Farming out economics with J.K.Galbraith

The system put in place in 1933 initially worked very well for corn and wheat, where farmers themselves were the primary operators of the farms producing the output. But when the system was put in place for cotton - with the Federal Government paying for the number of acres planted in cotton to be reduced - a profound social and moral dilemma arose. A few white men owned a lot of plantations. But a large number of African Americans and the poorest-of-poor whites worked as the sharecroppers on tenant farms. They were the ones who actually raised and harvested the cotton. And the question for the federal government was a simple one: who should be paid? The owners of those great plantations? Or should some or all of that money to go to the men and women who were most clearly impoverished by the collapse of farm prices and in particular by the price of cotton?

And as Galbraith remembers it, one young lawyer went over to see Cotton "Ed" Smith, senior Senator from the State of South Carolina, and the chairman of the Senate Agriculture Committee. And Senator Smith made it very clear what the appropriate decision was supposed to be. Succinctly, he said, "You take care of the payments. We'll take care of the niggers".

It was an example of the ways in which power operated because ultimately Roosevelt gave in. The money was paid to the planters and not to the sharecroppers. And it was a lesson that was seared in Galbraith's mind. This remained throughout the rest of his stellar career as a moment in which he understood as baldly and as clearly as possible that market forces are never simply market forces in the abstract. They always contain elements of ideology, of bigotry, of presumption, and most importantly, elements of the power which regenerates and reinforces those assumptions.

In Galbraith’s own words: “In making politics a non-political subject, neo-classical theory destroys the relation of economics to the real world. In that world, power is decisive in what happens. And the problems of that world are increasing both in number and in the depth of their social affliction.”

I believe Galbraith's career and the individual decisions and the overall vision that he has held to throughout his life are the best of American liberal tradition - tough, pragmatic, generous and compassionate all at once. And I believe that today we are on the cusp of being able to re-examine and, I hope, reignite those values in American political life.