Karl Mannheim, Max Weber, and the Problem

of Social Rationality in Thorstein Veblen

Rick Tilman

Karl Mannheim (1893–1947), Max Weber (1864–1920), and Thorstein Veblen

(1857–1929) all considered the role of social rationality in human affairs. Yet Veblen’s

version of social rationality has never been adequately examined using the conceptual

and taxonomic apparatus of contemporary European theory, although he dealt with it

not only in The Theory of the Leisure Class (1899) but in more detail in The Theory of Business

Enterprise (1904).

1

However, Veblen did not actually use the term “social rationality,” and

he never wrote a formal treatise as such on either sociology or economics.

2

For that rea-

son, Weber and Mannheim, who did both, are used to interpret and deepen understand-

ing of Veblen.

3

All three focus on the genesis and development of social rationality and the kinds

of rationality engendered or suppressed by different social forms and the cultures within

which these forms are embedded. Veblen and Weber, to be sure, wrote on the role of

rationality in primitive societies and ancient dynastic empires. Our focus, however, is

on social rationality as it has evolved in the past and might evolve in the future in indus-

trial societies within economies that have passed beyond the stage of primitive accumu-

lation—in short, social orders that have at least the rudiments of modern transport,

communication and exchange, and the corresponding scientific and technological base

of an industrial economy.

What does “social rationality” mean in a more generic sense in the social sciences,

especially in the late nineteenth to early twentieth centuries when Veblen and Weber

155

JOURNAL OF ECONOMIC ISSUES
Vol. XXXVIII

No. 1

March 2004

The author is a retired social scientist who taught political economy, political theory, and public administration at eight dif-

ferent universities and colleges in California and the Southwest between 1964 and 1998. He is the author of books on C.

Wright Mills, Thorstein Veblen, Jacques Loeb, and the libertarian economists. He is presently engaged in research on Veblen

and his contemporaries and the American tradition of empirical collectivism. He thanks Colin Loader, David Dickens, and

several anonymous reviewers for reading earlier drafts of the manuscript. All communications should be addressed to the

author at 809 Murray Road, Flagstaff, Arizona 86001-1237, USA.

J

ei

©

2004, Journal of Economic Issues

were at the peak of their intellectual prowess and Mannheim was undergoing the indoc-

trination and training that were to render him one of the most powerful thinkers of the

interwar period? Obviously, rational procedures emanate from rational psychological

processes. If society embraces rational techniques and the findings resulting from ratio-

nal processes of inquiry, knowledge, and control produce consequences that are more

predictable than otherwise, overall “social rationality” may be said to have increased.

Both individuals and social aggregates display it when systematic, explicit reasoning

occurs, for example, as when rationality is linked with symbolic transformation. The log-

ical structure of the mind, as a functional entity, is thus organizable into a coherent sys-

tem in which (1) beliefs or sets of beliefs are logical or consistent because they rely on

valid inferences, that is, they are based on sufficient evidence meaning relevant consid-

erations which in principle are falsifiable, (2) goal-directed action exists in which an

action is said to be maximally rational if what is in fact the adaptation of the most effi-

cient means is used to achieve a given end, and (3) the agents’ ends are the ends they

ought to have in the sense that each individual seeks what is in his or her interest accord-

ing to some specified set of values. “Rationality” thus means believing what is empiri-

cally or demonstrably true, means-ends congruency and understanding one’s own best

interests given certain value premises. Given these definitions of rationality, “irrational-

ity” would signify the flip side of the coin, that is, (1) beliefs that do not rest on valid

inferences or sufficient evidence, (2) action which is not maximally rational because the

means relied on are not congruent with the ends sought, and (3) the ends the agent

seeks not in his or her own best interest as defined by particular normative assumptions.

The fact that Mannheim, and especially Weber, have a more complex and elusive para-

digm for rationality does not preclude using a simpler and less opaque taxonomy for

explicating the meaning of social rationality in Veblen. In any case, probably any

typology of rationality useful in social science inquiry would have to encapsulate at least

these three usages of “rationality” and “irrationality.”

4

European critics, the Frankfurt School in particular, attack Veblen’s claims regard-

ing machine-induced rationality in industrial society.

5

Their attacks stem in part from

the fact that Veblen did not use the concepts or jargon familiar to the leading Continen-

tal thinkers. This article thus attempts to (a) demonstrate through textual exegesis the

meaning of social rationality in the corpus of Veblen’s writing, (b) show how European

sociology can be used to illuminate and critique Veblen’s theory; parts of the taxonomy

of rationality employed by Mannheim and Weber, respectively, are used to explicate its

meaning and significance, and (c) utilize the insights of the two Europeans, as well as

Veblen’s own thought, to clarify the meaning of the progress or decline of social

rationality in his Darwinian view of the future.

One caveat at the outset: This article is not about either Mannheim or Weber

except insofar as some of their ideas about rationality are helpful in explicating, clarify-

ing, and critiquing Veblen’s on the same subject. It is the problem of social rationality in

Veblen that is its focus and the two Europeans are used only when their ideas are ger-

mane to a better understanding of him. Clearly, Weber in particular had a more elabo-

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rate and complex conceptualization of rationality than can be used effectively here. To

illustrate, the author focuses on two types of rational social action in Weber’s work but

will use only sparingly his broader typology of rationality. The same will be the case with

Mannheim, whose ideas about rationality changed over time as in Man and Society in an

Age of Reconstruction (1940), where he used concepts other than functional and substan-

tial rationality such as “self-rationalization” and “self-observation.” In short, only con-

cepts developed by Weber and Mannheim which are of direct and immediate use in

understanding and criticizing Veblen’s machine- and science-induced rationality are sys-

tematically used here. But it is essential to understand what he argued was occurring and

how he qualified his argument before considering the European analysis of his claims

about the relationship between the machine process and social rationality.

