The last Keynesian

One of the great moral issues that dominated public discourse from the last quarter of the 19th century until the last quarter of the 20th was the responsibility of the state towards the poor. Until the Bolshevik revolution, the debate was largely confined to philosophers and do-gooders, and action to charity. Then the threat of the red virus spreading across Europe focused minds wonderfully, especially during the Great Depression. One consequence was the great tract by John Maynard Keynes called The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money. Keynes knew that unemployment was the vehicle on which the revolution could arrive, and in his book he argued that only if the government taxed the rich and spent the proceeds on creating jobs for the poor, if necessary by asking them to dig and fill holes, could western capitalism survive.

John Kenneth Galbraith, who died on Sunday, was one of his most ardent supporters. But unlike Keynes who had a keen sense of politics, Galbraith spoke from the heart. For entirely humanitarian reasons he believed that it was the duty of the state, not the market, to intermediate between the rich and the poor. Even when other Keynesians had begun to have doubts, Galbraith did not stray from the shining path. With him, perhaps, has gone the last true Keynesian. When he spoke the world listened, and when he wrote, it read. As the author of over 20 books, his influence was pervasive, not least because of his acute insights. Two of his books--American Capitalism: The Concept of Countervailing Power and The Affluent Society--are classics that will be read for a long time. Galbraith was quintessentially the people's economist who had little time for the arcane abracadabra of equations, charts and graphs. His last book, a scathing critique of modern economics which has no time for people, is called The Economics of Innocent Fraud. At a mere 55 pages, it could well become for liberals what the Manifesto became to the Communists.

Modern India has forgotten Galbraith, but during the 1960s and 1970s he was almost a household name. He had served as the US ambassador to India during John F Kennedy's presidency, and as his friend, he gave India access of the kind it has never enjoyed. As JFK's friend, he enjoyed access here as well, and could drop in on Jawaharlal Nehru almost at will. As he has recorded in his Ambassador's Journal, the two had long chats and clearly enjoyed each other's company. Ever the master of the bon mot, he dubbed India a 'functioning anarchy'. He remained India's friend till the end.

The legacy such men leave behind is hard to pin down. In important ways they change the way we perceive the world around us. But sometimes the course corrections they effect are so small that their impact is completely internalised and we forget who was responsible. If William Shakespeare did that for the English language, John Kenneth Galbraith did it for liberalism, morality and the role these two should play in economics. As far as India is concerned, which needs huge doses of all these, the last that can be done in memoriam is to make his teachings part of the curriculum at the universities.