Thorstein Veblen among his peer economists: a study on the audience and the argumentative structure of his systematic critique of economic thought

This paper aims to contribute to the revisionist tendency regarding Thorstein Veblen's intellectual biography. Specifically, it aimed to study Veblen's position among the economists of his time in the United States. For this purpose, the audience, the context and the structure of the argument used by the founder of institutionalism were analyzed in a series of texts published between 1898 and 1909. This series was named "systematic critique of economic thought". It was concluded that Veblen framed his argument with the explicit intention of reaching an agreement with his audience of economists, through the rhetorical device of the "reinvention of the tradition".

Thorstein Veblen; history of American economic thought; rhetoric of economics