value, immediately or remotely.
Source:
From Thorstein Veblen, The Theory of the Leisure Class: An Economic Study of
Institutions (New York: Macmillan, 1902), pp. 68-101
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