Veblen on Social Rationality as Induced by the Machine Process

The most explicit source of Veblen’s analysis of rationality is chapter 9, “The Cul-

tural Incidence of the Machine Process,” in The Theory of Business Enterprise. Textual exe-

gesis of it shows illuminating points of comparison with regard to European sociology.

Without specifically mentioning them as such, Veblen conflated, discarded, and added

substantive meaning and value to the ideas of rationality held by European sociologists.

First is Veblen’s view of the impact of the “machine process” on the worker’s psyche:

Mechanically speaking, the machine is not his to do with as his fancy may sug-

gest. His place is to take thought of the machine and its work in terms given him

by the process that is going forward. His thinking in the premises is reduced to

standard units of gauge and grade. If he fails of the precise measure, by more or

less, the exigencies of the process check the aberration and drive home the abso-

lute need of conformity. . . . The machine process is a severe and insistent disci-

plinarian in point of intelligence. It requires close and unremitting thought,

but it is thought which runs in standard terms of quantitative precision.

6

Veblen, then, carefully qualified his thesis in these terms:

Of course, in no case and with no class does the discipline of the machine pro-

cess mould the habits of life and of thought fully in its own image. There is pres-

ent in the human nature of all classes too large a residue of the propensities and

aptitudes carried over from the past and working to a different result. The

machine’s regime has been of too short duration, strict as its discipline may be,

and the body of inherited traits and traditions is too comprehensive and consis-

tent to admit of anything more than a remote approach to such a consumma-

tion.

7

It is important to keep these qualifications in mind because Veblen’s critics often over-

looked his focus on cultural and institutional impediments to machine-induced rational-

Mannheim, Weber, and the Problem of Social Rationality in Veblen

157

ity and mistakenly portrayed him as a technological reductionist whose work had a

monocausal thrust.

8

Veblen also advanced another important and influential thesis on the effects of the

machine process on the human psyche—especially that of the industrial worker. He

argued that the machine process provides no illumination into issues of morality, law,

or politics except in terms of material causation. Machine technology is best understood

in terms of pressure, temperature, velocity, and tensile strength; therefore metaphysics,

manners, breeding, and ancient custom are irrelevant to a grasp of its functioning.

9

The impact of machine technology produces a worker whose psychology is icono-

clastic in attitudinal response toward property, hierarchy, authority, religious belief, and

conventional morality.

10

The changes in values and attitude induced by the machine

process among industrial workers foster a new kind of critical intelligence (social ratio-

nality) among them. In fact, Veblen argued that the labor force is becoming increasingly

skeptical regarding the rights of large property owners as to power and ownership;

indeed, the more radical elements among the wage earners questioned whether corpo-

rate property rights should be honored at all.

11

Yet Veblen again carefully qualified his

argument and cautioned that

[i]n the light of this consideration, then, it is to be noted: (1) that the domi-

nance of the machine process in modern industry is not so potent a factor for

the inculcation of socialistic notions—it does not so irresistibly shape men’s

habit of mind in the socialistic sense—as the first survey of the facts would sug-

gest; and (2) that the differentiation of occupations involved in modern indus-

trial methods selectively bunches the socialistic elements together, and so

heightens their sense of class solidarity and acts to accentuate their bias, gives

consistency to their ideals, and induces that boldness of conviction and action

which is to be had only in a compact body of men.

12

One outcome of all this, however, is that class conflict ensues between the new

industrial working class under pressure from the machine process which is reworking its

psyche and changing its substantive values, on one hand, and classes with a strong pecu-

niary tradition, on the other.

13

As Veblen put it, the clash is between those whose

“thinking on all topics is more consistently held to tests of authenticity as contrasted

with tests of sense perception.”

14

It is clear too, that “the metaphysics of materialistic sci-

ence,” as he liked to call it, is more likely fostered among industrial workers and men of

science than among the business and professional classes. As he put it:

But that work of research which effectually extends the borders of scientific

knowledge is nearly all done under the guidance of highly impersonal, mechan-

ical, morally and aesthetically colorless conceptions of causal sequence. And

this scientific work is carried out only in those communities which are in due

contact with the modern mechanically organized industrial system,—only under

the shadow of the machine technology.

15

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Finally, he defined still further the nature of this perspective when he wrote that they are

of the “metaphysical assumptions of modern material science”—the law of cause

and effect, cumulative causation, conservation of energy, persistence of quan-

tity, or whatever phrase be chosen to cover the concept. The men occupied with

the modern material sciences are, accordingly, for the purpose in hand, in

somewhat the same case as the higher ranks of those employed in mechanical

industry. . . . The characteristically modern science does not inquire about

prime causes, design in nature, desirability of effects, ultimate results, or escha-

tological consequences.

16

Veblen also wrote, perhaps tongue in cheek, that

[f]or something more than a hundred years past this change in the habits of

thought of the workman has been commonly spoken of as a deterioration or

numbing of his intelligence. But that seems too sweeping a characterization of

the exchange brought on by habituation to machine work. It is safe to say that

such habituation brings a change in the workman’s habits of thought,—in the

direction, method, and content of his thinking,—heightening his intelligence

for some purposes and lowering it for certain others.

