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2003 3: 47 Journal of Classical Sociology
Barry Smart
An Economic Turn: Galbraith and Classical Sociology
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An Economic Turn
Galbraith and Classical Sociology
BARRY SMART University of Portsmouth
ABSTRACT While the late 19th-century analytic context in which classical soci-
ology emerged was constituted in substantial part by a discourse of political
economy, the subsequent development of the discipline has been characterized by
a growing analytic distance between sociology and economics. With increasing
specialization in the eld of knowledge in the course of the 20th century there
was a neglect of social institutions in orthodox economic analysis and a parallel
relative neglect of economic phenomena within sociological analysis. The latter
condition has been exacerbated by the cultural turn in social thought that took
place towards the close of the century, ironically a period marked by the growing
prominence of economic matters in social and political life. This paper presents an
argument for a return to the analytic concern with economic life that lies at the
heart of classical sociology, for an economic turn in contemporary sociological
thought. This is achieved through a discussion of the work of J.K. Galbraith on
economics and the transformation of capitalism; private afuence and public
provision; and the consequences of a culture of contentment, work that suggests
an afnity with the analytic preoccupations of the classical sociologists. The paper
demonstrates the sociological relevance of the social and institutional analyses of
J.K. Galbraith.
KEYWORDS capitalism, cultural turn, economics, scal sociology, Galbraith
Introduction: On Sociology and Economics
The early analytic development of sociology took place through a process of
differentiation of sociological analysis from a range of other forms of moral and
social science and involved a critical engagement with political economy in
particular (Bierstedt, 1979; Delanty, 2000). The late 19th-century historical
Journal of Classical Sociology
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context in which sociology emerged was substantially shaped by the growing
impact on social life of a developing industrial capitalist mode of production and
the increasing differentiation of economic and social structures.
The issue of the relationship between economy and society has been
acknowledged to be particularly prominent in the works of those gures who are
routinely regarded as part of the core of classical sociology, notably Karl Marx,
Max Weber, Georg Simmel and
Emile Durkheim (Smelser and Swedberg, 1994).

For these thinkers, the articulation of economic and social processes is analytically
central. One important early legacy of this aspect of the development of sociology
was the constitution of a distinctive tradition of economic sociology (Martinelli
and Smelser, 1990). This tradition of inquiry has been identied as a part of
economics, a part of sociology, and nally as lying somewhere between the two
(Zarovski, 1999). But it has become a relatively neglected tradition, one
consigned to the margins of sociology (Beckert and Swedberg, 2001).
As the moral and social sciences developed in the course of the late 19th
and early 20th centuries, the epistemological eld became fragmented (Foucault,
1973: 346). Specialization increased in the course of the 20th century, with
analysts in different elds becoming increasingly isolated from one another and
relatively little attention being devoted to the relationship between distinctive
elds of inquiry. Knowledge was increasingly carved up into a host of detailed
studies that [had] no link with one another (Durkheim, 1984: 294). It is in this
context that sociologys intellectual credentials and eld of study were consti-
tuted, in substantial part in relation to, and in the shadow of, the territorial claims
of an existing, more established discipline of economics.
During the 1930s the American sociologist Talcott Parsons (1935a,
1935b) proposed a clear division of labour between sociology and economics. His
intervention served to legitimate the neo-classical economic neglect of social and
institutional dimensions and effectively rendered the boundary between the two
elds of study impermeable. As Joseph Schumpeter (1954a) was moved to
observe, the two disciplines drifted apart to such an extent that it appeared they
knew little and cared even less about what each other was doing. The analytic
distance between sociology and economics has become a matter of increasing
concern. Analysts have noted how within economics there has been a lack of
interest in the analysis of social institutions while sociology [has] conceded the
study of socio-economic phenomena to economics (Grundmann and Stehr,
2001: 273). This condition has been exacerbated by the cultural turn in sociology
and the continuing marginalization of institutional analysis in modern
economics.
1
It is increasingly evident that we live in a highly economized culture
(Sayer, 1999: 53), a culture in which economic forms of life and an associated
economic logic are prominent, if not paramount. Given the growing prominence
of economic matters in everyday life and mainstream politics (Ray and Sayer,
1999: 3), an analytic readjustment within the eld of sociology is overdue. An
JOURNAL OF CLASSICAL SOCIOLOGY VOL 3(1) 48
analytic reorientation is required that redresses the relative neglect of economy
that has followed the cultural turn in contemporary sociological inquiry (Ray
and Sayer, 1999).
An analytic concern with economic processes, with the broad issue of the
relationship between economy and society, as well as a vision of how social and
economic life might be reconstituted, is a recognized feature of classical sociology.
