-----Original Message-----
Date: Mon, 10 Jan 2005 16:01:58 +0000
From: "Carl Remick" <carlremick at hotmail.com>
Subject: RE: [lbo-talk] Heilbroner dead
Message-ID: <BAY101-F22C5859871F1198BBBFB7DC8970 at phx.gbl>
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>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
True enough, and in his later productive years he was too quick to cede the debate over the viability of socialism to the Hayekians. That said, Heilbroner was one of the most decent & humane economists of his time. If he eventually came to the conclusion that socialism really couldn't work, he never stopped insisting that capitalism in its late twentieth century variants is morally unacceptable. I knew him only slightly, but my memories of him are of a kind thoughtful scholar. Few of his ilk remain, esp. in economics.
It's interesting that The Worldly Philosophers was second in sales only to Samuelson's textbook among economics works. Whatever is in Heilbroner's book that hooks undergraduates into pursuing economics must get purged pretty thoroughly in grad school, or the discipline would be very different from what it is.
Gary
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End of lbo-talk Digest, Vol 13, Issue 72
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