Thorstein Veblen’s Absentee Ownership in the Age of the Anthropocene: Law, Technology and Climate Crisis

This paper reconsiders Veblen’s Absentee Ownership on the centennial of its publication in 1923. It offers a reading of the work in relation to climate change in the new geologic age of the Anthropocene. The central finding is that Veblen’s analysis of the power implications of finance capital and law stand up well as guides to understanding the inertia of US energy policy. However, the book’s concept of ‘the industrial system’ is found seriously wanting. Conceiving of ‘the industrial system’ as a balanced whole of inter-connected mechanical processes, Veblen’s model fails to grasp how that industrial logic might be open to the environment and thus a major source of de-stabilising climate warming gases. More, this outcome is a result of industrial processes, regardless of which social group exercises control of the system: e.g. financiers, communists, or technicians. That is, while Veblen well understands the impact of technology on society, he tends not to envision how industrial technology itself can change Nature in unanticipated and destructive ways. The weaknesses of Veblen’s concept are traced back to his understanding of Nature as a structure of brute forces, scientific knowledge of which permits its effective technological control.