http://plsc.uark.edu/584v/critique.htm
March 11, 1999, Conrad P. Waligorski
A Liberal Critique of Inequality: John Kenneth Galbraith
Equality is often called a stepchild of liberalism, one that is inconsistent with liberal concerns. In the name of freedom, individualism or markets, some putative liberals oppose placing a high priority on equality, either as a value or as a policy. Others have been active defenders of inequality, especially economic inequality. Since at least Malthus, the apparent naturalness of class and economic differences has been used to oppose redistribution and justify curbs on political activity, arguments that are echoed today by some theorists who would limit participation by welfare recipients.[i] Acceptance and/or defense of inequality -- of some sort -- is very common. In his review of Rawls' Political Liberalism, Sheldon Wolin noted that "while inequalities have increased at a cancerous rate, equality has virtually disappeared from public rhetoric," and from liberal focus. Verba and Orren remark that "[e]quality is a dominant value in America" allowing people to pick and choose among different concepts of equality rather than openly oppose equality as a value.[ii] Amartya Sen, who is no defender of inequality, insists there is no such thing as equality per se. Rather, given human diversity, "demanding equality in terms of one variable tends to clash -- in fact and not just in theory -- with wanting equality in terms of another."[iii] R. H. Tawney's phrase "religion of inequality", borrowed from Matthew Arnold, to describe "the cult" and "tradition of inequality,"[iv] comes very close to describing a continuing justification of inequality in political and economic theory. As recently as 1996, two-thirds of Americans indicated that values such as equal opportunity were becoming increasingly difficult to fulfill.[v]
Many liberals neither criticize equality nor embrace inequality. To see this clearly we must go beyond philosophy to examine public policy oriented liberals. This essay looks at the American political economist John Kenneth Galbraith (b. 1908), emphasizing ideological[vi] debate over equality and equalization policies among economic theorists. This debate reflects a common American tendency to state general principles, stake out moral and philosophical positions, or make moral-ethical claims in the context of public policy debate. Moreover, political theorists have failed to pay adequate attention to the deterministic aspects of much economic theory.[vii] Both marxist and much conservative theory envision economic relations as determining and setting limits to politics, restraining political values and practices such as equality, freedom, and democracy, each of which must be defined and made operational within the limits of that economic theory. Efforts to exceed these limits -- witness recent Congressional debates over welfare reform -- are seen as violating a fundamental reality, destroying any possibility of achieving the desired value. Among popular writers, political conflict, especially that surrounding normative political economy, is frequently dismissed as self-interested bickering and partisanship, a kind of adult food-fight, ignoring the fundamental moral and philosophical disputes that propel policy debate. Significant aspects of economic theory and public policy proposals are driven by often unexamined moral, philosophical and ideological assumptions that produce policy and institutional outcomes very different from normative theory models and proposals. Conflict over public programs is about more than narrow self-interest, but reflects fundamentally different and often incompatible assumptions about motivation, obligation, individualism, freedom, equality, and the legitimate role of government in helping people attain their ends.
One cannot understand arguments for equality without recognizing that the meaning and practice of equality is inseparable from justifications of inequality, that the discussion of equality is always accompanied with defense of inequality. Full appreciation of equality and inequality arguments includes explaining one's meaning of equality, necessary conditions for equality, obstacles to its achievement, limits on one's principles, the relation of equality to other important values, and equality for whom.
This is where Galbraith fits. He is not a typical academic economist, but is linked to popular, policy oriented liberalism. He represents a form of liberalism that is now in eclipse, but one that offers an alternative that many still find attractive. His books have sold millions of copies[viii] and deeply influenced popular thinking in the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s. He was a co-founder and eventually chairperson of Americans for Democratic Action; advised John F. Kennedy and, until he broke with him over Vietnam, Lyndon Johnson on agriculture and poverty; wrote speeches for and/or advised and campaigned for six Democratic presidential hopefuls; and, was ambassador to India, 1961-1963. Along with Michael Harrington, he was instrumental in focusing public attention on poverty in the late 1950s and 1960s. He is still active in liberal causes, continues to publish, and remains a bete noire for many conservatives.[ix]
Galbraith has much to say about equality and inequality. For more than 40 years he regularly, thought not systematically, opposed the economic defense of political and economic inequality. Placing him within the context of liberal unease about equality, this essay explores Galbraith's examination of justifications of inequality, his criticisms of these arguments, his egalitarian policy proposals, and his growing despair that Americans have lost interest in seriously addressing inequality.
From his first popular work until today Galbraith has been appalled at the growing "truce on inequality" and "the decline of interest in inequality as an economic [and social] issue." American society has not lost interest because poverty and inequality have been eliminated. As noted below, liberals are partly to blame, not because of opposition to equality per se, but rather unwitting service to the interests of wealth and power, and infatuation with economic theory, to the detriment of examining how people actually fare. Liberals -- and one could include Rawls, though Galbraith does not -- have accepted the politically convenient argument that economic growth and enhanced production alleviate poverty, accepting growth as the alternative to redistribution and other egalitarian policies. Expanded production has benefitted many, and "has eliminated the more acute tensions associated with inequality." But, Galbraith argues, we slight people stuck at the bottom, whether due to prejudice, insufficient skills, social isolation, the need for an underclass, or their "fate ... [as] a voiceless minority", people who do not benefit from increased aggregate production alone. Under "the rich cloak of democracy" the relatively affluent and contented majority can safely ignore the needs of the poor.[x] With something to lose, the majority does not ask for enough.
Justifying Inequality
One cannot help but be impressed by the ingenuity, magnitude and persistence of justifications of inequality. Systematic justification of inequality dates at least to Plato and may be more common than principled defense of extensive equality. It has always focused on differences between people, not similarities, and has located inequality in individual failings such as sin, laziness, bad luck, ill fortune in the genetic draw, and over-breeding; in unchangeable trans-individual forces; or, a combination of both claims.[xi] "[T]he open exercise of economic power needs to be reinforced by a widespread belief in inequality."[xii] Many economists have provided this belief.
Despite its empirical components and pretensions, economic theory frequently contains the functional equivalent of natural law and natural order concepts. If economic relations represent or reflect some sort of natural order, it becomes possible to defend inequality as being independent of human will. One sees this especially with an argument that Galbraith criticizes as part of the conventional wisdom that hides reality from us -- the classic and neo-classic claim that the economy is separate from the polity, and that it contains a fundamental "ordering principle"[xiii] that ensures peaceful, productive relations. As a voluntary system of private relations, this system, the market, guarantees to everyone the full value of his/her contribution to the welfare of others, providing the most equality that can be achieved. Equality and inequality testify to an individual's worth, achievement, or personal failure, and as a natural result of voluntary behavior nothing can be done about inequality.
