July 30– THORSTEIN VEBLEN
Iconoclastic, sardonic theorist of profit, status and class, he probed the irrational forces of capitalist culture.

The basis on which good repute in any highly organized industrial community ultimately rests is pecuniary strength; and the means of showing pecuniary strength, and so of gaining or retaining a good name, are leisure and a conspicuous consumption of goods.

Read more Veblen on Project Gutenberg.

JULY 30, 2009 HOLIDAYS AND FESTIVALS
*Virginia: Crater Day. Civil War holiday.

ALSO ON JULY 30 IN HISTORY…
1857 — Economist and social theorist Thorsten Veblen born, Valders, Wisconsin.
1889 — Radical woodcut artist Frans Masereel born, Blankenberge, Belgium.
1925 — Rootless cosmopolitan Alexander Trocchi born, Glasgow, Scotland.
1938 — Hitler presents highest non-citizen award to Henry Ford in Berlin.
1958 — Left-wing coup in Iraq arouses Western fears of domino effect.

Excerpted from The 2009 Autonomedia Calendar of Jubilee Saints: Radical Heroes for the New Millennium by James Koehnline and the Autonomedia Collective