Abide with Me

“Abiding” is Mr. Galbraith’s substitute for the more popular term, “last-ditch.” For those of us in the less automatically publishable part of the population, Annals of an Abiding Liberal is not exactly a book. But then, it is not necessary for one of the faithful of the liberal Establishment to actually write a book in order to have it published. So Galbraith put together some of his articles and speeches, and here we have it: umpteenth book, same pulpit, same congregation. Then again, one might well question whether a book could have been written under this title. One may not be justified in stating flatly that a man of the author’s imaginative powers could not have found enough to say to write a new book about liberalism, but it is not too much to suspect. For a generation, the media and the publishing industry have been saturated with liberal opinions on every subject and every problem, real and invented. At this point, there is really nothing Galbraith can say about liberalism beyond the minddeadening declaration that, whoever else may desert it, he will remain true to the faith he helped to father. As for Annals of an Abiding Liberal, its content is its title. The first of the reprints which make up this volume gives us several stoppress items: a static supply-and-demand model of the economy does not accurately describe the real world; many major sectors of the American economy are dominated by big corporations; there are structural rigidities in the economy which prevent fiscal policy from dealing with many of our economic problems. Galbraith concludes from this that we need more structural rigidities: i.e., a vaguely defined but permanent set of wage and price controls. There is nothing said here that hasn’t been liberal policy for at least forty years. In an orthodox replay of liberal economic theory, Galbraith drags out the usual straw men for another beating. The problems with a static supply- and-demand analysis of an economy, as put forward by Alfred Marshall in 1890, are exposed fearlessly by Galbraith. But one who has actually read Marshall cannot but feel that Marshall’s own thorough analysis of these problems was better than Galbraith’s belated exposure of them. Like Keynes’s “classical economists,” who were supposed to have demanded tight money in the midst of the Depression, Galbraith’s neoclassical economists, who declare that supply-and-demand is a fixed state rather than a tendency, simply do not exist. As a last-ditch liberal, Galbraith remains the only true straw man in the debate. Galbraith’s boring recitation of liberal theory is not only outdated, but largely irrelevant. It is not liberal theory, but liberal practice, which has reduced the ranks of its unapologetic adherents to a handful of last-ditchers. Even socialist theory is not what crippled the Swedish economy. Galbraith makes the point that wage and price controls are a regular part of the economic policy in European countries that are doing very well. But European price controls have a limited destructive potential because they are based on clear and limited objectives: national prosperity and protection of the country’s currency. In America, such powers would be exercised by the same Establishment that conducted the War on Poverty and the escalation and rout in Vietnam.

Liberal theories filtering down have been overwhelmed by experience with their results filtering up. The electorate, taxed, mugged, and regulated, has made the liberal label safe only for those seeking Senate seats from the District of Columbia. The result has been a demand from the seats of power for theories alternative and even contradictory to liberal orthodoxy. Academe, columnists, and the media have accordingly begun wheeling to the right.

RW

About the Author

Robert W. Whitaker

“Abiding” is Mr. Galbraith’s substitute for the more popular term, “last-ditch.” For those of us in the less automatically publishable part of the population, Annals of an Abiding Liberal is not exactly a book. But then, it is not necessary for one of the faithful of the liberal Establishment to actually write a book in order to have it published. So Galbraith put together some of his articles and speeches, and here we have it: umpteenth book, same pulpit, same congregation. Then again, one might well question whether a book could have been written under this title. One may not be justified in stating flatly that a man of the author’s imaginative powers could not have found enough to say to write a new book about liberalism, but it is not too much to suspect. For a generation, the media and the publishing industry have been saturated with liberal opinions on every subject and every problem, real and invented. At this point, there is really nothing Galbraith can say about liberalism beyond the minddeadening declaration that, whoever else may desert it, he will remain true to the faith he helped to father. As for Annals of an Abiding Liberal, its content is its title. The first of the reprints which make up this volume gives us several stoppress items: a static supply-and-demand model of the economy does not accurately describe the real world; many major sectors of the American economy are dominated by big corporations; there are structural rigidities in the economy which prevent fiscal policy from dealing with many of our economic problems. Galbraith concludes from this that we need more structural rigidities: i.e., a vaguely defined but permanent set of wage and price controls. There is nothing said here that hasn’t been liberal policy for at least forty years. In an orthodox replay of liberal economic theory, Galbraith drags out the usual straw men for another beating. The problems with a static supply- and-demand analysis of an economy, as put forward by Alfred Marshall in 1890, are exposed fearlessly by Galbraith. But one who has actually read Marshall cannot but feel that Marshall’s own thorough analysis of these problems was better than Galbraith’s belated exposure of them. Like Keynes’s “classical economists,” who were supposed to have demanded tight money in the midst of the Depression, Galbraith’s neoclassical economists, who declare that supply-and-demand is a fixed state rather than a tendency, simply do not exist. As a last-ditch liberal, Galbraith remains the only true straw man in the debate. Galbraith’s boring recitation of liberal theory is not only outdated, but largely irrelevant. It is not liberal theory, but liberal practice, which has reduced the ranks of its unapologetic adherents to a handful of last-ditchers. Even socialist theory is not what crippled the Swedish economy. Galbraith makes the point that wage and price controls are a regular part of the economic policy in European countries that are doing very well. But European price controls have a limited destructive potential because they are based on clear and limited objectives: national prosperity and protection of the country’s currency. In America, such powers would be exercised by the same Establishment that conducted the War on Poverty and the escalation and rout in Vietnam.

Liberal theories filtering down have been overwhelmed by experience with their results filtering up. The electorate, taxed, mugged, and regulated, has made the liberal label safe only for those seeking Senate seats from the District of Columbia. The result has been a demand from the seats of power for theories alternative and even contradictory to liberal orthodoxy. Academe, columnists, and the media have accordingly begun wheeling to the right.