The Pompous Reiteration of the Commonplace
Cover. John Kenneth Galbraith OC [1908 - 2006].
Preface
This text is an excerpt from The Affluent Society [1958] by Canadian-American economist, diplomat and intellectual John Kenneth Galbraith OC [1908 - 2006]:
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Synopsis
John Kenneth Galbraith's international bestseller The Affluent Society is a witty, graceful and devastating attack on some of our most cherished economic myths. As relevant today as when it was first published, Galbraith's classic text on the 'economics of abundance', lays bare the hazards of individual and social complacency about economic inequality. Why worship work and productivity if many of the goods we produce are superfluous - artificial 'needs' created by high-pressure advertising? Why begrudge expenditure on vital public works while ignoring waste and extravagance in the private sector of the economy? Classical economics was born in a harsh world of mass poverty, and has left us with a set of preconceptions ill-adapted to the realities of our own richer age. And so, too often, 'the bland lead the bland'. Our unfamiliar problems need a new approach, and the reception given to this famous book has shown the value of its fresh, lively ideas
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I
The first requirement for an understanding of contemporary economic and social life is a clear view of the relation between events and the ideas which interpret them, for each of the latter has an existence of its own and, much as it may seem a contradiction in terms, each is capable for a considerable period of pursuing an independent course.
The reason is not difficult to discover. Economic, like other social, life does not conform to a simple and coherent pattern. On the contrary, it often seems incoherent, inchoate and intellectually frustrating. But one must have an explanation or interpretation of economic behavior. Neither man’s curiosity nor his inherent ego allows him to remain contentedly oblivious to anything that is so close to his life.
Because economic and social phenomena are so forbidding, or at least so seem, and because they yield few hard tests of what exists and what does not, they afford to the individual a luxury not given by physical phenomena. Within a considerable range, he is permitted to believe what he pleases. He may hold whatever view of this world he finds most agreeable or otherwise to his taste.
As a consequence, in the interpretation of all social life, there is a persistent and never-ending competition between what is right and what is merely acceptable. In this competition, while a strategic advantage lies with what exists, all tactical advantage is with the acceptable.
Audiences of all kinds most applaud what they like best. And in social comment, the test of audience approval, far more than the test of truth, comes to influence comment. The speaker or writer who addresses his audience with the proclaimed intent of telling the hard, shocking facts invariably goes on to expound what the audience most wants to hear.
Just as truth ultimately serves to create a consensus, so in the short run does acceptability. Ideas come to be organised around what the community as a whole or particular audiences find acceptable. And as the laboratory worker devotes himself to discovering scientific verities, so the ghost writer and the public relations man concern themselves with identifying the acceptable.
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'Audiences of all kinds most applaud what they like best. And in social comment, the test of audience approval, far more than the test of truth, comes to influence comment. The speaker or writer who addresses his audience with the proclaimed intent of telling the hard, shocking facts invariably goes on to expound what the audience most wants to hear.'
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If their clients are rewarded with applause, these artisans are deemed qualified in their craft. If not, they have failed. By sampling audience reaction in advance, or by pretesting speeches, articles and other communications, the risk of failure can now be greatly minimised. Numerous factors contribute to the acceptability of ideas.
To a very large extent, of course, we associate truth with convenience - with what most closely accords with self-interest and personal wellbeing or promises best to avoid awkward effort or unwelcome dislocation of life. We also find highly acceptable what contributes most to self-esteem. Speakers before the United States Chamber of Commerce rarely denigrate the businessman as an economic force.
Those who appear before the AFL-CIO* are prone to identify social progress with a strong trade union movement. But perhaps most important of all, people most approve of what they best understand. As just noted, economic and social behavior are complex, and to comprehend their character is mentally tiring.
* AFL-CIO or The American Federation of Labor and Congress of Industrial Organisations is the largest federation of unions in the United States. It is made up of 56 national and international unions, together representing more than 12 million active and retired worker.
Therefore we adhere, as though to a raft, to those ideas which represent our understanding. This is a prime manifestation of vested interest. For a vested interest in understanding is more preciously guarded than any other treasure. It is why men react, not infrequently with something akin to religious passion, to the defense of what they have so laboriously learned. Familiarity may breed contempt in some areas of human behavior, but in the field of social ideas it is the touchstone of acceptability.
