Veblens America

Sidney Plotkin

Description

A study of the political rise of Donald Trump through Thorstein Veblen’s theory of barbaric legacies in American development.

Donald Trump’s astonishing rise to the US presidency challenges conventional understandings of American politics, yet he is distinctively American. His biography and family lineage reflect American traditions such as real estate hucksterism and buccaneering salesmanship. But Trump’s pugnacity also reflects the shadow of other darker American traditions of misogyny, racism and xenophobia, patterns that formed what Thorstein Veblen called a “sclerosis of the American soul.” Using Veblen’s theory of American development to explore the nation’s curious fusion of barbarism and liberal democracy, Veblen’s America taps the rich vein of the sociologist’s early twentieth-century insights to shed light on the Trump phenomenon that has overwhelmed and threatened early twenty-first-century American democracy.

1. Donald Trump through Veblen’s Looking Glass; 2. Evolution, Institutions and Barbarism; 3. The American Plan; 4. Trumpean Ancestors, Exploitative Legacies; 5. Building for the Leisure Class; 6. Picturesque Accomplishments; 7. Candidate Trump and the Politics of Rage; 8. Limits of Barbarian Governance; Index.

Sujets

• POLITICAL SCIENCE
• Political opportunity
• Politics Magazine
• Federal government of the United States
• Executive (government)

Informations

• Publié par: Anthem Press
• Date de parution: 28 décembre 2018
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781783088744
• Langue: English

Extrait

Veblen’s America
Veblen’s America
The Conspicuous Case of Donald J. Trump
Sidney Plotkin
Anthem Press
An imprint of Wimbledon Publishing Company
www.anthempress.com
This edition first published in UK and USA 2018
by ANTHEM PRESS
75–76 Blackfriars Road, London SE1 8HA, UK
or PO Box 9779, London SW19 7ZG, UK
and
244 Madison Ave #116, New York, NY 10016, USA
© Sidney Plotkin 2018
The author asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.
All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise), without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.
British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
ISBN-13: 978-1-78308-872-0 (Hbk)
ISBN-10: 1-78308-872-9 (Hbk)
This title is also available as an e-book.
For Aura
CONTENTS
Acknowledgments
A Note on Citations
Chapter One
Introduction: Donald Trump through Veblen’s Looking Glass
Chapter Two
Evolution, Institutions and Barbarism
Chapter Three
The American Plan: Barbaric Liberalism
Chapter Four
Trumpian Ancestors, Exploitative Legacies
Chapter Five
Building for the Leisure Class
Chapter Six
“Picturesque Accompaniments”
Chapter Seven
Candidate Trump and the Politics of Popular Rage
Chapter Eight
Barbaric Governance
Index
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
This is a study that I never imagined I might write. It was certainly nowhere on my scholarly agenda. The coupling of Donald J. Trump and Thorstein Bunde Veblen did not present itself to me in any abstract way, history did. It began unexpectedly to take root in my mind in 2016. I was in the final stages of editing a collection of essays for Anthem on Veblen’s social theory. One of the volume’s anonymous reviewers was complimentary of the authors’ contributions, but added a note of surprise and disappointment that little in the collection spoke to Veblen’s sense of the American case. Indeed not—the authors’ preoccupations were mainly with Veblen’s social theory, its methods and underpinnings, not with his observations about specific national instances. I made this point in reply and added another. In light of the suddenly strident political success of Donald Trump, I suggested that invoking Veblen’s thoughts on the United States might be an intriguing way both to explore the Trump phenomenon as well as to underscore Veblen’s continuing relevance to an understanding of the contemporary world. What I did not express in that reply was my gnawing perplexity at this disturbing shift in the tenor and thrust of American politics nor my uncertainty about how well Veblen might actually help to clarify matters. With the encouragement of Anthem’s Tej P. S. Sood to follow this lead, I began working anew through Veblen’s treatment of the American case, particularly its linkages to Veblen’s earliest observations about barbarism in The Theory of the Leisure Class. As I proceeded to unravel his idea of the barbaric stand in American liberalism, and to familiarize myself with Trump’s life, the project became more and more imaginable and worthwhile. Readers, of course, will make their own judgments of its value. As for me, the experience of peering through Veblen to find the barbaric image of Donald Trump staring back at me proved to be among the most intellectually rewarding and harrowing of my writing life.
The resulting work is drawn from widely available, mainly journalistic sources on Trump, including the various biographies. Most of the writing was completed in January 2018. And though I have had some opportunities to update certain key developments, the main emphasis here is less on Trump’s presidency than on Veblen’s aid in explaining the life and institutional forces that led to that presidency. My goal has not been to provide new data or evidence but to enrich understanding of Trump by showing how his lineage, behavior, values and business career are understandable within, although not necessarily exclusively, with the help of Veblen’s theoretical frame. The years ahead will find scholars from many fields and disciplines adding much to the academic study of Trump and Trumpism. The present work is but a first stab at making theoretical sense of Trump and what he represents. But it is just as much an attempt to highlight the power of Veblen’s insight into the barbaric forces at work in American development. Naturally, any errors of fact and judgment fall exclusively within my responsibility, and I offer the usual authorial apologies for any and all of these.
The time and freedom to do this work did not spontaneously appear. I want very much to express my gratitude to Vassar College and to my colleagues in the Department of Political Science for permitting me to take an early sabbatical leave in order to develop and complete this work. Without that generous contribution, this study could not have been undertaken. Special gratitude as well to Bill Scheuerman, Russ Bartley and Rick Tilman for their insightful readings and comments on early chapter drafts as well as to Anthem’s anonymous readers for their helpful and supportive notes. My deepest gratitude, however, goes to my wife, Aura, for her gifts of love and friendship, and for her ability to sense before I did that Donald Trump’s candidacy was not to be taken lightly. Indeed, it is to her that this work is lovingly dedicated.
A NOTE ON CITATIONS
To avoid needless repetition, Thorstein Veblen’s writings are cited throughout with abbreviations. Full citations, with abbreviations in parentheses, including date of original publication, are included below:
The Theory of the Leisure Class , introduction by Robert Lekachman (New York: Penguin Books, 1979) ( TLC, 1899).
The Theory of Business Enterprise , with a new introduction by Douglas Dowd (New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction, 1978) ( TBE, 1904).
The Instinct of Workmanship and the State of the Industrial Arts , with a new introduction by Murray G. Murphey (New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction, 1990) ( IOW, 1914).
Imperial Germany and the Industrial Revolution , with an introduction by Joseph Dorfman (New York: Viking Press, 1954) ( IG, 1915).
An Inquiry into the Nature of Peace and the Terms of Its Perpetuation (New York: August M. Kelley, 1964) ( NOP , 1917).
The Engineers and the Price System , introduction by Daniel Bell (New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction 1983) ( EPS, 1921).
The Vested Interests and the Common Man (New York: Augustus M. Kelley, 1964) ( VICM , 1919).
The Higher Learning in America , with a new introduction by Ivar Berg (New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction, 1993) ( THL, 1918).
Absentee Ownership: Business Enterprise in Recent Times; The Case of America , with a new introduction by Marion J. Levy Jr. (New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction, 1997) ( AO, 1923).
Veblen’s essays and reviews appear in three collections. These are cited by title in the notes with abbreviations for the collections in which they appear:
The Place of Science in Modern Civilization (New York: Capricorn Books, 1969). The Capricorn edition was entitled Veblen on Marx, Race, Science and Economics. Citations are from this edition, but are noted in the text as ( PSC, 1919).
Economics in Our Changing Order , ed. Leon Ardzrooni (New York: Augustus Kelley, 1964) ( ECO, 1934).
Essays, Reviews and Reports: Previously Uncollected Writings, edited with a new introduction by Joseph Dorfman (Clifton, NJ: Augustus M. Kelley, 1973) ( ERR, 1973).
Chapter One
INTRODUCTION: DONALD TRUMP THROUGH VEBLEN’S LOOKING GLASS

