The Frankfurt School attacked Veblen ’ s claims regarding machine-induced rationality in industrial societ y. Their criticisms stemmed in part from the fact that Veblen failed to present his ideas systematically in a formal treatise on either economics or sociolog y, and because he did not use concepts or jargon familiar to the critical theorists. This article thus aims at: (1) demonstrating through textual exegesis the meaning of social rationality in the corpus of Veblen ’ s writing, especiall y The (...) Theory of Business Enterprise (1904); (2) elucidating the problems that arose in the Frankfurt School ’ s critique of Veblen because he used nomenclature and conceptualizations unfamiliar to Herbert Marcuse, Theodor Adorno and Max Horkheimer; (3) reiterating Veblen ’ s thesis on the impact of ‘transfer effects’ on workers interacting with the machine process; and (4) outlining the failure of the Frankfurt School adequately to examine his claims in the American political environment in which they were made. (shrink)

No philistine, Thorstein Veblen thought humankind's innate impulse to imbue experience with aesthetic unity advanced all knowledge, and that the most beautiful objects, ideas, and actions met a standard of communal benefit reflecting humanity's naturally selected sociability. Though German idealism was an early influence, it clashed with Veblen's historicist critique of Western institutions, and it was William James's psychology that refined his ideas into a coherent aesthetics with ethical and political applications, by clarifying how instinct, habit, and environment could interact (...) to institutionalize standards of beauty subverting the native altruism of the aesthetic impulse. Over years of association with John Dewey, Veblen concluded that a redeemed and reflective will to behold and create beauty in and through selfless activity could advance a more efficient and egalitarian society, and that humans cooperatively shaping their environments for the common good could approximate the German tradition's ideal of harmonizing personal freedom and external reality. (shrink)