The Hindu Business Line : Foremost economist for non-economists

It would be an elephantine task to read up all that John Kenneth Galbraith ever penned. Instead, soak yourself this weekend with some glimpses into his genius, says D. MURALI.

What is economics? "A subject profoundly conducive to cliché, resonant with boredom," said John Kenneth Galbraith. But how do people respond to the subject? Thankfully, by `turning off' their `ears and minds.' And Galbraith would well approve, saying: "None can say that the response is ill advised."

It would be ill advised, though, not to take a dip into the four-dozen books that Galbraith has left behind. Which is why an earlier article this week (`The man who should have won the Nobel', Business Line, May 3) touched upon a few of the works. Such as: American Capitalism (1952), The Affluent Society (1958), The New Industrial State (1967), and Economics and the Public Purpose (1973).

"Perhaps only an elephant of a book could cover the life and thinking of so influential a figure as Galbraith," noted Publishers Weekly in its review of Richard Parker's 820-page biography of the towering giant John Kenneth Galbraith: His Life, His Politics, His Economics (2005).

Equally elephantine would be any attempt to read up all that Galbraith ever penned.

So, soak yourself this weekend with some glimpses into the genius of Galbraith. For, as he said, "One of the greatest pieces of economic wisdom is to know what you do not know."

Let's begin with The Great Crash: 1929 published in 1955. "Even in such a time of madness as the late 1920s, a great many man in Wall Street remained quite sane. But they also remained very quiet," is a snatch from the intro, posted on http://lachlan.bluehaze.com.au.

"In a community where the primary concern is making money, one of the necessary rules is to live and let live. To speak out against madness may be to ruin those who have succumbed to it. So the wise in Wall Street are nearly always silent. The foolish thus have the field to themselves. None rebukes them." Ever heard rebukes in the bullish bourses closer home?

A man of controversy

Well, our next stop is Economics and the Art of Controversy (1955), `a little volume of lectures,' as www.commentarymagazine.com said. Relevant to the topic is this quote of Galbraith, on http://quotes.liberty-tree.ca: "These are the days when men of all social disciplines and all political faiths seek the comfortable and the accepted; when the man of controversy is looked upon as a disturbing influence; when originality is taken to be a mark of instability; and when, in minor modification of the original parable, the bland lead the bland."

In 1963, Galbraith wrote The Scotch, which www.amazon.com describes as "a memoir of the tight (in every sense) community in which he was raised." You'd read about Codfish John McKillop who was "so economical that when he died and was being lowered into his grave, he lifted the cover of his coffin and handed out his clothes."

Galbraith's was against the US wasting itself by warring in Vietnam. "In vain did he steal a top-secret report by Pentagon hawks from Walt Rostow's White House desk in order to present the President his strong, practical refutation to the case for engaging militarily in Southeast Asia," narrates Stephen Clarkson of Globe and Mail, in a review posted on www.johnkennethgalbraith.com.

"Although sent off as Ambassador to India, he continued to dispatch memoranda direct to the Oval Office, making the case against armed intervention." Galbraith wrote How To Get Out of Vietnam in 1967, a book that put him on the cover of Time magazine `as the intellectual leader of the anti-war movement.'

Clarkson gives more examples of Galbraith's progressive beliefs: "In 1969, Galbraith supported the Harvard student body when it went on strike. His solidarity with feminism led him to endow a fund to help women students at Harvard who became pregnant."

In 1968, he wrote The Triumph: A Novel of Modern Diplomacy. This was a satirical tale of political rebellion and US intervention in a small Latin American country, describes www.alibris.com. "As timely today as it was 25 years ago." It was "a sardonic comment on the fumblings and failures of American diplomacy," notes http://collections.ic.gc.ca, in a page titled `J. K. Galbraith: Canada's Gift to Harvard'.

Ambassador's Journal: A Personal Account of the Kennedy Years, published in 1969, was "a book based on the diary he kept during his time in India," informed www.iht.com in an obit dated May 2. "A year earlier he published Indian Painting: The Scenes, Themes and Legends, which he wrote with Mohinder Singh Randhawa. An avid champion of Indian art, he donated much of his collection to the Harvard University Art Museums," is further info you can gather from the story by Holcomb B. Noble and Douglas Martin of The New York Times.

Post office socialism

Much can be written about Galbraith's India life, be it his interactions with intellectuals in the Indian Statistical Institute, Kolkata, or his analyses of the Second Five-Year Plan. "The ultimate ownership of the very large industrial corporation, public or private, matters little. What is important is the autonomy that the management is accorded for operations and the rigour of the tests of performance to which management is made subject," is an excerpt from what he wrote, as you can find in page 278 of Parker's tome.

Operating decisions or those on personnel should never be second-guessed by civil servants or politicians, urged Galbraith. According to him, `earnings' was the comprehensive measure of `effectiveness in getting the most return for the least cost.' He insisted that leadership should be undisturbed so long as it succeeds. "When earnings fall, it should be changed and the new one left on its own to do better." Golden lessons. But the tragedy, he rued, was that India wasn't following these rules. He called our `relaxed system' post office socialism!

It seems the US President John F. Kennedy enjoyed Galbraith's prose style so much that he insisted on seeing all Galbraith's reports from his posting as ambassador to India — even when they were not written for the President's attention, informs www.chambersharrap.co.uk.

Laughter has its uses

The site speaks about Economics, Peace and Laughter, a 1972 book by Galbraith, wherefrom a quote is given: "In a world where for pedagogic and other purposes a very large number of economists is required, an arrangement which discourages many of them from rendering public advice would seem to be well conceived."

Power and the Useful Economist was a 1973 book. "Galbraith wanted to be what he called `a useful economist'," remembers www.reformer.com in a May 1 obit. "Galbraith more than earned his reputation as the most widely read economist of all time and as one of the great public intellectuals of the past century," it added. Sadly, one learns that Galbraith was "never well liked by his peers, who thought of him more as a populariser than an innovator." It seems Nobel laureate Paul Samuelson once said that Galbraith was `America's foremost economist for non-economists!'

"It is not necessary to advertise food to hungry people, fuel to cold people, or houses to the homeless," said Galbraith. So, too, it is may not be necessary to advertise Galbraith to the lay seekers of economic insights.

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Foremost economist for non-economists