Citizen Ken

By R.Z. Sheppard

A LIFE IN OUR TIMES by John Kenneth Galbraith Houghton Mifflin; 563 pages; $16.95

This affluent society has two celebrity economists. Milton Friedman is the short conservative one. The other, of course, is the 6-ft. 8-in. liberal John Kenneth Galbraith. The styles of these distinguished gentlemen also differ greatly. Wreathed in affability, Friedman delivers the chilly news that life is not fair. In contrast, Galbraith assumes the demeanor of a hanging judge and drolly intimates that life does not have to be as unfair as Professor Friedman says it is.

No one has ever accused Galbraith, 72, of generating much warmth from this slim ray of hope. "A commitment to losing causes," he writes, "is still a constant in my life." Perhaps. But few similarly committed public figures have succeeded as well as he. His attributes are many and formidable. The imposing intelligence and intimidating physique are obvious. His facility for understated sarcasm makes him a dangerous opponent on the podium or editorial page. Like Henry Kissinger, Galbraith can joke about his self-confidence without sinking in false modesty. Moreover, he is a diligent and productive worker.

A Life in Our Times, the author's 21st book, took six revisions before he was satisfied. To "combine composition with thought" does not come easily. Galbraith's task appears to have been further complicated by the need to budget space to accommodate his eventful public career. He has compressed earlier autobiography and summarized ideas presented in The Affluent Society and The New Industrial State.

Readers of The Scotch (1964) are reminded of the dour, industrious breed of Canadian farmers that molded the future agricultural economist, Harvard professor, Washington bureaucrat, journalist and diplomat: "A long day following a plodding, increasingly reluctant team behind a harrow endlessly back and forth over the uninspiring Ontario terrain persuaded one that all other work was easy."

Galbraith did not lay out his career in tedious rows. Teaching, Government service and writing follow a cyclical path. As a university instructor he feared "that my superiority would not be recognized." He found ample acceptance for his expertise in public service and journalism, first, in 1940, as a Keynesian economist for the American Farm Bureau Federation, during World War II in the Office of Price Administration, and then as an interrogator of Nazi war criminals and assessor of Allied bomb damage. Whenever Washington appeared to offer him an office but little to do, he returned to FORTUNE, where he had been an intermittent contributor since 1943. In 1948 it was back to Harvard, and eventually a full professor ship. Galbraith's life cuts a pattern of exits and re-entries. Campaigning for Adlai Stevenson, for John Kennedy, and against the Viet Nam War fill important gaps; writing absorbs the overflow of his curiosity and energy. There are the bestselling books on affluence and industrialism, more popular works on the Depression and money, a journal and art book evolved from his years as Ambassador to India, and even a political potboiler.

Throughout, Galbraith is as laconic as an Ontario plow jockey. He offers little about his private life; his wit is a bit too mechanical, as are mordant observations like "Politics is not the art of the possible. It consists in choosing between the disastrous and the unpalatable." Yet Galbraith's air of detachment is satisfying. It enables him to place himself in recent history without seeming more or less important than he was. He is one of the few contemporary memoirists who have held the line on inflation.

-- By R.Z. Sheppard

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