The question of the articulation of economy and society is at the centre of
the work of those classical analysts like Marx, Simmel, Weber and Durkheim
who engaged critically with the discourse of political economy and contributed to
the development of sociological inquiry. A comparable analytic concern with the
articulation of economy and society and the social consequences of existing and
potential developments is also present in the institutional analyses of a more
contemporary gure, the social economist J.K. Galbraith. Galbraiths works are
not conventionally regarded as relevant to the sociological tradition. But in so far
as the sociological canon is a eld for debate and analysis (Turner and ONeill,
2001: 6), then a consideration of their sociological relevance is warranted.
Moreover, to the extent that Galbraiths analyses focus on the articulation of
economic, cultural, social and political conditions and are informed by a concern
with contemporary society, rather than preoccupied with exposition of a margin-
alist economic perspective on human conduct, a consideration of their sociological
relevance seems overdue.
In this paper I begin by briey recalling the signicance economic matters
and disciplinary afnities beyond sociology assume in the works of the core classical
sociological gures. Then I turn to the heart of the matter and consider analytic
themes and concerns in the work of J.K. Galbraith that suggest a close afnity
with the preoccupations of the classical sociologists.
Classical Sociology, Political Economy and
Economic Life
The writings of gures accorded prominence within the discourse of classical
sociology, in particular such key thinkers as Karl Marx, Georg Simmel,
Emile
Durkheim and Max Weber, reveal analytic orientations and commitments ranging
across a number of disciplines and substantive concerns. In turn each of the
thinkers engaged critically with classical political economy and its analytic assump-
tions. These included the individualistic interest-maximizing and calculating
character of human nature (homo oeconomicus) and the effectiveness of the free-
market as the form of organization of economic and social life through which the
self-interested actions of individuals would spontaneously produce social order.
These thinkers had a common primary concern with achieving an under-
standing of the distinctive features of an emerging form of life, modernity. They
were particularly concerned with the impact of capitalist economic conditions on
the organization and experience of forms of social and cultural life.
SMART GALBRAITH AND CLASSICAL SOCIOLOGY 49
Marx and Capitalist Economic Life
Marxs primary intellectual afnity is with economics, although, as has been
acknowledged, there is much of sociological relevance in his writings (Bottomore,
1979). The bulk of his work is concerned with critically analysing the structure
and dynamic of modern capitalism, and the social consequences that ow from
the [c]onstant revolutionizing of production, uninterrupted disturbance of all
social conditions [and] everlasting uncertainty and agitation (Marx and Engels,
1968: 83) unleashed by it. In his work there are profound passages on
the development of the capitalist mode of production, especially in relation to the
impact of commodity production, the increasing importance of science and
technology as forces of production, and the social impact of automation (Marx,
1973: 7046). In addition there are controversial observations on the subject of
capitalisms probable development and possible fate.
A distillation of many, if not all, of the key sociologically relevant themes in
Marxs work may be found in the short text co-authored with Friedrich Engels
under the title The Communist Manifesto (1968), to which I have already made an
oblique reference. In a discussion of this historic text, Joseph Schumpeter
comments that the economic sociology of the Manifesto . . . is far more important
than its economics proper (1949: 204). A comparable evaluation may be made of
the works of Galbraith to be considered below.
Notwithstanding the cultural turn in social theory, Marxs broad critical
analytical legacy is still acknowledged in contemporary social theory, as demon-
strated by Lash and Urrys (1994) wide-ranging analysis of the transformation of
modern industrial capitalism in the latter part of the 20th century. Marxs critical
reections on modernity and his analysis of the process of capital circulation
continue to inform understandings of the transformations associated with con-
temporary capitalism (Derrida, 1994).
Simmel and the Modern Money Economy
In the respective writings of Simmel, Durkheim and Weber, the question of
sociology its subject matter, method and relationship to cognate elds
of investigation is explicitly addressed. Simmel had a number of elds of
intellectual interest and it has been argued that it was philosophy that constituted
his primary task, sociology representing merely a subsidiary discipline (Frisby,
1984: 25). Notwithstanding the fact that Simmel regarded himself primarily as a
philosopher, his sociological writings on social differentiation and the develop-
ment of forms of individuality and his reections on modern culture have led to
him being accorded the status of a key sociologist.
However, it is The Philosophy of Money, which attempts to determine the
impact of money and the modern money economy on social and cultural life, that
has been identied as Simmels most systematic analysis, a work that, until
recently, has been relatively neglected within sociology (Frisby, 1990: xxix). With
the belated (re)generation of sociological interest in our highly economized
culture (Sayer, 1999: 53) has come an increasingly wide recognition of the value
of Simmels writings on the modern money economy and commodity culture for
achieving an understanding of social life under conditions of capitalist modernity
(Frisby, 1990, 1997; Turner, 1999).
Simmels study of money constitutes an analysis of one of the most
important institutions of the modern economy. Although in the Preface to the
study Simmel comments: Not a single line of these investigations is meant to be
a statement about economics (1990: 54), there is a great deal in his work that
enhances our understanding of economic phenomena. Simmel presents a philo-
sophical study that acknowledges the multi-faceted character of phenomena, their
complex preconditions in non-economic concepts and facts, and indeed
their consequences for non-economic values and relationships (1990: 55).
