Future as History [Paperback]

Robert L. Heilbroner (Author)

Product Details

• Paperback
• Publisher: Joanna Cotler Books (December 1960)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0061313866
• ISBN-13: 978-0061313868
• Product Dimensions: 7.8 x 5.2 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 7.2 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 2.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #3,777,365 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

0 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars A Comprehensive Theory of Everything, January 1, 2011

By 

Stephen M. Prescott (Minneapolis, Minnesota United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Future as History (Unbound)

This highly readable, sweeping analysis of history argues that socialism is both desireable and inevitable as the next stage of human social development. I first read it in high school many years ago when I was just starting to think about the world and I was thrilled. To a teenager trying to understand the world he was entering into, it provided a lot of fairly easy answers. It made me feel smarter than I actually was.

50 years later, I understand that things are not nearly as simple as Heilbroner presented them. And it pains me to see that some people who have lived as long as I have still cling to these childish ideas. Plato's cave allegory holds true: as long as life can be sustained with a reasonable amount of comfort, people will prefer a pleasant illusion to reality.

This book was published in the years following WWII when so many gifted men thought they could solve the problems arising from intractable human nature. And while it is hard to ascribe hubris to men who fought that war and then set about trying to create a better world, their theories have not only been proven wrong but have spawned an entrenched political class that views the common people not as fellow citizens but as subjects for social experimentation -- a process of objectification which views society as a system and the individual as no more than a component of the system. In the USA, approx. 40 million unborn children have been murdered under a theory designed, in truth, to make the system function more efficiently.

If you really want to create a better world, put down the mouse, go out the door and find a person or a family that you can help and then help them. If you have the resources (your own not somebody else's), help lots of people. But if you waste your life trying to change the structure of society, then you stand to come to the end of it having, at best, helped no one. If you cherish the romantic illusion that you are a champion of the oppressed, taking my advice will mean accepting the fact that you are actually an ordinary person just like the rest of us. It also will mean that you are entering into reality which is the proper place for those who are not playing games but really do want to make something of their lives.