Because familiarity is such an important test of acceptability, the acceptable ideas have great stability. They are highly predictable. It will be convenient to have a name for the ideas which are esteemed at any time for their acceptability, and it should be a term that emphasises this predictability. I shall refer to these ideas henceforth as the Conventional Wisdom.
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II
The conventional wisdom is not the property of any political group. On a great many modern social issues, as we shall see in the course of this essay, the consensus is exceedingly broad. Nothing much divides those who are liberals by common political designation from those who are conservatives. The test of what is acceptable is much the same for both.
On some questions, however, ideas must be accommodated to the political preferences of the particular audience. The tendency to make this adjustment, either deliberately or more often unconsciously, is not greatly different for different political groups. The conservative is led by disposition, not unmixed with pecuniary self-interest, to adhere to the familiar and the established.
These underlie his test of acceptability. But the liberal brings moral fervor and passion, even a sense of righteousness, to the ideas with which he is most familiar. While the ideas he cherishes are different from those of the conservative, he will be no less emphatic in making familiarity a test of acceptability.
Deviation in the form of originality is condemned as faithlessness or backsliding. A 'good' liberal or a 'tried and true' liberal or a 'true blue' liberal is one who is adequately predictable. This means that he forswears any serious striving toward originality. In both the United States and Britain, in recent times, American liberals and their British counterparts on the left have proclaimed themselves in search of new ideas.
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'At the highest levels of social science scholarship, some novelty of formulation or statement is not resisted. On the contrary, considerable store is set by the device of putting an old truth in a new form, and minor heresies are much cherished. The very vigor of minor debate makes it possible to exclude as irrelevant, and without seeming to be unscientific or parochial, any challenge to the framework itself.'
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To proclaim the need for new ideas has served, in some measure, as a substitute for them. The politician who unwisely takes this proclaimed need seriously and urges something new will often find himself in serious trouble. We may, as necessary, speak of the conventional wisdom of conservatives or the conventional wisdom of liberals. The conventional wisdom is also articulated on all levels of sophistication.
At the highest levels of social science scholarship, some novelty of formulation or statement is not resisted. On the contrary, considerable store is set by the device of putting an old truth in a new form, and minor heresies are much cherished. The very vigor of minor debate makes it possible to exclude as irrelevant, and without seeming to be unscientific or parochial, any challenge to the framework itself.
Moreover, with time and aided by the debate, the accepted ideas become increasingly elaborate. They have a large literature, even a mystique. The defenders are able to say that the challengers of the conventional wisdom have not mastered their intricacies. Indeed, these ideas can be appreciated only by a stable, orthodox and patient man - in brief, by someone who closely resembles the man of conventional wisdom.
The conventional wisdom having been made more or less identical with sound scholarship, its position is virtually impregnable. The skeptic is disqualified by his very tendency to go brashly from the old to the new. Were he a sound scholar, he would remain with the conventional wisdom. At the same time, in the higher levels of the conventional wisdom, originality remains highly acceptable in the abstract.
Here again the conventional wisdom makes vigorous advocacy of originality a substitute for originality itself.
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III
As noted, the hallmark of the conventional wisdom is acceptability. It has the approval of those to whom it is addressed. There are many reasons why people like to hear articulated that which they approve. It serves the ego: the individual has the satisfaction of knowing that other and more famous people share his conclusions.
To hear what he believes is also a source of reassurance. The individual knows that he is supported in his thoughts - that he has not been left behind and alone. Further, to hear what one approves serves the evangelising instinct. It means that others are also hearing and are thereby in the process of being persuaded.
In some measure, the articulation of the conventional wisdom is a religious rite. It is an act of affirmation like reading aloud from the Scriptures or going to church. The business executive listening to a luncheon address on the immutable virtues of free enterprise is already persuaded, and so are his fellow listeners, and all are secure in their convictions.
Indeed, although a display of rapt attention is required, the executive may not feel it necessary to listen. But he does placate the gods by participating in the ritual. Having been present, maintained attention and having applauded, he can depart feeling that the economic system is a little more secure. Scholars gather in scholarly assemblages to hear in elegant statement what all have heard before.
