New School for Social Research, Robert L. Heilbroner (March 24, 1919 – January 4, 2005) was an American economist and historian of economic thought.

[2] Robert graduated from Harvard University in 1940 with a summa cum laude degree in philosophy, government and economics.

During World War II, he served in the United States Army and worked at the Office of Price Control under John Kenneth Galbraith, the highly celebrated and controversial Institutionalist economist.

Though an outspoken socialist for nearly his entire career, Heilbroner famously wrote in a 1989 New Yorker article prior to the collapse of the Soviet Union: He further wrote in Dissent in 1992 that "capitalism has been as unmistakable a success as socialism has been a failure"[3] and complimented Milton Friedman, Friedrich Hayek, and Ludwig von Mises on their insistence of the free market's superiority.

", which included both a grim view on the existent state of economics as well as a hopeful vision for a "reborn worldly philosophy" that incorporated social aspects of capitalism.