This book provides an intellectual portrait of John Kenneth Galbraith, a famous institutional economist who examines the configuration of power by the clusters of mores that comprise institutions. The principal focus of the book is Galbraith's celebrated trilogy, The Affluent Society, The New Industrial State and Economics and the Public Purpose, but works before and after the trilogy are also examined.

The Galbraithian System has both modern liberal and radical overtones and suggests that the quality of human life presently suffers needless restriction by the constraints imposed by obstructive institutions. The policy regime necessary to achieve social and economic reform so as to remove these restrictions may be referred to as aggressive social democracy; it includes explicit recognition that the state must intervene to countervail the power of entrenched political economic interests.

Aggressive social democracy would also necessarily concern itself with the affirmation of humanity by generous collective support of the arts and letters.