[DEBATE] : (Fwd) Andrew Glyn, RIP

[Patrick Bond]

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/