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human being. And, decidedly, the result has been an amelioration of the lot of the less favored in a relatively greater degree than that of those economically more fortunate. The claim that the system of competition has proved itself an engine for making the rich richer and the poor poorer has the fascination of epigram; but if its meaning is that the lot of the average, of the masses of humanity in civilised life, is worse today, as measured in the means of livelihood, than it was twenty, or fifty, or a hundred years ago, then it is farcical [1919, 391].
Capitalism has without a doubt improved the material standard of living of the average person. Its problems and deficiencies lie elsewhere.
The beginning of the twenty-first century finds us with no serious alternatives to capitalism. Various political factions agitate for change of greater or lesser magnitude. But only true ideologues, blind to history, really believe that a fundamentally different system would necessarily be an improvement, or that it could be brought about without enormous bloodshed. That makes Veblen’s approach and analysis all the more valuable. He made no attempt to construct castles in the air to which the march of history is inevitably taking us. There is only the hard business of looking at human society as it is and trying to make sense of it. As Diggins put it, “capitalism is something we must learn to live with [and that] makes Veblen’s critical perspectives more pertinent than ever” [1999, xxix]. Veblen’s approach offers an antidote to the tired ideologies espoused by the demagogues who dominate public discourse.