In order to gain and hold the esteem of men it is not sufficient merely to possess wealth or power. The wealth or power must be put in evidence, for esteem is awarded only on evidence. 1
He boasted of sexual assault. His first wife charged that he raped her. More than a dozen women have come forward to complain that he forcibly kissed or groped them. A porn star claims that he paid her off to keep their extramarital affair secret. A Senate candidate accused of sexual involvements with high school girls won his eager support. 2 He repeatedly threatened nuclear attack on North Korea, then warmly greeted its murderous leader and called him an “honorable man.” When a neo-Nazi and white supremacist march resulted in the death of a protester, he equivocated; there are “very fine people” on both sides, he said. 3 After becoming president, he refused to divest his private holdings or to divulge his tax returns. He continues to profit from his private properties, including a hotel near the White House that regularly hosts gatherings of party officials, lobbyists and foreign diplomats. 4 Members of his immediate family hold key positions in his government. 5 His idea of “sacrifice” is to work hard on his own behalf. 6 Promising to “Make America Great Again” for the nation’s workers, he appointed the wealthiest and perhaps least competent cabinet in American history. And he accelerated redistribution of income upward through a massive business tax cut. 7 He has repeatedly lied and dissembled, insulted and harangued, obliterating truth and fact with cavalier disdain. According to the fact-checking website, Politifact , he dissembles 75 percent of the time. 8 Despite all evidence to the contrary, he claims that, but for massive fraud, he won the popular vote for president. He has declared the US media the “enemy of the people,” and its