Thorstein Veblen, Iconoclastic Economist

This article offers a presentation of the works by Thorstein Veblen, as well as some biographical elements. After a brief presentation of Veblen’s main intellectual influences and after presenting the author’s context of an America dominated by robber-barons at the turn of the XXth Century, this article presents his theory of socio-economic evolution based on a Darwinian perspective, his theory of the elite and of the leisure class, his theory of capital as means of predation and, finally, discusses the heritage Thorstein Veblen left in social sciences.