We Mourn for Joerg Huffschmid (1940-2009)

On the morning of 5 December 2009, Joerg Huffschmid passed away. With him we lose one of the world’s most important economists of the post-war era. In 1975, Joerg Huffschmid founded the “Workgroup on Alternative Economic Policy / Arbeitsgruppe Alternative Wirtschaftspolitik”, together with Rudolf Hickel and Herbert Schui, and for more than 35 years set

On the morning of 5 December 2009, Joerg Huffschmid passed away. With him we lose one of the world’s most important economists of the post-war era.
In 1975, Joerg Huffschmid founded the “Workgroup on Alternative Economic Policy / Arbeitsgruppe Alternative Wirtschaftspolitik”, together with Rudolf Hickel and Herbert Schui, and for more than 35 years set its discourse on economic policy. For many decades he contributed to developing its political orientation in the drafts outlining the annual memoranda, for the last time in February 2009.
Already in 1969, Joerg had presented the book “Die Politik des Kapitals. Konzentration und Wirtschaftspolitik in der Bundesrepublik / The Policy of Capital. Concentration and Economic Policy in the Federal Republic”, published by Suhrkamp, which is an analysis still worth reading today and is by many regarded as a predecessor of the later memoranda.
In 1995, Joerg was a founding member of and driving force behind the “Workgroup of European Economists for an Alternative Economic Policy in Europe”, who will present their EuroMemorandum 2009 in a few days.
In 2000, Joerg Huffschmid was a member of the Enquête Commision on “Globalisation of the World Economy – Challenges and Answers” of the German Federal Diet. He was also the co-editor of the political scientific monthly “Blaetter fuer deutsche und internationale Politik / Sheets on German and International Politics” and was a member of the monthly journal “Wissenschaft und Frieden / Science and Peace”, of the “Bremische Stiftung für Rüstungskonversion / Bremen Foundation for Arms Conversion”, of “Z. Zeitschrift für marxistische Erneuerung / Z. Journal for Marxist Renewal” and of the anti-globalisation network Attac.
In recent years he helped the members of Die Linke hone their positions on the financial market crisis and on their demands for concrete measures of bank and financial market regulation.
Joerg’s death should spur us all to increase our efforts of fighting mass unemployment and poverty, ecological destruction and social insecurity and to be instrumental in bringing about concrete measures in favour of social justice and social security.

(Translated from a text by Axel Troost, abr.)