|
|
|
archived: 30 Apr - 6 May, 2006 Back Next GALBRAITH John Kenneth Galbraith and I worked in two of the same presidential campaigns: Gene McCarthy and George McGovern, but I never met him face to face. No matter, I knew him well through his work, and I admired him greatly. Not rated as an economist by his jealous academic peers, he surpassed them all to be recognized universally as a meta-economist, a natural born colossus in stark contrast to their unnatural Lilliputianism. John Kenneth Galbraith boldly strode America during the twentieth century as its most active and productive public intellectual in the new age of mass communications that gave birth to the information economy. Implacably, he undermined the economic doctrines of greed and fear propelling the unbridled forms of utopian capitalism. During WWII, to stem the tortuous boom and bust cycles of capitalism, he set in place price controls in order to prevent inflation from rearing its hideous head and wreaking its concomitant economic carnage. Galbraith brilliantly managed the economy of the American state through its most explosive time of fundamental regeneration since the nineteenth century and the industrial revolution. In 1952, Galbraith witnessed the political calamity of corporate elites manipulating McCarthyism to displace the New Deal. He went into a temporary depression. Yet, he survived and was rejuvenated. In retaliation to the usurpation of democracy by the craft of corporate capitalism, he directed a renewed assault against the seduction of political power. He launched his most withering attack on the banalities of the laissez faire vision of the corporate-capitalist utopia with his scintillating masterpiece, The Affluent Society, which became the cornerstone of the foundation for the launching pad of the New Frontier and the Great Society. Where Wall Street and Madison Avenue saw their corporate utopia of tranquilized happy, clappy consumers living in their ranch style houses driving three-ton gas-guzzlers getting five miles per gallon, Galbraith recognized a dystopian behemoth driven by lust for power to devour human potential on an altar of greed, building a global catastrophe of waste and a Niagara of dehumanization. Driven by its gargantuan addictions to material acquisitions artificially manufactured by Madison Avenue through comforting fixes of luxury, entertainment and escapism, Galbraith revealed the inescapable truth that American affluence was built upon the hollowness of greed, the shallowness of avarice and the environmental destruction of ruthless corporate aggression. Prolifically productive and gifted with infinite intellectual agility, Galbraith masterminded the economic policies of the modern western world with aplomb punctuated with episodes of verve and always with a compelling rationality that simply exploded the meager efforts of his erstwhile opponents: Friedman and Laffer. A devoted protege and acolyte of John Maynard Keynes, Galbraith led a lifelong battle for the scientific management of the economies of nations and the world in pursuit of justice and equality for all. He is the shining example of the duty-driven intellectual, committed to the service of society. Stephen Lendman's essay on the excesses of corporate capitalism does not mention JKG, yet it is imminently Galbraithian. This oversight in Lendman's essay would have gladdened JKG for it proves that his theories have become so commonplace that they will be reiterated by generations who have lost the memory of their omniscient source. ______ JUNKIE: This tribute first appeared in Michael Carmichael’s wonderful blog, Planetary Movement. References
Professor J. K. Galbraith
JK Galbraith / Visionary economist
who defined, and defied, the 'conventional wisdom' / Michael Stewart
/ Monday May 1, 2006
The Corporate Control Of Society and
Human Life By Stephen Lendman __________________ Michael Carmichael has been a professional public affairs consultant, author and broadcaster since 1968. In 2003, he founded The Planetary Movement, a global nonprofit public affairs organization based in the United Kingdom. He has appeared as a public affairs expert on the BBC's Today Programme, Hardtalk, PM, as well as numerous appearances on ITN, NPR and many European broadcasts examining politics and culture. He can be reached through his website: www.planetarymovement.org
Last Update: 05/07/2006 |
