To answer what I consider to be your question, Veblen systematically understands our desires on a biological and evolutionary level. As man develops more complicated social structures, society evolves to adapt to these cultural developments. We move therefore from a "peaceable" to a "quasi-peaceable" to a "predatory" social system in the age of primitivism. In all these stages, class division exists but to the teleological end of collective improvement. What motivates man is precisely that 'desire' of group enhancement.

The desire, however, diminishes significantly in the beginning and particularly the end of barbarism. Then, groups invert in the most literal sense external competition. While competition more generally seems to operate on a biological level across all human societies, this inversion of competition only infects 'higher' societies. At that stage, inverted competition within the group encourages emulation, more precisely 'invidious' emulation. I size up my neighbor against myself, and, if my neighbor belongs to a higher leisure class, I emulate him; if the same class like vicarious leisure, I compete to outdo him; if a lower class like the industrial class, I must avoid whatever activity he does entirely. In this sense, my demand or 'desire' for something is dictated by the superior class, and not the masses, since the superior class also must avoid whatever activity the inferior class does.

My question is to what extent the "domestic servant" with whom a reputable household must not socialize could be said to represent an allegory of the "firm" or "corporation"? Shareholders (the master), to whom service employees (the domestic servant) work, are always absent and thus do not socialize with the employees since "personal contact with the hired persons whose aid is called in to fulfil the routine of decency is commonly distasteful to the occupants of the house, but their presence is endured and paid for, in order to delegate to them a share in this onerous consumption of household goods"? (41 until the end of chapter 3).

-- JesseCreed - 12 Mar 2008