OPINION: The Affluent Society

Harvard's John Kenneth Galbraith, 49. is an economist who has always found a wider audience than his less articulate colleagues. His American Capitalism: the Concept of Countervailing Power was a bestseller in 1952; some of its ideas went into the 1956 campaign speeches of Adlai Stevenson, which Galbraith helped write. This week, in The Affluent Society (Houghton Mifflin; $4), Galbraith published what he obviously intended to be a searching inquiry into the U.S. economy. Instead, it is a well-written but vague essay with the air of worried dinner-table conversation.

What worries Galbraith is "the myth that production is the central problem of our lives." This concept of social efficiency, says Galbraith. originated in the days of Adam Smith in an era of scarcity. The classic economists have repeated it; the public has echoed them. Now it is obsolete: the present-day economy not only turns out all the goods needed but spends much of its energy whetting the consumers' appetites for things they do not need. The consequence of this lack of "social balance" is that production, largely in private hands, has far outdistanced services, which Galbraith seems to think are the responsibility of government. Thus there are plenty of vacuum cleaners but few street cleaners, a plethora of automobiles but no place to park. "The more goods people procure, the more trash must be carried away . . . the greater the wealth the thicker the dirt."

What Galbraith says about the lack of parking places will hardly be news to Americans. Nor will anyone argue with the need for better schools, parks, sanitation systems, traffic control. But having pointed his bat at the bleachers, Galbraith steps away from the plate. He never takes a full swing at drafting the program that he implies: that the state, local and federal governments must take a larger role in society. What Galbraith suggests concretely is much more conservative. He believes that the economy can absorb up to 4,000,000 unemployed, proposes a sliding scale for unemployment compensation. He feels that use of the sales tax should be expanded to provide better communities, and takes to task liberals who resist city and state sales taxes.

When the national frenzy for production has abated, Galbraith says, the Government can devote itself to the frontiers of education, science, world development. But these sonorous generalizations are left in the air. Galbraith has found it easier to sketch the problem than provide the answers.