Veblen's Instinct of Workmanship pg. 138-146

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 Chapter 4 is entitled “The Technology of the Predatory Culture”.  It starts with a strong statement that the way of life is very much based on the group's holding of a stock of knowledge and no individual can truly do their work or create without access to a pool of knowledge.  This is a reversal from some of our traditional notions that individuals create knowledge and that knowledge is then shared with the group through usage and implementation.  This idea is present through much of Veblen's writing. Veblen does recognize that some individuals are more creative or hard working or more inherently skilled but that they are still a product of the group.


The next few paragraphs Veblen focuses on the differences they exist across individuals due to chance of heredity and other random factors. He also makes the point that people will often deny the role of the group in their achievements and success. He writes that, “to evade or deny something of the breadth of their inheritance in respect of human nature” (Veblen 1914, pg. 139). He points out that some individuals will thank God for their success or their wonderful ancestors that created their distinctive success over others.  Veblen clearly doesn't buy this line of argument and says it is mostly about luck and random chance.


Later, Veblen focuses on the fact that in the “lower cultures” there are less differences amongst people and that technology is much simpler.  In these cultures, people are much more likely to share resources and cooperate with each other and there is less invidious distinction.  In these circumstances, there is little to be gained from ownership or the institution or private property and so it does not exist. There is also little to gain from the accumulation of wealth for any individual.   In Veblen’s view, the workperson is a function of the technological or industrial arts of the community and the state of the industrial arts is a function of the group's stock of knowledge from the past and their borrowings from other cultures.


To end this discussion, there is an important footnote in Veblen's view. He takes on the idea that any specific factor of production , land , labor or capital can be directly conceived of as being “productive” but is instead productive due to drawing on the collective stock of knowledge of the community so that each factor of production has an “imputed productivity” . He argues in fact that this imputed productivity is due to the institutions (habits of thought) that exist at any given time and in any given community.  He then goes on to argue that these institutions or habits of thought are themselves at least partially a response to the technology of the community. The final statement in the footnote is “the controversy as the productivity of labor should accordingly shift its ground from the “the nature of things” to the exigencies of ingrained preconceptions principles and expediencies as seen in the light of current technological requirements and the current drift of habituation (Veblen, 1914, pg. 146). In other words, labor productivity is a function of institutions and habits of thought and technology.

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