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stupidplover · 7 years ago

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John Kenneth Galbraith's 1979 Commandments to Librarians: Still Relevant?

Below is text of my talk at the Metropolitan New York Library Council’s Libraries in the Context of Capitalism event on Feb, 1st, 2018.

https://metro.org/news/libraries-in-the-context-of-capitalism

John Kenneth Galbraith's 1979 Commandments to Librarians: Still Relevant?

The origin of my talk today is a simple search in the Library, Information Science and Technology database. I was in the process of researching a project on political economy in LIS and I simply started plugging in the names of big the dead dudes (e.g., Marx, Smith, Keynes) when I stumbled upon the text of an address containing “six commandments to librarians” that economist John Kenneth Galbraith delivered to the fourth President’s Program of the ALA Annual Conference in Dallas, Texas, on June 27th 1979 and published in September of that year in an issue of American Libraries magazine. While 1979 is of personal interest (it’s the year I was born) it was a moment (particularly in Western Liberal Democracies) in which the discourse about the role of capitalism and markets in society was shifting along with the centers of political power. Galbraith begins the piece by stating that “We are now in the second year of our great conservative revolt.” Whether or not one agrees with him about the exact year that this “conservative revolt” began, it should now be clear that this movement has been a powerful feature of US Politics during the past 40 years. I would argue that Trumpism is its apotheosis. Putting aside the question of Trumpism for a moment (if it’s at all possible) the act of posing questions about libraries and their relationship to capitalism represented in the call for today’s event strikes me as an attempt to name and describe something that librarianship (with important exceptions) has not directly confronted or thought much about, at least about since I joined the profession 12 years ago.

Before turning to the specific opportunity that Galbraith’s “six commandments” gives us for examining how we talk about these issues has--or has not--changed, I would like to first call our attention to this larger issue of capitalism and, if I may be so presumptuous, to try to name and describe a little more specifically helpful ways to think about how to identify the multiple crises in the system that we are currently experiencing. The word capitalism has become synonymous with the general social, economic, and political systems that we currently live under. For example: When I’m stuck on hold with my cable company and I say to myself “Urrr… capitalism.” Or if I’m in Costco and I find a great deal on a big bag of cashew clusters (a personal favorite) and I may say to myself “Yeah! Capitalism!” However, if we are going to think seriously and rigorously about defending a broadly defined public interest as librarians and build power as library workers we must understand that the political economy of the United States in 2018 is a highly specific one. I find it helpful to think about capitalism as an incredibly versatile system that manifests itself differently at different times and in different societies (there is an entire literature in political economy that examines what it calls “the varieties of capitalism”). Whether we or not we would like to reform the current system, or move into something else entirely, we have to reckon with how the political economy of our current society is structured and the unavoidable question of how to build the political power of libraries as public goods within the specific context in which we act.

Ellen Meiksins Wood defines capitalism as “a system in which all major economic actors are dependent on the market for their basic requirements of life. Other societies have had markets, often on a large scale; but only in capitalism is market dependence the fundamental condition of life for everyone.” While libraries are not a requirement of life in the way that healthcare, food, and housing are; education, culture, and information are crucial public goods that enable the social reproduction of the working class. What I like about Wood’s definition is that it allows us to consider both formal waged labor and all of the activities (many unwaged like child care, house cleaning. etc.) necessary for the reproduction of workers in capitalism. Also, it shifts our attention away from, what to the uninitiated may seem like dry conversations about, say the difference between fiscal and monetary policy, to the fundamental existential and material questions about who gets what and whether or not what people get provides them with a decent, fulfilling life. Everyday at our reference desks and in our classrooms when we, say, work with homeless patrons, talk about “information poverty,” or feel more acutely than ever that we live “in a cultural environment in which profit is all-important.” We experience economics in a real and fundamental way.

If you took an economics class as an undergraduate, it’s unlikely that you would have encountered a definition of capitalism like this. That is because, particularly in the United States, the discipline has become dominated by neoclassical economics. Neoclassical economics focuses on how supply and demand influences the behavior of homo economicus (assumed to be a rational utility maximizing actor) often using mathematical equations. I will not contest its power as an explanatory tool, yet the dominance of neoclassical economics has marginalized key traditions of political economy and has reinforced and popularized the idea that there is some kind of economic system, or market, that exists separate from politics and society. There is nothing “natural” or “neutral” about a singular “market” separate from society. Political economy examines the influence of factors such as “political and social institutions, morality, and ideology in determining economic events.” This brings me to the subject of my talk today, I discovered Galbraith’s “six commandments” in a piece entitled “Are Public Libraries Against Liberty?” because I wondered if any political economists had said anything about libraries. And if so, what had they said. I want to use this address as more of a primary source for getting a sense of where these conversations were in 1979 and for thinking about how some of Galibraith’s main ideas have aged.