17

He claimed once more that certain traits of mind are bred out of the labor force, and oth-

ers bred in, by the machine process. This signifies that the days of the following

ideational proclivities are numbered: animism, anthropomorphism, teleology, natural

law, and related aspects of religious dogma and belief; belief in inherited property and

social status; inequalities of wealth and power not linked with the functional imperatives

of modern industry; and so forth. It is evident, then, that Veblen’s “industrial republic,”

if and when it emerges, will be characterized by certain kinds of social rationality and

these include a secular, matter-of-fact state of mind increasingly empirical in its focus and

skeptical about the received wisdom and social convention that buttresses the existing

system. Veblen never closely defined his “industrial republic,” which suggests that it had

vaguely utopian structures; nevertheless, his occasional references to the desirability of

“an ungraded commonwealth of masterless men” lead to the conclusion that even

though the Darwinian evolutionary process can arrive at no predesignated end, this is

what Veblen would enact if he were sovereign. In Veblen’s view such ends are inextrica-

bly bound up with the mass fostering or, at least, enhancement by machine technology of

“idle curiosity” (critical intelligence), the “parental bent” (altruism), and the “instinct of

workmanship” (proficiency and pride in craftsmanship). What may lie ahead in his sce-

nario of an industrial republic is the large-scale realization of the values and ethos of sci-

ence, community, and craftsmanship.

18

It is an analysis of the values and ethos of science

and their relationship to machine-induced rationality in Veblen’s theory that follows.

Mannheim, Weber, and the Problem of Social Rationality in Veblen

159

Veblen on Social Rationality as Induced by Science

The classic text for analyzing Veblen’s interpretation of the nature and function of

science is “The Place of Science in Modern Civilization,” first published in 1906. In it

he lays out his most detailed interpretation starting with a simple yet penetrating defini-

tion of it as “impersonal, dispassionate insight into the material facts with which man-

kind has to deal.”

19

It is this which gives Western industrial societies an advantage over

the less developed countries. As he put it, “a civilization which is dominated by this mat-

ter-of-fact insight must prevail against any cultural scheme that lacks this element.”

20

However, Veblen did not accept the exaggerated claims made for science by

scientistic cults, for his own claims for science were more modest. Indeed, he differenti-

ated between the use of science on one hand and more “pragmatic” forms of inquiry on

the other hand.

In the modern scheme of knowledge it holds true . . . that training in divinity, in

law, and in the related branches of diplomacy, business tactics, military affairs,

and political theory, is alien to the skeptical scientific spirit and subversive of

it.

21

Indeed, Veblen’s skepticism regarding these branches of learning as they existed in his

own day was, perhaps, more extreme than his rejection of the received economic theoret-

ical wisdom of his time for they were at best merely a form of pragmatic knowledge, not a

kind of scientific inquiry. Veblen’s objections to several branches of learning of his day

including jurisprudence, economics, and political science are as follows: Either they are

infected with Hegelianism with its emphasis on the fulfillment of reason in history, or

they are contaminated with the crudely pragmatic and utilitarian aims of vested interests.

Or they contain heavy residues of natural law with its focus on final cause guiding the

development of both individuals and groups toward their appointed telos, or end. All

these, in Veblen’s view, are manifestations of the nonscientific status, that is, pre-Darwin-

ian state of development of these disciplines. All but the most arbitrary reading of his

essay on the place of science in modern civilization indicates his belief that until the study

of these branches of learning becomes genuinely scientific, they will have little predictive

or explanatory power.

The spread of science and the advance of scientific method in the scientific commu-

nity are interpreted by Veblen to be convergent with diffusion of the machine-induced

rationality generally found among blue-collar workers and, more selectively, among

white-collar workers. It is important to note, however, that he is careful to qualify his

claims about the advance of science even in the professoriate by pointing to the likeli-

hood of institutional resistance to its dissemination as well as its contamination by exist-

ing atavistic or obsolescent ideological trends. Science-induced and machine-induced

rationality thus closely paralleled each other qualitatively,

22

but the spread of these simi-

lar forms of social rationality was impeded by anachronistic structural obstacles such as

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emulatory consumption, absentee ownership, hyper-patriotism, and religious

superstition.

Enter Max Weber

Max Weber had complementary insights which help illuminate Veblen’s views on

the genesis and nature of social rationality. Before turning to them, however, a few cau-

tionary words are in order. Unlike Weber, Veblen did not believe that capitalism epito-

mizes rationality; indeed, his dislike for business irrationality caused him to articulate

one of his most flamboyant oxymorons, to describe the “astute mismanagement” of

industry by business.

23

His insistence on the irrationality of modern business should

not, however, be disregarded as mere satire or mockery for his position nevertheless

complements Weber’s influential theory of the motivation of capitalists set forth in The

Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism.

Weber’s claim that the “spirit of capitalism” reflects the Calvinist idea of a predes-

tined “calling” for the elect leads to his view that modern business is characterized by its

rationalization. This is to say that Weber contrasted pre-modern business as “irrational”

work, “directed to acquisition by force, above all the acquisition of booty,” with the pen-

chant of modern business for rational “calculation of capital in terms of money. . . .

Everything is done in terms of balances.”

24

Veblen’s argument regarding the irrational-

ity of modern business does not simply contradict Weber’s view, for what Weber meant

by “rationality” has more to do with what Veblen called “pecuniary accountancy,” or the

flattening of all evaluation to numbers, than with irrationality itself. Veblen also sug-

gested that what Weber perceives as the rational calculation of interest actually cloaks a

profound irrationalism; this is because in Veblen’s view, other standards, such as ser-

viceability, productivity, and usefulness to the larger community, offer better ways to

measure value than does the pecuniary calculus. In short, Veblen suggested that the

allegedly rational reduction of value to numerical values is in fact “businesslike imbecil-

ity.”

25

His characterization of modern business as destructive and predatory is thus the

reverse of Weber’s claim regarding the peaceful, rational nature of modern business.

