PROFILES OF WORLD ECONOMISTS JOHN KENNETH GALBRAITH
JOHN KENNETH GALBRAITH doc. Ing. Ivan Figura, CSc.
John Kenneth Galbraith, the world famous American economist, was not a follower of the cult of the invisible hand of the market. His analyses and evaluations do not move in the closed abstract
John Kenneth Galbraith was born on 15th October 1908 at Iona Station in the Canadian province of Ontario. When he was aged 90, Galbraith recalled his childhood in a speech, when he received an honorary doctorate from the London School of Economics: „I was born and grew up on a farm in Canada. I still get up in the morning with a feeling of satisfaction that I do not have a day of hard monotonous work in front of me.“ His journey to theoretical economic research was not very direct. During his university study, he directed his attention to the economics of agriculture. He gained the degrees of master in 1933 and doctor in 1934 in agrarian economics at the University of California in Berkley. From 1934 to 1939, he taught at Harvard University in Cambridge and in 1939-1940 at Princeton University. He gains US citizenship in 1937. During the Second World War, he worked in the state administration in the area of monitoring of prices. Later he was director of the Strategic Bombing Survey, director of the Office of Economic Security and adviser to various government institutions. He was awarded a high American decoration – the Medal of Freedom for his activity during the war. After the war he permanently returned to Harvard University, where he gained the professorship bearing the name of Paul M. Warburg. He worked at the university until his retirement in 1975. He occupied a leading position among American economists, when he published his books „American Capitalism. The Concept of Countervailing Power“ in 1952 and „The Affluent Society“ in 1958. The literary level of this book led to it gaining two prestigeous prizes from the book market – the Tamiment Book Award and the Sidney Hillman Award. Translations of Galbraith’s works began to appear in other countries, and in the sixties he was one of the most famous American economists in the rest of the world. As an author, who did not accept the self-regulating activity of market forces, he also expressed his views in further works. Among them, it is necessary to men-
theoretical economic model, but start from the urgent and real problems of the modern economy. In this spirit, he also developed an analysis of the causes of inflation and the ways to control it.
tion „The New Industrial State“ (1967) and „Economics and the Public Purpose“ (1973), an excellent translation of which appeared in Slovakia in 1984. Galbraith devoted considerable attention in his writings to questions of inflation, monetary policy and money in general. Eventually, he wrote a separate book about money with the title „Money. Whence it Came, Where it Went“ (1975). In spite of the fact that, thanks to his sarcastic criticism of neo-classical views, Galbraith did not belong to the mainstream of economic thought of his time, he was elected president of the American Economic Association, the leading organization of American economists, in 1972. Numerous honorary doctorates and other awards from many American and foreign universities and academic institutions, testify to the world response to his works. However, his activity was not limited only to the area of economic theory. He worked as a newspaper and television commentator for many years, and from 1943 to 1948 he was editor of the well-known magazine Fortune. As an active member of the Democratic Party, he helped to write election speeches for A. Stevenson, the Democratic candidate for the office of president of the USA in 1952 and 1956. He was economic adviser to Senator John F. Kennedy in his presidential campaign. In 1956, he advised the Planning Commission of the Indian government, and from 1961 to 1963, he was American ambassador to India. The president of India has awarded the 92 year old Galbraith the second highest Indian civil award: the Padma Vibhushan. The brilliant and effective literary style of his economic books and articles, such as we rarely find in the works of world economists, and perhaps also the authorship of the novel „Triumph“ (1968), the most popular of its time, led to Galbraith being elected one of the fifty members of the American Academy of Arts and Literature in 1982, after the death of the poet Archibald MacLeish. BIATEC, Volume XI, 6/2003
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