F. A. Hayek symbolizes this with his argument that "Inequality is undoubtedly more readily borne, and affects the dignity of the person much less, if it is determined by impersonal forces" such as a competitive market. Milton Friedman summarizes some of the main arguments against egalitarian policy found among economists. He insists there is no such thing as real equality, and that efforts to achieve equality encourage law breaking and privilege, undermine freedom, and violate a basic human drive to better our condition. "[E]conomic and social progress do not depend on the attributes or behavior of the masses. In every country a tiny minority sets the pace, determines the course of events." People are naturally unequal, yet market processes produce as much equality as is possible. We must accept that "[l]ife is not fair." Our choice is between "equality or opportunity." Harry Johnson insisted that concern "with inequality" reflected "a naive and basically infantile anthropomorphism...." Echoing a common theme since Malthus and social darwinism, inequality reflects individual choice and is necessary for "motivation and reward, which contribute to the organization of society for survival and progress...." The British economist Lord Robbins argues that inequality results from "the preferences of consumers" and is therefore legitimate. Egalitarian demands are caused by "envy." Markets would ensure extensive equality were it not for government interference such as equal pay for equal work laws. Even equal opportunity policy undermines natural relations. All of these theorists agree that inequality provides socially necessary incentives and rewards.[xiv]
Non-economists employ similar arguments when discussing egalitarian policy. Robert Nozick accepts the idea of spontaneous order, developed in more detail by F. A. Hayek. An invisible hand explains complex relations, institutional development and people's place in society better than intentional design. As with Hayek, Robert Nisbet finds that "`inequality is the essence of the social bond.'" If everyone were equal there could be no society. In a classic essay, J. R. Lucas asserts that inequality fills "deep social needs" and that egalitarianism takes energy from desirable goals, is unachievable, and "undesirable." As with more purely economic arguments, from Malthus through social darwinism, to supply side theory in the 1980s, "inequality has been the means whereby economic progress has been achieved." Differences of wealth, status and other resources provide the means by which some can oppose government and improper public policies. Russell Kirk insists that egalitarianism is unjust.[xv] Arguments that welfare causes poverty and illegitimacy are more sophisticated versions of Malthus' original claims, minus divine providence, but also blame the poor not institutional arrangements for inequality and poverty.[xvi] One could extent this sample of anti-egalitarian arguments indefinitely. It would be easy to add increasingly sophisticated arguments based on race, gender and biological determinism. But our focus is essentially economic. Negative arguments assert there is no relevant sense in which people are equal, or claim that some good or goods must be protected from excessive equality. Positive claims encompass two approaches: [1] Inequality conforms to and follows from natural order and human nature/motivation; [2] inequality protects and promotes important values such as freedom, property, choice-preferences, innovation-initiative-efficiency, and desert, while benefiting everyone, especially the poor. Most claim that human nature-motivation, natural relations, and maintaining economic, political and/or social success necessitate and produce significant differences among people. Each justification assumes or argues for specific political relations and public institutions.[xvii]
Galbraith on Economic Inequality

Galbraith finds most justifications of political, social and economic inequality unpersuasive and self-serving. He has explored the economic and cultural justification of inequality for forty years, from Affluent Society, through The Culture of Contentment, to his most recent interviews. Galbraith identifies numerous defenses of inequality: natural law; the inevitability of poverty and inequality; incentive; economic efficiency; capital formation; protection of cultural diversity; provision of aid to the arts and sciences; equality as savoring of "communism" and "atheism"; equality is "unworkable"; policies such as the income tax have "achieved virtual or ... quite excessive equality"; cultural and biological inevitability; the iron law of wages; good fortune results from personal merit; avoidance of short-run costs despite long-run advantages; lack of community feeling; a "highly selective view of the role of the state" that justifies public aid to the affluent, but not to the poor; tolerance of great inequality by the contented class as the apparent price of protecting their position; "the general commitment to laissez-faire"; blaming the poor; and protecting freedom.[xviii] Each claims to be based on empirically valid arguments about human nature or motivation. Each protects the interests of the well-off and wealthy.
Galbraith recognizes that a large part of what he calls the "central tradition" in economics -- and related policy proposals -- has defended inequality. Theorists such as Thomas Robert Malthus and David Ricardo invoked seemingly natural laws that "worked with ferocious inequality" decreeing "the inevitability of mass poverty."[xix] This central tradition assumes that markets are efficient, protect freedom, eliminate power and coercion, and produce optimal economic, social and political outcomes. Galbraith, following John Maynard Keynes, argues that the theory upon which these claims are based does not represent reality, but conforms to the needs of power holders, justifying inequality. If the market does not operate as conservative and some mainstream economists assert, it need not be an agent for equality, and resulting inequality need not be accepted as inevitable or desirable. For the vast majority of market participants there is neither independence nor freedom, therefore meaningful equality is a myth.[xx]
Parts of the central tradition worried about inequality and poverty, but this was not, according to Galbraith, the analytic line that proved most useful to power holders. Malthus and Ricardo taught that poverty and inequality resulted from a working class that "relentlessly bred itself down to subsistence levels" while one's good fortune represented rewards for one's market contribution to the welfare of others. Galbraith is especially critical of social darwinism and what he sees as its contemporary revival. Social darwinism required curtailment of popular government so that people injured by the evolving economy would have no recourse to politics. Theory and popular literature embody "more than an analysis of economic behavior and a set of rules for economic polity. It also has a moral code." It taught people that insecurity was the norm, that they were responsible exclusively for their own welfare, that failure was their own fault, and that the wealthy "are products of natural selection." Intensifying the "special mystique of the market", social darwinism undermined collective efforts to alleviate "privation or to protect ... from the hazards of economic life." Social darwinism helped generate the efficiency -- and deterministic -- claims that are increasingly employed against welfare and interventionist measures. Galbraith says that many socially painful things are defended in the name of efficiency, but he shifts the grounds for efficiency claims by asking, in effect, efficiency of what, for which goals. At one time efficiency arguments were employed against efforts to address "industrial and occupational disease...." Today this is less acceptable, but we still measure progress in production of goods, regardless of their nature, not "progress in the arts and sciences .... health, education or the battle against juvenile delinquency." We still justify destruction of the countryside, tearing apart of family and community, and ignoring the underclass in the name of a productive efficiency that creates unnecessary and unwanted products.[xxi]
