Description
JOHN KENNETH GALBRAITH, internationally celebrated seer and iconoclast, has made a career of questioning conventional wisdom. His monumental accomplishments as an economist, historian, statesman, political provocateur, essayist, and wit have edified and entertained millions. But his very versatility has made his work a target for some of his fellow economists, who would deny him a place at their table, who see him more as a troublemaker than as a scholar.
Galbraith himself has often taken aim at his profession and fired. "This is what economics now does," he has written. "It tells the young and susceptible and the old and vulnerable that economic life has no content of power and politics.... Such an economics is not neutral. It is the influential and invaluable ally of those whose exercise of power depends on an acquiescent public." That he draws re- turn fire should come as no surprise.
With this volume of essays in honor of Galbraith the economist, public servant, and teacher, and Galbraith the man, accounts are squared. Through the years Galbraith has become "the conscience of the economics profession," write the editors of this festschrift. "Sometimes masked by irony and wit, and often tempered by understatement, his passion for a more just and civilized human existence and his lifelong commitment to act politically toward those ends challenged a profession espousing an improbable and vacuous neutrality on questions of public morality. No one ever doubted which side Galbraith was on."
ISBN:9780395491799
