/
40-42_files/40-4200001im.jpg" width="695"
height="1066" useMap="#Map">
Business
Ethics MGT610
VU
LESSON
42
This is a
pretty good measure of how
far we have come in America in
our understanding of
freedom
from that of the founders:
Bill Clinton awarded the
"Medal of Freedom" to
John
Kenneth
Galbraith on August 9, 2000,
despite the fact that
Galbraith has been a
stalwart
champion
of the very opposite idea of
freedom from that laid
out by those founders.
Galbraith,
a professor emeritus at the
department of economics at Harvard
University, although
a
fine writer and charming
human being-- so much so
that William F. Buckley,
Jr., has been
his
long
time friend despite their
political differences--has been a
socialist for nearly all of
his
career.
He has been a relentless
critic of capitalism and the
market system, based on
his
essentially
elitist and paternalistic idea of
what governments must do for
the people they
serve.
This
was to make them all abide by tenets of
"fairness" or, at least, his
socialist version of
that
ideal.
Galbraith,
though an avowed statist--not of
the Marxist-Leninist but
more of the
democratic
socialist
variety--has been one of the
most fervent bashers of the
"rich" in contemporary
American
culture. While not an
explicit Marxist, he accepted
the Marxian idea that
capitalists
create
nothing and take a great deal that they
should not be allowed to
have. In his most
popular
book,
The
Affluent Society, he laid
out a case for a powerful
welfare state. He has written
in
some
of the most prestigious
publications of our society,
including The
New York Review
of
Books, The
New York Times, American
Prospect, Dissent, The
Nation and so
on.
One
of his most well known and
widely studied legacies was
created from a section of
his book
dealing
with advertising. Galbraith
asserted that advertising is a
device by which
business
creates
desires in consumers which must be
acted on and thus produce
what he called "the
dependency
effect." In other words,
consumers become dependent on
corporations because
the
latter
create desires in them for
the goods and services they
offer for sale. By this
means,
corporations
become wealthy, make huge
profits, while resources are
taken away from far
more
important
projects, you guessed it,
those the government wants to
provide for us. The
public
sector
is diminished and the private sector
unfairly benefits.
This
famous section of The
Affluent Society is reprinted
in nearly all business
ethics readers
serving
as text books for business
school students across the
world. Far fewer of these
volumes
offer
the decisive rebuttal to
Galbraith's position, penned by the great
economists, the late F.
A.
Hayek.
Hayek noted that Galbraith's
claim is true but not
just for business and
advertisers but
also
of all human creative
endeavors.
The
difference is that unlike
Galbraith, Hayek did not
believe that the desires
that people might
cultivate
for what is presented to
them must be acted on.
Instead, we have the freedom
to
choose
whether to try to fulfill
our desires, however they
might be created. Advertising
appeals
to
us but cannot make us do anything. It is
a promotional project by which
producers call out to
us
hoping we would consider
what they have to offer and
to purchase it. But there is
no
guarantee
at all that we will act as the
advertisers wishes we would.
In
what sense does Galbraith
deserve a medal of freedom?
Only in the sense that a
certain
conception
of freedom does underlie his
thinking. This is what is
called "positive" freedom.
It
means
a condition whereby people are
provided by government, and at the
expense of other
102
/
40-42_files/40-4200002im.jpg" width="695"
height="1066" useMap="#Map">
Business
Ethics MGT610
VU
people,
with what they could
use to advance their lot.
Such provisions would "free"
them to
move
forward.
The
freedom of the American
founders is quite different,
mainly backed by a different
idea of
human
nature. It is that people in communities
require first and foremost
not to be thwarted in
their
efforts to make headway in
life.
Others
may not be conscripted into
involuntary servitude to provide
them with what they
might
need
because if they are not
thwarted by them, they will be able to do
this on their own.
Not
equally
rapidly, not to the same
extent, perhaps, but if they
only apply themselves, they
will
flourish
without coercing
others.
Galbraith
has never championed this
kind of "negative" freedom. So
his views are alien to
the
American
political tradition. It is not
surprising, then, that he receives
the medal of freedom
from
President Bill Clinton, someone
who has done nothing at all
to further freedom in
this
truly
American sense.
To
Galbraith's minor credit,
however, he did, a few years
ago, finally admit that
capitalism is a
far
better economic system than
socialism. He did this only
in the wake of the collapse
of the
Soviet
Empire. And even then
with great reservations and
regret.
He
was asked, in an interview published in
Alitalia's October 1996 "in
flight" magazine: "You
spoke
of the failure of socialism. Do
you see this as a total
failure, a counterproductive
alternative?"
He replies this way: "I'd
make a distinction here. What
failed was the
entrepreneurial
state, but it had some beneficial
effect. I do not believe
that there are any
radical
alternatives,
but there are correctives.
The only alternative
socialism, that is the
alternative to
the
market economy, has failed.
The market system is here to
stay."
103