From: GERALD LEVY (gerald_a_levy@MSN.COM)
Date: Sun Dec 23 2007 - 11:16:02 EST
Date: Sun, 23 Dec 2007 10:40:39 -0500From: urpe-moderator@lists.econ.utah.eduTo: urpe-announcements@lists.econ.utah.eduSubject: [URPE] Andrew Glyn has died
Dear Friends,
It is with great sadness that I pass along the news that Andrew Glyn died today. I just received a phone call from Bob Sutcliffe in Oxford informing me of this.
Andrew was diagnosed with a severe, and inoperable, brain tumor only a couple of months ago. It obviously took hold of him relentlessly. Now he is gone.
Of course, Andrew has been one of the great figures in political economy for more than 30 years. My friends and I were debating his 1972 book with Bob Sutcliffe, British Capitalism, Workers and the Profit Squeeze, when we were graduate students in the 1970s. We didn’t realize then that Andrew was only a few older than we were. Andrew continued to make seminal contribution throughout the next three decades. His most recent book Capitalism Unleashed, is, in my view, the best analytic history of neoliberalism around.
I happened to review Capitalism Unleashed for New Left Review for their August 2007 issue—just a few months ago. I heaped deserved praise on the book and Andrew. But I did also offer some criticisms, including that he didn’t go very far by way of an ending. Here is Andrew’s response to this criticism, which was characteristic of him: modest, extremely funny, and bound up with jazz, which he loved:
“I did worry a lot about how to finish the book off and how much to say programmatically but in the end feebly followed Miles David' advice to John Coltrane - "try taking the horn out of your mouth"”
Andrew was a fantastic person: he was a truly great economist with a deep, lifelong commitment to the left. He was also unbelievably warm and generous as a friend. I also had the good fortune to observe him a bit up close as a father. There is no getting around the loss that his children are now experiencing. But they can also feel fortunate in all that they were able to gain, and will continue to gain, from having been with Andrew.
I think we should be inspired by Andrew’s memory as we move on in everything we do this coming year.
Peace to all,
Bob Pollin
**************************************
Robert Pollin
Department of Economics and
Political Economy Research Institute (PERI)
Gordon Hall
418 N. Pleasant Street
University of Massachusetts-Amherst
Amherst, MA 01002
(413) 577-0126 (office); (413) 577-0261 (fax)
(413) 545-6355 (PERI office); (413) 549-8796 (home)
PERI website: http://www.umass.edu/peri/
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