John Kenneth Galbraith is one most famous economists of the 20th century. He was influential enough that his New York Times obituary claimed that he “helped define the terms of the national political debate, influencing both the direction of the Democratic Party and the thinking of its leaders.” He worked with Adlai Stevenson, served as the ambassador to India under John F. Kennedy, and was a key player in the development of Lyndon B. Johnson’s Great Society policies. Perhaps no other economist better represents the social democratic tendencies in postwar American liberalism better than Galbraith. While other political economists (i.e., Marx) developed far more thorough and radical critiques of capitalism, Galbraith’s theory of social balance poses interesting and important questions for those examining the role of libraries, that serve a broadly defined public interest within the context of 21st century American capitalism.

Galbraith’s theory of social balance is fairly simple: an unwavering philosophical commitment to private goods at the expense of public infrastructure (e.g., schools, roads, clean air) leads to a ruinous situation of “private opulence and public squalor.” He argues that as large corporate firms grow and consolidate power they develop a “technostructure” in which a host of technicians, engineers, lawyers, and economists exert influence over the political system (e.g., lobbying against regulation) and structure a political economy in which the public sector will be perceived as “inferior.” As Galbraith put it in 1958, the scientist, engineer, or advertiser who develops “a new carburetor, cleanser, or depilatory for which the public recognizes no need and will feel none until an advertising campaign arouses it, is one of the valued members of our society. A politician or public servant who dreams up a public service is a wastrel” (Galbraith 1958). We can see this in our libraries when, for example, a user experiences inconvenience and frustration because resources are lacking they may find it easier to turn to a privatized information service than to agitate and organize politically for greater library services and funding. This continues a bifurcation between those who can afford private information resources and those who rely on public libraries. Even the most talented, resilient, and gritty librarian will struggle mightily to ever compete with, say, a user’s experience with Google, because of the massive imbalance of resources and the librarian’s position within the institutional economic framework of society. For Galbraith “Social imbalance arises from an increase in the production and consumption of private goods that is not matched by the public services required by their use.”

Galbraith's solution, as outlined in the Affluent Society, was the development of what he “countervailing power” in the form of a new class of educated citizens who would identify the problem and fight politically for adequate public services. This “countervailing power” would include unions, citizens groups, and the state to restrain corporate power. In his address to librarians we can observe these ideas surfacing in his recommendations. The commandments are as follows:

Defend Public Services - I will quote directly. “Public services… are not, in any respect, inferior to private goods and services. Let all say this plainly… the children of the rich can buy books, the poor cannot. And let it be said often and with emphasis.”

Take a Stand on Collective Decision - Many of the most nearly essential services must be defended

Resist Inflation - Very much a relic of the 70s when inflation was prevailing in issue in the economy. We now live very much in the shadow of the fiscal and monetary policies that design to control inflation. The financial crisis of 2008 and stagnant growth since then is very much a deflationary issue.

Seek Federal Support - The localism that funds so much of the American public sector is clearly a problem. Municipalities and states are very restrained in terms of spending and revenue.

Make Librarians Seem Dangerous - Obviously a good idea?

Become More Efficient - To counteract stereotypes about lazy inefficient public servants. Sure, being efficient is good. I doubt this will blunt the attacks of the right.

While, Galbraith’s commandments are interesting, in my opinion they fail to develop a sufficient framework for addressing the conjuncture of crises in capitalism that libraries are confronting.

Galbraith’s countervailing power concept required an overlapping consensus on the part of the public in order to reign in corporate power. But it’s inattentive to how class consciousness and the civil rights revolutions of the 60s and 70s (and the backlash to them) have made achieving some mythical consensus difficult. The political theorist Nancy Fraser has argued that the financialized capitalism that now dominates has precipitated three categories of crisis: one, in the process of capital accumulation analyzed by Marx; a second environmental crisis that threatens the habitability of the planet for most people; and a third crisis in the systems of unwaged and low-waged work necessary to reproduce the background conditions for the system to reproduce itself. Social reproduction becomes “commodified for those who can pay for it, privatized for those who cannot.”

The continual attacks on public services demanded by the advocates of austerity look remarkably similar: whether it is in Puerto Rico, Greece, or Kansas: create a “friendly business environment” by slashing taxes for the wealthy and by continually cutting public services to the bone. This is the crisis we are confronting directly in our libraries that I think this conference is trying to address. Our libraries do not play the role that, say, auto manufacturing did in the 1930s. If we were to withdraw our labor from libraries tomorrow, the process of capital accumulation would continue mostly unabated. However, we are a part of the institutional latticework that maintains the background conditions that allows for the system reproduce itself. Developing solidaristic bonds with teachers, medical care workers and community organizations engaged in the key social movements of the day strikes me as a potential way forward. Libraries must form bonds with other movements.

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