In Weber’s sociology there are four types of social action; however, two of these

contribute most directly to clarification of Veblen’s ideas regarding social rationality. To

Weber, zweckrational was basically expedient rationality that indicated a system of action

whereby the actor weighed the alternative ends and means open to them in terms of his

or her goals and chose the course of action most appropriate for him or her. A system of

particular ends existed for the actor, but before action was taken to achieve them, the

likely costs and consequences must be taken into consideration. In Weber’s analysis,

wertrational was distinguishable from zweckrational because the incorporation of an

“absolute value” eliminated the possibility of the actor’s choosing alternative ends, and

ultimately, therefore, also barred the possible choice of certain means. The only impor-

Mannheim, Weber, and the Problem of Social Rationality in Veblen

161

tant consideration of the actor was the realization of the cherished value be it ethical,

aesthetic, religious, or otherwise.

26

Weber Continued: “Transfer Effects” or Not?

Altogether, Weber used four types of rationality that enhance the meaning of

Veblen’s machine-induced rationality. First, his “practical rationality” accepts the reali-

ties of everyday existence and calculates the most expedient means of coping with the

difficulties it offers. It thus suggests a purely adaptive subordination of individuals to cir-

cumstances and a tendency to avoid behavior that transcends daily routine. Clearly, the

imperatives of the industrial economy and its corollary, machine-induced rationality,

rests on such rationality if the system is to function effectively. Second, Weber’s “theo-

retical rationality” is also relevant to understanding the impact of the machine process

on the psyche of the worker. Here Weber’s focus is on such cognitive processes as logical

deduction and induction, the attribution of causality, and the genesis of symbolic mean-

ings. Third, his “formal rationality” (zweckrational) indicates means-ends rational calcu-

lation with reference back to applied rules, laws, or regulations. Its meaning in Veblen’s

time in a partly or largely bureaucratized work setting is too obvious to need further

elaboration.

Weber’s fourth category of “substantive rationality” (wertrational) directly orders

action into patterns, but it does so on the basis of some value postulate. These value pos-

tulates are not simply a single value but signify entire clusters of values. Veblen’s

machine-conditioned proletarian is clearly an exemplar of one such cluster—for he was

undevout, matter of fact, increasingly unpatriotic, inclined toward collectivist-egalitar-

ian values, and oriented toward the practice of workmanship, or so Veblen claimed; yet

he also detected strong countervailing tendencies. It should be noted, however, that

these values and their behavioral correlates are time-specific and have a particular cul-

tural locus, whereas for Weber the exercise of substantive rationality may extrude values

and value clusters that are enormously varied and culturally transcendent. Nevertheless,

Veblen’s machine-conditioned worker does exemplify a certain form of substantive

rationality in the Weberian sense.

In summation and synthesis, Weber’s typology of rationality subsumes five impor-

tant aspects of rationality which include (1) inductive inference, (2) causal attribution,

(3) symbolic abstraction, (4) systematization of belief, and (5) rules of conduct, all of

which play a significant role in Veblen’s machine-induced rationality. In fact, the

machine process cannot function effectively without inculcating the cognitive skills so

essential to these aspects of rationality, or so he claims.

Weber’s five aspects play a key role here in clarification of the meaning of Veblen’s

machine-conditioned rationality in that the latter presupposes it will incorporate at least

a modicum of each. To illustrate, in his analysis industrial workers interacting with

machines use induction to grasp the interactive role of the machine, that is, the worker

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learns to both generalize and then particularize about the nature of machinery through

protracted experience with industrial technology. Inductive logic thus becomes reflex-

ively embedded in the worker’s psyche and this can be traced to the machine process.

But it does not follow that there is any direct or immediate transfer effect outside the

realm of industry, a fact that Veblen failed to adequately stress.

27

Causal attribution also resulted from the worker’s observance of both the perfor-

mance of individual machines and their concatenation with other machines both singly

and in the aggregate. At the very least, the operative comes to understand the role of the

boilers, pistons, and flywheels in animating heavy machines, as well as the functional

relationship between the individual machines. Still, causal attributive abilities devel-

oped in the mechanical sphere may not carry over directly into the realm of social causa-

tion, or so his critics claimed.

They also argued that it was more doubtful yet that machines induced the ability to

manipulate abstract symbols except insofar as these symbolized aspects of the machine

process or closely related facets of industrial experience. Still, as Veblen pointed out in

The Theory of Business Enterprise, the socially valuable skills of accounting and inventory-

ing also required symbolic understanding and manipulation for their practice and it was

difficult to imagine an industrial process without them.

It is questionable whether the machine process helped workers systematize their

belief systems about anything except industrial machinery, its immediate environment,

and the work habits essential to their maintenance. In short, it was difficult to see why

Veblen believed that important transfer effects to other cultural and institutional

realms would occur in terms of aiding workers in formulating and systematizing their

belief systems. In his defense, however, he argued that both the scientist and the worker

would be transformed into “finikin skeptics”; that is, agnostic, secular materialists

would be the byproducts of the scientific laboratories and the machine shops.

Finally, the formation and application of rules of conduct, insofar as these involve

the imperatives of industrial work, have some likelihood of transfer effects. It is difficult

to deny that the rules also have some impact on the need for punctuality, efficiency, and

harmonious interaction in other walks of life. Schools, churches, and places of con-

sumption; service outlets; and transportation facilities all required formally or infor-

mally defined rules of conduct if they were to function effectively, and these rules

converge with those of the industrial plant.

While critics were skeptical about Veblen’s views regarding the transferability to

other cultural realms of (1) inductive inference and (2) causal attribution, they were

even less sanguine regarding the impact of the machine process on the development of

proletarian abilities to engage in (3) symbolic abstraction, (4) systemization of belief, and

(5) formulation and manipulation of rules of conduct. The transfer effects of industrial

technology alleged by Veblen to have a transformative impact on the worker’s psyche

were said by his critics to have a cultural and ideational genesis instead. Probably Weber,

who is the inspiration and genesis for most of this analysis, would agree with them.

Mannheim, Weber, and the Problem of Social Rationality in Veblen

163

Veblen clearly failed with regard to transfer effects to move from hypothesizing about

authenticity to demonstrations of matter-of-fact and empirical testing.

