The Political Economy of the Great Corporation

The publication in June 1967 of The New Industrial State constitutes the maturation of the Galbraithian System. In the ‘ Foreword,’ Galbraith himself compared it to The Affluent Society as a window to the house that contains it, the earlier book providing a ‘ glimpse’ into the total structure depicted in the latter. Years later, he referred to it as his ‘ principal effort in economic argument’ (Anatomy, p. xiii). The New Industrial State is the systematic expression of all of Galbraith’ s preceding works that examine the neglected problem of power and political economic structure. The works that followed it, notably the highly readable Economics and the Public Purpose (1973a), emended, but scarcely enlarged upon the essential 1967 classic. Four decades later it rewards the careful and open-minded student with a model of the concrete political economy that no other scholarly work in the postwar period approaches. Even though the specifics of the analysis must be altered to incorporate continuing change, the analytic structure remains essential reading and will likely remain so for the foreseeable future; it will remain vital until a superior interpretation of the trajectory of mature capitalism is provided.