Focusing on the Planners

...Can we emancipate ourselves from the thrall of the corporate system...

...Although Galbraith is somewhat airy about this Socialism, he unmistakably calls for central planning...

...Outside of the planned corporate universe remains an untidy assortment of small entrepreneurs, artists and craftsmen, farmers, and commercial builders...

...Within the frame of the Five Socialisms loom Galbraith's perennial concerns with the preservation of the environment, rectification of the imbalance between private and public output, advancement of esthetic values, and diminution of inequalities—between men and women, black and white, poor and rich...

...renewal than anything deducible from American Capitalism, The Affluent Society, or his more recent The New Industrial State...

...I hope I am wrong...

...In terms of coherent social reform, the final 100 pages of Economics and the Public Purpose go far beyond anything their author has previously advocated...

...the inhabitants of the market sector, who are now exploited by major corporations...

...In the interests of honest labeling, Galbraith would trade government bonds for corporate stocks...

...In any case, I do recommend Galbraith to the dejected...

...It is necessary to begin an assessment of Economics and the Public Purpose with such a conclusion because, for once, Galbraith has done himself the disservice of prefacing his message with familiarities...

...Nonetheless, it is the planning system, growing in power and influence, that runs the show...

...It would have the government act to prevent such anomalies as the expansion of auto production at rates faster than oil refining...

...As here outlined, the politics of progress starts from the proposition that there is already almost half a major political party sympathetic to a Galbraithian future, the reform or McGovern wing of the Democrats, and that to this minority may in due course be added the female sex, now condemned to administer and supervise (with growing rebelliousness) an array of consumer goods whose benefits flow mostly to men...

...Always ready with a sharp word for his own profession, Galbraith argues that conventional economics, founded upon assumptions of market competition, focuses almost entirely upon the unplanned sector of the economy, and consequently dramatically distorts the reality of American society...

...Galbraith continues to believe that large corporations dominate economic life in advanced societies, whether the official ideology is capitalist or socialist...

...I confess, though, that he has done a better job of persuading me that the corporate system is potent than that the Five Socialisms will soon usher in a more humane society...

...and the blacks...

...So far so familiar, at least to old Galbraith fans...

...Galbraith's early works, however, lacked a convincing vision of a better economic future and a persuasive program of political action...

...One may wonder whether Galbraith is scientific or Utopian...

...Impotent and ill-organized, these industries have for long periods done badly by low and lower-middle income families and evince few or no signs of improvement...

...Socialism two, guild socialism revived, represents the antithesis of current antitrust policies: Galbraith by law would encourage small firms (in industries more viable than housing and medicine) to merge into trade associations, cartels able to match the organized planning of large corporations...

...Finally, Socialism five is addressed to the coordination of the existing corporate system...

...Reviewed by Robert Lekachman THIS is Galbraith's most important book, a tar fuller prospectus for U.S...

...Socialism four echoes Keynes' hope for the euthanasia of stockholders who years ago lost their social function...

...Socialism three is reserved for the defense contractors, whom Galbraith would simply nationalize on the grounds that they are practically public utilities already...

...Useful economics, he maintains, concerns politics and market power, the realms in which contemporary graduate school curricula are feeblest...

...Presented with less literary grace and elegant malice than is usual for its author, Economics and the Public Purpose is a blunt manifesto aimed at the creation of a more decent society, one that has turned away from an obsession with wealth and power to an interest in beauty, variety and the small, seemly pleasures of a decent existence within a restored environment...

...Thus, impatient readers may stop before reaching the novelties...

...Thus it is that year by year, to the growing discomfort of young and radical economists, the best theories "explain" a shrinking fraction of economic activity and increasingly trivial phenomena...

...Socialism one is the nationalization of certain weak portions of the economy, notably health, residential housing and mass transit...

...the inhabitants of the competitive sectors lead lives that are nasty, brutish and short...

...At present, even in the United States, where this organizational impetus has thrust furthest, the arrangements of big business comprehend a bare half of the activities that enter into the Gross National Product...

...Indeed, aside from occasional modifications made to answer the objections of critics, the first two-thirds of the volume are basically The New Industrial State concisely retold...

...Giant companies deploy masses of money and hordes of employes...

...They plan...

...As corporations mature, so also do the techniques by which they bend to their interests government regulators and elected officials...

...the poor...

...In the 19th century, Fried-rich Engels distinguished Utopian from scientific socialism by the capacity of the second and the incapacity of the first to sketch the historical route along which a society might travel from the detestable present to the delectable future...

...The New Industrial State depended heavily upon the Educational and Scientific Estate, based in the universities, to reform corporate behavior by inculcating humane values in the graduates who would people the giant technostructures...

...The Affluent Society offered little in the way of prescription other than higher sales taxes as a revenue source for essential public expenditure...

...Countervailing power, the organizing notion of American Capitalism, implied that government could be relied upon more or less automatically to rescue weak interests and oppressed groups...

...Such good things, he contends, can be attained only by the Emancipation of Belief and, as a corollary, the liberation of the state from the service of the corporations' planning system...

...This potential majority will rise in electoral might when consciousnesses are sufficiently elevated, when the corporate system's sheer inefficiency threatens its continued hegemony, and when the elements of the new political grouping come to perceive that they are allies rather than rivals...

...The man still hopes...

...From the control of their own operations, they branch out to the manipulation of customers by the black arts of marketing and advertising, and to the regulation of the unions and small businessmen who supply them with labor and materials...

...As an egalitarian, Galbraith proposes above all to diminish existing inequities of power, income, wealth, and competence...

...It is a long time since the people who own large corporations actually ran them...

...environmentalists...

...Nationalization would dissolve or at least alter the terms of the alliance between defense firms and the Pentagon, which has influenced elections and distorted national priorities...

...I should like to believe that Galbraith's politics are as plausible as his vision is appealing...

...Once the public stops trusting in the efficiency and benevolence of the corporate structure, many reforms are possible, including what Galbraith calls the Five Socialisms—tailored interventions by the liberated state into the private economy...

...On the last score, he is an unashamed advocate of benign quotas for blacks and women...