Quotes from book
The New Industrial State

The New Industrial State

John Kenneth Galbraith

The New Industrial State is a 1967 book by John Kenneth Galbraith. Three revised editions appeared in 1972, 1978 and 1985.

“The overall effect of the rise of the industrial system is greatly to reduce the union as a social force. But it will not disappear or become entirely unimportant.”

John Kenneth Galbraith book The New Industrial State

Source: The New Industrial State (1967), Chapter XXIV, Section 1, p. 275

“The notion of a formal structure of command must be abandoned. It is more useful to think of the mature corporation as a series of concentric circles.”

John Kenneth Galbraith book The New Industrial State

Source: The New Industrial State (1967), Chapter XIII, Section 1, p. 149

“The size of General Motors is in the service not of monopoly or the economies of scale but of planning.”

John Kenneth Galbraith book The New Industrial State

Source: The New Industrial State (1967), Chapter VII, Section 2, p. 76

“THE GENIUS of the industrial system lies in its organized use of capital and technology. This is made possible, as we have duly seen, by extensively replacing the market with planning.”

John Kenneth Galbraith book The New Industrial State

Source: The New Industrial State (1967), Chapter XXXI, Section 1, p. 354

“But it can be laid down as a rule that those who speak most of liberty are least inclined to use it.”

John Kenneth Galbraith book The New Industrial State

Source: The New Industrial State (1967), Chapter XXXV, Section 5, p. 398

“Only men of considerable vanity write books; consistently therewith, I worried lest the world were exchanging an irreplaceable author for a more easily purchased diplomat.”

John Kenneth Galbraith book The New Industrial State

Foreword p. vii
The New Industrial State (1967)

“It is not the individual's right to buy that is being protected. Rather, it is the seller's right to manage the individual.”

John Kenneth Galbraith book The New Industrial State

Source: The New Industrial State (1967), Chapter XIX, Section 4, p. 217

“All, the intelligent and stupid, diligent and idle, have been swept along on a current of increased output that, in the usual case, owed nothing whatever to their efforts.”

John Kenneth Galbraith book The New Industrial State

Source: The New Industrial State (1967), Chapter XXX, Section 7, p. 353

“In economics, unlike fiction and the theater, there is no harm in a premature disclosure of the plot: it is to see the changes just mentioned and others as an interlocked whole.”

John Kenneth Galbraith book The New Industrial State

Source: The New Industrial State (1967), Chapter I, Section 3, p. 6

“Agreeable as it is to know where one is proceeding, it is far more important to know where one has arrived.”

John Kenneth Galbraith book The New Industrial State

Source: The New Industrial State (1967), Chapter XXVIII, Section 3, p. 321

“In fact, the wage-price spiral is the functional counterpart of unemployment. The latter occurs when there is insufficient demand; the spiral operates when there is too much and also, unfortunately, when there is just enough.”

John Kenneth Galbraith book The New Industrial State

Source: The New Industrial State (1967), Chapter XXII, Section 4, p. 255

“In the assumption that power belongs as a matter of course to capital, all economists are Marxians.”

John Kenneth Galbraith book The New Industrial State

Source: The New Industrial State (1967), Chapter V, Section 2, p. 49

“The real accomplishment of modern science and technology consists in taking ordinary men, informing them narrowly and deeply and then, through appropriate organization, arranging to have their knowledge combined with that of other specialized but equally ordinary men. This dispenses with the need for genius. The resulting performance, though less inspiring, is far more predictable.”

John Kenneth Galbraith book The New Industrial State

Source: The New Industrial State (1967), Chapter VI, Section 2, p. 62

“THE INDUSTRIAL SYSTEM requires that prices be under effective control. And it seeks the greatest possible influence over what buyers take at the established prices.”

John Kenneth Galbraith book The New Industrial State

Source: The New Industrial State (1967), Chapter XX, Section 1, p. 219 (Caps as per text...)

“Only in very recent times has the average man been a source of savings.”

John Kenneth Galbraith book The New Industrial State

Source: The New Industrial State (1967), Chapter IV, Section 2, p. 37

“Men are, in fact, either sustained by organization or they sustain organization.”

John Kenneth Galbraith book The New Industrial State

Source: The New Industrial State (1967), Chapter VIII, Section 5, p. 96

“Nothing in our time is more interesting than the erstwhile capitalist corporation and the erstwhile Communist firm should, under the imperatives of organization, come together as oligarchies of their own members.”

John Kenneth Galbraith book The New Industrial State

Source: The New Industrial State (1967), Chapter XXXV, Section 2, p. 390

“That one never need to look beyond the love of money for explanation of human behavior is one of the most jealously guarded simplifications of our culture.”

John Kenneth Galbraith book The New Industrial State

Source: The New Industrial State (1967), Chapter XII, Section 1, p. 142

“There is an insistent tendency among serious social scientists to think of any institution which features rhymed and singing commercials, intense and lachrymose voices urging highly improbable enjoyment, caricatures of the human esophagus in normal and impaired operation, and which hints implausibly at opportunities for antiseptic seduction as inherently trivial. This is a great mistake. The industrial system is profoundly dependent on commercial television and could not exist in its present form without it.”

John Kenneth Galbraith book The New Industrial State

Source: The New Industrial State (1967), Chapter XVIII, Section 5, p. 208

“Economic theory is the most prestigious subject of instruction and study. Agricultural economics, labor economics and marketing are lower caste fields of study.”

John Kenneth Galbraith book The New Industrial State

Source: The New Industrial State (1967), Chapter X, Section 5, p. 122 (Mr. Galbraith was originally an agricultural economist...)

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