ABSTRACT
In the last issue of this journal is a paper of some length by Mr. John Cummings,1
criticising a book lately published for me under the title, The Theory of the Leisure Class. The paper is notable for its earnestness no less than for its graceful and cogent discussion. It is needless for me here to express my high appreciation of the attention which the volume has received at Mr. Cummings’s hands. But circumstances have made it necessary for me to take this means of calling attention to certain passages in Mr. Cummings’s discussion, where the criticism is directed rather against the apparent than against the intended drift of the argument set forth in the volume. As editor of the Journal it should have been my place, and my privilege,
to forestall what I might conceive to be misdirected criticism by making the necessary suggestions to Mr. Cummings before his paper appeared in print; and, but for the untoward chance that the issue in which the paper appears was printed during my absence, this [107] would have been done. As it is, I am constrained to offer my explanations in the ungracious form of a reply to his criticism. There is the more excuse for so doing, since what has proved to be obscure to so acute a critic as Mr. Cummings may be expected to offer at least as great difficulties to others who may have the patience to read the book. Had I had the good fortune to say what I intended, and no more, my critic would, I believe, have been saved a good share of the corrections which he is good enough to offer, as well as much of the annoyance which he is at pains to conceal. Indeed, to such an extent does this appear to be true that the greater portion and the weightier of Mr. Cummings’s criticisms appears to proceed on misapprehension that might have been obviated by a more facile use of language. But to speak first of a point on which the difference between the book and
its critic is apparently not of this verbal complexion. Mr. Cummings (p. 426) gravely distrusts any “attempt to read modern psychology into primitive conditions,” together with attempts at “a psychological reconstruction of
primitive society.” To the first count I plead guilty, only if “modern” psychology is taken to mean the latest views of psychological science known to me, as contrasted with older theories. Whether this constitutes an offense is, of course, not within my competency to inquire. As to the second count, I plead that any theory of culture, late or early, must have recourse to a psychological analysis, since all culture is substantially a psychological phenomenon. In any modern discussion of culture, and of cultural development, where this recourse is not had openly it is had covertly. Mr. Cummings’s criticism is directed to three main heads: (1) The theory of
waste (pp. 427-34); (2) the relation of the leisure class to cultural change (pp. 436-39); (3) the justification of leisure-class incomes (pp. 439-53). On the first of these heads the difference between the book and its critic seems to be apparent only, due to a misconception caused by want of explicitness in the argument. As to the second, the difference between Mr. Cummings’s views and mine is, I believe, less by half than appears from Mr. Cummings’s strictures. Under the third head, running through some fourteen pages, Mr. Cummings develops a point of doctrine with which the book does not concern itself. Exception is taken (p. 427) to my attempted definition of waste. It
should be said that the definition in question aims to promulgate no [108] novel doctrine; the aim being to state discursively what is the content of a judgment concerning waste or futility. The definition may be unfortunate, but its ineptitude does not eliminate the concept of waste from men’s habits of thought, nor does it eliminate the word from everyday speech. Men do currently pass opinions on this and that as being wasteful or not wasteful, and there is much evidence that they have long been in the habit of doing so. Sumptuary legislation and the much preaching of the moralists of all ages against lavish habits of life is evidence to this effect. There is also a good deal of a consensus as to what manner of things are wasteful. The brute fact that the word is current shows that. Without something of a passable consensus on that head the word would not be intelligible; that is to say, we should have no such word. As Mr. Cummings earnestly contends (p. 428), it is always the individual that passes an opinion of this kind – as must manifestly be conceded with respect to all opinions. But the consensus that prevails shows that the opinions of individuals on matters touching “the generically human” passably coincide – which, I gather, Mr. Cummings is (p. 428) unwilling to admit. If it were in place to offer instruction here, I should suggest some reason for this coincidence of views is to be found in a community of descent, traditions, and circumstances, past and present, among men living in any given community, and in a less degree among men in all communities. It is because men’s notions of the generically human, of what is the legitimate end of life, does not differ incalculably from man to man that men are able to live in communities and to hold common interests. It is the use of the word “impersonal,” in the sense of non-invidious or non-
emulative, that seems particularly to have proved misleading. And this, probably,
