True, more countries must develop efficient systems for posthumous donation, a very important source of organs. But even in Spain, which is famously successful at retrieving organs from the newly deceased, people die while waiting for a kidney.

The debate over Chávez s political legacy is a posthumous re enactment of the ideological battles that were fought while he was alive. The battle for his economic legacy is more straightforward it comes down to how he managed Venezuela s oil wealth.

The global economic collapse of 2007 2008 discredited rational expectations economics (though its high priests have yet to recognize this) and brought both Keynes and Hayek back into posthumous contention. The issues have not changed much since their argument began in the Great Depression of the 1930 s.

LONDON The Austrian economist Friedrich von Hayek, who died in 1992 at the age of 93, once remarked that to have the last word requires only outliving your opponents. His great good fortune was to outlive Keynes by almost 50 years, and thus to claim a posthumous victory over a rival who had savaged him intellectually while he was alive.