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Name: John Kenneth Galbraith
Dates:
Born: October 15, 1908 in Ontario, Canada
Died: n/a
Ph.D. from the University of California: 1934
Became an American citizen: 1937
Published Affluent Society: 1958
Published The New Industrial State: 1967
Biography:
John Kenneth Galbraith is a Canadian-born American economist who has
been widely popular among non-economists - perhaps more so than any other
economist has ever been. A principle reason for this is the clarity of his writing, making
economic concepts more readily intelligible to lay people.
Galbraith's first really popular work was Affluent Society (1958) in which he attacked the popular notion of "consumer sovereignty." According to Galbraith, our economy is not really driven the free choice of consumers - instead, modern business "uses its political influence to persuade the government to maintain full employment and total demand for all output of all firms." In essence, Galbraith pictured the modern industrial economy as a kind of treadmill, structured by businesses to keep people working and consuming, regardless of what they might want if they were actually left to their own devices.
If the individual's wants are to be urgent, they must be original with himself. They cannot be urgent if they must be contrived for him. And above all, they must not be contrived by the process of production by which they are satisfied.... One cannot defend production as satisfying wants if that production creates the wants.
Critics have generally agreed with Galbraith's central thesis, namely that consumer desires are not really innate but rather products of social forces beyond their control. Where they disagree, however, is in the question of how to interpret this fact. Whereas John Kenneth Galbraith concludes that such socially determined desires are not really important, his critics will argue that this would lead to a denigration of practically all cultural achievement.
Also Known As: none
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Related Resources:
What are Political and Legal Philosophy
The Philosophy of Politics and the Philosophy of Law are often studied separately, but they are presented here jointly because they both come back to the same thing: the study of force. Politics is the study of political force in the general community, while jurisprudence is the study of how laws can and should be used to achieve political and social goals.What is Philosophy?
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