Enter Karl Mannheim

Karl Mannheim offered further explanation of how European social theory can be

used to enhance the meaning of Veblen’s ideas regarding social rationality. Mannheim

distinguished between “functional” and “substantial” rationality, respectively. He wrote

that “rational” in the functional or instrumental sense is so according to these two

criteria:

(a) Functional organization with reference to a definite goal; and (b) a conse-

quent calculability when viewed from the standpoint of an observer or a third

person seeking to adjust himself to it. . . . [E]ach act is functionally rational [if]

(a) it is organized with reference to a definite goal, and (b) [if] one can adjust

oneself to it in calculating one’s own actions.

28

He also defined “substantial” rationality in a way that was helpful to social scientists

attempting to better understand Veblen’s point of view: “We understand as substan-

tially rational an act of thought which reveals intelligent insight into the interrelations

of events in a given situation.”

29

Substantial rationality thus referred to the perceptions

individuals obtain of a situation, which may permit them to control it in keeping with

their conscious purposes. Mannheim thus distinguished between the ability to adjust

means to ends when the ends are given, or fixed, which he called “functional” rational-

ity, on one hand, and designating certain ends as superior to or worse than alternative

ends which, on the other hand, he called “substantial rationality.” He has contrasted

“functional rationality” with “substantial rationality” to the detriment of the former

with what he asserts is the latter’s superior development of human insight on matters of

value.

However, Mannheim was more given to conceptualization and analysis than he was

to prescription; indeed, although hopeful that an intellectual “floating strata” might

obtain privileged epistemological access to superior forms of social rationality, he was

uncertain of this eventuality.

30

Like Weber, he did not think social scientists qua social

scientists should engage in political advocacy without explicit acknowledgment of their

own political and moral orientation. Veblen, too, recognized the degree to which any

kind of social science is value laden and reflective of the social position and professional

aspirations of its practitioners. Even his tongue-in-cheek claims to the effect that he is

dispassionately and objectively analyzing social values, institutions, and actors cannot

disguise the satirical mockery in which he so often engaged.

Nevertheless, by extrapolating from Mannheim, it is possible to interpret “rational-

ity” in three ways relevant to its meaning in Veblen. The first, functional or instrumen-

tal rationality, can be interpreted as means-ends congruence; the second, substantive

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rationality, signifies understanding of the relationship between alternative ends; and

the third involves the substance of ends themselves as understood by Veblen. It is these

ends to which I now turn.

Mannheim, Veblen, and the Generic Ends of Life

Veblen claimed that the human community had “generic ends of life,” or as he also

put it, “fullness of life” to pursue. Do these contain institutionally adaptable value con-

stants? Or are they of transcultural moral and social significance for the human species

throughout history and prehistory? If Veblen is properly understood, “idle curiosity,”

“workmanship,” and the “parental bent” are not passing fancies but values embedded in

the social matrix of a properly developing (meaning generically human) community.

The exercise of “social rationality” properly construed must focus on the revalidation of

these values as well as their implementation. Social scientists, no doubt, will continue to

debate whether these values and the social processes linked to them are superior to oth-

ers but still find an effective explication of them in Veblen’s work. In this vein, Warren

Samuels wrote that

one can read The Leisure Class as a satire of the practices of conspicuous con-

sumption and status emulation by the socio-economic elite, as Veblen’s deni-

gration of those practices for what they are, namely, situation dependent

practices having no independent existence or value, despite how much they

mean to certain practitioners.

31

Veblen’s way of valuing, then, may draw on various sources, but there were, never-

theless, limits to its diversity. This was because the utilization of certain values would

obstruct his method of valuation itself. One prime value of The Theory of the Leisure Class

was that it was highly suggestive of the limits which must be placed on social values and

evaluative processes if they were to remain conducive to “fullness of life.”

However adequate his formulation of ends may be judged to be, he articulated

value constants, though relative to time and circumstances, which provided enduring

standards by which to judge existing social values and processes. Whether these were

congruent with European conceptualizations of substantive rationality or not, he was

clearly more explicit than Mannheim and Weber regarding the nature and significance

of values and the reasons for sanctioning certain of them.

However, it is with the explication of what Veblen called the “generic ends of life,

impersonally considered,” that I am concerned because this is the most explicit articula-

tion of value constants in his work. As indicated, these value constants included “idle

curiosity,” which in industrial society signified critical inquiry; the “parental bent,”

which meant altruism; and the “instinct of workmanship,” which denoted taking pride

in and obtaining gratification from the craftsmanlike performance of work. Veblen was

Mannheim, Weber, and the Problem of Social Rationality in Veblen

165

thus using transcultural standards of judgment which found their locus in his abbrevi-

ated discussions of the “fuller unfolding” of the life process.

32

An important statement regarding the theoretical relationship between Mannheim

and Veblen which leads to a clearer understanding of the latter’s views on social ratio-

nality is provided by Mannheim’s comments to this effect:

If in analyzing the changes of recent years, people had kept in mind the distinc-

tion between various types of rationality, they would have seen clearly that

industrial rationalization served to increase functional rationality but that it

offered far less scope for the development of substantial rationality in the sense

of the capacity for independent judgement. Moreover, if the distinction

between the two types of rationality which emerges from this explanation has

been thought out, people would have been forced to the conclusion that func-

tional rationalization is, in its very nature, bound to deprive the average individ-

ual of thought, insight, and responsibility and to transfer these capacities to the

individuals who direct the process of rationalization.

32

And, in a footnote, Mannheim concluded:

Cf. Veblen, Th. B., The Vested Interests and the Common Man . . . for an exposition

of a divergent interpretation of the influence of industrialization on the possibili-

ties of substantial rationality (author’s emphasis).

