Galbraith anticipated the evolution of today’s capitalism. Rather than conceive of it as operating on the same “ market-force” principles as a medieval fair or Middle Eastern souk, where buyers and sellers interact to find prices that reflect preferences and scarcities, he thought of markets as cockpits for the interplay of concentrations of private corporate power. Prices would, of course, be manipulated; consumers and governments would be hoodwinked; employees could expect a raw deal.

What keeps executives, owners and politicians honest are embedded and strong institutions representing other forces – unions, strong consumer groups, independent regulators, checks and balances within companies and effective political parties as alternative governments-in-waiting.

Galbraith would not have been surprised at the degeneration of corporate culture worldwide: too much indulgence of greed as a market “incentive” and too much indulgence of market power dressed up as “wealth generation”. Investment banking (witness the latest fraud allegations against Goldman Sachs) is a particular cesspit. The institutions of countervailing power have been dismantled to allow “market forces” better to operate