Then there is the danger to the environment. The growth in population notwithstanding, continued search for resources by the industries they feed adds to an aesthetic and real destruction to our surrounding environment. Heilbroner's main concern here is expressed in his belief that the atmosphere's limited ability to absorb the heat dissipated from rapidly growing industries will seriously affect the world's climate.

This brings us to the third section of The Human Prospect, and probably the most devastating--"Socio-Economic Systems." First, Heilbroner's definition of capitalism: It is an economic order "marked by the private ownership of the means of production vested in a minority class called 'capitalists' and by a market system that determines the incomes and distributes the outputs arising from its productive activity." It is a social order most obviously characterized by an extreme acquisitiveness. This is the economic and social order into which you and I are destined to descend. Certainly, it's only an "ideal type," as Heilbroner calls it--an oversimplified generalization that allows only for high levels of abstraction. Still, it is the force that makes competition as a way of life and allows about one fifth of this nation's population to enjoy roughly 40 per cent of its total income.

In Heilbroner's analysis of socio-economic systems, his treatment of socialism is also presented in extremely broad terms, as "the replacement of private ownership by public ownership, and the displacement of the market by planning." Socialism too is plagued by problems, especially the restriction of civil liberties. The economist's intention is to draw out the very basic underlying assumptions common to both socialism and capitalism and to try to predict how each will be able to deal with the three major challenges of the human prospect. At the very root, both systems rely on a "technological imperative," built into an industrial civilization that requires efficiency, a controlled artificial environment, and a necessary priority of production over the aesthetic aspects of life.

So far, many of Heilbroner's ideas outlined here sound like the mere prattlings of a paranoid glossed over with the verbiage of radical chic; all issues you've studied or read of before. But when they're brought together they take on a new seriousness. Population explosions will exert pressures on both socialist and capitalist nations alike, the inevitable competition for dwindling resources will cause wars of "preemptive seizure" that will eventually lead to an extreme dichotomy between rich and poor countries. Capitalism and socialism will both have to deal with a stagnant industrial production, and the latter will probably fare better, simply because capitalism will have to undergo a transition of income redistribution unacceptable to its long-standing commitment to the ethos of economic advancement. More importantly, neither a traditionally democratic capitalistic society, nor a democratic socialist society could cope with a growing body of science and technology, or burgeoning industrial growth--strict controls would have to be imposed. "In place of prodigalities of consumption," says Heilbroner, "must come new frugal attitudes." Of the utmost consequence, however, are the inevitable strictures on civil rights to which either form of socio-economic system will have to resort.

In his next to last chapter, "The Political Dimension," Heilbroner portrays two convenient facets of "human nature" that will accommodate the coercive states of the future. One is a willingness to accept authority and a capacity for national identity. "Survival," says Heilbroner "must reckon with the need for--perhaps the ultimate reliance on--welcomed heirarchies of power and strongly felt bonds of peoplehood." This argument is difficult to swallow; its basis is rooted in child psychology and I don't think one can draw such grandiose extensions into politics. One certainly can't claim that it is "more courageous and less pietistic," as Heilbroner does, to advocate the following:

...the tensions immanent in socio-economic trends must be worked out within and through political elements in "human nature." ...The plasticity of culture must adapt itself in some manner or other to the needs that spring from man's conditioning; and this does not permit us to assume that the political structure of society can accommodate itself to whatever image we have of what man should be.

In his fifth and final chapter, Heilbroner talks about the human prospect in three different phases. The immediate problems are uses and abuses of power, political history, and economic development, problems like Vietnam that directly affect the "quality of existence." In the next fifty years he sees the key to continued chances for survival as the "relative resilience and adaptability of the two great socio-economic systems." In the long run, he calls for "the reconstruction of the material basis of civilization itself," aided by a new politics of coercion through an appeal to "human nature."

All told, Heilbroner's outline for the future seems reasonably realistic social prophecy, given the delicacy of that kind of task. I'm a little surprised and much more disappointed then to see him condone the present course of events: the development of new technologies to find natural resources, including new sources of fuel; more new technology to control the dissipation of heat; and the input into "backward areas" of "that minimal infrastructure needed to support a modern system of health services, education, transportation, fertilizer production and the like," so as to prevent international disruption. The number of international incidents can be kept down, but it won't mean that many third world peoples aren't suffering while the larger world powers seek a mythical "post industrialism," about which one can only speculate. In the years to come, human suffering will increase around the globe--already spiralling international inflation is a portentious warning of economic stresses to come.

IN THE SIX Sahelian zone countries of Western Africa--Senegal, Mauritania, Mali, Upper Volta, Niger and Chad--Western science and technology in an indiscriminate and "minimal" way, has actually increased the amount of devastation wrought by a 6-year old drought. A famine in the six countries last year left as many as 100,000 dead and 7 million others dependent on foreigners' food handouts. The famine continues and every day more West African nomads die under the hot desert sun. An FAO report on the Sahel says that the destructive farming and grazing practices now more frequent than ever in the Sahel are due to the cumulative effects of "over-population, deterioration of the climatic conditions, and above all, the impact of the Western economic and social system."

Heilbroner says, "At this late juncture I have no intention of sounding a call for moral awakening or for social action on some unrealistic scale."

In the six Sahelian countries, in Greece, Cyprus, Chile, Vietnam and countless other countries around the world people are dying while the United States pursues capitalistic ventures meant to buttress its high materialistic standards of living. And Heilbroner awaits the "negative factors" (the Malthusian reapers--war, malnutrition, epidemics) that will eventually correct the Western way of thinking.

Students too, in their quiesence, in their failure to act out the political attitudes they can only harbor as cynicism, and in their damning desire to squeeze into the "tight job market," are just as guilty as the nation's elders. It's a sad commentary guilty as the nation's elders. It's a sad commentary indeed, that so many college students today lack the courage of their supposed convictions.