Both social darwinism and, what Galbraith sees as its descendent, twentieth century supply-side economics justified inequality as an incentive and reward for the wealthy to produce more, benefiting everyone. Thus transfer of resources to those at the top of the socio-economic pile, reduced public aid to people near the bottom, and concerted efforts to stigmatize the poor may be painful in the short run but promise to provide more for everyone in the long run. Galbraith dissents from this happy picture. He does not believe that the empirical foundations of economic theory and policy are as firm as many economists claim, and he is correct.[xxii] Unexamined assumptions, what Galbraith calls convenient and conventional beliefs, wishful thinking, and unspoken values shape perception, data analysis and policy recommendations. For Galbraith, historical social darwinism, 1980s supply side theory, current efforts to revive supply side policy, and efforts to reduce welfare, are based on faulty assumptions about human motivation. Supply side theory and current welfare arrangements assume different motivations at the top and bottom of society, that the rich do not work hard enough because they have insufficient rewards (incentives) and that the poor do not work hard enough because minimum wage laws and welfare systems give them too much, discouraging effort. This, of course, implies that the rich are not doing their job, that their performance is bad and inadequate. For Galbraith, this suggests that they may need higher, not lower, taxes to encourage their effort, "in order to sustain their after-tax income." But such logic did not guide public policy. Books such as George Gilder, Wealth and Poverty, 1981, which attained "near biblical standing in the early 1980s" and Charles A. Murray, Losing Ground: American Social Policy, 1950-1980, 1984, encouraged the rich, provided balm for the consciences of the well to do and contented, and justified ignoring the bottom thirty percent of society. But poverty is not a spur for people to get ahead. Rather, it crushes them.[xxiii]
Whether or not incentive arguments for inequality are moral, and Galbraith thinks they are not, they make no economic sense. Galbraith accepts Keynes' argument that economic expansion is fueled by demand, especially from those with a high propensity to consume, and they are not rich. "To give individuals large incomes to encourage savings also has elements of illogic. The rich man saves because he is able to satisfy all his wants and then have something over ..... not an especially efficient way to promote capital formation. Moreover, the empirical evidence on the effect of egalitarianism on capital formation is uncertain." He accepts at face value David Stockman's statement that supply side theory was "really a cover story for lowering taxes on the rich." Theorists such as George Gilder proposed fantastic but superficially plausible arguments that regressive taxes helped the poor, rediscovering the social darwinian claim that concentrated wealth allowed the gifted minority to drag the rest of us up the evolutionary ladder, a "socially serviceable" argument for "the age of contentment."[xxiv]
One of the more common justifications of inequality, that investment and growth require transferring to and concentrating resources in the hands of the wealthy, the class that invests, is illustrated by late nineteenth and early twentieth century social darwinian theory, by 1980s supply side policy, and by continuing efforts to lower capital gains taxes. Such theory claims that resulting inequalities now will benefit everyone in the long run (time unspecified.) Galbraith, however, argues that inequality is bad for the economy. Income inequality is "the socially most damaging feature of capitalism." He accepts Keynes' theory that economic prosperity does not require great economic inequality. Indeed, Keynes and Galbraith argue that in order to avoid unemployment and its associated problems, consumption driven economies require more equality of purchasing power -- ie more aggregate demand -- not greater inequality to expand investment. Inequality that "does not reward differences in intelligence, application or willingness to take risks", and Galbraith argues this is satisfied by much smaller disparities than currently exist, "may also impair economic stability." For example, unlike more conservative economists who blame the Great Depression on incompetent government, Galbraith faults the structure and operation of our capitalist economy for the stock market crash. Income inequality, "[t]he bad distribution of income", was one of the elements in the fundamental unsoundness of the 1920s economy, and persisted throughout the 1920s. Continuing inequality and unequal distribution deepened the 1987 stock market turmoil. "Income inequality, like monopoly, distorts the use of resources" diverting them from public and social needs.[xxv]
"Fortunately, equitable performance and effective operation of the economy go together." Economic failure flows from policies "that are in the interest not of the many but of the few...." This is particularly true of expenditures that serve the larger public -- education, health care, secure jobs, collective consumption, Galbraith's concept of social balance between private consumption and social needs -- as opposed to the planning system. Taxes can serve both equality and efficiency. Indeed, Galbraith argues for "a strongly progressive tax structure" to help ensure "greater equality" and a more "equitable distribution of income" which in turn serve economic and social "tranquility" and "stabilization." Although he favors provision of more public services over using the tax system to promote equalization, the two are related.[xxvi]
Galbraith also questions the freedom defense of inequality, the assertion that equality or equalization damage freedom. At least some of the conflict between "freedom" and "equality" is over the meaning, content and obstacles to freedom. Galbraith has an expansive image of freedom that contains a large element of equal treatment and more equal access to resources. He denies that markets are free in the sense that theorists such as Milton Friedman, F. A. Hayek, Robert Nozick, James Buchanan and George Gilder claim.[xxvii] As meaningful freedom hardly exists in market relations, except for the powerful, market freedom per se cannot justify inequality. The structure of market relations; large scale organization; constrained choice; limited alternatives; advertising; pressure to conform; unequal resources; systemic differences in access to education, opportunities, and status positions; the "nerve-wracking problem of insecurity"; and pervasive but unacknowledged power dominate and shape individuals, restricting their freedom, ability and initiative. Freedom is more than being allowed to employ one's resources as one chooses, but requires some equality. It also includes a reasonable chance for success. Too many people "weep that the liberty of the affluent is being jeopardized by taxes, regulation and the general apparatus of the welfare state .... They neglect to consider the way liberty is enlarged by giving people income -- by welfare payments, medical care, food stamps, unemployment compensation, old age pensions." Economists and conservatives fail to recognize that freedom "is circumscribed by poverty", and that "having some money to spend" is an essential liberty.[xxviii]
Defense of inequality is not incidental to economics, but is a large part of the conventional wisdom -- unexamined preferences, assumptions and values that serve the interests of those with power. Galbraith does not reject liberalism per se, but one variety of liberalism, laissez-faire, market liberalism. Economics is not "a science of unchanging ultimate truths." Much "socially inconvenient analysis" is ignored. Faith hides the reality of social-economic relations. Market theory is "ideologically convenient" and subordinates experience and reality to theory and belief. Galbraith claims that "Economics has been not a science but a conservatively useful system of belief defending that belief as a science." Much economics "does not describe the world as it is...." Too often "economic theory combines interpretation with justification .... [and] explicit defense." An ideology of the benign self-adjusting market ignores power and the impact of conventionally acceptable policy on those with little power, and supports the egregious belief things work out for the best if left alone, helping "to justify a reduced sense of public responsibility for the poor." Private power, corporate bureaucracy and inequality are neglected or explained away. Thus economics "serves the controlling economic interest. It cultivates the beliefs and therewith the behavior that such interest requires."[xxix]
Public Policy, Power and Inequality
A brief review of public policy can elucidate these claims. Galbraith denies that public policy is (or should be) neutral. Choices have unequal impact. Power to influence government is not equally shared. Public decisions habitually favor those with power, regardless of consequences for equality, equity or long-term social welfare. Even in an ideal situation we would be forced to choose winners and losers. Though the range of choices is not unlimited, Galbraith insists that more viable choices are available than anti-egalitarian theorists and mainstream economists imagine. We see this in Galbraith's arguments about power, and in criticism of policies such as monetary and anti-inflation policy.
