Letters

Editors:

Have you read Galbraith’s Affluent Society? I don’t know what your plans are for dealing with it in DISSENT, [see p. 84] but I do know that it strikes me as a piece of wrong-headed smugness which deserves the truth: that it is a bad book. We may be told by the expert egg-heads of the Labor Party, John Strachey and C. A. R. Crosland, that it is the bible of our times; but I see no reason why we should participate in their obvious joy in finding an Apologia for Snobs.

Why is it such a bad book? Because it is wrong. It is wrong for many reasons, but for one above all. America is not an affluent society. This simple fact, which was overlooked by Galbraith, destroys the book and makes it quite useless except as a conversation piece. America is not an affluent society simply on the basis of the facts which even Galbraith has to admit. On page 86 he shows that in 1950 four-fifths of the families in America had an income (after taxes) of $4690 or less; three-fifths had an income of $3440 or less. Is that affluency? is threefifths—well over a majority, note—of the families of America living on $3440, affluency? Now, of course, Galbraith would come back with his clever prose, and quibble by saying t...