Money serves as a convenient topic or means for exploring the relations that exist
between economic affairs and the more profound orders of human existence and
history ultimate values and things of importance in all that is human (1990:
55).
What emerges from Simmels work is conrmation that it is necessary
to retain the explanatory value of an analytic approach that reveals the extent to
which economic life shapes and inuences culture; but that it is also necessary
to recognize that economic structures and practices emerge from and are bound
up with cultural preconditions and values. In short, while it is necessary to
construct a new storey beneath historical materialism, it is important to remem-
ber that in the analysis of economic, cultural and social forms of life the practice
of cognition . . . must develop in innite reciprocity (1990: 56).
Durkheim and the Social Conditioning of Economic Life
In his attempt to establish a distinctive place for sociology, Durkheim draws
distinctions between psychology and sociology, acknowledges an afnity between
sociology and anthropology, and in addition draws a critical contrast between the
competing claims of classical economics and an emerging sociological science. He
is particularly critical of the way in which the abstractions of economics distort
reality: Classical economics fashioned a world that does not exist . . . a world in
isolation, everywhere uniform, in which the clash of purely individual forces
would be resolved according to ineluctable economic laws (1982: 197). The
general propositions of economics fail to take account of conditions of time and
place, hence therefore of all social conditions (1982: 205). In turn, economics is
criticized for employing a notion of man in general ruled by self-interest the sad
portrait of an isolated egoist (1978: 49). The reality of economic activity for
Durkheim is that it is shaped by the characteristics of the particular society in
which it is located, for example by the policies and reforms implemented by a
particular state. The theoretical consequence is that, rather than an abstract
economy grounded in a priori suppositions, observation of national economy is
argued to be the focus of analysis.
In the course of his criticism of economics for its analytic preoccupation
with the construction of a more or less desirable ideal and observational neglect
of the complexity of real life, Durkheim (1978: 49) makes reference to the
difculties that derive from divisions between the various social sciences. He
argues that, contrary to the opinion expressed by economists, moral, legal,
economic and political phenomena do not unfold along parallel lines without
intersecting (1978: 51). Social phenomena such as these are closely related, and
in consequence it is not appropriate to study them separately. An approach that
recognizes what Durkheim calls the relatedness and Simmel describes as the
multi-faceted character of social life has the potential to be able to avoid
formulations totally inadequate to the objects of study (Bourdieu et al., 1999:
181 n. 1). In turn, such an approach is better placed to deal effectively with the
complexity of social phenomena and to increase understanding of the economic
and social determinants of the innumerable attacks on the freedom of individuals
and their legitimate aspirations to happiness and self-fullment (Bourdieu et al.,
1999: 629). This has constituted the promise of sociology from its inception, the
potential it contains to illuminate the complex contradictions intrinsic to social life
and the social causes of individual experiences.
A number of the critical observations on aspects of late 19th- and early
20th-century life provided by Durkheim continue to inform the experiences of a
later generation of modern subjects encountering the complex consequences of
continuing far-reaching processes of economic transformation. Durkheim is crit-
ical of the notion that economic initiatives and interests should be free of
regulation. In a discussion of the consequences associated with the growth of the
market economy and the unregulated expression of economic interests, he draws
attention to the undermining of moral discipline and public morality. He argues
that economic functions are not their own justication; they are only a means to
an end; they constitute one of the organs of social life (1957: 16). For Durkheim,
the value of a particular form of economic activity is questionable if a disturbance
of peaceful mutual relations, social disorganization and perpetual discontent with
our lot is the inevitable price to be paid. Economic activity represents merely a
means, the end of which, in his (1957) view, is to bring about a harmonious
community.
In contrast to forms of economic analysis that endorse the idea and reality
of a self-regulating market economy, Durkheim (1982) afrms the idea of a
science of economics that recognizes the existence of society and concerns itself
with the ways in which societal interests receive economic expression. It is in
relation to precisely this sociologically informed sense of economics that Gal-
braiths institutional analyses of social and economic processes can be located.
Weber on Economy, Culture and Society
The relation between sociology and economics has been identied as the most
complex and problematic of disciplinary differentiations (Giddens, 1987: 40), and
perhaps nowhere is this more acutely evident and better exemplied than in the
writings and intellectual status of Max Weber. Weber is widely accorded the status
of being a key gure in the establishment of the discipline of sociology for his
contribution to both sociological methodology and the substantive analysis of
modern forms of life. Yet he conceived of himself rst and foremost as an
economist, as is evident from several of his texts, including the opening remarks
in his 1918 Munich University lecture (Weber, 1970: 129; see also Hennis,
1988).
As to some extent is the case with the other thinkers discussed earlier, the
intellectual conguration from which Webers analytical practice emerged is one
informed by moral philosophy, political science and political economy. Reecting
on this intellectual conguration, as well as the perspective and purpose of
Webers work, Hennis questions Webers sociological credentials. He argues
that Weber nearly always referred to sociology in a distancing fashion. . . .
