Bio: (1908-2006) Canadian-American economist and political scientist. John Kenneth Galbraith graduated in agronomy from the University of Toronto and completed his master's and doctoral studies in agricultural economics at the University of Berkeley. He taught at several universities but had the greatest and most fruitful period of his career at Harvard University, where he taught economics. In addition to his scientific career, he also had a fruitful political career, serving in the administrations of four American presidents, and he was also the US ambassador to India.

Galbraith is the author of a large number of books and articles in various fields, but the most important works for sociology are his famous economic trilogy: American Capitalism (1952), Affluent Society (1958), and The New Industrial State (1967), as well as the book The Anatomy of Power (1983). In American Capitalism Galbraith argues that a decentralized private economy has led to a huge increase in productivity and innovation. Since the tendency to concentrate and enlarge capital is inevitable, it is necessary to establish a counterweight to that process. Instead of anti-monopoly laws, it is much more effective, as a counterweight, to increase the power of consumers, unions, and government, in order to control monopolists.

The book Affluent Society describes the disparity between the enormous wealth and consumer potential of the largest part of American society, and on the other hand, inadequate state investment in public goods: infrastructure, education, transport, ecology, etc. This book also emphasizes the new feature of modern corporations that survive, above all, creating new needs, and not only, as before, passively responding to the already existing needs of consumers.

In the book The New Industrial State, Galbraith concludes that in the modern age, large corporations are led and controlled by employed bureaucratic technocrats, while owners have less and less power. The technocratic non-proprietary elite, which Galbraith calls “technostructure”, exert actual control over corporations, and they primarily strive to survive, thrive, and maintain independence, while less interested in profit maximization. Management, marketing, and connections with politicians are key resources of this group. Galbraith differed from most economists in that he did not believe that the essence of a good economy was the maximization of GDP, but it was much more important to build social harmony and meet the real needs of the people.

In The Anatomy of Power, Galbraith introduces a typology of three basic types of power: compensatory power that buys subordination, condign power where subordination is achieved by making alternatives worse choices, and conditioned power where subordination is achieved by persuasion. Sources of power can be: personality (leadership), wealth, and organization. In earlier societies, the most common source of power was compensatory power combined with leadership, while in modern societies, conditional power, combined with organization, was dominant as a source of power. The organizations that are the most important sources of power in modern society are: the government, military, religion, and the press.

Main works

American Capitalism: The Concept of Countervailing Power (1952);

The Great Crash 1929 (1954);

The Affluent Society (1958);

The New Industrial State (1967);

The Anatomy of Power (1983).