
I’ve been in a discussion on Facebook in the last few days on the topic of John Kenneth Galbraith. In the 1960s and early 1970s, the three economists that were most well-known were Galbraith on the left, Paul Samuelson on the center left, and Milton Friedman on the libertarian end.
The discussion was mainly about civility and about how Galbraith had some. It reminded me of something that happened shortly after Galbraith died. I remember getting an email, on a Sunday morning in April 2006, from Tunku Varadarajan, op/ed editor at the Wall Street Journal asking me if I “do” Galbraith. Galbraith had died the previous day. What Tunku was asking was whether I knew enough to write an op/ed on Galbraith. I said I did. I wrote it and it ran the next day, if I recall correctly.
I made no errors that I know of in the piece. I still like it. But in the process of researching my subject, I had found interesting nuggets in his autobiography, A Life in These Times, nuggets that I didn’t have space to discuss. So I started reading that book and some of his other work in my leisure time. After a month or two of reading, I contacted Sheldon Richman and asked him if I could write a longer piece for The Freeman, of which he was the editor at the time. Sheldon was surprised. “You want to write an appreciation of Galbraith?” he asked. I said that I did but that there would also be heavy elements of criticism. Sheldon knew my work, trusted me, and gave me the green light.
The result was David R. Henderson, “John Kenneth Galbraith: A Criticism and an Appreciation,” The Freeman, December 2006.
An excerpt:
Most free-market economists, including me, have had little use for the vast bulk of Galbraith’s writing and thinking. This is understandable, given that the main work by which he was judged, and by which he appeared to want to be judged, was weak, both theoretically and empirically. But a more-complete assessment of Galbraith’s writing leads me to conclude that we free marketers have been somewhat uncharitable to Galbraith. He had remarkable insights, especially about government bureaucracy and war, insights that would not have surprised a Ludwig von Mises, an F. A. Hayek, or a Robert Higgs. Moreover, in his opposition to war and his attempts to stop it, Galbraith showed some real courage.
A criticism:
Other mainstream economists, such as Scott Gordon and Robert Solow, also pointed out fundamental problems with his conclusions—problems Galbraith never seriously grappled with. Instead he focused on the witty epigram. As one critic pointed out, Galbraith’s main form of argument for key assumptions in his model of the economy was “vigorous assertion.” It’s not hard to see why. In his autobiography, A Life in Our Times, Galbraith wrote that he learned a deep skepticism about statistics from a Harvard colleague, statistician William L. Crum. Galbraith wrote: “In my adult life I have occasionally been criticized for inadequacy in statistical or econometric method. Crum is responsible; from him I early formed the impression that no figure and no calculation was really valid and that it was foolish to expose one’s self by citing one.”
What an incredible overconclusion. No figure or calculation was really valid? How would he know, except by presenting contrary figures or corrections in calculations? And if he judged the invalidity based on these contrary figures or calculations, wouldn’t he be accepting their validity? Indeed, Galbraith backed up his skepticism with a follow-up example: an incorrect data-based prediction of an Alf Landon landslide over Roosevelt in the 1936 presidential election. Of course, Roosevelt won, a fact that Galbraith acknowledges—which means that Galbraith must have trusted, within a certain margin, the actual data on presidential voting.
An appreciation:
What else is impressive about Galbraith? He brought an independent mind to some of the biggest issues of the twentieth century, those involving war and peace. For all his refusal to look at evidence, Galbraith did some of his most important work on the effect of Allied bombing of Germany during World War II. As a director of the U.S. Strategic Bombing Survey he went to Germany immediately after the European war and headed a team to do an overall economic assessment of the German mobilization and the effect of the bombing on that mobilization. Galbraith’s team included economists Burton H. Klein, who made his reputation with his work on that team, Nicholas (later Lord) Kaldor, E.F. Schumacher (later author of Small Is Beautiful), Tibor Scitovsky, and Edward Dennison.
What they found was devastating. Galbraith wrote wittily, “Nothing in World War II air operations was subject to such assault as open agricultural land.” Successful attacks on war-production plants were much rarer. Whereas in 1940, 1941, and 1942, average monthly production of Panzer vehicles was 136, 316, and 516, respectively, in 1943 (when the bombing had begun in earnest) and 1944, monthly Panzer production was up to 1,005 and 1,583, respectively. They found similar results for airplane production. Galbraith’s boss, George Ball (later undersecretary of state under Presidents Kennedy and Johnson), found something equally disturbing about the firebombing of cities. The RAF’s bombing of central Hamburg, for example, destroyed many lives and many businesses in the central city—restaurants, cabarets, department stores, banks, and more. What were the newly unemployed waiters, bank clerks, and entertainers to do? That’s right: seek jobs in the war plants on the edge of the cities “to get the ration cards that the Nazis thoughtfully distributed to workers there.”
Moreover, the effect of the bombing was to shift control of production from the incompetent Goering and the Luftwaffe to the far-more-competent evil genius, Albert Speer. In other words, the incredible destruction that the British and air forces wreaked on Germany, with the high loss of human life, didn’t even have the intended effect of slowing Germany ‘s war-production machine. Galbraith had to fight hard to have his report published without it being rewritten to hide the essential points. “I defended it,” he wrote, “with a maximum of arrogance and a minimum of tact.”
In my experience as a senior economist with President Reagan’s Council of Economic Advisers, I found tact to be strongly overrated. To prevail, Galbraith probably needed about as little tact as he used.
And my little sadness:
Finally, I confess some sadness. In November 1981 I was the warm-up speaker for Galbraith at an event held by the Chicago Council on Foreign Relations. We had a short, friendly interaction, but I went into it knowing virtually nothing about Galbraith’s keen observations on war and peace. How much different our conversation and my speech might have been had I paid Galbraith the respect that was his due.
