Considering the endless amount of writing, rewriting, revising, rethinking, recasting, etc. he did... yes, all of it is there for a very good reason. It may or may not strike a particular reader's fancy, but there is damned little in that book that is "wasted space". In its own odd way, it is one of the most tightly-structured books that I've read, because even those little divagations from the "main" story play a part in the texture of the world he's creating, and that entire world plays a part in the "main" story.
The fact is, there are tons of things that Tolkien wrote and removed from the book, not to mention those things that he never fully developed, but which are nonetheless closely related to the main thread in one way or another, yet which it was not essential to tell in their full form. These he hints at, gives sketchy information on, etc. They aren't truly superfluous. Tolkien is a much more subtle and careful craftsman than that, and there's a lot more depth to his books than to the majority of fantasy.
Though he avoided direct or "simple" allegory, Tolkien is conveying a very genuine (and complex) worldview through this and his other work, and every bit of what is there is in some way important to getting across that "message".
I've used this quote from William Godwin before, but it seems germane to this discussion as well, so I'll repeat it here:
Quote:
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It is the refuge of barren authors, only, to crowd their fictions with so great a number of events, as to suffer no one of them to sink into the reader's mind. It is the province of true genius to develop events, to discover their capabilities, to ascertain the different passions and sentiments with which they are fraught, and to diversify them with incidents; that give reality to the picture, and take a hold upon the mind of a reader of taste, from which they can never be loosened.
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