34

Although Mannheim did not agree with Veblen’s treatment of the relationship

between functional and substantial rationality, which was to conflate them, his com-

ments were helpful in understanding why. The contrast between the two was amplified

by his claims that disparities of power and limited access to information are likely to

strip the industrial labor force of the opportunity to develop substantial rationality, a

prospect which he felt Veblen overlooked. Although Veblen did not actually use the

terms “functional” or “substantive” rationality, it was evident that what the Europeans

call “substantive rationality” was, in his analysis, largely machine induced; at the very

least it was powerfully influenced by the machine process and could not be understood

apart from the “generic ends of life” as he called them. “Substantive rationality” was

thus synonymous or at least closely linked with these particular ends. In his eyes, it was

not simply as Mannheim wrote “an act of thought which reveals intelligent insight into

the interrelations of events in a given situation,” as important as this may be for liberal

intellectuals like Mannheim, whose focus was on cognitive processes. Rather, for

Veblen it was a transcultural value orientation embedded in a social existence which

eschewed emulatory consumption, waste, and exemption from useful labor. This exis-

tence prescribed a system of social arrangements and material provisioning which

enhanced the life process, and this life process was characterized by an abundance of

critical intelligence, altruism, and proficiency of workmanship.

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Rick Tilman

Conclusion

Given the complexities of meaning and usage of the term “social rationality,” the

reader may be willing to substitute the term “social intelligence” for it, in which case lit-

tle would be lost. In any case, there were undertones of pessimism in the work of our

three key figures regarding the future of social rationality in industrial society. Neverthe-

less, they did not abandon hope that the industrial order might come to encapsulate

both science and means-ends congruence as well as authentically humanistic values.

Veblen recognized that the development of his own social value principle was part

of an evolutionary process whose incompleteness would always be part of human exis-

tence. However strongly he articulated and defended what he took to be the generic

ends of life, he knew, staunch Darwinian that he was, that the impermanency of life con-

demned to obsolescence claims of institutional immutability. If idle curiosity, altruism,

and the sense of workmanship were of transcultural significance and transhistorical rel-

evance, it was primarily because of their role in helping humanity avoid extinction; in

short, they had adaptive and selective value greater than their opposites, Veblen’s bête

noire, force and fraud.

Indeed, the growth and development of social rationality itself was viewed by

Veblen as an integral part of the evolutionary process. Its impact on modern culture was

largely the result of the expansion of science and the maturation of the machine process.

While Mannheim and Weber were both interested in the genesis of social rationality,

they more often found it embedded in social institutions and cultural processes other

than machine-induced cognition. In fact, Veblen’s conflation of functional and sub-

stantive rationality and his linkage of both with overt behavior resulted in the fusion of

two different forms of social rationality which, for analytical and conceptual purposes,

the Europeans kept separate.

Mannheim believed that the more a society is industrialized and the more progress

has been made in the division of labor and the organization of a society, the greater the

number of areas of human endeavor that are organized functionally-rationally. This

functional rationality constrains and inhibits substantial-rational insight, which might

otherwise provide critical illumination of conventional categories of thought and domi-

nant sociopolitical structures. Clearly this view differs from Veblen’s where

machine-induced rationality encompasses both functional and substantial rationality,

which he tends to fuse.

Mannheim’s and Weber’s texts are useful for the extraction of meaning from the

heterodox American economist’s writing, explication which makes Veblen’s ideas more

intelligible to both Continental sociologists and U.S. social scientists, many of whom

still find him too dense to read and too satirical to take seriously. Like many other West-

ern intellectuals of his time, including Mannheim and Weber, Veblen is uncertain of

what the future holds for humankind. The potential “social rationality” in store for

industrial civilization thus fluctuates in his analysis depending on world events and the

ability or failure of Western institutions to overcome the inertia of cultural lag and

Mannheim, Weber, and the Problem of Social Rationality in Veblen

167

opposition of the vested interests. However, Veblen does not have people “choose” the

ends of life on the basis of rational selection. Although he did not deny the existence of

volition or agency for individuals, the ends of life for social aggregates are a matter of an

unintentional evolutionary process based on habituation.

Perhaps there is in Veblen’s mind’s eye the acting out of a “universal notion of

rationality: a self unencumbered by transient, egoistic, private and unreflective wants

and desires.”

34

Yet he drew back from predicting such human transformation because

he knew too many intervening institutional and cultural variables existed to warrant

such a view for even a science and machine-induced future. Although Veblen did not

sink irretrievably into the ranks of the cultural futilitarians and political pessimists à la

Oswald Spengler, there was a vein of despair, even cynicism, in his last book, Absentee

Ownership (1923), which was less evident in his other books.

35

At this time, European

social theory could, perhaps, have provided impetus for the clarification, refinement,

and testing of his ideas on machine-induced rationality. Instead, its insights were largely

ignored as he apparently succumbed to the view that Western, particularly American,

civilization was trapped by “imbecile institutions.” Considered in this light, the Veblen

who emerges from this portrayal is neither a mere historical figure nor a theoretical

anachronism but a thinker whose potent social theory is strengthened by an injection of

European sociology B la Mannheim and Weber.

Notes

1.

Thorstein Veblen, The Theory of the Leisure Class (New York: Augustus M. Kelley, 1975) and

The Theory of Business Enterprise (Clifton, N.J.: Augustus M. Kelley, 1975). Perhaps as many as

four different issues in Veblen with regard to “social rationality” must be distinguished from

each other. These are (1) the issue of individual rationality versus norm-guided behavior, that

is, the pursuit of individual self-interest as it conflicts with other-regarding motives and action;

(2) the question of the nature of the scientific point of view which is the issue of the extent to

which science is “objective” versus the degree to which it is socially conditioned; (3) the issue

of the linkage between the scientific viewpoint and social rationality more broadly construed;

and (4) the question of whether the scientific perspective involves a change in the nature of

rationality and norm-guided behavior as compared with their role in previous social forms.