Galbraith is not a power theorist as such. Every relation is not reduced to power, but, unlike most conservative and liberal economists, he finds a major role for power in his analysis. This is not the place to examine the shortcomings and advantages of Galbraith on power. Instead, we will explicate the impact of uneven power on equality and public policy.
Power is a prime example, for Galbraith, of how markets do not operate as laissez-faire theorists propose, undermining their political claims and their twin assertions that inequality is a necessary incentive and reward for growth, and that the market produces the maximum equality possible. Galbraith doubts that economic relations are completely free and voluntary in the sense employed by more conservative economists, but contain substantial compulsion that limits freedom. Discussion of power is "the great black hole of economics." Galbraith, who accepts John Maynard Keynes' basic argument, says that Keynes, and by implication most liberal theory, failed to address economic power. He insists that access to politicians, to the bureaucracy, and to the means to shape public opinion is closely related to income. With economic growth, power passes more and more to producers, increasing inequality and "divergence" between producer purposes and "the purpose of the public." Intervention for the well-off, not the poor, characterizes American society. Despite vocal opposition from some economists and most conservatives to welfare and spending on the needs of those without influence, intervention and public spending serve the highly organized sector of the economy and have "been relatively comprehensive when the interests of the contented are involved .... Intervention to provide employment and alleviate enhanced poverty and suffering is far less likely than hitherto."[xxx]
Democracy cannot remedy this situation because citizens are not fully sovereign. Galbraith believes two things about "power over the state." In a larger sense, public will, popular actions and the general public do not determine government expenditures or major economic policy. "[D]aily practice openly, visibly, comprehensively denies" that the public controls these decisions. Unlike conservative economists, it is not groups of selfish minorities, uniting to loot the well off, who decide economic and welfare policy. Rather, major power holders -- Galbraith's planning system and technostructure -- who in conservative versions of market economics have no power, determine public policy, spending, and beneficiaries from government economic action. In a narrower sense, Galbraith finds the majority in the United states to be contented, and, out of satisfaction and fear of losing what they possess, unwilling to challenge either major power holders or call for egalitarian reform.[xxxi]
Galbraith discounts a central argument of classical economic theory, one that can justify inequality, the claim that in the long run markets generate equality. We face, instead, "the organic inequalities of bargaining power where the many face the few" -- structural weaknesses and inequalities inherent in the composition of the political-economic system.[xxxii] Galbraith distinguishes between what he calls the planning system and the market system. The planning system, the epitome of organization, is characterized by extensive planning and is composed of about one thousand large firms and associated labor unions, which he says produce more than half of United States output. "In its mature form, the corporation can be thought of as an instrument for perpetuating inequality." These large, well organized firms have a great deal of independence from market forces, and do not passively accept market prices. Well into the 1970s, and to a lesser extent today, they mitigate market forces by exercising meaningful control over suppliers, customers, government, and the market system. This control includes compensation for top executives, which, in a reversal of more orthodox theory, Galbraith claims does not require the growing gap between top and lower level employees, and is determined not by the rarity of talent and market demand but by power. With a fair amount of success they "seek to control the social environment", and have the "ability to impose their values on the society and the state." Government service to powerful industry increases inequality.[xxxiii]
The market system operates more or less like neo-classical theory says the whole economy operates. It is composed of millions of smaller firms producing the remaining output. Unlike the planning system, but in conformity with neoclassical theory, it is inherently stable and tends toward equality, though it is in an inferior position to the planning system, leading to income and other inequalities between the two parts of the economy. Individuals in the market system have little power. They are unable to significantly "influence" customer, supplier or government "behaviour", or directly control prices. Moreover, as the planning system is able to manipulate its political-economic environment, and the market system is not, inequality is built into their political and economic relations with one another, and into their separate relations with government. Galbraith claims the planning system has direct access to decision makers, and is able to organize power and resources "to persuade consumers and the government as to [its] need" in a forceful way that small actors cannot hope to emulate. Political and economic inequality only grows larger with mergers and increased concentration. Inequality between the few large producers and the millions of small ones will not disappear without deliberate efforts to address unequal power.[xxxiv]
What then is power? "Power is the ability of an individual or a group to impose its purposes on others." Unequal development and inequality in the economy and society at large are closely related to "unequal deployment of power." In the contemporary world property and organization are primary sources of power. The planning system has a plenitude of each. Organization control has largely replaced the older emphasis on individualism, though the myth of individualism still justifies unequal rewards. Physical force -- the only exercise of power recognized among more conservative theorists -- is no longer acceptable, but major corporate entities are able to employ compensatory power and conditioned power. Compensatory power refers to straight forward purchase of acquiescence, and is related to financial condition. Conditioned power is much more interesting. It undermines the argument that market relations are free, therefore voluntary. If not completely free or voluntary it becomes more difficult to argue that inequality results from a natural or quasi-natural process. Conditioned power "is exercised by changing belief." How? Through education, persuasion, manipulation of perceptions, individual identification with group goals, corporate use of revered symbols, and advertising. It leads people to submit to the planning system without recognizing their behavior is being manipulated. Conditioned power is the central means for winning the public and government to planning system needs and wishes.[xxxv]
Monetary and anti-inflation policy illustrate, for Galbraith, how public policy serves the interests of large economic entities. Manipulation of interest rates and the money supply is an inherently unequal tool for economic policy. Its impact "is not evenly distributed." Small business, workers, and those who are unorganized are affected much more than the highly organized part of the economy. "[H]igh interest rates are far from neutral." While they have a direct effect on the market system, it takes much longer for them to affect the planning system, deepening problems for the rest of the economy. Inflation fighters are not drafted equally from each group or class. Monetary policy causes "massive unemployment and much idle plant capacity." This is not simply an unintended consequence of salutary policy, but a disguised "incomes policy," a direct, deliberate decision to force some people out or work or out of the market, to fight the inflation that Galbraith says is produced mainly by the planning system. Those who lose, given opposition to welfare spending, are not compensated for their sacrifice.[xxxvi]
At one time Galbraith argued for wage and price controls to manage inflation and to reduce income inequalities, especially in what he calls the planning system. He called for "public action" to reduce "the differential between those who do the unpleasant work and those who like their work .... to narrow differentials which are a reflection not of function but of hierarchy, tradition and power." Galbraith no longer sees this as possible, and finds in these differentials, which grew throughout the 1980s and 1990s, a source of potential disorder when the next major economic downturn hits the United States. Worse, we have allowed what seems like a permanent underclass to develop, people with little or no prospect of personal or intergenerational development. Will they revolt? Perhaps, but that remote and undesirable possibility is not his sole concern. Other social dangers remain: creation of a "laager mentality" among the well-to-do; attribution of poverty, urban problems and crime to racial inferiority, laziness or criminal disposition; "increasingly oppressive authority in areas of urban desolation" as the majority insists on order above all else; abandonment of any sense of community or nation with the poor; and growing social-political division. Conversely, "opportunity" helps ensure "social tranquility" while "economic stagnation and privation bring with them adverse and widespread social consequences." Partial creation of a limited welfare state has "mitigated" the worst "inequities and cruelties", ensuring the survival of capitalism, but, for Galbraith, neglects unresolved problems and the people who remain excluded from prosperity.[xxxvii]