Again, it is not a negligible rite, for its purpose is not to convey knowledge but to beatify learning and the learned. With so extensive a demand, it follows that a very large part of our social comment - and nearly all that is well regarded - is devoted at any time to articulating the conventional wisdom. To some extent, this has been professionalised.
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'As noted, the hallmark of the conventional wisdom is acceptability. It has the approval of those to whom it is addressed. There are many reasons why people like to hear articulated that which they approve. It serves the ego: the individual has the satisfaction of knowing that other and more famous people share his conclusions.'
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Individuals, most notably the great television and radio commentators, make a profession of knowing and saying with elegance and unction what their audience will find most acceptable. But, in general, the articulation of the conventional wisdom is a prerogative of academic, public or business position.
Thus any individual, on being elected president of a college or university, automatically wins the right to enunciate the conventional wisdom. It is one of the rewards of high academic rank, although such rank itself is a reward for expounding the conventional wisdom at a properly sophisticated level. The high public official is expected, and indeed is to some extent required, to expound the conventional wisdom.
His, in many respects, is the purest case. Before assuming office, he ordinarily commands little attention. But on taking up his position, he is immediately assumed to be gifted with deep insights. He does not, except in the rarest instances, write his own speeches or articles, and these are planned, drafted and scrupulously examined to ensure their acceptability.
The application of any other test, e.g., their effectiveness as a simple description of the economic or political reality, would be regarded as eccentric in the extreme. Finally, the expounding of the conventional wisdom is the prerogative of business success. The head of almost any large corporation - General Motors, General Electric, IBM - is entitled to do so.
And he is privileged to speak not only on business policy and economics but also on the role of government in the society, the foundations of foreign policy and the nature of a liberal education. In recent years, it has been urged that to expound the conventional wisdom is not only the privilege but also the obligation of the businessman.
'I am convinced that businessmen must write as well as speak, in order that we may bring to people everywhere the exciting and confident message of our faith in the free enterprise way of life . . . What a change would come in this struggle for men’s minds if suddenly there could pour out from the world of American business a torrent of intelligent, forward-looking thinking.'
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IV
The enemy of the conventional wisdom is not ideas but the march of events. As I have noted, the conventional wisdom accommodates itself not to the world that it is meant to interpret but to the audience’s view of the world. Since the latter remains with the comfortable and the familiar while the world moves on, the conventional wisdom is always in danger of obsolescence.
This is not immediately fatal. The fatal blow to the conventional wisdom comes when the conventional ideas fail signally to deal with some contingency to which obsolescence has made them palpably inapplicable. This, sooner or later, must be the fate of ideas which have lost their relation to the world. At this stage, the irrelevance will often be dramatised by some individual.
To him will accrue the credit for overthrowing the conventional wisdom and for installing the new ideas. In fact, he will have only crystallised in words what the events have made clear, although this function is not a minor one. Meanwhile, like the Old Guard, the conventional wisdom dies but does not surrender.
Society with intransigent cruelty may transfer its exponents from the category of wise man to that of old fogy or even stuffed shirt. This sequence can be illustrated from scores of examples, ancient and modern. For decades prior to 1776, men had been catching the vision of the liberal state.
Traders and merchants in England, in the adjacent Low Countries and in the American colonies had already learned that they were served best by a minimum of government restriction rather than, as in the conventional wisdom, by a maximum of government guidance and protection. It had become plain, in turn, that liberal trade and commerce, not the accumulation of bullion, as the conventional wisdom held, was the modern source of national power.
Men of irresponsible originality had made the point. Voltaire had observed that 'it is only because the English have become merchants and traders that London has surpassed Paris in extent and in the number of its citizens; that the English can place 200 warships on the sea and subsidise allies.'
These views were finally crystallised by Adam Smith in the year of American independence. The Wealth of Nations, however, continued to be viewed with discontent and alarm by the men of the older wisdom. In the funeral elegy for Alexander Hamilton in 1804, James Kent complimented his deceased friend on having resisted the 'fuzzy philosophy' of Smith.
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'The enemy of the conventional wisdom is not ideas but the march of events. As I have noted, the conventional wisdom accommodates itself not to the world that it is meant to interpret but to the audience’s view of the world. Since the latter remains with the comfortable and the familiar while the world moves on, the conventional wisdom is always in danger of obsolescence.'
