The Affluent Society by J K Galbraith

The Affluent Society (Pelican)

Another Pelican book brought on the same trip as America's Receding Future, Galbraith is writing ten years before Segal and while they do have slightly different focuses they are seeing much the same world through much the same lens.

It was particularly interesting to be reading this essay while traveling in China as it showed some great similarities to the America of the late 1950s and some radical departures (both in line with Galbraith's recommendations and at counterpoint to them).


It seems China today is living the America dream - there are plenty of opportunities to get rich quick - and while there are the dream lives as even the poorest of the poor can endure in the hope that it could be them - however this phase will not last for ever - soon the opportunities will dry up and wealth will settle around a traditional core the really rich will not be people who made money but people who inherited it - society has a great capacity to look warmly on those who made money (even when they did so with little ethic regard) the link between their toil, their gamble, even their lie, and the wealth they enjoy is a model for how to join them, for inherited wealth has no redemption for try as you might you can not become born on a wealthy father after the fact.


One area of interest is on productivity - one of the striking things about China is the number of people working in roles which we saw as under-employed - the vast numbers of assistants in the shops - the people sweeping the highway with twig brooms or cutting the bushes in the central reversion with hand shears - one of Galbraith's key arguments is that in a poor society it is important that every member is pushed to the maximum level of productivity but in an affluent society (like our and these days China - where people have enough food, shelter etc) the drive to increase productivity is counterproductive it renders some members of society redundant - "That full employment is more desirable than increased production combined with unemployment would be clear alike to the most sophisticated and the most primitive politician." If you are adequately fed what is the point in you working harder if it while adding marginally to your wealth denies a job to another?

The second be area is the contrast we make between private expenditure and public expenditure - Galbraith asks why money spent by individuals is a sign of a successful society but money spend collectively by the society/the state is a problem, why is money spend on for examples cars better than money spent on schools? Clearly China does not at this time make this distinction  - it has high taxes, it spends big money on public infrastructure (which is an enabler to private enterprise - for example while its cities are huge they are moving because the state has put in the trains, expressways, and subways to meet the need - in the West the same ciy would be on its knees in grid lock) also the success of China's state owned corporations means that the dividing line between the state and the private economy not as clear as in the West.

There are also clear questions to ask in light of the problems of public deficits - Galbraith argues that the affluence of the private sphere should be matched by the affluence of the public (with the accompanying high taxes to transfer money from private to public hands) - to Galbraith the answer to the deficit would be more tax not less expenditure - on a day when many public sector works are on strike trying to protect their pension rights the question is how much higher tax would they be prepared to stomach in order to key those rights?

I think Galbraith's ideas are so far out of fashion at the moment to be almost laughable - but they do ask some very deep questions of the assumptions that frame they current political debates and reveal just how narrow our politics has become as you would have to go to the very extremes of the left (beyond politics and into the realms of insanity and idealism) to find anyone who would publicly sign up to any of what Galbraith is saying.

America's Rededing Future by Ronald Segal

America's Receding Future (Pelican)

I am a sucker for the shelf of Pelican books in the local Oxfam shop - there seems to be a mode of discourse about these 'vintage' essays that we just don't get anymore.

Segal is writing at the tail end of the 1960s and yet much of what he writes shines a light on very contemporary issues - this is depressing, in 'the war on terror' and the economic fiasco of the last few years we have witnessed the intensification of issues which Segal identified as debasements of America's ideals and founding values.  Segal writes with a tone of hope, seeing the civil rights movement as the key example of people forcing the nation to live up to the ideal of America as it should be not as it is - people who saw that  things are bad right now but we can make them better.  The trouble is how are we to remain hopeful given that in the intervening 40 years America has not only failed to turn back but run headlong into the abyss.

Some examples: Segal writes "People are incalculably capable of adapting themselves to protracted periods of social disruption...  It is not impossible to imagine an America in which a regime of ruthless repression would preserve some semblance of order, even prosperity, in the face of sustained racial rebellion.  But it would not be America any longer."  This seems to fit the situation since 9/11, we are blind foolS when we sacrifice our freedom in order to maintain it.

