ABSTRACT
In this chapter the author wrote that the economist who wants to discuss the economy in its institutional setting must tell a convincing story, weaving fact, value and theory into a coherent narrative which carries the reader along, inducing in him a warm glow of assent. The author characterized Galbraith as a revolutionary in economics because he is not simply dissatisfied with this or that aspect of theory, but with its very core. Galbraith is entirely right in considering the old-fashioned picture of the hedonistic, rationalistic and atomistic consumer as nonsense. Galbraith blasts a swindle by showing that the hands-off attitude of conservative economics—which results in social imbalance —rests on nothing more substantial than a set of alternative values masquerading as objective economic knowledge. Galbraith is above all a publicist of post-Keynesian policies, and the merit of such policies does not depend on the elimination of the old economics root and branch.