has provoked Mr. Cummings (p. 429) unguardedly to deny the practical possibility of waste. This result of my escapade, I need not say, I deeply regret. The like is true for the word “invidious,” though on this term the critic’s quarrel is with the current use of the word, not with any misuse of it at my hands. My critic’s discussion at this point also carries the implication that any item of consumption which is in any degree useful, as, e.g., “costly church edifices,” cannot at the same time be in any degree wasteful. This seems an unwarranted application of the logical expedient of “exclusion.” As bearing on this passage (p. 429), it may be added that even if “the labor expended on the church edifice … be considered in [109] any sense wasteful,” that need not imply that the edifice or its consumption according to the accepted method is disallowed by economic theory. It is, for all I can see, competent for an economist to inquire how far such an edifice and the employment of time and effort involved in its use may be industrially unproductive, or even industrially disserviceable, if such should be the outcome of the inquiry. Such an endeavor, I believe, need bring no obloquy upon the economist, nor need he thereby invade the moralist’s peculiar domain, nor need it flutter the keepers of the idols of the tribe. The economic bearing of any institution is not its only bearing, nor its weightiest. The ends of human culture are manifold and multiform and it is but the meaner of them, if any, that are fairly comprised in that petty side of life into which it is the economist’s lot to inquire. An electrician might, without blame, speak of the waste of energy that is inseparable from the use of storage batteries. Indeed, if he is discussing the efficiency of this means of utilising a source of power, he could not avoid a detailed inquiry into this feature of their use. But his endeavor to determine the magnitude of the unavoidable or of the ordinary waste involved would not commit him to a condemnation of the batteries, nor would it make him an object of suspicion in the eyes of his fellow-electricians. The like critical use of exclusion, applied to alternatives which it had
not occurred to me to conceive of as exclusive alternatives, recurs in Mr. Cummings’s observations on the conservatism of the leisure class (e.g., pp. 437-38), and on the differentiation of employments between the pecuniary and the industrial occupations (pp. 443-53). It is on the strength of such a needless application of exclusion that Mr. Cummings is able to say (p. 432): “In Dr. Veb1en’s philosophy, all our judgments are based on invidiousness.” This should be so amended as to read: “Some of our judgments are in part based on invidiousness.” It will be seen that such an amendment would materially affect Mr. Cummings’s further development of the theme, particularly as regards his strictures on the views advanced in the book. Similarly the reductio ad absurdum on page 434, where the view that elegance of diction and orthography serve an invidious purpose is taken logically to contain the further position that speech can serve no purpose but an invidious one, and that the origin and sole use of language lies in the invidious distinction which it lends the user. This resort to excluded middle is in touch with the rhyme of a modern poet, who sings: [110]
I’d rather have fingers than toes; I’d rather have ears than a nose; etc.,2
overlooking the possibility of combining these several features in a single organism. These pages (428-35) are a source of comfort and of despair to me. Of
comfort in that I find in them a cogent exposition of views which I had attempted to set forth; of despair in showing how my attempted exposition has proved unintelligible even to a reader who had already beforehand reached an articulate recognition of very much of what I attempted to say. For, if I am not mistaken, Mr. Cummings’s views on the subject of waste, as set forth fragmentarily in these pages, passably coincide with those intended to be expressed in the volume which he criticises. Much the same is true for what Mr. Cummings has to say (pp. 436-39) on
the conservative effect of the institution of a leisure class. The point at which his development of theory on this head chiefly differs from that of the book – as I had conceived it – is his insistence that this conservative effect is, always and in the nature of things, of a salutary kind. On this I had, perhaps weakly, reserved decision, as I am still compelled to do. Similarly as regards Mr. Cummings’s conviction (p. 437) that “Theoretically there is but one right course of social evolution, while the number of wrong courses is infinite.” For my part, I have not had the fortune to reach a conclusion, or to attempt one, on this point. I am at a loss to understand what such a thesis may mean to an evolutionist, and I believe it would get the assent of fewer men today than at any previous time. But the main drift of Mr. Cummings’s development I gladly assent to. In particular, I am at one with him in his view (p. 437) – which reads like a summary restatement of the argument of the book – that “whatever is, is clearly, at one and the same time, both right and wrong.” This proposition Mr. Cummings has, by an unfortunate oversight, placed in contrast with a partial statement of the same view as expressed in the book. Attention may be called to a further point of detail in this connection.
Mr. Cummings (p. 442) takes exception to the view that man’s environment changes with the growth of culture. He finds that the environment is “relatively fixed”; that “climate and soil make up pretty much all there is at the basis of that environment, and these [111] change but little.” All this is no doubt true if environment be taken to mean climate and topography; but for the purpose of my inquiry – an inquiry as to why and how the habits of life and of thought of the individual come to be modified – for this purpose customs, conventions, and methods of industry are no less effective elements in the environment than climate and topography, and these vary incontinently.