He also quotes Jack Newfield who said that "To be a radical in America today is like trying to punch your way out of a cage made of marshmallow.  Every thrust at the jugular draws not blood, but sweet success; every hack at the roots draws not retaliation, but fame and affluence ... Yesterday's underground becomes today's vaudevillee and tomorrow's cliche." Which makes me think particularly of Micheal Moore whose voice seems to have been deadened by the 'celebrity' of being Micheal Moore - he is the event not the message.

The Shipwrecked Men Cabeza De Vaca

The Shipwrecked Men (Great Journeys)

This tale of early European 'adventure' in the Americas somehow left me cold - it was more a dry report of events that the vivid descriptions that you get with most of the Great Journeys.  Cabeza De Vaca clearly has a much greater openness to the native population even before he is shipwrecked and dependent on them for survival - and one laments the fact that colonial history was dominated by men wholly unlike Cabeza De Vaca because if there had been more like him the worse cruelties would have been avoided - it also sets a harsh judgement on the others, for seeing Cabeza De Vaca humanity to the native populations there can be no excuses of actions justified in a different context or era.

Henry and Cato by Iris Murdoch

Henry and Cato

This is classic Murdoch stuff with the complex wrestling with identities that are at the edge of acceptable norms and exploring relationships, particularly between parents and their adult children - which here is mostly a destructive formation. 

There is real dram, however there is a bit too much tidying up in the final chapters - I have often found this with Murdoch and have on occasion left her books a little from the end while they remain juicily unresolved - as it is the tension and ambiguity that give her writing its power.  

In this novel a key part of the plot is a pseudo-sexual relationship between a catholic priest and an adolescent (whether he is a boy or a young man is not clear but he is whatever he physical age immature in the context of the relationship) which is in some ways divorced from the abuse scandals that have recently come to light in the Catholic Church.  The way Murdoch writes Cato (the priest), he is a victim - of circumstance and perhaps a weakness of character but whatever it is he has fallen foul of we are not to blame him and hardly even to pity him - this is problematic as his relationship with Joe (the adolescent) has to modern eyes all the hallmarks of sexual grooming. But this uncomfortable place I think has significant merits - it gives us a insight in to how things happened, things we now see as unbelievable mistakes of the highest order, it doesn't make things right but it does make them intelligible.

Sea Hazard (1939 - 1945) by Houlder Brothers & Co Ltd

I picked this up this interesting volume in the local Oxfam bookshop, and in the front cover is a note from the Company and an acknowledgement from Commander T. Culliford RN. It is an account of the significant incidents that vessels of the Houlder Line (and associated companies) encountered during the Second World War, which mostly were sinking at the hands of German U-boats - It describes itself as a second volume following a similar collection publishedat the end of the first war.

I have had a long fascination with the war memorial process and this example has many interesting features.

First there is the level at which you choice to read it - is it a humble tribute to the crews of the companies vessels, or is it an exercise in PR (either commercial or political - perhaps directed at the new Labour Government with its nationalising tendencies - a subtext to this record of vital service to the nation might be "Hands Off"). Also was the volume, produced and sent out at the Company's expense, written down against tax? But maybe I should be less cynical.

Then there is Apprentice J K Thornton's questionable "distinction of being 'the most torpedoed man'" with a total of 4 vessels falling victim with him on board. This is linked to a comment on the fact that many of the crew had been serving during the first war and so served again in the knowledge of the fate awaiting them "Facing unknown danger calls for courage, but fighting known peril merits the description of heroism."
There is also a clear attempt to match the service of the armed forces, common of many civilian occupations to answer the question "what did you do in the war, Daddy?" 

It is clear that part of the pressure of the Battle of the Atlantic was that the torpedo would hit out of the blue, in most battle situations there is a distinction between times of active engagement and times away from the front - yet for these vessels weeks of ordinary 'business as usual' must have been impregnated with the gut twisting tension of waiting for that torpedo (similar things are seen when civilian populations are subjected to prolonged bombardment).

Although this is not really a comment of the memorial process,  the size of the crews is amazing - by modern standards these vessels were tiny - yet in one example it records that 78 out of the 81 crew on board got off safely - now some of these were steam vessels and tending the engines was therefore a more labour intensive task than today, but even taking that into account these are high manning levels.

This volume gives a useful insight into a oft forgotten and always, I think, difficult to capture theatre of the War.