[lbo-talk] Heilbroner dead

[Carl Remick]

>From: Doug Henwood <dhenwood at panix.com>
>
>Financial Times - January 10 2005
>
>... Dr Heilbroner stopped writing three years ago but he remained a 
>prolific, passionate and controversial voice well into his late 70s. The 
>seventh edition of Worldly Philosophers, published in 1999, included a new 
>final chapter entitled "The End of Worldly Philosophy", which included both 
>a grim view on the current state of economics as well as a hopeful vision 
>for a "reborn worldly philosophy" that incorporated social aspects of 
>capitalism.
>
>"Economics will not, and should not, become a political torch that lights 
>our way into the future," he wrote in the new coda, "but it can and should 
>become the source of an awareness of ways by which a capitalist structure 
>can broaden its motivations, increase its flexibility and develop its 
>social morale."

Heilbroner was a very lucid writer but stuck in a rut, IMO.  He was always 
probing the weaknesses of capitalism but never able to admit that the system 
is irreparable.

Carl