John Kenneth Galbraith and I share the same alma mater: The University of Guelph. Mind you, Galbraith apparently hated the place while I loved it. Galbraith, according to this article, called it “probably the worst college in the English-speaking world.” (When Galbraith was there it was simply the Ontario Agricultural College, branch plant of the University of Toronto, 80 km to the east). When Galbraith died in 2006, the University of Guelph was willing to overlook Galbraith's harsh assessment and instead claimed that its (arguably) most famous alumnus was “a dedicated friend and supporter of the University.”
Whatever …
Certainly Galbraith was one of the greatest liberal thinkers of his age and quite possibly of the last few hundred years.
I quite like Galbraith for his wit, candour and plain languge, something that comes up in this review essay in The Nation by Kim Phillips-Fein:
Galbraith delighted in puncturing the self-importance of his profession. He was a satirist of economics almost as much as a practitioner of it. He took generally accepted ideas about the economy and turned them upside down. Instead of atomistic individuals and firms, he saw behemoth corporations; instead of the free market, a quasi-planned economy. Other economists believed that consumers were rational, calculating actors, whose demands and tastes were deserving of the utmost deference. Galbraith saw people who were easily manipulated by savvy corporations and slick advertising campaigns, who had no real idea of what they wanted, or why. In many ways, our economic world is quite different from the one Galbraith described at mid-century. But at a time when free-market orthodoxy seems more baroque, smug and dominant than ever, despite the recession caused by the collapse of the real estate bubble, his gleeful skewering of the “conventional wisdom” (a phrase he famously coined) remains a welcome corrective.
Phillips-Fein is reviewing a “Library of America” collection of Galbraith's writings between 1952 and 1967:
The four books collected in the Library of America volume take as their central target the idea that the economy is composed of rational, calculating individuals, whose personal preferences shape the market and guide it to an optimal outcome for everyone. It is hard to imagine four such books being written today: they were bestselling, lucid, fiercely confident works that argued in various ways against the idea that the American economy operates as a frictionless, benevolent free market.
For example:
Private consumption rose to heights of bizarre extravagance—while schools and parks had to beg for money from the state. “Vacuum cleaners to ensure clean houses are praiseworthy and essential in our standard of living,” Galbraith wrote. “Street cleaners to ensure clean streets are an unfortunate expense. Partly as a result, our houses are generally clean and our streets are generally filthy.” He also observed the odd discrepancy in attitudes toward public and private debt—the one, sharply condemned, the other eagerly encouraged.
Phillips-Fein reminds us that Galbraith's attack on unfettered capitalism are possibly even more relevant today than they were 50 years ago though..
“..some of the particulars of his vision may seem out of place today, his argument that there is something absurd about a society that can afford tremendous mansions, private jets and elite colleges while cities close firehouses, shut down bus lines and debate whether their crumbling public schools can even stay open five days a week seems as relevant as ever. So does his willingness to poke fun at those who recite platitudes about the market.
Today, the gulf between the richest and the poorest has grown wider, with the policies that support such inequalities buttressed, in part, by the intellectual project of modern conservatism, which Galbraith once called “one of man’s oldest exercises in moral philosophy; that is, the search for a superior moral justification for selfishness.” With the headlines dominated by news of recession and austerity, how clear is it that we live in an “affluent society” any longer?