The Vested Interests and the Common Man

("The Modern Point of View and the New Order")

Thorstein Veblen

Published in New York, NY by B. W. Huebsch, Inc.

First published in May, 1919

Second Printing, November, 1920

Transcribed for Manifold using a Google-digitized scan accessed via HathiTrust.

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Table of Contents

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Preface

These papers have already appeared, in a slightly abridged form, in the Dial; running from the 19th October, 1918, to the 25th January, 1919, under the general caption: "The Modern Point of View and the New Order". They are here reprinted in a collected form in response to requests which have come to hand. Except for a more detailed description at one point and another this text does not differ materially from the papers in the Dial;. In point of scope and logical content this discussion resumes the argument of a course of lectures before students in Amherst College in May, 1918.

The aim of these papers is to show how and, as far as may be, why a discrepancy has arisen in the course of time between those accepted principles of law and custom that underlie business enterprise and the businesslike management of industry, on the one hand, and the material conditions which have now been engendered by that new order of industry that took its rise in the late 18th century, on the other hand; together with some speculations on the civil and political difficulties set afoot by this discrepancy between business and industry.

March, 1919.