The Hindu Business Line : A giant passes away

Galbraith made no secret of the fact that for him `Greek letter economics' of mathematical equations, which took the subject far from the everyday reality on which it was originally solidly based, had failed.

John Kenneth Galbraith, who died on Saturday at the age of 97 after a wonderful, full life of diverse attainments, was the last of a declining species that nearly went out in the Thatcher-Reagan era of the 1980s. He was an honest-to-goodness, old-fashioned liberal and democrat whose heart was firmly in the right place, despite a fierce loyalty to the economics of markets and freedom of choice.

At six feet eight inches, he stood head and shoulders above not just the economists of his time but just about everyone else, in the width of his vision and the humanity of his thought and concerns.

He was perhaps the last of the great Keynesians with an unshakeable faith in the need for purposeful policy action by governments in the social sphere despite all the corporate power of the new industrial state that has become the model for all economies everywhere.

Landmark book

His first landmark book American Capitalism (1952) offered the notion of countervailing power (one of his phrases that have passed into idiom), arguing that corporate bigness was "countervailed" by large retailers, consumer networks, labour unions or government itself.

"Under capitalism, man exploits man. Under communism, it's just the opposite" is a good example of his perceptive wit and proof of his having no illusions about the benevolence of big business. Indeed, it was this countervailing power that he foresaw as the equation that would deliver prosperity along with a just and fair society, a view of the world that drew him and Jawaharlal Nehru together, naturally.

When The Observer, UK, asked him to comment on Margaret Thatcher adopting Milton Friedman's monetarist policies, leading to 3.5 million jobless, he famously wrote that there could be no better choice than Britain to be the Friedmanite guinea pig because the Welfare institutions and political liberalism of the country were so solid.

Neither Englishmen nor Scots nor even the Welsh would "take readily to the streets" said this Canadian of Scottish ancestry who was a natural candidate for the phrase, `legend in his own lifetime'. He was until last week the only surviving advisor to President Roosevelt and among the very few to have received the American Presidential Medal of Freedom twice, spread over nearly six decades.

It will, no doubt, be written by his academic critics that he played too much to the gallery, or that he was an iconoclast who was not a pure theoretician. Galbraith made no secret of the fact that for him `Greek letter economics' of mathematical equations, which took the subject far from the everyday reality on which it was originally solidly based, had failed.

With its pretentious hard science methods it had lost touch with real economic behaviour. "In making economics a non-political subject," Galbraith wrote, "neoclassical theory destroys the relation of economics to the real world . . . it manipulates levers to which no machinery is attached."

Love for India

His love affair with India was very well known. He was such a sharp observer of men and society that, in an introduction to a book on India, he said on the power of what we now call networking: If one went from one city to another in a short period, being handed around by from one acquaintance to another, one could be forgiven for coming away with the impression that "India is run by a hundred families who knew each other very well".

Another facet of Galbraith's character was his endless fascination with the written and spoken word, especially the art of communicating clearly, intelligibly and wittily about what was often dreaded as the driest of subjects.

His first year economics lectures at Harvard were hugely popular and were always ranked among the most popular in terms of student registrations.

His first series of lectures on the foundations often had to be held in an auditorium seating several hundreds, and it was always standing room only.

On writing, he told an interviewer, that the "extraordinary part of good writing is to avoid excess, which many writers do not understand.

The next thing... is to be aware of the music, the symphony of words." He added modestly "how one does that, I don't know. But certainly it is something that has always been a concern of mine".

He was an admirer of Henry R. Luce the editor of Fortune, saying he could not write a page without the feeling that Henry Luce was looking over his shoulder and saying: "That can go."

His unswerving belief was stated thus: there are no propositions in economics that can't be stated in clear, plain language. There just aren't.

(Feedback can be sent to srchander23@netscape.net)