Social Structure and Status Veblen

Social Structure and Status

According to Veblen, emulation is the drive for possession of property since affluence is honorable. The desire for ownership is an inducement to work. Property is now the trophy and the individual members of the community were compared in terms of ownership property (Veblen 2). This shows that if people desired simple comfort in life, then there would be no exploitation, because the standard would be easy to obtain. However, because of invidious comparison, people want to be valued higher, and that means exploitation in order to reach these overarching desires. Thus, social structure of higher class is stronger and only the successful one percent falls into it. But Marx fails to see how this system is still so well structured. It isn’t just about the fact that the “general law of accumulation” took place - meaning to be a direct result of capitalism, it is that top capitalists desired more and more. Nonetheless, it isn’t just them who held this greedy, self-consumed desire. It is everyone who is out to for their own self-interest, which is why it influenced this social structure. The “reserve army,” Marx talks about will one day come together and revolt against the one percent of capitalists, where all the power lies in, but how so, if they themselves hold this desire to obtain the American dream, and believe they can achieve it? This essay’s purpose is to elaborate on the evolution of class relations and the desire of status that comes along with it as Veblen depicts, and contrasts his depiction with the ideas of Karl Marx.

Veblen undertook the analysis of social structure from a progressive angle. He emphasized the idea that society and its institutions are endlessly altering, and that must be understood in order to apprehend social affinity. According to Veblen, there has always been a leisure class and a productive class (Veblen 10). The upper classes, he states, are exempt from any industrialized work, and are withheld for certain jobs only attributed to honor (Veblen 1). His evolutionary hypotheses depict how the top capitalist progressed to their status they have today.

Ownership of private property is what separates the classes according to Marx. Just as lords owned the land and equipment used by serfs, so too do the capitalists who own the infrastructure operated by laborers under capitalism. Marx applied this same idea in his analysis. In Volume 1, Marx divides the participants within a capitalist economy into two distinct classes based on the role one plays in the production process. The bourgeoisie refers to the capitalist class, the exclusive owners of the means of production. The proletariat is known today as the working class, those who sell their labor to capitalists for a wage. In Marx’s view, the dawn of capitalism simplified class antagonisms. Splitting up [society] into two great hostile camps (Marx 1).