GALBRAITH, John Kenneth

(b. 15 October 1908 in Iona Station, Ontario, Canada), world-famous economist and critic of materialism who served as U.S. ambassador to India and was an economic adviser to the administration of President John F. Kennedy.

Galbraith was the second of four children born to William Archibald Galbraith and Catherine Kendall in the farming community of Iona Station near Lake Erie in Canada. His parents were farmers, and it seemed natural that Galbraith should study agriculture. With this in mind, Galbraith attended Ontario Agricultural College, then part of the University of Toronto and since known as the University of Guelph, graduating with a B.S. in agricultural economics in 1931. He then attended the University of California, Berkeley, where he earned an M.S. in 1933, and a Ph.D. in 1934. Galbraith's doctoral dissertation concerned public expenditure and agriculture in California, a topic indicative of a future career in public service. Galbraith began his Harvard teaching career immediately after graduating in 1934. He married Catherine Atwater on 17 September 1937, the same year he became a U.S. citizen. The couple had four sons.

Galbraith's early career included both university teaching and public service as a government adviser. His keen intelligence and ability to explain complex problems in concise terms made him invaluable in both roles. During the 1930s, working for President Franklin D. Roosevelt, Galbraith became the most influential economic adviser in the United States, implementing New Deal policies intended to halt the collapse in farm incomes begun in the 1920s and regulating the supply of goods during World War II. The ideas for which he became famous, chiefly that governments should intervene to protect citizens from large corporations, were cemented in this period. In 1952 Galbraith published The Theory of Price Control, a book based on his wartime experience, which sealed his reputation as one of the great economists of his generation. Galbraith later worked as adviser and speechwriter to Democratic presidential hopeful Adlai Stevenson and for John F. Kennedy. Kennedy rewarded him in 1961 by making him U.S. ambassador to India, a post he held for two years.

Yet despite his deep involvement in government and education, Galbraith's major influence on the economics and culture of the 1960s came through his books The Affluent Society (1958), The New Industrial State (1967), and Economics and the Public Purpose (1973). From the time of his early work on agricultural economics in the 1930s, Galbraith had been interested in the balance between sectors of the economy and ways of maintaining it. In American Capitalism: The Concept of Countervailing Power (1952), Galbraith outlined his belief that power relations are the single most important factor in managing the economy. It was an argument that would become central to the politics of the 1960s.

Unlike the so-called neoclassical economists of the political right, Galbraith was not convinced that market forces could achieve a stable and fair society. As an institutionalist economist he was convinced not only that governments should intervene to influence economic factors such as wages and prices, but also that they should do so to maintain the balance of power between, for example, employers and employees. In The Affluent Society Galbraith attacked the conventional view that the economic boom of the 1950s was necessarily a good thing. He pointed out that market forces had created an economy that wasted its wealth on goods and services that did little to improve the quality of life. The artificially high demand created by advertising and social expectations did not benefit those with limited incomes or those who lacked access to decent schools; rather, it enriched the political, cultural, and economic elite who benefited from the neglect of public services.

Written in a clear, easy style, The Affluent Society soon became a best-seller. Galbraith emphasized culture, history, and education as crucial for the economic well-being of nations, and he was suspect among the conservatives who dominated the economics profession. But Galbraith's influence went far beyond economics. With its focus on the role of power and vested interests, The Affluent Society was in step with dissenting movements of the 1960s counterculture, including antiwar protests, civil rights campaigns, and the nascent feminist movement. These ideas were expanded in The New Industrial State (1967), in which Galbraith developed his concept of the "revised sequence." Conventional economics saw the sequence of production as being governed by the demands of informed consumers; firms would change their products and modes of production according to decisions made by their customers in competitive markets. Galbraith took an opposite view. In his revised sequence, which applies only to industrial economies, a small number of corporations strive to exercise and expand their power over consumers. Detached from price fluctuations because of their size, such corporations influence politics, culture, and social attitudes. This, Galbraith argued, was undemocratic, and prevented industrial societies from achieving the quality of life their affluence should make possible.

The New Industrial State also became a best-seller. The institutionalist school of economics, to which Galbraith belongs, was at the time obscure, but Galbraith's views on the structure of the economy and society gained popular appeal, especially among readers who were concerned about the relationship between corporations and government and about the rise of large monopolies. Galbraith's book gave expression to long-held suspicions that the people were being manipulated and controlled. The third book in the trilogy, Economics and the Public Purpose, was published in 1973 and expanded on the range of the previous two to describe the whole capitalist system, not just industrial capitalism.

By then Galbraith was acclaimed as one of the foremost economists of the post–World War II period and as a writer who brought wit and clarity to complex ideas. He was Paul M. Warburg Professor of Economics at Harvard University from 1959 to 1975, and over the course of his long career has taught at universities around the world. Galbraith holds many honorary degrees, and in 2000 was honored by President William J. Clinton with the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the highest civilian honor in the United States.

Galbraith's memoir, A Life in Our Times (1981), is a highly readable account of his experience in government and public life, and his Letters to Kennedy (1998), provides insight into his time in the Kennedy administration. James Ronald Stanfield, John Kenneth Galbraith (1996), is an affectionate biography, and Allan G. Grunchy, Contemporary Economic Thought (1972), is a useful contemporary view of Galbraith's thought and influence. David Reisman, Galbraith and Market Capitalism (1980), provides a longer view of the period.

Chris Routledge