Wherever he accepted the term for his own work he sought, by using specifying
adjectives (verstehend, interpretive) not only to isolate it, but actually to
singularize it (Hennis, 1987: 28). For good measure, Hennis adds that while
there is a sociology in Webers work, it is restricted to subjectively understandable
phenomena, and the concepts and categories constructed are employed to make
a contribution to social economics (1987: 289).
Hennis adds that it is not possible to understand Webers work from the
perspective of sociology. In contrast to the intellectual division of labour current
between the social sciences, his work is located within an unfractured tradition in
which economics is both a human science and a political science.
2
Following the
line of the German Historical School and the work of Karl Knies in particular,
Webers work contributes to the development of economics as a science of man, a
moral and political science. It is in this historical context that his work belongs and
the development of his sociological writings is to be located.
While Weber held that the economic sphere was a core feature of modern
social life, he argued that the development of modern societies could not be
accounted for through a consideration of economic factors alone; to the contrary,
other inter-related social and cultural processes had to be taken into account. This
point of view is exemplied by his (1976) study of the development of modern
Western capitalism. The development of forms of modern capitalist economic
activity in the West are argued to have been closely connected with a particular
cultural ethos, associated rationalizations of social conduct and the constitution of
a new kind of individuality (Sayer, 1991: 119). If emphasis is placed by Weber on
the signicance and impact of forms of rationalization on the development of
modern forms of social life, it is worth recalling that capitalism is identied by him
as the most fateful force in . . . modern life (1976: 17).
To explain the particular features of Western rationalism, Weber remarked
that it was necessary to take account of both the fundamental importance of the
economic factor and the processes through which the ability and disposition of
men to adopt certain types of practical rational conduct (1976: 26) were formed.
He traced the formation of a disciplined, systematically rational conduct of life to
the idea of a calling and a devotion to labour associated with the religious
doctrines of ascetic Protestantism. What had been a matter of choice for the
Puritan became an inescapable feature of everyday life for subsequent generations
of modern secular subjects for whom there has been no option but to accom-
modate to the modern economic order.
By the early 20th century, the notion of a dutiful performance of ones
calling in accordance with the highest spiritual and cultural values was increas-
ingly out of step with the reality of a fast-developing modern capitalist economic
life. The pursuit of wealth had been stripped of its religious and ethical meaning
. . . to become associated with purely mundane passions (Weber, 1976: 182). A
century later the differences are even starker. Ideas of duty and calling now appear
marginal within modern afuent consumer-orientated societies. Society no
longer has much of a need for mass industrial labour and increasingly individuals
are shaped not so much by the requirements of work but rst and foremost by
the duty to play the role of the consumer (Bauman, 1998a: 80). The inuence of
material goods over peoples lives has grown exponentially and increasingly it is
not restless, continuous work that is of value, but ceaseless, seductive consump-
tion. The notion of work as a vocation has become the preserve of a privileged few
(Bauman, 1998b).
The context in which the issue of the relationship between economy,
culture and society is now being addressed is in a number of important respects
different from the era of the classical sociologists. Economic life, cultural forms
and practices, and social institutions and relationships have continued to be
transformed by the unremitting development of modernity. Moreover, whereas at
the beginning of the 20th century, sociology was merely an emerging eld of
study, it has subsequently established a secure place for itself as an academic
discipline. However, the process of increasing differentiation of knowledge has led
to a neglect of social institutions by economics and a parallel relative neglect of
socio-economic phenomena and analyses within sociology (Ray and Sayer, 1999).
It is in this context that I am arguing the social and economic institutional
analyses of J.K. Galbraith warrant sociological consideration, for their focus on the
relationship between processes of economic, cultural and social transformation
and impact on everyday life expresses and develops the concerns of the classical
sociologists.
Situating Galbraith: Beyond Conventional
Wisdom
The writings of Marx, Simmel and Weber, gures whose principal disciplinary
afnities can be argued to lie beyond sociology, are recognized to contain
signicant analyses of direct sociological relevance. A comparable claim can be
made in respect of the writings of Galbraith, whose major works include studies of
complex processes of transformation to which modern social life has been
subject.
In a discussion of the relationships between knowledge statements, Fou-
cault (1977) cautioned that familiar distinctions between divisions, groupings and
classications should be questioned, not simply accepted. In particular, the
familiar attribution of discursive unity to the oeuvre of an author must be
suspended, for, far from being a given, unity is the result of an interpretative
operation (1977: 234). The works of J.K. Galbraith are conventionally
considered to constitute a unity and to lie within the discourse of economics,
but, as Galbraith notes, it is the task of the analyst to call into question continuity
in social thought and to challenge conventional wisdom (1963: 267). There is
without doubt an appreciation in Galbraiths work that a number of import-
ant questions that need to be addressed lie beyond the reach of economics
(1969: 407; see also 4089) as it has been conventionally constituted. It is in
respect of questions that have been at best marginal to conventional economic
discourse, but interestingly central to sociology, that several of Galbraiths (1963,
1969, 1975, 1993, 1996) major works can be considered to constitute a
response.
