Comparative Analysis of Richard H. Tawney and Thorstein B. Veblen’s Conceptions of Property

Abstract:

The conceptualizations of property by Thorstein B. Veblen and Richard H. Tawney are compared. At a general level, both scholars were avid students of economic history and used economic history to explain evolutionary changes in the institution of property. Methodologically, Veblen clearly explains property in a cumulative causal sequence, which Tawney does not do convincingly. However, both Tawney and Veblen dichotomized society into a functional society (industrial, commonwealth of masterless people) and an acquisitive society (business dominated, leisure class dominated, commonwealth of saboteurs). The former is dominated by active property, which serves a social purpose of advancing the common good. Property, in this case, is an institution to fulfil the survival requirement of society. The latter is dominated by passive property, which serves as an extractive institution through which the power of economic sabotage is exercised. Although Tawney viewed some variants of the institution of property as necessary for society to function properly, Veblen found that all legal rights to property were rights of economic sabotage, which, in most cases, started as active property and over time mutated into passive property, manifesting as absentee ownership.

Keywords:

• Thorstein Bunde Veblen
• Richard Henry Tawney
• property rights
• functional society
• acquisitive society
• economic sabotage
• absentee ownership

JEL Classification Codes:

• B15. B25
• B52

Notes

1 Readers of the JEI recall debates about whether institutions (including property) are ceremonial or instrumental, for example, in Yngve Ramstad (1991) and Yngve Ramstad (2001). The ceremonial dimension captures use of property in acts of economic sabotage. The instrumental dimension captures the role of property in incentivizing creativity and production. In large part, the institution of property seemed to be viewed as fulfilling ceremonial functions as the Veblenian Dichotomy classified institutions as part of the ceremonial system.

2 In Tawney ([1921] 1922, 66–67), “It is questionable, however, whether economists should call it ‘Property’ at all, and not rather, as Mr. Hobson has suggested, ‘Improperty,’ since it is not identical with the rights which secure the owner the produce of his toil, but is the opposite of them.”

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Juniours Marire

Juniours Marire is in the Department of Economics and Economic History at Rhodes University, Grahamstown, South Africa. The author acknowledges the invaluable input of two anonymous reviewers and the Editor-in-Chief. The reviewer also thanks members of the Faculty of Commerce at Rhodes University who gave their critique to his ideas in the Faculty Research Colloquium in 2017 where he had developed some ideas about Tawney’s work in relation to contested land reform in South Africa.