The Political Economy of Affluence

Abstract

The Affluent Society (1958a) is one of the most famous books of the twentieth century. Once he focused on American affluence, the paradox that production nonetheless remained the highest national priority came to Galbraith ‘ with the force of a thunderclap’ (Parker, 2005, p. 280). Thus one of the two major themes of the book became the impediment to progress posed by obsolescent thought or cultural or institutional lag. Galbraith’ s term for this was the conventional wisdom, an unforgettable phrase which has become ensconced in the popular idiom and is applied to any habitual interpretation of present circumstances to which its correspondence is dubious. The other major theme was that political economic thought needed to traverse this lag in order to examine the power of the great corporation in modern society and to contemplate the opportunity afforded by affluence to enhance the quality of life. In this regard, Galbraith emphasized the need to address the issue of social balance in the allocation of resources between the pubic and private sectors.

I know not why it should be a matter of congratulation that persons who are already richer than anyone needs to be, should have doubled their means of consuming things which give little or no pleasure except as representative of wealth.…

J. S. Mill, 1848

Fired by an emotional faith in spontaneity, the common-sense attitude toward change was discarded in favor of a mystical readiness to accept the social consequences of economic improvement, whatever they might be.… Household truths of traditional statesmanship … were … erased by the corrosive of a crude utilitarianism combined with an uncritical reliance on the alleged self-healing virtues of unconscious growth.

K. Polanyi, 1944