Theory of the Leisure Class: An Economic Study of Institutions (The Modern Library of the World's Best Books, ML 63)

xv, 404 pp. Foreword by Stuart Chase. An economic treatise and detailed social critique of conspicuous consumption, as a function of social-class consumerism. It proposes that the social strata and the division of labor of the feudal period continued into the modern era. Includes: Biographical Note; Bibliography; Preface; Foreword; Introductory; Pecuniary Emulation; Conspicuous Leisure; Conspicuous Consumption; Pecuniary Standard of Living; Pecuniary Canons of Taste; Dress as an Expression of the Pecuniary Culture; Industrial Exemption and Conservatism; Conservation of Archaic Traits; Modern Survivals of Prowess; Belief in Luck; Devout Observations; Survivals of the Non-Invidious Interest; High Learning as an Expression of the Pecuniary Culture. ABOUT THE AUTHOR: "Thorstein Bunde Veblen (born Tosten Bunde Veblen July 30, 1857 - August 3, 1929) was a Norwegian-American sociologist and economist and a founder, along with John R. Commons, of the Institutional economics movement. He was an impassioned critic of the performance of the American economy, and is most famous for his book The Theory of the Leisure Class (1899)."