The Theory of the Leisure Class (1899)

Their wordsWherever the circumstances or traditions of life lead to an habitual comparison of one person with another in point of efficiency, the instinct of workmanship works out in an emulative or invidious comparison of persons.

Their wordsIn the sequence of cultural evolution the emergence of a leisure class coincides with the beginning of ownership. This is necessarily the case, for these two institutions result from the same set of economic forces.

Their wordsThe motive that lies at the root of ownership is emulation; and the same motive of emulation continues active in the further development of the institution to which it has given rise and in the development of all those features of the social structure which this institution of ownership touches.

Their wordsSo far as concerns the present question, the end sought by accumulation is to rank high in comparison with the rest of the community in point of pecuniary strength.

Their wordsIn order to gain and to hold the esteem of men it is not sufficient merely to possess wealth or power. The wealth or power must be put in evidence, for esteem is awarded only on evidence.

Their wordsConspicuous consumption of valuable goods is a means of reputability to the gentleman of leisure.

Their wordsNo class of society, not even the most abjectly poor, forgoes all customary conspicuous consumption.

Their wordsThroughout 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.

Their wordsThis suggests that the standard of expenditure which commonly guides our efforts is not the average, ordinary expenditure already achieved; it is an ideal of consumption that lies just beyond our reach, or to reach which requires some strain.

Their wordsThe need of conspicuous waste, therefore, stands ready to absorb any increase in the community's industrial efficiency or output of goods, after the most elementary physical wants have been provided for.

Their wordsThe marks of expensiveness come to be accepted as beautiful features of the expensive articles.

Their wordsElegant dress serves its purpose of elegance not only in that it is expensive, but also because it is the insignia of leisure.

Their wordsThe office of the leisure class in social evolution is to retard the movement and to conserve what is obsolescent.

Their wordsThe relation of the leisure (that is, propertied non-industrial) class to the economic process is a pecuniary relation—a relation of acquisition, not of production; of exploitation, not of serviceability.

Their wordsThe lawyer is exclusively occupied with the details of predatory fraud, either in achieving or in checkmating chicanery, and success in the profession is therefore accepted as marking a large endowment of that barbarian astuteness which has always commanded men's respect and fear.

Their wordsIt is perhaps truer, or at least more evident, as regards sports than as regards the other expressions of predatory emulation already spoken of, that the temperament which inclines men to them is essentially a boyish temperament. The addiction to sports, therefore, in a peculiar degree marks an arrested development of the man's moral nature.

Their wordsThe belief in luck is a sense of fortuitous necessity in the sequence of phenomena. In its various mutations and expressions, it is of very serious importance for the economic efficiency of any community in which it prevails to an appreciable extent.

Their wordsIn the older communities of the European culture, the hereditary leisure class, together with the mass of the indigent population, are given to devout observances in an appreciably higher degree than the average of the industrious middle class, wherever a considerable class of the latter character exists.

Their wordsThe canons of pecuniary decency are reducible for the present purpose to the principles of waste, futility, and ferocity.

Their wordsIndeed, there can be little doubt that it is their utility as evidence of wasted time and effort, and hence of the pecuniary strength necessary in order to afford this waste, that has secured to the classics their position of prerogative in the scheme of higher learning, and has led to their being esteemed the most honorific of all learning.