Well, I have to yield to your argument on this , Rob. I guess I wonder why nothing socialist has come of his efforts in the American scene. I read some of him back in the early 70's when he was very prominent, but I didn't have the perspective I have now, so I wasn't thinking of the issues we discuss here. I haven't thought of him much since his prominence dwindled, but it seems that if he is or was a left as you say, he would be discussed (criticized even) "on the left" more since he is so prominent. You don't hear of any Galbrathians on the left. Major public intellectuals who are Marxiod thinkers generally have some "spectacle" in the Marxoid left. Today, he plays almost no public role in politics even outside the left, in the center, whatever. He was in the Kennedy administration, I believe. That was a pretty liberal (non-Marxist) admin. , but maybe Galbraith was one of the reds left over from the FDR period. His technocracy theme seems to buttress corporate bureaucra! tism some, but maybe it's a critique. Maybe he is sort of a Cassandra of the liberal establishment. But I hope Galbraith does inspire some Marxist friendly economists. Charles Brown >>> Rob Schaap <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> 06/10/99 09:32AM >>> Hi again Chas, >Are you saying Galbraith is a critic of capitalism ? Not much doubt in my mind, Chas! Old JK is no Bolshie, but he's a socialist, for mine. And he's read Marx (he did once say, incidentally, that "American economists in high office reach into the future and adjust it to their needs; what they predict is what they need to have happen. In the Soviet Union and the other Communist countries, Marxists reach into the past and adjust Marx to their needs." Good on him). It's hard to know where he follows Marx (but there are plenty of hints that he does - see below) and where he departs (plenty of those, too - he rejects the FROP and speculates that ownership and control have parted company such as to place 'the technostructure' at the apex of modern relations) - but I see lots of Marx-like reflections in *The Affluent Society*. He was pointing at *fundamental* problems, requiring *fundamental* fixes way back in 1957, when he wrote *TAS*. I've given you the beginning. Here's the end: "To furnish a barren room is one thing. To continue to crowd in furniture until the foundation buckles is quite another. To have failed to solve the problem of producing goods would have been to continue man in his oldest and mosr grievous misfortune. But to fail to see that we have solved it and to fail to proceed thence to the next task would be fully as tragic." In light of the rest of the concluding chapter (a resounding indictment of the problems with private production for profit), this sounds to me like JKG reckoned the forces of production no longer warranted the attendant relations of production ... >Sort of like that other Yank, FD Roosevelt was ? I don't really know how many of FDR's ideas were his - but he always struck me as a paternalist pro-capitalist patrician - noblesse oblige in moments of crisis can look radical, but heads nowhere inthe long run. >Aren' they trying to save capitalism ? FDR was. I still reckon JKG is a revolutionary (albeit not one after your tastes) - for him capitalism has to be transformed into something else, I think. >Let me take your point, and ask further, isn't this reformist critique, critique with the idea of saving the system , rather than radical critique to change it fundamentally ? JKG sounds to me a bit like Marx sounded in his speech to the Hague Working Men's Conference in 1872. A sorta 'revolution through the reason of the many and the democracy available in extant institutions' scenario. >Thus, ultimately Galbraith justifies the system fundamentally, by proposing correction that will make the system ok ? Well, I don't pretend to have read everything the bloke wrote, but you'd have to back this up. Every charge he seems to throws at the current order is of the basic contradiction type. Sometimes he seems fatalistic (a latter day Ricardo) and sometimes he seems revolutionary (more of a Marx temperament). Certainly he focuses on things the system can't fix if it's to remain the same system. And he doesn't shirk this. In the middle of the hottest phase of the cold war, with McCarthy fresh in the memory and redolent in the culture, he writes (again in *TAS*): "Had Marx been mostly wrong, his influence would quickly have evaporated ... But on much he was mostly right." Easy for us to say to our 300 fellows now, but he wrote this for a mass US audience in 1957! >Take the passage below. I guess the sarcasm is lost on me. The affluence of 1957 constituted a lack of understanding that gave us Edsels while people starved, and did so while on-one noticed. We're still too rich in fridge magnets and too poor in understanding. That's why I said *TAS* was sarcastic and timeless. The positive connotation is on stage from the off, and duly tortured to death before our eyes by way of genteel excoriation. >Could you explain to me how this is a criticism of capitalism and society on the same level as Mao Tse-tung's ? I don't know anything about Mao, Chas. In my places and times of schooling, nothing noteworthy had ever happened east of the Urals. I do generally recoil at lots of big pictures of great men (except for Karl Marx and George Best, anyway), but that ain't quite a critical platform. >This thread ( or is that the other list?) has been on the lack of critical thinking in Maoism, implying that western liberals are more critical thinkers. My thought would be that Mao thinks more critically about capitalism than Galbraith ; and that Galbraith, in typcial liberal style, has a sort of split personality: "critic" yet apologist. I'm not sure you've read him, Chas. You'd enjoy it, coz he writes gorgeously and is generous in his critique of Marx (though less so in his readings of latter-day commie leaders). But, yeah, my guess is you'd see an apologist at work in his doubts (for some, I suppose, to have doubts is to have a split personality). For mine, a critical thinker is one who questions assumptions, points to fundamental flaws there-in, and makes himself comprehensible to the people in whom he has the faith to make the changes they might consequently think warranted. JKG qualifies on all counts, for mine. As do some fine liberals. And as don't some socialists. Cheers, Rob.
