Veblenian and Neo-Marxian Perspectives on the Cultural Crisis of Late Capitalism

Abstract

This chapter seeks to draw attention to the psychocultural consequences of the systemic late capitalist response to economic crises and to the need for a research agenda to delineate and evaluate these consequences. The work of Veblen and recent American neo-Marxists is suggested as the basis for a start toward developing this research agenda. I use the term neo-Marxism loosely to encompass a variety of scholars who share a common point of departure in Marx’s social theory, but insist that Marx’s categories do not capture the essential tendencies of existing capitalism and socialism (Brown, 1988, p. 9).

Sales-publicity … is a trading on that range of human infirmities which blossom in devout observances and bear fruit in the psychopathic wards.

T.B. Veblen, 1923.

If we confine attention to the inner dynamics of advanced monopoly capitalism, … the logical outcome would be the spread of increasingly severe psychic disorders leading to the impairment and eventual breakdown of the system’s ability to function even on its own terms.

P.A. Baran and P.M. Sweezy, 1966.

Reprinted from the Journal of Economic Issues (1989) by special permission of the copyright holder, the Association for Evolutionary Economics. An earlier version was published in William Dugger, ed., Radical Institutionalism by Greenwood Press whose permission to reprint is also gratefully acknowledged.