ABSTRACT
Thorstein Veblen has much to say about the rhetoric of money, but he writes about money not as a modern symbol of community life, but as a means for emulation and display as found in primitive and medieval life. Thus Veblen upholds the Puritan ethic by which work becomes sacred while spending becomes evil. The transformation of money from a symbol of evil to a symbol of good and the creation of money as a symbol of hierarchal wonder and mystery have been noted by many observers. Bernard de Mandeville stated in 1705 that spending, not saving, created the glory of money and hence the prosperity of the community. Marx and Thomas Carlyle thought the social rhetoric of money important—but for very different reasons. Thus both Marx and Carlyle agree that the mystery of money, its transcendence, as expressed by clothes which indicate class differences and differences of power, upholds social order.