Greater than necessary poverty, and refusal to use our resources to effectively end poverty also result from unequal power and the justification of inequality. Poverty is related to but is not identical with inequality. Galbraith has addressed poverty for nearly 50 years. A full discussion is beyond this essay, but a few points are relevant. Galbraith broke with, and helped reshape, the pattern of American liberalism over the last 50 years, insisting that poverty cannot be reduced by general economic advance alone, because poverty is concentrated among groups and regions. General economic advance has both helped reduce poverty and has diminished interest in equality at the same time that it has created the resources for eliminating most poverty. Increasing wealth is not irrelevant, but dealing with poverty requires an act of political will and commitment that is becoming increasingly remote.
"Poverty is man's most powerful and massive affliction." It intensifies and often causes our worst problems: hunger, disease, internal conflict, and deep separation between people. Unlike more conservative economists, Galbraith insists that relative poverty is important. A smaller proportion of people are poor today, in the developed states, than at any other time, but that increases the sense of desolation and separation among those who remain poor. Efforts to find the cause of poverty in the poor -- a traditional justification of inequality -- comfort the well off but ignore reality. Galbraith finds the major cause of poverty "in the nature of the society of the rich which allows or requires some to stay poor." In a potentially far reaching argument that Galbraith never quite develops, he insists that "to refuse to consider how we use our wealth is to fail to see why some people remain permanently poor." In his later work, Galbraith is horrified at the prospect for democratic society from the development of a "semipermanent" underclass, and surprised at our "relative tranquility." Poverty effectively disenfranchises the poor. Survival crowds out political participation and "self-expression." The voice of the poor is rarely heard, and their interests remain unserved. We spend little, and this, not spending on the affluent, is attacked as wasteful and freedom destroying. This underclass, however, is highly "functional", doing the dirty work that the more affluent refuse, supporting the prosperity which the poor hardly share.[xxxviii]
Liberalism
Galbraith believes that it is the duty of liberals to solve the problems caused by conservatives, and that liberalism "is ... the only practical [political-economic] faith."[xxxix] For theoretical and political reasons, American liberalism has, according to Galbraith, failed to solve poverty and inequality.
Starting in the late 1930s, American liberals began to emphasize economic growth as a way of avoiding distributional conflict and politics.[xl] In doing so, poverty and inequality were more and more argued to be solvable through general economic advance -- President Kennedy's famous statement that a rising tide lifts all boats. As noted, Galbraith does not believe this to be correct. He was in broad disagreement with what he saw as the basic strategy, or lack of strategy, of liberal political-economic policy. Though he is a Keynesian, Galbraith faults post World War II liberalism for embracing "Keynesian fiscal policy" as "the summum bonum of liberal economic policy." Production and output "established something akin to a monopoly over" the liberal mind, but, "without a sense of strategy" production alone could not solve problems that resulted from discrimination, poor education, lack of power, and geographic isolation, not inadequate production. A narrow concept of Keynesian policy seemed politically safe because it "required no fundamental revision of the role of the state in the economy." Not only were liberal economists ignoring the growing challenge from conservative theorists, they were persisting in a Keynesian type production policy that no longer met growing and fundamental needs of the United States. "Liberals did not entirely forget their earlier commitment to the public services" but political opposition made them too cautious, "inviting grave social ills."[xli]
Galbraith's Affluent Society criticized liberal thinking and liberal policy in the areas this essay addresses. For Galbraith, in Affluent Society and most of his subsequent work, modified only slightly by growing acceptance in the 1990s of emphasis on growth, scarcity is no longer pressing, poverty is no longer the norm, we need to rethink priorities, rethink single-minded, traditional emphasis on production for private use, and move beyond what Andrew Levine recently called "the distribution of privately owned things."[xlii] In contrast to the widely accepted view, Galbraith insisted needs are not only private, but there are public needs and goods, shared as part of a public, that must be met to fulfill private and collective requirements. Though he does not see this social balance as directly equalizing, it is egalitarian in that the poor will share in public goods in greater proportion than the affluent, but all will share, incidentally developing a sense of mutual obligation and a sense that we are part of one society. Thus Affluent Society attempted to transcend accepted conservative and liberal thinking about the nature of production and distribution priorities; to redefine the content and relation between public and private spheres and needs; and, therefore, to revise ideas about scarcity and the policies that flow from traditional thinking about scarcity, thereby rejecting the inequality that scarcity seemed to entail.[xliii] The alternative? "The test of the good liberal is still that he is never fooled, that he never yields on issues favoring the wealthy."[xliv]
This argument is also an implicit criticism of the line of thinking that has evolved from Rawls. Despite the egalitarian thrust of Rawls' work, his second principle can allow a great deal of inequality. "[S]ocial and economic inequalities, for example inequalities of wealth and authority, are just only if they result in compensating benefits for everyone, and in particular for the least advantaged members of society." Or, "economic inequalities are to be arranged to that they are ... reasonably expected to be to everyone's advantage...." The full, potentially radical implications of this argument remain unexplored. In policy terms, one can accept this principle and not concede very much to equality. Everything depends on the nature of the policy that can promote everyone's advantage, whether the same or different people from those affected by inequality will eventually benefit from that inequality, and one's judgment about an acceptable length of time in which those who are unequal receive some benefit. That is Galbraith's point. He would probably endorse Rawls second principle, but operationalize it differently. Galbraith is not as accepting of markets as is Rawls, and he does not believe that increased production per se is the path to improving the condition of those on the bottom. Does the second principle justify tax cuts for the wealthy on the assumption they will invest in productive enterprises? How much incentive is enough? Does it allow for feelings of despair at large income differences? Does it support laissez-faire or interventionist policies? Most of the arguments justifying inequality, including Malthus and nineteenth social darwinism, make just this claim, that -- in the long run -- everyone benefits, even if a great many separate ones suffer now. The operational question is, how much must the least advantaged benefit, and when, to justify inequality.[xlv]
The Good Society[xlvi]
Galbraith envisions a substantially egalitarian society, one that remains capitalist, but not laissez-faire. But, what does substantially egalitarian mean? Equality and an egalitarian system are not either/or concepts, where we have equality or do not have equality. There are many possible gradations. On efficiency and social-political justice grounds, Galbraith defends more extensive equalization than is common. Social and market forces cannot do the job. A more equal society requires deliberate public policy to alter power and inegalitarian relations. It also requires a more active and responsive government than any that may be currently acceptable to either major power holders or even the mass public.
