The Frankfurt School and the problem of social rationality in Thorstein Veblen

History of the Human Sciences 12 (1):91-109 (1999)
  Copy   BIBTEX

Abstract

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

Other Versions

No versions found

Links

PhilArchive

    This entry is not archived by us. If you are the author and have permission from the publisher, we recommend that you archive it. Many publishers automatically grant permission to authors to archive pre-prints. By uploading a copy of your work, you will enable us to better index it, making it easier to find.

    Upload a copy of this work     Papers currently archived: 102,283

External links

Setup an account with your affiliations in order to access resources via your University's proxy server

Through your library

Similar books and articles

Darwin, Veblen and the Problem of Causality in Economics.Geoffrey M. Hodgson - 2001 - History and Philosophy of the Life Sciences 23 (3/4):385 - 423.

Analytics

Added to PP
2013-11-22

Downloads
49 (#458,662)

6 months
12 (#296,609)

Historical graph of downloads
How can I increase my downloads?

Citations of this work

No citations found.

Add more citations

References found in this work

Eclipse of reason.Max Horkheimer - 1974 - New York: Continuum.
Eclipse of Reason.Max Horkheimer - 1948 - Philosophy 23 (87):368-369.
Some social implications of modern technology.Herbert Marcuse - 1941 - Studies in Philosophy and Social Science 9 (3):414-439.
Some Social Implications of Modern Technology.Herbert Marcuse - 1941 - Zeitschrift für Sozialforschung 9 (3):414-439.

View all 14 references / Add more references