This summer marks 50 years since the publication of John Kenneth Galbraith’s The New Industrial State and its quick rise to the top of the New York Times Best Seller list. The book was one of the rare instances where an economist was able to capture public imagination and focus debate on big-picture economic issues. We have only rarely seen its like since — although Thomas Piketty gave it a great go in 2014, with Capital in the Twenty-First Century.
50 Years Ago an Economist Worried About Unchecked Corporate Power. Here’s What His Theory Got Wrong
How power shifted from corporations to financiers.
August 22, 2017
Tim Evans for HBR
Summary.
July marked 50 years since the publication of John Kenneth Galbraith’s The New Industrial State and its quick rise to the top of the New York Times bestseller list. Like many people today, Galbraith was worried about unchecked corporate power. Yet, with the benefit of hindsight we can see his worries were largely wrong. The dominant corporations of 1967 did not have quite the control over their destinies that Galbraith had been convinced of. Somewhat, ironically, Galbraith missed a big counter-effect: capital organized and aggregated itself. In the end, we may not have a U.S. economy dominated by corporate technocrats as Galbraith imagined. Instead, we have one dominated by the wealthy individuals who align themselves with Big Capital.