Thorstein Veblen and conspicuous consumption.(Critical essay)

IT MUST BE SIXTY years ago, perhaps almost to the day, that I bought my copy of Thorstein Veblen s book The Theory of the Leisure Class. I was on my way to have a counter lunch with Brian Fitzpatrick at Melbourne's famous Mitre Tavern, which happily today still serves beer in a lane off Collins Street. Being a little early, I popped into the Craftsman bookshop, newly opened in wartime Melbourne in a basement nearby. (Alas, the Craftsman does not survive.) They were displaying some freshly arrived stock of titles in Random House's wonderful "Modern Library" series and, after a little browsing, I bought the Veblen--for the life of me I can't remember why. Tucking it under my arm unwrapped, I walked the few paces up the lane to the Mitre, and found Fitzpatrick impregnably positioned already in a corner of the bar.

Brian had beautiful manners, and only after a polite "May I?" did he draw the book from under my arm to inspect it.

"This is splendid," he exclaimed in his fruity tones. "No person who has not read Veblen can understand the world, or even be called properly civilised."

A powerful tribute indeed, especially, as I thought, coming from a lifelong committed socialist. But I discovered later that, although Veblen had no part of socialism, many socialists were attracted to his quirky ideas and his humour. G.D.H. Cole, for example, has described him as "acute and stimulating". I promptly read the book over the next few days so that, with luck, I might be accepted into the ranks of the properly civilised.

As I learned more about the remarkable author, it was clear that Brian Fitzpatrick might feel a personal affinity to him as well as an academic approval of his book: both men were "outsiders".

Thorstein Veblen was born in the United States in 1857, son of a carpenter immigrant from Norway. He earned his PhD from Yale in 1884, and both taught and researched in a number of well-regarded US institutions, though not in any one of them for long. They were never altogether sorry to see him move on; popularity was not the purpose of Veblen's enquiries or publications. It was likewise with Fitzpatrick, to whom Australian universities were rather less than hospitable.

The private idiosyncrasies of both men made them the sort of candidates who caused vice-chancellors and selection committees to shuffle their agenda papers and glance sideways at each other. Veblen, a few years after publishing his brilliantly successful Theory of the Leisure Class (1899) was actually sacked by Chicago University; he may not have strengthened his tenure by an unchaperoned linercrossing of the Atlantic with a lady.