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For another generation or more, or in all western countries, there would be solemn warnings that the notion of a liberal society was a reckless idea. Through the nineteenth century, liberalism in its classical meaning having become the conventional wisdom, there were solemn warnings of the irreparable damage that would be done by the Factory Acts, trade unions, social insurance and other social legislation.
Liberalism was a fabric which could not be raveled without being rent. Yet the desire for protection and security and some measure of equality in bargaining power would not down. In the end, it became a fact with which the conventional wisdom could not deal. The Webbs, Lloyd George, La Follette, Roosevelt, Beveridge and others crystallized the acceptance of the new fact.
The result is what we call the welfare state. The conventional wisdom now holds that these measures softened and civilised capitalism and made it tenable. There have never ceased to be warnings that the break with classical liberalism was fatal. Another interesting instance of the impact of circumstance on the conventional wisdom was that of the balanced budget in times of depression.
Almost from the beginning of organised government, the balanced budget or its equivalent has been the sine qua non of sound and sensible management of the public purse. The spendthrift tendencies of princes and republics alike were curbed by the rule that they must unfailingly take in as much money as they paid out.
The consequences of violating this rule had always been unhappy in the long run and not infrequently in the short. Anciently it was the practice of princes to cover the deficit by clipping or debasing the coins and spending the metal so saved. The result invariably was to raise prices and lower national self-esteem.
In modern times, the issuance of paper money or government borrowing from the banks had led to the same results. In consequence, the conventional wisdom had emphasised strongly the importance of an annually balanced budget. But meanwhile the underlying reality had gradually changed.
The rule requiring a balanced budget was designed for governments that were inherently or recurrently irresponsible on fiscal matters. Until the last century, there had been no other. Then in the United States, England and the British Commonwealth and Europe, governments began to calculate the fiscal consequences of their actions.
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'Almost from the beginning of organised government, the balanced budget or its equivalent has been the sine qua non [something absolutely indispensable or essential] of sound and sensible management of the public purse. The consequences of violating this rule had always been unhappy in the long run and not infrequently in the short.'
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Safety no longer depended on confining them within arbitrary rules. At about the same time, there appeared the phenomenon of the truly devastating depression. In such a depression, men, plant and materials were unemployed en masse; the extra demand from the extra spending induced by a deficit - the counterpart of the extra metal made available from the clipped coinage - did not raise prices uniquely.
Rather, it mostly returned idle men and plant to work. The effect, as it were, was horizontally on production rather than vertically on prices. And such price increases as did occur were far from being an unmitigated misfortune; on the contrary, they retrieved a previous, painful decline.
The conventional wisdom continued to emphasise the balanced budget. Audiences continued to respond to the warnings of the disaster which would befall were this rule not respected. The shattering circumstance was the Great Depression. This led in the United States to a severe reduction in the revenues of the federal government; it also brought pressure for a variety of relief and welfare expenditures.
A balanced budget meant increasing tax rates and reducing public expenditure. Viewed in retrospect, it would be hard to imagine a better design for reducing both the private and the public demand for goods, aggravating deflation, increasing unemployment and adding to the general suffering.
In the conventional wisdom, nonetheless, the balanced budget remained of paramount importance. President Hoover in the early thirties called it an 'absolute necessity,' 'the most essential factor to economic recovery,' 'the imperative and immediate step,' 'indispensable,' 'the first necessity of the Nation,' and 'the foundation of all public and private financial stability.'
Economists and professional observers of public affairs agreed almost without exception. Almost everyone called upon for advice in the early years of the depression was impelled by the conventional wisdom to offer proposals designed to make things worse. The consensus embraced both liberals and conservatives.
Franklin D. Roosevelt was elected in 1932 with a strong commitment to reduced expenditures and a balanced budget. In his speech accepting the Democratic nomination he said, 'Revenue must cover expenditures by one means or another. Any government, like any family, can for a year spend a little more than it earns. But you and I know that a continuation of that habit means the poorhouse.'
One of the early acts of his administration was an economy drive which included a horizontal slash in public pay. Mr. Lewis W. Douglas, through a distinguished life a notable exemplar of the conventional wisdom, made the quest for a balanced budget into a personal crusade and ultimately broke with the administration on the issue.
In fact, circumstances had already triumphed over the conventional wisdom. By the second year of the Hoover administration, the budget was irretrievably out of balance. In the fiscal year ending in 1932, receipts were much less than half of spending. The budget was never balanced during the depression.
