The Imperatives of Consumer Demand (as published in The Affluent Society)
Author(s)
Galbraith, John Kenneth
Abstract
Here Galbraith presents his most cogent critique of the traditional defence of Fordist mass production. Galbraith argues that the established orthodoxy – that the production of more and more goods simply enables the satisfaction of more and more human needs and wants – is rendered fallacious in the face of the actual evidence that it is production itself, aided by the powerful institutions of “advertising and salesmanship,” that has created these needs and wants in the first place.