ABSTRACT
Thorstein Veblen's "ignoble savages" give him an anthropological norm with which to criticize the "artificiality" of later cultures. For in Veblen's view, hardly any American is so poor and benighted as to escape participation in the leisure class in his mode of life as well as in his dreams. Veblen believed that if men were brought into physical contact with modern machine industry they would increasingly tire of leisure-class posturings and pastimes; they would come to lead a natural, no-nonsense life. Louis Schneider in his book on Veblen assumes that The Theory of the Leisure Class comes out of a post-Calvinist stage in American life, when consumption was no longer restrained by religious motives or by the needs of capital accumulation. Conspicuous production as carried on by large organizations in the mid-twentieth century is not at all equivalent to the sabotage of production about which Veblen complained.
