Galbraith Vs Marxism

summary
In this text, Galbraith criticizes the neoclassical theories about product demand and the consumer sovereignty in the market. His basic goal is to fight against those affirmations based on “conventional wisdom” and all the mistakes developed because of them. He insists that a new world with new realities needs new ideas and theories that must adjust to the world they are living in because, in two hundred years, society and its economy vary radically.
The neoclassical economical theories affirm that the costumer is the entity that rules the market because it is he and his wants the ones that create the demand of a product. Galbraith denies this, arguing that it is not the consumer who spontaneously creates his wants: it is the same entity of production the one that creates the wants and later sells and
Marx’s study on commodities has a lot of points in common with Galbraith’s theory of want creation. Both of them criticize the way that society has developed a taste for consuming the unnecessary. They see it from different perspectives: Galbraith studies how the “unnecessary” products (commodities) become necessary; and Marx explains how commodities develop an absurd economic system and shows alternatives to this. Also they both show an urge for change. Maybe not for the same change, because they live two different times and situations, but in both cases it is possible to see a direct criticism to the central structure of the society that they live in: Marx criticizes all capitalism and society’s need to move on, break from the present standards looking for a better tomorrow; Galbraith criticizes the closed mind that does not let new ideas and new possibilities of future to arrive, he searches for a radical switch in society’s way of perceiving life; looking to open people’s minds to different points of view that were not taken care of