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is the most famous economist alive, and — to the regret of
friends of liberty and prosperity — the most influential. Nearing
age 93, John Kenneth Galbraith is a little hard of hearing, and
greets his visitor with resignation. After all, what is shut out
from his hearing is not all that important, inasmuch as he has had
the last word on everything in the great span of years that took
him from farmer's son in Ontario to Ph.D. at Berkeley to journalism
for Henry Luce to his professorship at Harvard and king of the world
in his profession.
"I have
a new book for you."
"Oh?"
"It is
called 'The Essential Galbraith.'"
"Ah. Short
book?"
He smiles defiantly
from the armchair he is now confined to. "Not so short."
It is a collection
of essays drawn from his huge lifework. He has written short editorial
introductions to each one of them. About "The Valid Image of
the Modern Economy," from the volume Annals of an Abiding
Liberal, he writes: "A more technical and in some respects
more precise statement of this theme was in my presidential address
to the American Economic Association in 1972. The latter, I am not
quite alone in believing, is the best short account of my general
economic position."
That is the year — 1972 — in which Galbraith scaled the
heights of his profession, and the year in which he persuaded Senator
George McGovern to run for president of the United States. The two
campaigns failed. George McGovern won two states, and the socialism
of John Kenneth Galbraith ran into the real world which, with however
many compromises, said No thanks, and turned instead to Margaret
Thatcher and Ronald Reagan.
At his old large house in Cambridge where with his learned and beautiful
wife he has lived lo these many years, he reflects on odd moments
in his career, and on an unbumpy way to affluence. "Did you
get paid well when you were a writer for Fortune magazine?"
his visitor asked. "Paid well! What was it, Kitty, twelve thousand
dollars per year, correct?" She nods. "That was a fortune
in 1936."
He went then to Harvard where still in his 20s he drifted into a
reception for university trustees. "One of them gave me a drink
order," he laughed. He was there when President Roosevelt appeared
at the ceremonies remarking the 300th anniversary of Harvard. "Joe
Kennedy — he was the brightest of the Kennedys — brighter
even than Jack. Young Joe knew that the great majority of Harvard
graduates were in favor of Landon for president, and that their
ideological loyalty prevailed over their judgment. So young Joe
went around taking bets. He made enough money from Landon loyalists
to buy an automobile!"
Did Galbraith's
colleague Joseph Schumpeter also profit from journalism? "No.
He was always broke. And opinionated. You know, back then, anybody
offered a job at Harvard was really summoned to Harvard
— nobody else could compete. Paul Samuelson's name came up
for a professorship and Schumpeter vetoed him. I talked to
Samuelson and he said, 'You know, I wouldn't have minded Schumpeter's
blackballing me, because I'm a Jew.' Everybody knew that Schumpeter
was an anti-Semite. 'He blackballed me because he knew I was smarter
than he was.'"
Ah, prejudice.
And look now, he said, at the religious people in the Mideast.
His visitor
objected that religion was getting a bad rap. "You shouldn't
condemn religion because people profane religion by invoking it
to serve evil ends, right?"
He affected not to hear, and chatted about his early years. He was
the eldest of four Galbraiths, and after draining the family resources
to go to college, undertook to finance the education of the younger
siblings, on his way to eminence. Prime Minister Trudeau, who ruled
over Canada for 15 years, superintending a drop in the Canadian
dollar of 25 percent of its value, told the world that his economic
policies were based on the work of John Kenneth Galbraith. "Do
you know, my book on the Great Crash sells more than all my other
books combined? Whenever there is a blip in the market, people say,
'I wonder what Galbraith had to say about the Depression?'"
He once told the visitor that he kept The Great Crash at
his bedside and when suffering from insomnia, reread a chapter or
two, closing his eyes finally with blissful gratitude. "That
son of a b-tch can really write!"
The old man
is so self-confident he doesn't, in his latest book, even bother
to list the titles of his other books. He deals that way with honorary
degrees, stopping to list them, in Who's Who, after twenty
or so. "My only rule in the matter is to have more honorary
degrees than Arthur Schlesinger."
And his legacy? The introduction to one of his essays reads, "Thirty-five
years after [the original essay] was written — years that have
included Ronald Reagan, Margaret Thatcher, and now George W. Bush
and Dick Cheney — Adam Smith remains undiminished in the scholarly
eye and, as here told, is by no means the exclusive possession of
conservatives." Nor is Galbraith venerated exclusively by liberals.
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