有闲阶级论 (1899)

《有闲阶级论》（The Theory of the Leisure Class），是美国社会学家托斯丹·范伯伦在1899年出版的经济学专著。

概述

《有闲阶级论》是根据范伯伦1898年在《美国社会学期刊》上发表的三篇论文改写而成，并成为他往后著作的理论架构基础。

书中提出炫耀性消费概念，批判19世纪末期的美国上流阶级中，那些与企业密切往来的暴发户，称其为“有闲阶级”（leisure class）。范伯伦认为，这些有闲阶级透过消费非维生所需的时间与昂贵物品保持、展现身份地位，同时也脱离劳动关系，轻视普通劳动者的生产贡献。并且，这个阶级的消费习性将会影响其它阶级，无形中成就一个浪费时间、金钱的社会风气。

《有闲阶级论》与当时其它社会学作品不同，它的焦点在于“消费”。往后的社会学理论的焦点也渐渐由“生产”转为“消费”。

The Theory of the Leisure Class: An Economic Study of Institutions (1899), by Thorstein Veblen, is a treatise of economics and sociology, and a critique of conspicuous consumption as a function of social class and of consumerism, which are social activities derived from the social stratification of people and the division of labor; the social institutions of the feudal period (9th–15th c.) that have continued to the modern era.

Veblen discusses how the pursuit and the possession of wealth affects human behavior, that the contemporary lords of the manor, the businessmen who own the means of production, have employed themselves in the economically unproductive practices of conspicuous consumption and conspicuous leisure, which are useless activities that contribute neither to the economy nor to the material production of the useful goods and services required for the functioning of society. Instead, it is the middle class and working class who are usefully employed in the industrialised, productive occupations that support the whole of society.

Background

The Theory of the Leisure Class (1899) was published during the Gilded Age (1870–1900), the time of the robber baron millionaires John D. Rockefeller, Andrew Carnegie, and Cornelius Vanderbilt, at the end of the 19th century. Veblen presents the evolutionary development of the social and economic institutions of society, wherein technology and the industrial arts are the creative forces of economic production. In the economics of the production of goods and services, the social function of the economy was to meet the material needs of society and to earn profits for the owners of the means of production. Sociologically, the industrial production system required the workers (men and women) to be diligent, efficient, and co-operative, whilst the owners of the factories concerned themselves with profits and with public displays of wealth; thus the contemporary socio-economic behaviours of conspicuous consumption and of conspicuous leisure survived from the predatory, barbarian past of the tribal stage of modern society.

The sociology and economics reported in The Theory of the Leisure Class show the influences of Charles Darwin, Karl Marx, Adam Smith, and Herbert Spencer; thereby Veblen's socio-economic theory emphasizes social evolution and development as characteristics of human institutions. In his time, Veblen criticised contemporary (19th-century) economic theories as intellectually static and hedonistic, and that economists should take account of how people actually behave, socially and culturally, rather than rely upon the theoretical deduction meant to explain the economic behaviours of society. As such, Veblen's reports of American political economy contradicted the (supply and demand) neoclassical economics of the 18th century, which define people as rational agents who seek utility and maximal pleasure from their economic activities. In contrast, Veblen's economics defines people as irrational economic agents who disregard personal happiness in the continual pursuit of the social status and the prestige inherent to having a place in society (class and economic stratum). Veblen concluded that conspicuous consumption did not constitute social progress because American economic development was unduly influenced by the static economics of the British aristocracy; therefore, conspicuous consumption was an un-American activity contrary to the country's dynamic culture of individualism.