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The influential economist and philosopher Thorstein Veblen (1857-1929) was one of the most original and penetrating critics of American culture and institutions, and his work attracted and still attracts the attention of scholars from a wide range of political viewpoints and scholarly disciplines. Focusing on the doctrinal and theoretical facets of Veblen's political economy, this book offers a study not only of his ideas but also of the way his critics have responded to them. Rick Tilman assesses the weight of the critics' reactions, both positive and negative, as well as exposing their so

This is the first systematic analysis of the intellectual and cultural relationship between Thorstein Veblen's sympathetic view of Marxism and ideological affinities with Italian Marxist-Leninist Communists and his Marxist European contemporaries.

"Tilman argues that evolutionary naturalism provides the philosophical foundations of Veblen's thought. He links evolutionary naturalism to Veblen's aesthetics, secular humanism, sociology of control, sociobiology, and sociology of knowledge, thereby initiating observations regarding the relationship of Veblen's own life to his thinking and his place as a cultural lag theorist"--Provided by publisher

In recent years the reputation of Herbert Spencer (1820-1903) has undergone a transformation. Indeed, until the mid-1970s the answer to the rhetorical question, "Who reads Spencer now?" would surely have been "hardly anyone." However, since then sociologist Jonathan Turner, intellectual historian Robert Bannister, political scientist Robert Perrin and dozens of economists and humanists have contributed to reconsideration of his role in nineteenth-century thought. They have also reinterpreted the corpus of his work and suggested new ways to utilize his contributions as a social theorist. Most important for our purposes is their effort to demonstrate that his stances on policy issues were not as mean-spirited as his critics have claimed. Indeed, Bannister, for example, forcefully argues that neither Spencer nor his American contemporary, William Graham Summer, were as consistently in favor oflaissez faireor as harsh in their attitudes toward the underprivileged and the lower classes as scholarly convention once had it.

Explores the relation of neoclassical economists to Thorstein Veblen's concept of wasteful consumption, arguing that avoidance of interpersonal comparisons of utility in modern economics prevents useful analyses of consumption, & most neoclassical economists are too uneducated about modern philosophy/social value theory to be able to determine whether or not consumption is wasteful. Further, personal involvement in wasteful consumption by well-off economists, coupled with fear of government intervention in personal choices, inhibits objective evaluations of wasteful consumption patterns. It is suggested that scholars who work in the Veblenian tradition are in a better position to call attention to wasteful consumption & recommend policies to combat it. The "value agnosticism" of modern economics is examined, along with rationalizations used by neoclassical economists to avoid substantive analyses of the qualitative composition of consumer preference formations. It is contended that mistaking moral agnosticism for scientific neutrality has kept economists in a state of suspended judgment that thwarts policy analysis in spite of affirmations of Veblen's hypotheses regarding consumption. J. Lindroth

John Dewey (1859-1952) is easily the most influential philosopher America has produced and Thorstein Veblen (1857-1929) is arguably the most influential American heterodox economist. Although scholars have often pondered both their intellectual and personal relationship, until recently no firm conclusions could accurately be drawn. Due to the lack of correspondence between the two men and the brevity of Veblen's comments on and citations of Dewey, it is difficult to know what the former thought of the latter both in terms of personality and economic ideas. But, fortunately, Dewey cited Veblen and commented on his economic thought on many occasions so it is possible to at least partly reconstruct one-half of the relationship. This reconstruction will be the focus of this article, emphasizing: (1) their biographical intersections and convergences; (2) Dewey's ideas about economics and the economy; (3) Dewey's explicit use of Veblen's economic ideas in his own published work; and (4) Dewey's critical comments in his correspondence regarding Veblen's interpretation of pragmatism and his development as a social theorist.