Although this article focuses on all four of these issues, it deals primarily with (3) and (4).

2.

The most recent book-length interpretations of Veblen as a social theorist are Rick Tilman,

Thorstein Veblen and His Critics, 1891–1963 (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press,

1992) and The Intellectual Legacy of Thorstein Veblen: Unresolved Issues (Westport, Conn.: Green-

wood Press, 1996). Also see Stephen Edgell, Veblen in Perspective: His Life and Thought

(Armonk, N.Y.: M. E. Sharpe, 2001).

Weber and Mannheim occasionally quoted Veblen or cited him in their published

work; Veblen never reciprocated, although given his knowledge of German, it is difficult to

believe he was not familiar with Weber’s work. The publication of Mannheim’s Ideology and

Utopia in German in 1929 came too late for Veblen to have acknowledged it even in his last

writing.

3.

Weber’s analyses of rationality are scattered and fragmented in his writings, but see Hans

Gerth and C. Wright Mills, eds. and trans., From Max Weber: Essays in Sociology (New York:

Oxford University Press, 1946), 293–94; Weber, The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capital-

168

Rick Tilman

ism, trans. by Talcott Parsons (New York: Scribner’s, 1930); Weber, Economy and Society, edit.

by Guenther Roth and Claus Wittich (New York: Bedminster Press, 1968), 30, 85, 333, 424,

809; Weber, The Religion of China, trans. and edit. by Hans Gerth (New York: Free Press,

1964), 226-27; Weber, Ancient Judaism, trans. and edit. by Hans Gerth and Don Martindale

(New York: Free Press, 1967), 425-26; Weber, The Theory of Social and Economic Organization,

edit. with intro. by Talcott Parsons (New York: The Free Press, 1967), 186. Useful summa-

tions of Weber’s views on rationality are Stephen Kalberg, “Max Weber’s Types of Rational-

ity: Cornerstones for the Analysis of Rationalization Processes in History,” American Journal of

Sociology 85 (March 1980): 1145–79; Michael Zouboulakis, “From Mill to Weber: The Mean-

ing of the Concept of Economic Rationality,” European Journal of the History of Economic

Thought 8 (spring 2001): 30–41; Wolfgang Mommsen, The Political and Social Theory of Max

Weber: Collected Essays (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1989), part III.

On the genesis of Mannheim’s social theory, including the development and use of his

concepts of rationality, see Colin Loader and David Kettler, Karl Mannheim’s Sociology as Politi-

cal Education (New Brunswick, N.J.: Transaction Publishers, 2002). Also see Loader, The Intel-

lectual Development of Karl Mannheim (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1984). The

most detailed comparison of the social theory of Weber and Veblen is John P. Diggins, The

Bard of Savagery: Thorstein Veblen and Modern Social Theory (New York: Seabury Press, 1977).

4.

For a discussion of problems in defining “rationality” as well as explication of its meaning, see

Steven Lukes, Essays in Social Theory (New York: Columbia University Press, 1977) chapter 6.

5.

See esp. the articles by Herbert Marcuse, Theodor Adorno, and Max Horkheimer in the theo-

retical journal of the Frankfurt School, Studies in Philosophy and Social Science, vol. 9, no. 3

(April 1941): 365–439. Also, see American Louis Schneider’s The Freudian Psychology and

Veblen’s Social Theory (New York: King’s Crown Press, 1948), 99–132; Rick Tilman, “The

Frankfurt School and the Problem of Social Rationality in Thorstein Veblen,” History of the

Human Sciences 12 (February 1999): 91-109; and Tilman et al., “Critical Theory and Institu-

tional Economics: Frankfurt’s Encounter with Veblen,” Journal of Economic Issues 14 (Septem-

ber 1980): 631–648.

6.

Veblen, The Theory of Business Enterprise, 308.

7.

Ibid., 309–310. Veblen also commented that “[t]he spread of materialistic, matter-of-fact pre-

conceptions takes place at a cumulatively accelerating rate, except in so far as some other cul-

tural factor, alien to the machine discipline, comes in to inhibit its spread and keep its

disintegrating influence within bounds” (373).

8.

See esp. the articles by Marcuse, Adorno, and Horkheimer cited above.

9.

Veblen, The Theory of Business Enterprise, 311.

10. Ibid., 359.

11. Ibid., 342

12. Ibid., 353.

13. Ibid., 319.

14. Ibid., 321.

15. Ibid., 312.

16. Ibid., 314, 370.

17. Ibid., 313.

18. Glimpses of Veblen’s industrial republic are found in his “Some Neglected Points in the The-

ory of Socialism,” Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science 2 (1892),

387–408; “Christian Morals and the Competitive System” in Essays in Our Changing Order

(New York: Augustus M. Kelley, 1964), 200-218; and The Theory of Business Enterprise, chaps.

9–10.

19. Veblen, “The Place of Science in Modern Civilization,” in The Place of Science in Modern Civili-

zation and Other Essays (New York: Viking Press, 1930), 1.

20. Ibid., 2.

21. Ibid., 20.

Mannheim, Weber, and the Problem of Social Rationality in Veblen

169

22. Although Veblen suggested that scientific method was more likely to produce desirable

results in the social sciences than other approaches, he also recognized its moral and cultural

limitations (Ibid., 30). For a more detailed treatment, see Rick Tilman, “Thorstein Veblen:

Science, Revolution, and the Persistence of Atavistic Continuities,” in Charles M. A. Clark,

ed., Institutional Economics and the Theory of Social Value: Essays in Honor of Marc R. Tool (Boston:

Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1995), 241–48.