Equal opportunity is one component of a good society. Equal opportunity is more problematic than most of my students and most popular writers imagine. It is always based on some other (underlying) equality. Equal opportunity requires that one consider people already comparable or alike in some relevant sense, that is, they are similar, or are or ought to be treated alike, or in a comparable way.[xlvii] It makes no sense for aristocrats, racists or sexists to argue for equal opportunity between peasant and lord, white and black, women and men. Much of the conflict over equality involves who is to be considered eligible for equal opportunity, and how equal opportunity is to be measured. Equal opportunity can mean many different things, from allowing people to compete, a kind of careers open to talent, to intensive effort to ensure everyone has the resources through which they can develop whatever talents they may potentially possess, accompanied by fundamental changes in how status is allocated.
Galbraith favors a hard equality of opportunity, one that means more than removing the rough edges from an otherwise fair competitive system. It includes not only removal of legal barriers, or even providing legal access to education, opportunity, and status, but requires active efforts to ensure people have access to resources necessary for development, that they can compete, that they can contribute to society, and more. For those who cannot compete, or who are severely harmed by competition, there must be a very deep safety net. Sometimes more basic change is needed. The American socio-economic system places women in an inferior position and must be altered. "The reasonable goal of an economic system is one that allows all individuals to pursue socially benign personal goals regardless of sex." For Galbraith this means ending both subordination and conditioning for subordination, which, incidentally, is perpetuated by advertising -- conditioned power -- and unequal access to jobs. What is needed? Writing more than 25 years ago, he argued for alternatives between marriage and no income, requiring "[e]qual access to jobs", and ending male "monopoly of the better jobs" in the highly organized sector of the economy. Because freedom for Galbraith is compromised by lack of alternatives, real equal opportunity and equalization for women require "professional" child care, and "[g]reater individual choice in the work week and work year." Lack of flexibility denies "the individuality that established economics pretends to defend." Better education for women is necessary. Affirmative action for women and racial minorities is essential to real equal opportunity. "To do otherwise is implicitly to perpetuate past discrimination .... When the effects of past discrimination have been ended ... selection can become blind. But only then."[xlviii]
Other policies are necessary. Better, more extensive, readily available education has always been a component in Galbraith's better society. It is one key to lessening poverty, realizing effective democracy, and creating citizens who are self-assertive and expressive.[xlix] What else? Galbraith would probably agree with John Baker that "the welfare state is designed for an unequal society"[l] but argue that in our society an expanded welfare state would be a real advance over current behavior, and is necessary to decency and economic growth. His answer seems like a laundry list for the welfare state, but is more than that: progressive taxes; decent public housing; health care; public transportation; racial tolerance; aid to the market part of the economy; support for labor unions; reducing wage differentials; promoting access by the poor and excluded to government; more spending on shared, public needs; attacking beliefs justifying inequality; better unemployment compensation; creation of effective equal opportunity. Welfare encourages equalization and equal opportunity by increasing aggregate demand and individual opportunities. It is also liberating in that it gives aid recipients an alternative to taking any job at any wage, reducing inequality of power between employers and employees. Affluence, too, is a component. Affluence also increases choice, reducing the exercise of power. Expanding the range of effective, available choices is liberating because it increases the ability to exercise freedom, and in this case, more freedom means more equality.
Is Galbraith an egalitarian? The picture is mixed. This essay could be entitled "Equality, a Modest defense." Certainly one can argue that Galbraith does not go far enough,[li] but he is more egalitarian than American or even Western European public policy and the people whom he criticizes. Galbraith rejects most defenses of inequality, not all inequality. He doubts that humans are so constituted as to willingly accept the same reward. His alternative picture of how the political-economic system operates, and criticism of standard economic theory, however, lead him to an alternative picture of equality and inequality, and to attack many justifications of inequality that often accompany other theories. Moreover, extensive inequality is undesirable in itself. Rather than develop a philosophical defense of equalization, he argues for equality in policy terms. Galbraith combines empirical seeming and normative claims. In economic terms, at this stage of development, inequality undermines economic efficiency and is counter-productive. Wide spread inequality weakens a market system and makes recovery from recessions more difficult. In social terms, it divides society into mutually hostile groups. Politically, it causes unequal access to government and unequal benefits from government, while compromising democracy. There is also an unarticulated theory of justice in this argument, that Galbraith does not even acknowledge, centering on the idea that we have an obligation to one another. Demand for a more active government in addressing inequality, is, however, central to his work. Economics is not rigidly separate from politics. Inequality cannot be solved by market forces. "[L]eft to themselves, economic forces do not work out for the best except perhaps for the powerful."[lii] Remedying this requires a shift in power, but Galbraith is unclear how this might occur.
Galbraith emphasizes social and economic relations, rarely discussing political equality. Only late in life has he begun to address democracy, and is deeply worried that unequal economic power is undermining democratic government. His emphasis on government's asymmetric response to those with economic power is largely neglected in mainstream academic and policy oriented liberalism. In terms of addressing unequal power; demanding a broad picture of equal opportunity; seeking more opportunities and more protection for those on the bottom of society; insisting on a less hierarchical structure in large firms, accompanied by smaller income differentials and the elimination of "caste differences" in employment;[liii] and, placing more equality at the center of his definition of a good society, Galbraith represents the current limits of liberal theory and policy.
