Howdy y'all Jim Devine wrote: >Years ago, Bob Fitch wrote an essay titled "A Galbraith Reappraisal: the >Ideologue as Gadfly" in E.K. Hunt and Jesse Schwartz, A CRITIQUE OF >ECONOMIC THEORY, Penguin, 1972. It's been many years since I read it, but >if I remember correctly, it says tht Galbraith says a lot of >radical-sounding things (being a gadfly) at the same time he basically >apologizes for capitalism. A lot of Galbraith is like Veblen: he's very >critical of the system, but he thinks the way to fix things is for the >experts to be in charge. I wouldn't call him a socialist at all. More of a >technocrat, or someone who wants the intellectuals to rule. You are right to point to similarities between Galbraith and Veblen, as I believe an understanding of Galbraith would be incomplete without an appreciation of Veblen's influence. As for technocracy, I think you are right to a certain extent. Re Veblen, Rick Tilman has done a tremendous amount of work trying to disentangle Veblen the technocrat from Veblen the egalitarian critic of contemporary capitalism. See, for instance, his "The Intellectual Legacy of Thorstein Veblen" (Greenwood, 1996) or "Thorstein Veblen and his Critics, 1891-1963" (Princeton UP, 1992), and many assorted articles in the pages of the Journal of Economic Issues, to name but one journal. I am not convinced entirely by the efforts to dismiss Veblen's technocratic orientation evident in "The Engineers and the Price System", nor am I comfortable with Veblen's aspiration to rationalism and efficiency. I am more in agreement with his rather gloomier assessment of the human prospect as compared with Marx. Douglas Dowd has done fine work comparing both writers, and his 1966 portrait "Thorstein Veblen" is being republished this fall by Transaction. As for Galbraith, the major criticism of him from the Left is that he raises pertinent issues, dissects them expertly, and then proceeds to offer anodyne solutions - we all live happily ever after. I believe, however, that he has become more radical with age. His introduction to the fourth edition of "New Industrial State" makes clear his recantation of his earlier belief that the "scientific and educational estate" will overrule the pecuniary interest in the organisation of society, on the grounds that he had not counted on the phenomenon that was Reagan. In some respects this is reflected in some of Chomsky's recent interviews, where he cites the relative academic freedom to be enjoyed at MIT during the 60s, despite the deep association with the military. What Chomsky fears as most corrosive of that freedom these days is corporate sector collaboration with universities, which both determines the nature of research and binds practitioners to confidentiality. Hardly conducive to the community of scholars oft-conceived. More generally,this demarcation of intellectuals and the masses is not very helpful. As if intellectuals should be apologetic for being so, wear sackcloth and ashes, or should somehow defer as a matter of course to the masses. What masses? What was Mao if not an intellectual? And so what if his image is somehow improved by his plowing the fields. Galbraith also knew poverty in an agricultural setting, coming as he did from the backwoods of rural Canada. In a technologically developed society such as the one we have now, and would have were socialism suddenly to take the place of capitalism, a division of labour is inherent. Therefore there are going to be rulers and the ruled. The question is really about democracy and accountability. Galbraith's technocracy, and Veblen's, is inadequate because there is the assumption that the technocrats will be guided by rational and altruistic ends, a forlorn hope. As for the Party leadership, and those in any position of power, they require the greatest transparency and accountability of all. Would I trust myself if I were President of the United States? Michael Michael Keaney Department of Economics Glasgow Caledonian University 70 Cowcaddens Road Glasgow G4 0BA Scotland, U.K.