23. Veblen, Imperial Germany and the Industrial Revolution, (New York: B. W. Huebsch, 1915), 320.

24. Weber, The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, 20, 18.

25. Veblen, Absentee Ownership and Business Enterprise in Modern Times, intro. by Robert

Lekachman (Boston: Beacon Press, 1967), 360. For a comparison of Weber and Veblen on

several of these points, see Diggins, The Bard of Savagery, 113–19 and 133–38.

26. The other two are “(3) in terms of affectual orientation (affektuell), especially emotional, deter-

mined by the specific affects and states of feeling of the actor; (4) as traditionally oriented (tra-

ditional) through the habituation of long practice.”

Max Weber, The Theory of Social and Economic Organization, 115. Also, cf. Ernest M.

Manasse, “Moral Principles and Alternatives in Max Weber and John Dewey” I and II, The

Journal of Philosophy 41 (Jan. 20 & Feb. 3, 1944): 29–48, 57–68; and Donald N. Levine, “Ratio-

nality and Freedom: Weber and Beyond,” Sociological Inquiry 51, no. 1 (1981): 5–25. For an

analysis of culture-bound definitions of “rationality,” see Anne Mayhew, “Contrasting Ori-

gins of the Two Institutionalisms: The Social Science Context,” Review of Political Economy 1

(November 1989): 319–333.

27. But, cf. Veblen’s discussion of “borrowing,” “crossing,” and “grafting” in The Instinct of Work-

manship; Imperial Germany and the Industrial Revolution, chaps. 1, 2, 6, and The Theory of Business

Enterprise, chap. 9.

28. Karl Mannheim, Man and Society in an Age of Reconstruction (New York: Harcourt, Brace and

Co., 1940), 53–54. “Instrumental” or “functional” rationality is, of course, open to the charge

that it can be used to shore up any kind of political regime. As Eduard Heimann said in a let-

ter to Mannheim, “Your rationalism is not opposed to fascism, but rather, because of its

reduction to the social-technical, politically neutral . . . therefore supportive of the prevailing

power.” Eduard Heimann to Karl Mannheim, January 31, 1935, in Mannheim, Sociology as

Political Education, David Kettler and Colin Loader, edits. (New Brunswick: Transaction Pub-

lishers, 2001), 179.

29. Ibid., 53

30. See the brief but penetrating discussion of Mannheim in this regard in Russell Jacoby, The

End of Utopia Politics and Culture in an Age of Apathy (New York: Basic Books, 1999), 110–11,

123. Also see Jacoby’s analysis of intellectuals, ideology, and policy in the same study.

31. Warren Samuels, “The Self-Referentiability of Veblen’s Theory,” Journal of Economic Issues 24

(September 1990): 714–15. Assuming that Veblen was often an advocate and a practitioner of

instrumental valuation in the American pragmatic tradition, his generic ends of life are not

and cannot be ends-in-themselves. Instead, although more value specific than John Dewey’s

ends-in-view, they must also take their place in the continuum of means-ends. Ends, however

important they may be, are also means to other ends whose existence may not as yet even be

recognized. As Veblen once put it:

So closely in touch and so concurrent are the parental bent and the sense of work-

manship in this quest of efficiency that it is commonly difficult to guess which of

the two proclivities is to be credited with the larger or the leading part in any given

line of conduct; although taken by and large the two are after all fairly distinct in

respect of their functional content. This thorough and far-going concurrence of

the two may perhaps be taken to mean that the instinct of workmanship is in the

main a propensity to work out the ends which the parental bent makes worth

while. (The Instinct of Workmanship, New York: Augustus M. Kelley, 1975, 48)

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32. See Veblen, The Theory of the Leisure Class, chapt. 13. Veblen often used language and concepts

that are undeniably value laden. Indeed, The Theory of the Leisure Class is strewn with phrases

such as conformity “to the generically human canon of efficiency for some serviceable objec-

tive end” (259), “actions and conduct as conduce to the fullness of human life” (311), implied

endorsement of “reversion to a more generic type of human character” (361), “in order to be

at peace with himself the common man must be able to see in any and all human effort and

human enjoyment an enhancement of life and well-being on the whole. In order to meet with

unqualified approval, any economic fact must approve itself under the test of impersonal use-

fulness—usefulness as seen from the point of view of the generically human” (98); the ques-

tion that must be asked regarding all expenditure is “whether it serves directly to enhance

human life on the whole—whether it furthers the life process taken impersonally” (99), and,

finally, “this collective interest is best served by honesty, diligence, peacefulness, goodwill, and

absence of self-seeking, and an habitual recognition and apprehension of causal sequence,

without admixture of animistic belief and without a sense of dependence on any preternatu-

ral intervention in the course of events” (227). Also, cf. Veblen’s The Instinct of Workmanship,

chaps. 1–2, and Michael Sheehan and Rick Tilman, “A Clarification of the Concept of ‘In-

strumental Valuation’ in Neoinstitutional Economics,” Journal of Economic Issues 26 (March

1992): 731–744.

33. Mannheim, Man and Society in an Age of Reconstruction, 58.

34. Ibid., 58. Mannheim referred to Veblen’s The Vested Interests and the State of the Industrial Arts

(New York: B. W. Huebsch, 1919), the title under which it was originally published.

35. Michael Freeden, “John Hobson as a Political Theorist” in John Pheby, ed., J. A. Hobson after

Fifty Years: Freethinker of the Social Sciences (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1994), 30. Freeden

was describing the views of Hobson, Veblen’s friend and critic.

36. Veblen, Absentee Ownership and Business Enterprise in Recent Times, 205–206. Also cf. chap. 13,

“The Secular Trend,” with The Theory of Business Enterprise (1904), chap. 9, “The Cultural Inci-

dence of the Machine Process,” and the general tone of The Vested Interests and the State of the

Industrial Arts (1919).

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