Blurts & Spasms

This is an interesting question to me because it exposes the critical issue of interpreting how movements/ideologies change over time - and how definitions of those movements/ideologies change over time as well (and not always in a synchronized way). If we take a snapshot of Veblen’s culminated ideas about institutional (social) economics and criticisms of rent-seeking financialization, these do indeed seem to be broadly supportive of what social democracy eventually came to embody after WWII. But at the time Veblen lived and wrote, the term “social democrat” would have been too narrow of a box to confine Veblen’s thought, as I believe it was more specifically focused on transitioning capitalism to socialism at that time. So although there are some similarities of appearance - when viewed from afar - the endgames would have been quite different. I think Veblen was much more interested in restoring industrial production and the LTV to their “rightful place” in a classical economics sense, and either taxing non-value-adding activities, or pointedly excluding them from profit-seeking and shifting them into the public domain. This could then be viewed as pragmatic socialization in the context of a mixed economy - so again this might align with what “social democracy” came to represent in the latter 20th century.

Now at the same time this would also be perceived by neoliberals as extreme “socialist” intervention, to be sure…but Veblen’s provocation of such reactions has, I think, always been and continues to be mostly about his criticisms of those self-serving rentiers, rather than about his proposed institutional remedies or desired linkage between capitalist enterprise and social value. In other words, it’s a knee-jerk reaction. Remember that any regulation, attempts to constrain monopoly, attenuate the advantages of inheritance, reduce worker or consumer exploitation, or shift speculative risk back to the speculators is a direct frontal assault on the neoliberal fantasy. Neoliberals believe that any and all profits (and subsequent concentrations of wealth) are self-justifying…no matter how obscene or destructive they may be to society itself. And since Veblen’s intense criticisms of such views are bound to resonate with Marxists, libertarian socialists, anarchists and the like, it would be (and has been) easy to overgeneralize that proposals from all of these camps share the same goals. But of course they don’t…not really. Further, would Thorstein Veblen agree with all “Third Way” social democratic formulations and trajectories that evolved later still? I dunno. On the surface, perhaps, it might seem that he would. But I suspect that he would also have a biting, snarky and insightful critique to offer about them as well.

My 2 cents.


From Quora post: https://www.quora.com/Was-Thorstein-Veblen-a-social-democrat/answer/T-Collins-Logan