But not until 1936 did both the necessities and advantages of this course begin to triumph in the field of ideas. In that year, John Maynard Keynes launched his formal assault in The General Theory of Employment Interest and Money. Thereafter, the conventional insistence on the balanced budget under all circumstances and at all levels of economic activity was in retreat, and Keynes was on his way to being the new fountainhead of conventional wisdom.
By the very late sixties a Republican President would proclaim himself a Keynesian. It would be an article of conventional faith that the Keynesian remedies, when put in reverse, would be a cure for inflation, a faith that circumstances would soon undermine.
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V
I will find frequent occasion to advert to the conventional wisdom - to the structure of ideas that is based on acceptability - and to those who articulate it. These references must not be thought to have a wholly invidious connotation. [The warning is necessary because, as noted, we set great ostensible store by intellectual innovation, though in fact we resist it. Hence, though we value the rigorous adherence to conventional ideas, we never acclaim it.]
Few men are unuseful and the man of conventional wisdom is not. Every society must be protected from a too facile flow of thought. In the field of social comment, a great stream of intellectual novelties, if all were taken seriously, would be disastrous. Men would be swayed to this action or that; economic and political life would be erratic and rudderless.
In the Communist countries, stability of ideas and social purpose is achieved by formal adherence to an officially proclaimed doctrine. Deviation is stigmatised as 'incorrect.' In our society, a similar stability is enforced far more informally by the conventional wisdom. Ideas need to be tested by their ability in combination with events to overcome inertia and resistance.
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'In the Communist countries, stability of ideas and social purpose is achieved by formal adherence to an officially proclaimed doctrine. Deviation is stigmatised as 'incorrect.' In our society, a similar stability is enforced far more informally by the conventional wisdom. Ideas need to be tested by their ability in combination with events to overcome inertia and resistance.'
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This inertia and resistance the conventional wisdom provides. Nor is it to be supposed that the man of conventional wisdom is an object of pity. Apart from his socially useful role, he has come to good terms with life. He can think of himself with justice as socially elect, for society, in fact, accords him the applause which his ideas are so arranged as to evoke.
Secure in this applause, he is well armed against the annoyance of dissent. His bargain is to exchange a strong and even lofty position in the present for a weak one in the future. In the present, he is questioned with respect, if not at great length, by congressional committees; he walks near the head of the academic processions; he appears on symposia; he is a respected figure at the Council on Foreign Relations; he is hailed at testimonial banquets.
He does risk being devastated by future hostile events, but by then he may be dead. Only posterity is unkind to the man of conventional wisdom, and all posterity does is bury him in a blanket of neglect. However, somewhat more serious issues are at stake.
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VI
No society seems ever to have succumbed to boredom. Man has developed an obvious capacity for surviving the pompous reiteration of the commonplace. The conventional wisdom protects the community in social thought and action, but there are also grave drawbacks and even dangers in a system of thought which, by its very nature and design, avoids accommodation to circumstances until change is dramatically forced upon it.
In large areas of economic affairs, the march of events - above all, the increase in our wealth and popular well-being - has again left the conventional wisdom sadly obsolete. It may have become inimical to our happiness. It has come to have a bearing on the larger questions of civilised survival.
So while it would be much more pleasant [and also vastly more profitable] to articulate the conventional wisdom, I am here involved in the normally unfruitful effort of an attack upon it. I am not wholly barren of hope, for circumstances have been dealing the conventional wisdom a new series of heavy blows.
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'Man has developed an obvious capacity for surviving the pompous reiteration of the commonplace. The conventional wisdom protects the community in social thought and action, but there are also grave drawbacks and even dangers in a system of thought which, by its very nature and design, avoids accommodation to circumstances until change is dramatically forced upon it.'
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It is only after such damage has been done, as we have seen, that ideas have their opportunity. Keynes, in his most famous observation, noted that we are ruled by ideas and by very little else. In the immediate sense, this is true. And he was right in attributing importance to ideas as opposed to the simple influence of pecuniary vested interest.
But the rule of ideas is only powerful in a world that does not change. Ideas are inherently conservative. They yield not to the attack of other ideas but, as I may note once more, to the massive onslaught of circum- stance with which they cannot contend.