The Age of Uncertainty

Did You Know?

• The series was three years in the making.
• Galbraith began by writing a series of essays from which the scripts were derived, and from these the book emerged, which in many places goes beyond the material covered in the relevant television episode.

Background

Galbraith acknowledged the successes of the market system but associated it with instability, inefficiency and social inequity, advocating government policies and interventions to remedy these faults. In his 1973 book Economics and the Public Purpose he proposed extending the planning system used in the industrial core to the wider market economy, arguing for a new socialism with more steeply progressive taxes, public housing, medical care and transportation, public support of the arts, and conversion of some corporations and military contractors into public corporations. The most read social scientist of his era, his association with the U.S. Democratic Party and criticism of fellow economists promoting free-market economics occasioned strong responses. In summer 1973, during the Watergate scandal, Adrian Malone of the BBC asked Galbraith about doing a television series on the history of economic or social ideas; Galbraith, who had been thinking of retirement, quickly accepted. The title 'Age of Uncertainty' was settled early to reflect the contrast between 19th-century economic certainty and modern less assured views. A further theme developed: that beliefs about markets and their relationship to the state shape history through enacted or discarded laws, so the treatment fell into two parts—ideas followed by their consequences.

Series outline

The series comprises episodes titled: The Prophets and Promise of Classical Capitalism; The Manners and Morals of High Capitalism; Karl Marx The Massive Dissent; The Colonial Idea; Lenin and the Great Ungluing; The Rise and Fall of Money; The Mandarin Revolution; The Fatal Competition; The Big Corporation; Land & the People; The Metropolis; Democracy, Leadership, Commitment; and Weekend in Vermont, three one-hour programmes with guests such as Henry Kissinger, Georgy Arbatov and Edward Heath, not covered in the book.

Reception

British Conservative Party leader Margaret Thatcher and Keith Joseph objected to the BBC screening the series, perceiving it too biased for a publicly-owned station. Milton Friedman was brought from Chicago to lecture against Galbraith's economic viewpoints, with Nicholas Kaldor opposing him. The Daily Telegraph and The Spectator dismissed the series, while the Financial Times and The New York Times viewed it positively. Friedman later presented his own response in his series Free to Choose. The series reinforced Galbraith's stature as a major American economist championing traditional Keynesian economics.