About this title:
Classic of economic and social theory offers satiric examination of the hollowness and falsity suggested by the term "conspicuous consumption" (coined by Veblen), exposing the emptiness of many cherished standards of taste, education, dress and culture.

About this title:
The Guardians of the Vested Interests...have allowed their own knowledge of this sinister state of things to unseat their common sense....they have gone in for a headlong policy of clamor and repression, to cover and suppress matters of fact and to shut off discussion and deliberation. And all the while the Guardians are also feverishly at work on a mobilization of such forces as may hopefully be counted on to "keep the situation in hand" (I love Veblen)

The Instinct of Workmanship and the State of the Industrial Arts

About this title:
In the ordinary course, it should seem, such an advance in the industrial arts as will result in an accumulation of wealth, a considerable and efficient industrial equipment, or in a systematic and permanent cultivation of the soil or an extensive breeding of herds or flocks, will also bring on ownership and property rights bearing on these valuable goods, or on the workmen, or on the land employed in their production. What has seemed the most natural and obvious beginnings of property rights, in the view of those economists who have taken an interest in the matter, is the storing up of valuables by such of the ancient workmen as were enabled, by efficiency, diligence or fortuitous gains, to produce somewhat more than their current consumption.
 

About this title:
BCC: In The Vested Interests and the Common Man, long considered a classic text of economics, Veblen discusses various financial transformations within the historical unfolding of capitalism and examines the value of free enterprise in general. It emphasizes the automation and the loss of direct human relations within the industrial arts as well as social repercussions of capitalistic industry.

An Inquiry Into the Nature of Peace and the Terms of Its Perpetuation


About this title:
1919. Veblen explores the questions and conditions related to the quest for perpetual peace at large. Contents: On the State and Its Relation to War and Peace; On the Nature and Uses of Patriotism; On the Conditions of a Lasting Peace; Peace Without Honor; Peace and Neutrality; Elimination of the Unfit; and Peace and the Price System.