To the Editor:
Daniel Bell’s review article in the December COMMENTARY on Galbraith’s recent book, American Capitalism, traverses a great deal of controversial economic territory, and no discerning reader could be expected to accept his judgment and analysis of all the writers and schools of thought which he covers. Your author writes about Hayek, J. M. Keynes, Keynesians, Alvin Hansen, and Schumpeter as well as about the book by Galbraith. In my view his criticism of American Capitalism, because it fails to analyze the character of our present defense garrison, or as Mr. Bell calls it, “readiness economy,” is fully merited.
What I don’t like about the article is the juxtaposition of the popular and the scholarly; Mr. Bell in the main presents Keynes and Hansen as shortsighted depression economists while his measure of Schumpeter is more appreciative. It is obvious that Mr. Bell likes neither J. M. Keynes, Keynesians, nor Alvin Hansen, and he is probably unaware of his change of pace as he passes from a discussion of these writers to the ideas of Schumpeter. In presenting the ideas of Keynes and of Hansen he gives us a popular judgment, mainly of those who do not like Keynesian economics, while in his presentation of Schumpeter he examines the basic writings of this highly original and provocative professor of economics.
Valdemar Carlson
Antioch College
Yellow Springs, Ohio
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