The Theory of the Leisure Class

This division of labour coincides with the distinction between the working and the leisure class as it appears in the higher barbarian culture. As…

The work of the men in the lower barbarian culture is no less indispensable to the life of the group than the work done by the women. It may even…

These communities that are without a defined leisure class resemble one another also in certain other features of their social structure and manner…

This distinction has but little obvious significance in a modern industrial community, and it has, therefore, received but slight attention at the…

But the change of standards and points of view is gradual only, and it seldom results in the subversion or entire suppression of a standpoint once…

The tacit, common-sense distinction to-day is, in effect, that any effort is to be accounted industrial only so far as its ultimate purpose is the…

In other times and among men imbued with a different body of preconceptions this line is not drawn precisely as we draw it to-day. In the savage or…

Under the guidance of this naive discrimination between the inert and the animate, the activities of the primitive social group tend to fall into two…

As has already been indicated, the distinction between exploit and drudgery is an invidious distinction between employments. Those employments…

During that primitive phase of social development, when the community is still habitually peaceable, perhaps sedentary, and without a developed…

Under this common-sense barbarian appreciation of worth or honour, the taking of life--the killing of formidable competitors, whether brute or human-…

It is here assumed that in the sequence of cultural evolution primitive groups of men have passed from an initial peaceable stage to a subsequent…

It may therefore be objected that there can have been no such initial stage of peaceable life as is here assumed. There is no point in cultural…

The substantial difference between the peaceable and the predatory phase of culture, therefore, is a spiritual difference, not a mechanical one.…

The life of a given group would be characterised as peaceable so long as habitual recourse to combat has not brought the fight into the foreground in…

In the sequence of cultural evolution the emergence of a leisure class coincides with the beginning of ownership. This is necessarily the case, for…

It is as elements of social structure--conventional facts--that leisure and ownership are matters of interest for the purpose in hand. An habitual…

The early differentiation out of which the distinction between a leisure and a working class arises is a division maintained between men's and women'…

There was undoubtedly some appropriation of useful articles before the custom of appropriating women arose. The usages of existing archaic…

In this way a consistent system of property in goods is gradually installed. And although in the latest stages of the development, the serviceability…

But it is only when taken in a sense far removed from its naive meaning that consumption of goods can be said to afford the incentive from which…

Property set out with being booty held as trophies of the successful raid. So long as the group had departed and so long as it still stood in close…

But as soon as the custom of individual ownership begins to gain consistency, the point of view taken in making the invidious comparison on which…

Those members of the community who fall short of this, somewhat indefinite, normal degree of prowess or of property suffer in the esteem of their…

In the nature of the case, the desire for wealth can scarcely be satiated in any individual instance, and evidently a satiation of the average or…

What has just been said must not be taken to mean that there are no other incentives to acquisition and accumulation than this desire to excel in…

In making use of the term "invidious", it may perhaps be unnecessary to remark, there is no intention to extol or depreciate, or to commend or…

But it is otherwise with the superior pecuniary class, with which we are here immediately concerned. For this class also the incentive to diligence…

In order to gain and to hold the esteem of men it is not sufficient merely to possess wealth or power. The wealth or power must be put in evidence,…

This direct, subjective value of leisure and of other evidences of wealth is no doubt in great part secondary and derivative. It is in part a…

Even if the institution of a leisure class had not come in with the first emergence of individual ownership, by force of the dishonour attaching to…

During the predatory stage proper the distinction between the leisure and the labouring class is in some degree a ceremonial distinction only. The…

Abstention from labour is not only a honorific or meritorious act, but it presently comes to be a requisite of decency. The insistence on property as…

It has already been remarked that the term "leisure", as here used, does not connote indolence or quiescence. What it connotes is non-productive…

The lasting evidence of productive labour is its material product--commonly some article of consumption. In the case of exploit it is similarly…

Decorum set out with being symbol and pantomime and with having utility only as an exponent of the facts and qualities symbolised; but it presently…

As has been indicated in an earlier chapter, there is reason to believe that the institution of ownership has begun with the ownership of persons,…

A division of labour presently sets in, whereby personal service and attendance on the master becomes the special office of a portion of the servants…

After some considerable advance has been made in the practice of employing a special corps of servants for the performance of a conspicuous leisure…

In all grades and walks of life, and at any stage of the economic development, the leisure of the lady and of the lackey differs from the leisure…

But much of the services classed as household cares in modern everyday life, and many of the "utilities" required for a comfortable existence by…

The vicarious leisure performed by housewives and menials, under the head of household cares, may frequently develop into drudgery, especially…

As the standard of wealth recognized by common consent advances, the possession and exploitation of servants as a means of showing superfluity…

Personal service is still an element of great economic importance, especially as regards the distribution and consumption of goods; but its…

In what has been said of the evolution of the vicarious leisure class and its differentiation from the general body of the working classes, reference…

But already at a point in economic evolution far antedating the emergence of the lady, specialised consumption of goods as an evidence of pecuniary…

The quasi-peaceable gentleman of leisure, then, not only consumes of the staff of life beyond the minimum required for subsistence and physical…

Conspicuous consumption of valuable goods is a means of reputability to the gentleman of leisure. As wealth accumulates on his hands, his own unaided…

In the giving of costly entertainments other motives, of more genial kind, are of course also present. The custom of festive gatherings probably…

With the disappearance of servitude, the number of vicarious consumers attached to any one gentleman tends, on the whole, to decrease. The like is of…

The requirement of vicarious consumption at the hands of the wife continues in force even at a lower point in the pecuniary scale than the…

From the foregoing survey of the growth of conspicuous leisure and consumption, it appears that the utility of both alike for the purposes of…

So long as the community or social group is small enough and compact enough to be effectually reached by common notoriety alone that is to say, so…

The greater prevalence of dissipation among printers than among the average of workmen is accordingly attributable, at least in some measure, to…

But it is, on other grounds, worth noting that the term "waste" in the language of everyday life implies deprecation of what is characterized as…

Under the selective surveillance of the law of conspicuous waste there grows up a code of accredited canons of consumption, the effect of which is to…

The principle of conspicuous waste guides the formation of habits of thought as to what is honest and reputable in life and in commodities. In so…

The sanctuary and its fittings have something of this austerity in all the cults in which the saint or divinity to whom the sanctuary pertains is not…

In the latter case the sanctuary and the sacred apparatus are so contrived as not to enhance the comfort or fullness of life of the vicarious…

Similarly it is felt--and the sentiment is acted upon--that the priestly servitors of the divinity should not engage in industrially productive work;…