Galbraith is an unconventional gure who has rejected economic ortho-
doxy, one whose work is often viewed with suspicion within the eld of
economics (Keaney, 2001: 1). Within the discipline of sociology it is barely viewed
at all. In consequence the potential sociological relevance of his work has rarely
been acknowledged.
3
This is surprising given the level of sociological interest in
the advent of a consumer society, the relationship between production and
consumption, the seemingly insoluble problem of reconciling the pursuit of
private interest with an appropriate level of public service provision, the trans-
formation of industrial society, and in possible alternative forms of social organiza-
tion. Each of these inter-related themes is not only present within Galbraiths
work, but is addressed in a manner that has an afnity with the analytic interest of
the classical sociological gures in the emergence and development of industrial
capitalist society and its consequences for social and cultural life.
To begin to open up the issue of the potential relevance of Galbraiths
work for sociology, consideration will be given to his analysis of the transforma-
tion of economic society through a brief discussion of the following three inter-
related themes in his work:
economics and industrial capitalism;
private afuence and public provision;
the consequences of a culture of contentment.
Economics and the Transformation of Industrial
Capitalism
In Galbraiths studies there are two fundamental analytic objectives. The rst is to
provide a critical analysis of conventional understandings of social and economic
life and associated vested interests that have informed policy decisions and
conduct in relation to the economy. The second is to offer an analysis of
signicant changes in the form of economic life, including those responsible for
creating unprecedented levels of personal material well-being in Western Europe
and America, and to consider the consequences for social and cultural life.
Criticism of conventional economic wisdom, of economic orthodoxy, is a
consistent theme in Galbraiths work. Economic discourse is argued to be
burdened by ideas formed in a world of grim scarcity and constrained by vested
interests. Attempts within the discourse of economics to account for the economic
realities of a world of wealth and afuence are deemed to be problematic, to be
too deeply rooted in the past. Galbraith suggests that there has been a long-
standing problem of uncorrected obsolescence (1963: 15), and that in the realm
of economic ideas familiarity tends to be the touchstone of acceptability (1963:
18). Economics is burdened with ideas derived from an earlier economic era,
when rms were considered to be subordinate to the instruction of the market
(1975: 24) and market and consumer were deemed to be sovereign. Operating
under the assumption that the choice of the consumer continued to control all,
the discipline of economics slipped imperceptibly into its role as the cloak over
corporate power (1975: 24). The critical attention drawn by Galbraith to the
instrumental function of economics, that is, the ways in which it serves not
the understanding or improvement of the economic system but the goals of those
who have power in the system (1975: 23), invites comparison with other forms of
critical analysis.
4
A prominent theme running through Galbraiths work is the dominance of
a neo-classical model of economics that promotes the idea of management of the
economy through the market. Criticism of the consequences of the predominance
of the capitalist market system and the doctrine of laissez-faire is a consistent
feature of his work. Galbraith demonstrates how, from the early 19th century
through to the late 20th century, economics has accommodated its view of
economic process, instruction therein and recommended public action to speci-
c economic and political interest (1993: 78). In analyses of the processes of
transformation to which modern social and economic life has been subject,
Galbraith (1969, 1975) has highlighted the issue of the relationship between the
market system and what he describes as the planning system. He argues that by
placing all the emphasis on the framework of the market, economists have
effectively concealed the working of the planning system and have disguised the
power that . . . it wields (1975: 342). Galbraith shows that with economic
development, the growth of the large corporation and the increased signicance
of co-ordination and planning, power has passed from consumer to producer
(1975: 342; see also 1993: 1335). But neo-classical economics has continued to
promote the idea that consumers exercise control through the market, leaving
those who are exposed to its instruction with the impression . . . that interference
with private business decision is unnecessary and abnormal (1975: 114) until,
that is, the wake-up call inadvertently issued by Enron, Xerox and Worldcom.
Reecting on the key changes to which economic society has been
subject during the course of the 20th century, Galbraith identies the impact of
science and technology on production, the growth in inuence of both large
corporations and the state, and a moderation of the business cycle. In addition, he
notes three other changes, namely innovations in advertising and consumer
demand management, a decline in membership of trade unions and an expansion
in higher education enrolment. The argument is that the imperatives of technol-
ogy and organization are determining the shape of economic society (1969: 18)
and that economic goals are exercising an increasing monopoly over the lives of
people.
