Volume 20, Number 18 · November 15, 1973
Galbraith's Utopia
By Paul M. Sweezy
Economics and the Public Purpose
by John Kenneth Galbraith
Houghton Mifflin, 333 pp., $10.00
It would be interesting to trace the development of John Kenneth Galbraith's ideas, beginning with American Capitalism (1952) and culminating (so far at any rate) with Economics and the Public Purpose, which has just been published. Such a survey would show, I think, that Professor Galbraith is very sensitive to the moods of the moment, moving with but little resistance and even less acknowledgment from a kind of Panglossian optimism in American Capitalism (and the same year's famous New York Times Magazine article 'We Can Prosper Without War Orders'), through increasing skepticism in the middle books (The Affluent Society and The New Industrial State), to something which now displays what is at times ill-concealed alarm. That all this goes along with, and in Galbraith's mind no doubt stems from, a basically not much changed vision of the American economy and American society, is a noteworthy fact which may tend to suggest that the correspondence between this vision and the reality is not altogether perfect. It is to this aspect that I should like to direct attention.
Review, 3917 words
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