Read the whole thing.
READER COMMENTS
Jim Rose
Apr 20 2022 at 4:15am
The bombing of Germany destroyed the German air force. The bombing of Germany required the luftwaffe to be withdrawn for home defence conceding air superiority on both the Eastern front and after D-Day. German artillery had to be redirected to home anti-aircraft defence as did munitions supply
Bob Bell
Apr 20 2022 at 3:46pm
Your points are all valid ones but I think they best fall under the category of unintended consequences. The operative theory was that daylight precision bombing would win the war by eliminating German war production. That just didn’t happen. But the resultant air superiority you describe (aided by tactical strikes on Luftwaffe airfields) helped immeasurably to make the ground offensive successful.
Henri Hein
Apr 21 2022 at 1:00pm
You could be right, but it doesn’t seem persuasive. There is an opportunity cost on the allied side as well. Sending bombers in 1,000 km is a lot more expensive in resources than running the local air defense systems. There are likely more efficient ways they could have bled the Germans. That’s before taking into account the questionable ethics of sacrificing 100,000s of civilians.
BS
Apr 21 2022 at 3:39pm
The SBC is hard to measure. It didn’t achieve the bold objective of ending war production, but it had effects. German war production appeared to increase because before (roughly) 1942 they weren’t trying very hard. The question is whether the Allies could afford the cost of the resources they consumed to attack more than the Germans could afford the cost of the resources they consumed to defend.
Joy Schwabach
Apr 20 2022 at 3:03pm
What an interesting piece. I’m glad to know that Galbraith wasn’t all windbag. I look forward to reading your response to the comment by Jim Rose.
David Henderson
Apr 21 2022 at 11:52am
I don’t know enough about those other effects to answer, but my guess is that Bob Bell gets it right.
Monte
Apr 20 2022 at 10:23pm
Dr. Henderson’s critique of JKG was relatively mild compared to Thomas Sowell’s review of his book, Money, in which he absolutely torched the Canadian:
And here’s just one of many JKG glittering generalities testifying to his proclivity for arguments by unfounded assertion:
Still, Galbraith was a silver-tongued devil who was a tireless advocate for peace, God rest his soul.
David Henderson
Apr 21 2022 at 11:51am
Thanks. I actually don’t disagree with Sowell on the items he reviewed. But that’s why I mentioned the other items, where Galbraith does show both an ability to reason and some courage in taking on powerful political figures.
Kevin Corcoran
Apr 21 2022 at 12:21pm
I appreciate this sentiment quite a bit. I learned a lot of things in my nine years in the Marine Corps, many of them beneficial to life in general. But nothing I learned, and none of the skills I acquired, give me any special insight into the important questions of war and peace. I certainly have my opinions about these topics, but I don’t think those opinions should be granted bonus points because I was in the military. My opinions should be judged entirely on the soundness of the arguments that lead to them. To treat my arguments more lightly in favor of deference based on my “lived experience” (to use the parlance of our time) is an exercise in condescension.
David Henderson
Apr 21 2022 at 3:37pm
Thanks, Kevin.
Slightly a propos of that, I was at an event at Stanford yesterday when the host of a talk asked at the start for all active-duty military members to stand. Four people did. After a slight pause, the audience broke into applause. I didn’t.
The reason is that I don’t know who they are or what they did. I’m not anti-military; I couldn’t’ have been and still loved teaching military people for 33 years. It’s just that I judge people based on them individually and not based on their career choice.
Kevin Corcoran
Apr 21 2022 at 3:55pm
As it happens, whenever I’m at any sort of event and it’s asked for veterans or members of the military to stand, I never do. Not because I’m ashamed of or want to hide the fact that I’m a veteran, but because the act of receiving applause or accolades from strangers on that basis has always felt weird to me. And I know based on conversations with friends I’m not the only one who feels that way – it wouldn’t surprise me at all if there were other military members of that audience who stayed seated and who would have appreciated your reaction.
David Henderson
Apr 21 2022 at 4:40pm
Good for you. I remember sitting in an airport and getting into a fun conversation with an active duty officer. When the United employee started the boarding and said that active duty military could board first, my new friend didn’t move. “You can board now,” I told him. “I’m against that,” he said. Good for him.
I also remember one of my favorite students, who also became a friend, coming back from Iraq (well after he had been my student) and telling me that people would defer to his judgment about the value of the war. He told me that he would say to them “No, no, don’t defer to me. If I’m really fighting for your freedom, then USE your freedom to think for yourself and maybe even question whether the fight is worth it.” (I think he didn’t really think that he was fighting for our freedom. He was using the point rhetorically.)
Henri Hein
Apr 21 2022 at 1:19pm
Nice piece, David.
I only read The Affluent Society myself. I was deeply disappointed. In my youth, I was solidly leftist-liberal, but at the time I was reading The Affluent Society, I was turning strongly libertarian. I was hoping to get challenged in my new-found convictions. Instead, I found it chock-full of assertions with weak foundations and outright errors. For instance, I remember the issue he brought up with the garbage that you mentioned. As I recall, his conclusion was that we should raise taxes and add funding for the garbage department(s), and other public services. If private services are adequately funded and functioning, and public solutions are not, another obvious solution would be to privatize the public services. Even if he had any arguments in mind to favor option #1, he didn’t present them.
bill steigerwald
Apr 25 2022 at 5:34pm
I met the tall man in 1997, when he was alive and famous and witty and I was a humble newspaperman. Before our interview started I mentioned my favorite economist was Hayek and he made a crack about Hayek not being a real economist.
https://clips.substack.com/p/john-kenneth-galbraith-a-tall-friend?s=w
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