12)īut men’s hunting and fighting are both of the same general character. 11)Įmployments such as warfare, politics, public worship, and public merry-making, are felt, in the popular apprehension, to differ intrinsically from the labour that has to do with elaborating the material means of life. The institution of leisure class is the outgrowth of an early discrimination between employments, according to which some employments are worthy and others unworthy. … It is a distinction of a personal kind – of superiority and inferiority. As on the higher plane… these employments are government, warfare, religious observances, and sports. (p. … The men of the upper classes are not only exempt, but by prescriptive custom they are debarred, from all industrial occupations. The range of employments open to them is rigidly defined. Manual labour, industry, whatever has to do with the everyday work of getting a livelihood, is the exclusive occupation of the inferior class. … the rule holds with but slight exceptions that, whether warriors or priests, the upper classes are exempt from industrial employments, and this exemption is the economic expression of their superior rank. Pecuniary: Relating to or consisting of moneyĬhief among the honorable employments in any feudal community is warfare and priestly service is commonly second to warfare.Conspicuous: Attracting notice or attention.I’d like to share my favorite parts with you, but first, a little vocabulary to help with your reading: Published in 1899, the book is an economic treatise and detailed social critique of conspicuous consumption, as a function of social-class consumerism, which proposes that the social strata and the division of labor of the feudal period continued into the modern era. If you’re looking for a non-Marxist critique of Capitalism and modern society in general, then you need to read Thorstein Veblen’s The Theory of the Leisure Class.
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