The consequence of this system of invidious distinction is waste. While people do not usually waste time and money intentionally, they do so in a wish to conform to the accepted canons of decency in society. Veblen rails against such wasteful expenditures as the ownership of pets and the use of beauty products. Overall, the leisure class is associated with waste, futility, and ferocity, and it stands in opposition to the needs of industrial society to efficiently distribute goods—they are the embodiment of the cultural lag.

Business and Industry

Veblen sees an inherent conflict between what he calls, somewhat idiosyncratically, business and industry. Veblen's two-class model of social stratification includes a business class, which owns wealth invested in large holdings, and an industrial class, whose conditions of life are controlled by others and who live by work. On the one hand, today's business leaders are almost exclusively concerned with financial matters—especially profit—and make no contribution to production. Veblen sees these captains of industry as parasitic and exploitative. On the other hand, industry is oriented toward workmanship and production. Unlike the businessman's pecuniary orientation, the industrial orientation is an impersonal standpoint of quantitative relations and mechanical efficiency.

Business leaders obstruct the operation of the industrial system. For example, business leaders attribute the yields of the modern industrial system—what Veblen called free income—to intangibles like patents. Such intangibles impede the ability of the industrial system to produce as much as possible. Similarly, Veblen argues that prices are kept artificially high by sabotaging production. For these reasons, industrial society would be run most efficiently by production engineers who would look out for the welfare of all members of society rather than the vested interests of business.

Higher Education

Veblen also investigated the effects of business interests on higher education, suggesting that the American educational system could be more profitably directed toward serving the needs of industry. Veblen believed that the university should be dedicated primarily to scientific and scholarly inquiry rather than to undergraduate education. He thought that undergraduates would be better served in professional and technical schools where practical knowledge could be imparted efficiently without corrupting the university's essentially impractical mission. University administrators are too oriented toward business and stand in opposition to science and scholarship because they seek to run the university with businesslike efficiency. For example, Veblen was critical of the university's interest in competition with other universities. He thought that this impulse too often resulted in wasteful expenditures like manicured lawns and expensive buildings. Similarly, the faculty does quasi-science dedicated to supporting the status quo rather than real science. Veblen holds out little hope of the academic world changing until the larger economic system is overhauled.

Politics

Veblen approached politics in much the same way he did the economy. He saw political leaders as tools of the captains of industry. Too often, he believed, the government takes action to serve the interests of business leaders abroad without considering the international development of industry. Tariffs and wars are examples of the predatory behaviour of nations acting to fortify the interests of business leaders.

Mannheim, Marx, and Ideology

Although he never produced a systematic grand theory of society on the scale of Marx or Weber, Karl Mannheim (1893-1947) is an important figure in sociology because he invented the field called the sociology of knowledge. Mannheim credited Marx for creating the beginnings of this field through his theory of ideology; however, Mannheim was critical of Marx's notion that ideologies involve the conscious intention to distort reality. According to Mannheim, ideology "has no moral or denunciatory intent." Mannheim also questioned Marx's belief that ideologies emerge only from social classes. While Mannheim believed that the most significant source of ideology originated from class stratification, he acknowledged that all social groups produce ideologies, such as generations. In contrast to Marx, Mannheim attempted to study the social sources of distorted thinking in a scientific manner rather than exclusively focusing on the political sources of ideology. This, according to Mannheim, was one of the premises of the sociology of knowledge.

Mannheim's Sociological Approach

Mannheim's sociology of knowledge is empirical because he was interested in studying how social relationships influence thought; but he was neither a determinist nor a positivist. In fact, Mannheim was highly critical of positivism because it allowed no role for theory and, by focusing solely on material reality, neglected the importance of understanding and interpretation. Mannheim was also critical of phenomenology because it focused too much on mental or cognitive phenomena without addressing how these related to the material world. Mannheim viewed the task of the sociology of knowledge as one of integrating the empirical orientation of positivism with the cognitive orientation of phenomenology. He also argued that the sociology of knowledge should be informed by relationalism rather than relativism.