ABSTRACT
Bernard Shaw once wrote: “The reasonable man adapts himself to the world: the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man.” Most economists will agree that John Kenneth Galbraith is an unreasonable man. They may, however, shrink from Shaw’s conclusion that the unreasonable man is the cause of progress. In the present instance the issue will eventually be resolved by the place accorded Economics and the Public Purpose. It is the complete Galbraith. All his previous books are prelude. This one invites comparison with Keynes’s General Theory, for it is Galbraith’s general theory; and it is very general indeed. Previous economics is thrown unceremoniously on the rubbish pile. A new social order is sketched out in all necessary detail and the required methods of reform comprehensively presented. It has been a long time since so celebrated an author has undertaken so much in a single book. If there is to be a Galbraithian revolution, it will be bigger than Keynes’s by several orders of magnitude.
