614
PARTISAN REVIEW
Florida-what does he care ' if the rich have candles at dinner, and
Matisses, and Chippendale furniture, and expensive jewelry, and even
two Cadillacs and an annual holiday at Cannes? He no longer feels
deprived; and hence he no longer feels a bitter sense of inequality. But
the change in his attitudes, and the consequent decline in social tension,
are due entirely to the rapid economic growth which has made possible
his higher standard of living. Hence it is that liberals have given so
high a priority to economic growth. However, from this point of view
the insistence on high production has fulfilled its historic function; for
the decline in tension is not likely to be reversed even if the American
rate of growth is now allowed to slacken.
But the third traditional reason for the obsession with production
is a continuing one. This is what Galbraith calls the security motive.
The main cause of insecurity in an industrial economy is unemployment.
In order to eliminate insecurity, therefore, we accept the goal of full
employment. But full employment is naturally associated with maximum
production. The marginal production is needed not for its own sake,
but for the sake of the marginal employment associated with it; for on
this depends the worker's income and security. We are thus in the para–
doxical position of giving first priority to maximum production, even
though society scarcely needs the extra goods, simply
in
order to avoid
exposing individuals to the hardships of unemployment.
Such, then, are the traditional reasons, now either dated or para–
doxical, for the preoccupation with production in the affluent society.
But, says Galbraith, the champions of production, feeling subconsciously
dissatisfied, have now thought up two new reasons. The first concerns
defense. They argue that military strength
is
a function of gross national
product, from which it follows that to resist the Soviet threat we must
aim at the maximum rate of economic growth. The Sputniks have by
now rather discredited this simple view; and in any case Galbraith ad–
duces other arguments to show, convincingly
in
my view, that the abso–
lute size of the economy is by no means the decisive influence on
military capacity.
The second new justification, he asserts, is the modern economist's
theory of demand, according to which one cannot accurately compare
the satisfactions which consumers derive from different levels of expen–
diture at different periods of time. Now Galbraith gives an accurate
account of this theory; but he is wrong in supposing that it was either
intended to demonstrate, or has in fact been used to demonstrate, that
production today was as urgent as production one hundred years ago.
However, we can leave him to argue this out with his fellow academi-
