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Ideology and the Intellectual: A Study of Thorstein Veblen

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  14 March 2022

Walter P. Metzger
Walter P. Metzger*
Affiliation:
State University of Iowa
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Extract

Another critical analysis of the intellectual antecedents or the logical structure of Thorstein Veblen's thought is hardly needed. Since his death—iconoclasm's reward is often posthumous—a goodly number of such studies has appeared. I do not intend to add to the pile, but rather to analyze Veblen's work as representative of the response of “intellectuals” to specific ideologies and to ideology in general. This is a subject that has not received the direct attention it deserves, and, to my knowledge, Veblen has never been studied in this connection.

By “ideology” I mean a system of beliefs that presents value-judgments as empirical truths in order to justify, with or without conscious intent, a particular socio-economic group's claim to material and prestigial rewards. The valuejudgments in an ideology fall into two categories: those which have to do with a hero-subject, individual or group, whom the ideologue believes worthy of the rewards, and those which concern a villain-subject, individual or group, whom the ideologue believes unworthy. To win general acceptance of these valuejudgments an ideology also contains a set of reality-statements. These, in purporting to tell the “truth” about the world—about men, nature, God—serve to objectify, and thus justify, the choice of the hero and villain-subjects.

Type
Research Article
Information
Philosophy of Science , Volume 16 , Issue 2 , April 1949 , pp. 125 - 133
Copyright
Copyright © The Philosophy of Science Association

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References

Notes

1 Cf. Hobson, J. A., Veblen, (N. Y. 1937); Dorfman, J., Thorstein Veblen and His America' (H. Y. 1934); Duffus, R. L., Innocents at Cedro, (N. Y. 1944); Mitchell, W. C., Introduction to What Veblen Taught; Schneider, Louis, The Freudian Psychology and Veblen's Social Theory, (N. Y. 1948).

2 This paper has grown out of a seminar conducted by Professor Gustav Bergmann at the State University of Iowa.

3 Ideology, as here understood, is thus more than party program but less than the total Weltanschauung of Karl Mannheim's definition. Cf. Mannheim, Karl, Ideology and Utopia, (N. Y. 1936).

4 Differing again from Mannheim, who calls aspiring ideology “utopia“.

5 Cf. The Vested Interests and the State of the Industrial Arts, (N. Y. 1919), pp. 89, 157, 163; The Engineers and the Price System, (N. Y. 1921), pp. 126–127; The Theory of Business Enterprise, (N. Y. 1904), passim.

6 Cf. Vested Interests, p. 162; The Theory of the Leisure Class, (N. Y. 1899), p. 322.

7 Cf. “Why is Economics not an Evolutionary Science?” in Quarterly Journal of Economics, XII, July 1898, pp. 373–397; “Christian Morals and the Competitive System”, The International Journal of Ethics, XX, January, 1910.

8 Charles Francis Adams typifies this view in North American Review, April 1871, CXII p. 244.

9 Vested Interests, p. 157.

10 Leisure Class, p. 242.

11 The Inquiry into the Nature of Peace and the Terms of Its Perpetuation, (N. Y. 1917), pp. 347–348.

12 “The Socialist Economics of Karl Marx” in Quarterly Journal of Economics, XX, August 1906, p. 585.

13 Ibid., pp. 575–585.

14 Ibid., p. 582.

15 Nature of Peace, p. 36.

16 The Higher Learning in America, (N. Y. 1918), p. 3.

17 Dorfman, J., op. cit.

18 “The Intellectual Pre-eminence of Jews in Modern Europe” Political Science Quarterly, Vol. XXXIV, March 1919, pp. 33–42.

19 Engineers and the Price System, pp. 54–55.

20 “The Instinct of Workmanship”, American Journal of Sociology, IV, Sept. 1898, p. 190.

21 The Place of Science in Modern Civilization, (N. Y. 1919), p. 105.

22 Theory of Business Enterprise, p. 312.

23 The Place of Science, p. 149.

24 Mannheim, op. cit., p. 138.

25 For this I am in part indebted to MacDonald, William, The Intellectual Worker and his Work, (N. Y. 1924).

26 The Higher Learning, p. 74.

27 Engineers and the Price System, p. 79.

28 Ibid., p. 145.

29 Vested Interests, p. 59.

30 Higher Learning, p. 87.

31 “The Intellectual Pre-eminence of Jews”, loc. cit., pp. 37, 41.

32 Higher Learning, p. 9.

33 Ibid., p. 27.