Galbraith emphasizes the dominant role in the economy of a few hundred
technically dynamic, massively capitalized and highly organized corporations
(1969: 21), and identies the factors that have led to a planning system and
forms of state involvement. Economic production increasingly involves the
deployment of sophisticated technology, substantial research and development
costs, high capital investment, and long lead-times before benets are realized in
production. In circumstances such as these, large corporations seek to reduce
uncertainty wherever possible through planning, that is, minimizing or getting
rid of market inuences (1969: 36), and by drawing on the support of the state.
In a variety of areas, including the defence industry, space exploration and
developments in transport and nuclear energy,
. . . the state guarantees a price sufcient, with a suitable margin, to cover
costs. And it undertakes to buy what is produced or to compensate fully in
the case of contract cancellation. Thus, effectively, it suspends the market
with all associated uncertainty.
(1969: 41)
With the increasing prominence of scientic and technological innovation
and growth in size of the modern business corporation, Galbraith notes that the
classical entrepreneur has been displaced in signicance by the emergence of a
collective and imperfectly dened (1969: 80) management entity that constitutes
the collective intelligence of the organization. This new organizational con-
stituency, termed the technostructure by Galbraith (1975: 98), includes a variety
of occupational groups whose common denominator is that they are knowledge-
and information-processing workers.
5
The technostructure has a monopoly over
the knowledge required in the increasingly frequent and complex decision-making
processes that routinely occur in large corporations, and Galbraith argues that as
corporations have grown in size, the power and inuence of the technostructure
has increased. Large corporations have the capacity to shape, if not determine,
signicant aspects of contemporary social life. As Galbraith observes, they are
able
not only to x prices and costs but to inuence consumers, . . . and . . . the
attitudes of the community and the state. . . . They are not conned by the
market. They transcend the market, use the market as an instrument and
are the chariot to which society, if not chained, is at least attached. That
the modern corporation deploys such power the neo-classical model, of
course, denies. That it is the reality we here see.
(1975: 107)
In so far as neo-classical economics continues to assume that businesses are
subordinate to the market and that the consumer is sovereign, the reality of
corporate life is occluded.
Economic reality has undoubtedly been transformed since the late 1970s.
However, notwithstanding the development of a post-Fordist, more exible and
globally extensive form of capital accumulation, Galbraiths analysis of economic
society retains considerable relevance. The pursuit of exibility through econ-
omic downsizing and reorganization has not led to the demise of the techno-
structure but rather to its metamorphosis (Keaney, 2001: 84). Corporate-state
networks endure and the state continues to play a signicant role in economic life
by fostering appropriate developmental strategies for business and acting as lender
of last resort (Castells, 1996; Harvey, 1989). No less important is the role the
state has played in the development of the information technology revolution by
underwriting research and development costs and by providing guaranteed
markets for products.
6
However, as Galbraith anticipated, it is the size, political
clout and lack of transparency of global corporations actively reorganizing the
world economy that is continuing to cause most concern (Klein, 2001: 340;
Monbiot, 2001).
Private Afuence and Public Provision
In his analysis of the development of a wealthier, more afuent society, Galbraith
(1963) emphasizes the paramount position occupied by economic production
and, as a necessary corollary, the vital importance of effective consumer demand.
He shows how consumer demand is continually conditioned, indeed has to be, for
decisions about the purchase of goods and services are too important to be left to
unconditioned consumer choice. If economic growth is to remain the paramount
goal, consumers must never reach a point where they may feel they have acquired
a sufciency of goods. Contrary to conventional economic wisdom, the consumer
is not sovereign, the ow of inuence is not unidirectional from consumer to
market to producer. Rather, demand is provoked and managed through market-
ing, advertising and branding. In short, consumption, as Marx (1973) recognized
in the mid-19th century, is a function of production and has to be continually
cultivated and shaped. As Galbraith remarks, the urge to consume is fathered by
the value system which emphasizes the ability of society to produce (1963: 133).
But within that value system all forms of production are not considered equiva-
lent. Whereas privately produced production is valued, in contrast the production
of public goods and services is regarded as a burden to be borne by private
production through the imposition of taxation (Galbraith, 1963: 116, 218).
The contrast in social attitudes towards private goods and public services is
a theme to which Galbraith (1963, 1969, 1975, 1998) has continually returned.
The general reticence to question what gets produced in afuent societies, a
reticence shared by conventional economics, is criticized by him. The existence of
a profusion of some things alongside a dearth of others follows a fault line which
divides privately produced and marketed goods and services from publicly
rendered services (1963: 206). It is the wealth of privately produced goods
and services that is largely responsible for the critical condition of the public
services. The social imbalance between the stock and ow of private and pub-
lic goods and services is recognized to have grown steadily worse (1985: xxii).
The contrast of opulence and squalor uncovered in Galbraiths initial study of
the relationship between the private and public sectors in an afuent society has
subsequently been compounded by the growth of a culture of contentment
(Galbraith, 1993).
