Bloodsport

Watching Channel 4's programme on The Upper Class, with its wry look at the remnants of the British aristocracy busy hunting foxes and coursing hares, it came to me that its analysis would have benefited greatly from a familiarity with Veblen's Theory of the Leisure Class. Adorno rightly praised this work as one of the classics of early sociology, and for having a message more damning of the class system it surveys than the author’s own explicit conclusions. Veblen’s leisure class is not the sympathetically reckless aristocracy of The Great Gatsby but a class whose free time is premised on the labour, the exploitation of others. This is also an upper class as barbaric in its leisure pursuits as tonight’s television programme did well to highlight. The British prototype of Veblen's American aristocracy only underlines those inhuman features. Our presenter briefly put himself in the shoes of the upper class revolt against a perceived urban middle-class (Blairite) attack on an ancient ‘way of life’ – though in such a manner that we could only see this ‘way of life’ – fox hunting, hare coursing – for the sadism it is. We even had an aristocratic spokesman quoting Darwin’s ‘nature red in tooth and claw’ – a strange analogy for a class which has risen above the state of nature which is civil society. (Incidentally, back in 1776 Adam Smith could find an analogy between the emerging capitalist system of production and bloodsport, a link it would take another half-century for Engels to make). But Veblen isn’t fooled. He sees the barbarity beneath the veneer of aristocratic respectability in the way few other writers have done. This is a class whose wealth, were it shared out, would meet the needs of many who for want of it will not be living by the end of the year. Divorced from the premise of their wealth the aristocrats look on voyeuristically at the struggle for existence - nature red in tooth and claw - from a comfortable distance, more concerned with the passing of their own way of life.

Comments

[bat020]

Bukharin responded to the rise of the "coupon clipper" class with a similarly titled book that took apart their economic ideology, aka marginalist economics. A much neglected classic, IMHO, do check it out.

N Bukharin: Economic Theory of the Leisure Class

http://tinyurl.com/7lqeu

[YH]

Interesting. I'll certainly have a look at that.

[Matt]

Great post.

And thanks for the free book.

[Josh]

"Nature red in tooth and claw" is a line from Tennyson, which describes a pre-Darwinian view of how the nonhuman world differs from human culture. There's a Stephen Jay Gould essay about it somewhere . . .

[YH]

Thanks Josh. Note to self - it's never too far to reach for the dictionary of quotations.