Galbraith's fifty year public career has been at the center of the development and apparent decline of public liberalism. Political theorists need to pay more attention to policy debate and to politicians, popular theorists, and writers who are involved in this debate. If we take seriously the values and arguments we analyze, it is useful to examine how similar ideas and values are handled among people who are trying to implement them in the existing political arena. Analyzing these efforts expands the scope of material we can study and contributes to understanding political reality. After all, some of the "greats", including Locke, Marx, and J S Mill, addressed themselves to public policy and to changing the world.
Endnotes
[i]. Conrad P. Waligorski, The Political Theory of Conservative Economists (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 1990). 
[ii]. Sheldon S. Wolin, "The Liberal/Democratic Divide: On Rawls's Political Liberalism," Political Theory, 24 (February 1996) 97-119; Sidney Verba and Gary R. Orren, Equality in America: the View from the Top (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1985) p 120. Cf p 252: "There are no egalitarians or antiegalitarians in any straightforward sense." 
[iii]. Amartya Sen, Inequality Reexamined (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, Russell Sage Foundation, 1992) x-xi and ff. Sen is correct that every theory accepts some equality, but if one looks at a theory's entire argument it is fair to say that some are, on the whole, anti-egalitarian. Andrew Levine, Rethinking Liberal Equality: From a 'Utopian' Point of View (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1998) challenges insistence on asking "equality of what." 
[iv]. R. H. Tawney, Equality (New York: Harcourt, Brace and Company, 1931) pp 12-13, 26. 
[v]. Eric Foner, The Story of American Freedom (New York: W. W. Norton, 1998) p 326. 
[vi]. Compare Levine, p 39.Furure: Add Freeden's new book on ideology. I acknowledge that normative theorists address important policy issues. This essay explores ideas in action and public debate, focusing on issues such as who has access to status and status opportunities, redistribution, power, governmental capabilities etc, more than issues of esteem, worth, moral agency etc. 
[vii]. Cf Waligorski, 1990. 
[viii]. Affluent Society sold nearly one and a half million copies. Peggy Lamson, Speaking of Galbraith: A Personal Portrait (New York: Ticknor and Fields, 1991) p 137. 
[ix]. Cf Galbraith's liberalism in Conrad P. Waligorski, Liberal Economics and Democracy: Keynes, Galbraith, Thurow and Reich (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 1997) pp 66-92. 
[x]. John Kenneth Galbraith, The Affluent Society (New York and Toronto: New American Library, Second Edition, 1969) pp 204, 87-99, 153; John Kenneth Galbraith, The Culture of Contentment (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1992) p 15 and passim; John Kenneth Galbraith, The Voice of the Poor: Essays in Economic and Political Persuasion (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1983). Galbraith credits liberals with concern for quality of life and racial equality. Cf Affluent p 154. 
[xi]. Cf Conrad P. Waligorski, "The Economic Justification of Inequality", Southwest Social Science Association, 1995. 
[xii]. John Baker, Arguing for Equality (London: Verso, 1987) p 130. 
[xiii]. For a rather different discussion see Waligorski, 1990, pp 31-38. "Ordering principle" is from James A. Caporaso and David P. Levine, Theories of Political Economy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992) p 36. 
[xiv]. Friedrich A. Hayek, The Road to Serfdom, with a new Preface by the Author, 1976 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1944, 1972), p 106; Milton and Rose Friedman, Free to Choose: A Personal Statement (New York: Avon, 1979) pp 35, 52, 119-139. Cf Milton Friedman, Capitalism and Freedom, (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1962) pp 9-10, 17; Harry G. Johnson, "Some Micro-Economic Reflections on Income and Wealth Inequalities", Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, 409 (September, 1973) pp 53-60; Lord Robbins, Liberty and Equality (London: Institute of Economic Affairs, 1977, Occasional paper 52) pp 16-18, 22-23. For one of the more successful economics based critiques of equality, see George Gilder, Wealth and Poverty (New York: Basic Books, 1981). Compare Waligorski, 1990, pp 76-100. All of these themes were present in Malthus. Thomas Robert Malthus, An Essay on the Principle of Population, Seventh Edition (London: Reeves and Turner, 1872, Reprinted by Augustus M. Kelley, Fairfield, N. J., 1986). 
[xv]. Robert Nozick, Anarchy, State and Utopia (New York: Basic Books, 1974) pp 18-21. Nozick's protective associations, where individuals have all the protection they can afford, are radically inegalitarian, accepting or rejecting members at will. See especially p 322; Nisbet in Benjamin Barber, Strong Democracy: Participatory Politics for a New Age (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1984) p 231; J. R. Lucas, "Against Equality Again", Philosophy, 52 (1977) pp 255-80; Russell Kirk, "The Injustice of Equality" (HeritageFrom web, have copy. Foundation, Lecture number 478, October 15, 1993). 
[xvi]. Cf. Frances Fox Piven and Richard A. Cloward, The Breaking of the American Social Contract (New York: The New Press, 1997) pp 76, 180-197. 
[xvii]. For different but overlapping lists of inequality claims see John Kenneth Galbraith, Affluent Society, p 86; Baker, pp 54 and ff; Gunnar Myrdal, Objectivity in Social Research (Middletown, Connecticut: Wesleyan University Press, 1969) pp 98-99; FROM 1995 ESSAY UP TO HERETawney, passim; Martin Bronfenbrenner, "Equality and Equity", Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, 409 (September, 1973) pp 9-23; Sen, passim. 
[xviii]. Galbraith, Affluent Society, pp 86, 46-50, Culture, pp 18-26, 40-41, 51. 
[xix]. Galbraith, Affluent Society, pp 45, 32-35. 
[xx]. This is a central theme in John Kenneth Galbraith, The New Industrial State, Fourth Edition, With a New Introduction (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1985). The quotes are from John Kenneth Galbraith, Economics and the Public Purpose (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1973, 1975) p 13. Cf John Kenneth Galbraith, The Great Crash, 1929 (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1975). 
[xxi]. Galbraith, Affluent Society, pp 56-7, 62, 68-74, 116, 221-24; Culture, pp 3, 80-81; John Kenneth Galbraith, "Recession Without End", Los Angeles Times, (November 3, 1991), sec M, pp 1, 6. 
[xxii]. Cf Waligorski, 1990, pp 3, 14-17. 
[xxiii]. Galbraith, Culture, pp 101-107, 41; John Kenneth Galbraith, "The Uses and Excuses for Affluence" New York Times Magazine, Sec 6, May 31, 1981, pp 38-44 and ff; John Kenneth Galbraith, "Nothing Succeeds Like Excess" New York Times, Aug 28, 1989 sec A, p 17; John Kenneth Galbraith, "Mr. Galbraith's Principle," Across the Board, 34 (June, 1997) p 16. Cf John Kenneth Galbraith, The Good Society: The Humane Agenda (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1996). 