The Consequences of Contentment
Within afuent societies there is a substantial proportion of the electorate, if not a
majority, who view favourably any political constituency promising not to disturb
their immediate comfort and contentment. The primary objective of the socially
and economically fortunate is to protect their present condition. The primary
threat to this condition of contentment arises, Galbraith argues, when govern-
ment and the seemingly less deserving intrude or threaten to intrude their needs
or demands. This is especially so if such action suggests higher taxes (1993: 17).
Galbraiths analysis of the culture of contentment brings into sharp relief the
limits within which the tax state (Schumpeter, 1954b) operates, and claries
the context within which a new overriding commitment to laissez faire and the
market (Galbraith, 1993: 62) has developed.
Taxation is not only resisted by the relatively afuent, it is argued that
beyond a modest level it acts as a disincentive to wealth creation and thereby
threatens to damage the economic prospects of the community as a whole.
Galbraith remarks that the assumption seems to be that while the wealthy need
the incentive of substantial additional income, the poor are deserving of their
poverty (1993: 145), and in so far as this is a widely held view, economies in
public provision appear to be warranted. In short, indifference towards the poor
appears to be a corollary of afuence. And in so far as the poor are considered to
be architects of their own fate (1993: 97), the contented majority are able
to continue enjoying their private wealth undisturbed by any feelings of guilt
about the public squalor to which the less fortunate are consigned.
The ways in which a culture of contentment receives political expression
are outlined by Galbraith in the following terms. The pursuit of personal wealth
and individual material well-being is accorded social esteem and value, if not
reverence. In contrast, poverty is viewed with relative indifference, and is per-
ceived to be a consequence of a lack of responsibility on the part of the poor, who
are viewed with disdain, if not contempt. Private organizations are deemed to be
efcient and dynamic, while the state and public organizations are criticized for
being bureaucratic, a synonym for inefciency, incompetence, impersonality and
remoteness. Given the above and the fact that there is an asymmetry at the heart
of the public services The fortunate pay, the less fortunate receive (1993: 46)
it is no surprise to nd that the state, public sector and taxation are viewed as a
burden by the contented and self-approving majority. Such a politics of content-
ment effectively reduces the scope for taking difcult, potentially unpopular,
yet necessary long-term measures, for it leads to emphasis being placed on
the electoral benets of short-run economic policies of contentment
(1993: 157).
Towards the conclusion of his discussion, Galbraith comments that the
present age of contentment will come to an end only when and if the adverse
developments that it fosters challenge the sense of comfortable well-being (1993:
1567). The possible developments identied by Galbraith include economic
disaster, military action . . . associated with international misadventure, and
eruption of an angry underclass (1993: 157). In the period of time that has
elapsed since Galbraith speculated on the possible reckoning awaiting the
American economy and polity, much has happened. Social and economic life has
become increasingly insecure (Beck, 2000). America has become a divided
society in which an anxious majority is wedged between an underclass that has no
hope and an overclass that denies any civic obligations (Gray, 1999: 111; see also
Castells, 1998: 130). An erosion of condence in corporate America has led to the
middle classes rediscovering the condition of assetless economic insecurity (Gray,
1999: 111). Factor in the events of 11 September 2001 and the possibility that
the War on Terror will be a war without a clearly dened end, and the culture of
contentment already seems to have been displaced by one of anxiety.
Concluding Remarks: Galbraith, Fiscal Sociology
and the Market Society
Writing in an earlier period of social, economic and political uncertainty following
the events of the First World War, Joseph Schumpeter (1954b [1918]) sought to
designate a special eld of inquiry that he described as scal sociology. By the
latter, he intended study of the public nances, which he described as one of
the best starting points for an investigation of society, for gaining an insight
into the spirit of a people, its cultural level [and] its social structure (1954b: 7),
as well as its potential development. Within sociology there have been few
attempts to cultivate the eld Schumpeter identied (Bell, 1976, is a rare
example). However, throughout the work of Galbraith there is a continual critical
engagement with the issue of the public nances as well as analysis of a range of
important closely related sociologically relevant themes and issues. To that extent
it can be argued that there is a scal sociology in his work.
An economic turn has become a feature of recent social thought as
sociologists have rediscovered their public purpose as social critics to take issue
with neo-liberalism and the cultivation of a market society (Beckert and Swed-
berg, 2001; Bourdieu, 1998; ONeill, 1998; Philo and Miller, 2001; Slater and
Tonkiss, 2001). The development of a critical analytic interest in the articulation
of economy and society and the impact of capitalist market forces on social life
represents a return to a set of concerns that are central to the works of the classical
sociologists. The classical sociologists sought to make sense of the great trans-
formation (Polanyi, 1968) that led to the development of modern industrial
capitalist forms of social life and critically analysed the consequences. Our task is
comparable, namely to make sense of current wide-ranging processes of social and
economic transformation, including the regeneration of the market system and its
social and cultural consequences. To that end it is necessary to counter the
conventional wisdom of neo-liberal discourse what Bourdieu (1998) has
termed the dominant discourse and conduct an analysis of the market society,
including its major aws. On both counts Galbraiths work provides analytic
resources of direct sociological relevance.
