I remember reading that book and I remember being somewhat cynical towards it, but it has been a long time since I have read this book, but I'll give a response a shot.
Is it true that humans are a product of aggressive violence? Yes and no. Humans are a product of a lot of factors, including violence, but including a lot of other qualities.
I would think that the real innovation for civilization was agriculture, which allowed for division of labor and higher inequality, and through that polygamy among the rich(who could afford the most wives).
I generally, however, tend to reject the idea of a parasitic class of people. This isn't to say that some mannerisms aren't wasteful, however, generally speaking, there will always have to be members of society that have power and that are powerbrokers, and organize this power into useful forms. Doing so will require social displays, socialization, etc. I am not sure that we can make political activity into a science, and would tend to doubt the efficacy of efforts to do so. I also tend to doubt that priests are just useless members of society, as I would generally consider the role of a church to be one of a social organization, and the role of a priest as a community organizer, motivator, and counselor. Finally, I doubt that "honor" and "virtue" is just a celebration, I would rather imagine that it is a claim about one's relationship to ethical categories which most human beings accept, which themselves might owe more to social rules for unity than any historical claims(although it does seem to be true that more rule-oriented moralities correlate with status and more outcome-oriented moralities correlate with the lack). However, honor and virtue are also shown in defeats as well, such as with many societies and their relationship to suicide, and in such utter defeat is hardly a way to celebrate victory, it might still be a way to signal high status, but not celebrate.
I will have to admit that I consider a lot of actions to be motivated by showing status, and giving off signals as to some superiority. I don't think that this necessitates a "leisure class", I just think this is a socio-psychological fact. I do think that Thorstein Veblen's book is also to a certain extent his effort to bash everything he disliked as well, but I could just be cynical towards the man.
In any case, if you are interested in the view of human society as a matter of status displays, I would recommend Robin Hanson's blog Overcoming Bias.
http://www.overcomingbias.com/
Hanson is a strong consequentialist, who seeks to deal with bias through analyzing it, and, he also analyzes a lot of human actions as ways to display status. He does not focus on the idea of a "leisure class", but rather I would imagine that he seems status-seeking as a basic human activity that emerged through the evolutionary desire to get the best mates. I would imagine that he and Thorstein Veblen would disagree a lot politically, but I would recommend this blog.
In any case, as I've said, I have not read Veblen's book in a long time. A few years or some such, so anything I say could easily be nonsense.
19 Nov 2009, 1:22 pm