[xxiv]. Galbraith, Affluent Society, p 87; John Kenneth Galbraith, "Interest Groups By Any Other Name", New York Times, May 29, 1988, sec 4, p 17; Galbraith, Culture, pp 101-103. 
[xxv]. Galbraith, Economics and the Public Purpose, 278-279; Great Crash, pp 194, 203-204, and passim; John Kenneth Galbraith, The Liberal Hour (New York: Mentor, New American Library, 1960) pp 82-87; John Kenneth Galbraith, "What Tact the Press Showed", New York Times (December 22, 1987) p A 23; American Capitalism, pp 104-105. Cf American Capitalism, pp 82-83. 
[xxvi]. Galbraith, Economics and the Public Purpose, pp 321-324, 312; Affluent Society, p 234, 238-240; Voice of the Poor, p 71. Affluent Society is the primary statement of social balance. 
[xxvii]. Cf Waligorski, 1990, pp 49-75. 
[xxviii]. Galbraith, Affluent Society, p 65; American Capitalism, pp 33-35; John Kenneth Galbraith, "Interview: The Anatomy of Power", conducted by Richard D. Bartel, Challenge, 26 (July-August, 1983), p 31. Cf. Good Society, pp 4, 26; "Uses and Excuses for Affluence," p 50. 
[xxix]. John Kenneth Galbraith, "Time and the New Industrial State", with discussion, American Economic Review: Papers and Proceedings 78 (May, 1988) p 373-376; John Kenneth Galbraith, Economics, Peace and Laughter (New York: Signet, 1971), pp 59-60; John Kenneth Galbraith, "Ideology and Economic Reality", Challenge 32 (Nov-Dec, 1989) pp 4-9; John Kenneth Galbraith, A Life in Our Times: Memoirs (New York: Ballantine Books, 1981) pp 28-29, 49-50; Culture, p 22, 97; John Kenneth Galbraith, Economics in Perspective: A Critical History (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1987), pp 113, 284-86; John Kenneth Galbraith, "The Wealth of the Nation", Review of Samuel Bowles, David Gordon and Thomas E. Weisskopf, Beyond the Waste Land: A Democratic Alternative to Economic Decline, New York Review of Books, 30 (June 2, 1983); Economics and the Public Purpose, p 12. 
[xxx]. Galbraith, A Life in Our Times, pp 451-52; New Industrial State, p xviii; Economics and the Public Purpose, p 342; Culture, 162. 
[xxxi]. John Kenneth Galbraith, The Anatomy of Power (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1983) p 147; Economics and the Public Purpose, p 342, 216-17, 226-228; Culture, passim. 
[xxxii]. John Kenneth Galbraith, American Capitalism: The Concept of Countervailing Power (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, revised ed, 1956) pp 156, 161; Economics and the Public Purpose, p 216. On p 220 he argues that emphasis on the long run underminesie, 1, things will get better, don't need to worry. 
2. no need to do anything now. "the moral energy of belief" in reform. One can also view long run emphasis as a form of determinism. 
[xxxiii]. Galbraith, Economics and the Public Purpose, pp 54-56, 60-66, 82, 93, 108-109ff, 146-149, 195-199, 289, and passim; Anatomy of Power, pp 138-39; New Industrial State, pp 4-6, 13-20, 178, 218-19 and passim. 
[xxxiv]. Galbraith, Economics and the Public Purpose, pp 43, 59-62, 71-93, 146-149, 195-199, 216, 220, 239-240, 268, 270-282; New Industrial State, p 62. Cf Galbraith, "Interview: The Anatomy of Power", p 32; "Time and the New Industrial State." 
[xxxv]. Galbraith, Economics and the Public Purpose, p 108, 10; Anatomy of Power, pp 47-56, 5-6, and passim. 
[xxxvi]. Galbraith, Voice of the Poor, pp 72-75; "Interview: The Anatomy of Power", pp 26-33; Economics and the Public Purpose, pp 203-211. 
[xxxvii]. Galbraith, Economics and the Public Purpose, p 288; Culture, pp 169-172, 52; Good Society, p 24. 
[xxxviii]. John Kenneth Galbraith, The Nature of Mass Poverty (Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1979) pp 20-28 and passim; Culture pp 180-181, 38-41, 31, 33; Affluent Society, pp xxi-xxii, 98, 245-250; Anthony Lewis "The World Through Galbraith's Eyes" [Interview] New York Times Magazine, Vol CXVI, no 39,775, Dec 18, 1966, pp 25, 88 ff. 
[xxxix]. John F. Kennedy Presidential Library, John Kenneth Galbraith Collection, Box 107, "The State of Liberalism" Address at the Annual Roosevelt Day dinner, January 31, 1959, pp 5, 11. 
[xl]. Cf Alan Brinkley, The End of Reform: New Deal Liberalism in Recession and War (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1995); Add FonerDavid Plotke, Building A Democratic Political Order: Reshaping American Liberalism in the 1930s and 1940s (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996). 
[xli]. Galbraith, Affluent Society, pp xvi-xxiii, 88-98, 151. 
[xlii]. Levine, p 106. 
[xliii]. Galbraith opposed the 1964 tax cuts, on the ground that public spending would provide any needed stimulus, and the cuts would take resources away from public needs. His opposition to the Reagan program was even stronger. 
[xliv]. Affluent Society, p 88. 
[xlv]. John Rawls, A Theory of Justice (Cambridge: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1971) pp 14-15, 60. Concern with social minimums, pp 275 and 277, meets part of my objection. 
[xlvi]. Galbraith's last book is entitled The Good Society, but this discussion includes all of his major work. 
[xlvii]. Cf Sen. Lawrence B. Joseph, "Some Ways of Thinking About Equality of Opportunity", Western Political Quarterly, 33 (1980) pp. 393-400, is the best short piece I have seen on this topic. 
[xlviii]. Galbraith, Economics and the Public Purpose, pp 252-256. For another statement of goals in terms of "access to a rewarding life" see Galbraith, Good Society, p 23. 
[xlix]. Galbraith, Voice of the Poor, p 19; Affluent Society. 
[l]. Baker, p 10. 
[li]. Cf Michael Harrington, "Liberalism According to Galbraith", Commentary 44 (4) October 1967, pp 77-83; Levine, on Rawls and liberalism in general, passim. 
[lii]. Galbraith, Economics and the Public Purpose, p 13. 
[liii]. Galbraith, Economics and the Public Purpose, p 285.