One of the distinctive features of sociology has been openness to ideas,
approaches and analyses that derive from other disciplinary elds, providing, that
is, that they enhance understanding of social processes and practices. The analyses
of the classical gures demonstrate that sociological relevance is not conned
to the works of those analysts who explicitly dene themselves as sociologists.
Given the transformation of economic society is at the forefront of Galbraiths
work, his writings merit greater sociological consideration than they have received
to date.
Notes
1. The limitations of modern economics follow from its neglect of institutions and preoccupation
with theoretically oriented mathematical models (Davern and Eitzen, 1995: 79; see also Bell,
1990; Solow, 1990).
2. As Weber remarks in his 1895 Freiburg inaugural lecture on The National State and Economic
Policy, economics as a human science . . . investigates above all else the quality of the human
beings who are brought up in those economic and social conditions of existence (1989: 197). As
a political science it is to be regarded as a servant . . . of the lasting power-political interests of
the nation (1989: 198). The signicance of this lecture for making sense of Webers project is
recognized by Hennis (1987, 1988), for whom the political economy of the German Historical
School constitutes a continuing signicant inuence in the development of Webers work,
including the later works designated as Webers sociology. In a comparable manner, Barbalet
remarks that the inaugural lecture is an absolutely necessary key to the proper appreciation of
Webers subsequent work (2001: 148), but in contrast to Hennis his argument is that the
continuities revealed are entirely sociological (2001: 149).
3. Notable exceptions are to be found in the respective works of T.H. Marshall (1963), Jean
Baudrillard (1998 [1970]), Daniel Bell (1976), Zygmunt Bauman (1991, 1993, 1998b) and John
ONeill (1972). Marshall considers the impact of the values associated with the afuent society,
including the stimulation of consumption, on the welfare state in Britain. Baudrillard briey
assesses Galbraiths analysis of afuence and its consequences and takes issue with his conception
of needs. Bell briey acknowledges the signicance of Galbraiths analysis of the afuent society
and his identication of a relationship between rising levels of personal consumption and
increasing public squalor. Bauman briey notes the signicance of Galbraiths contribution to our
understanding of the conditions that have led to erosion of the welfare state, in particular the
emergence of a contented majority in Western democratic polities. Perhaps the most explicit
recognition of the sociological value of Galbraiths work is to be found in John ONeills critical
analysis of the growing privatization of public space, corporate socialization of individuals into
consumers, and equation of freedom with consumer behaviour.
4. For example, there are parallels with the critical analysis of economic thinking and of the role of
ideas, ideology critique, provided by Karl Marx. There are also similarities with a later critique
provided by Foucault of the way in which a regime of truth, linked with systems of power which
produce and sustain it, was a condition of the formation and development of capitalism (1980:
133).
5. There are a number of similarities between Galbraiths analysis of the transformations to which
industrial capitalism has been subject with the systematic application of science and technological
innovation and Daniel Bells (1973) ideas on the emergence of a post-industrial society. Indeed
Galbraiths notion of a technostructure, that is, individuals of diverse technical knowledge . . .
which modern industrial technology and planning require (1969: 67), and the associated
identication of a large scientic and educational estate (1969: 286) anticipate key features of the
post-industrial society thesis.
6. Galbraiths identication of the strategic economic role of the state receives support from Harvey,
who identies the scale of American defence expenditure as fundamental to whatever economic
growth . . . [occurred] in world capitalism in the 1980s (1989: 170). Further support is provided
by Castells, who documents the contribution of military and defence-related expenditure on
research and development programmes to a series of fundamental breakthroughs ranging from
1940s computers to optoelectronics and articial intelligence technologies of the 1980s . . . [to
the more recent] design and initial funding of the Internet (1996: 59).
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Barry Smart is Professor of Sociology at the University of Portsmouth. He is the author of a number
books, including Economy, Culture and Society: A Sociological Critique of Neo-Liberalism (in press),
Handbook of Social Theory (2001, co-editor with George Ritzer), Facing Modernity (1999), Resisting
McDonaldization (1999), Michel Foucault: Critical Assessments I (1994) and Michel Foucault: Critical
Assessments II (1995), Postmodernity (1993) and Modern Conditions, Postmodern Controversies
(1992).
Address: School of Social, Historical and Literary Studies, University of Portsmouth, Milldam, Burnaby
Road, Portsmouth, PO1 3AS, UK. [email: barry.smart@port.ac.uk]

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- Mar 1, 2003 Version of Record >>

Emile Durkheim (Smelser and Swedberg, 1994).

E. (1957) Professional Ethics and Civic Morals. London: Routledge

Emile Durkheim On Institutional Analysis, ed., and with an

E. (1982) The Rules of Sociological Method and Selected Texts on

E. (1984) The Division of Labour in Society. London: Macmillan.

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