Profile Major Works Resources

Paul M. Sweezy, 1910-2004

American Neo-Marxist economist.

Born to a New York, son of a prominent banker, Paul Marlor Sweezy was educated at Harvard.  After receiving his BA in 1932, Sweezy spent some time at the LSE and Vienna.  Returning to the US in 1933, Sweezy enrolled against at Harvard, and came under the tutelage and mentorship of Josef Schumpeter.  Sweezy obtained his Ph.D. in 1937, and stayed on at Harvard as a lecturer.

Paul Sweezy is best known in economics for two not-so-distinct concerns which have dominated his economics: analyzing monopolistic competition and updating Marxian thought into "Neo-Marxian" economics.  His work on the former is best exemplified by his discovery of the "kinked" demand curve for oligopoly (1939) and his prize-winning study on the English coal industry (1938).

Sweezy had first encountered  Marxian theory during his European sojourn.. In his majestic 1942 book, Theory of Capitalist Development, helped reintroduce Marxian thought to economics - in particular drawing attention to Marx's "Transformation Problem" and the theory of crisis. Sweezy subsequently translated Böhm-Bawerk's classic 1896 critique of Marx as well as Hilferding's response.

In 1945, despite the support of Schumpeter and other faculty, Sweezy's appointment at Harvard was not renewed and Sweezy left academia.  In 1949, Sweezy co-founded the Monthly Review, as its subtitle indicates, an independent socialist magazine.  It would be the principal forum for radical economics and political thought for the next few decades, edited almost throughout by Sweezy.   It is unsurprising that Sweezy came within the sights of the American establishment at the height of the Cold War.  He was summoned and jailed for "contempt" by the McCarthyite New Hampshire legal establishment in 1953 - a conviction only overturned in 1957 by the US Supreme Court (see statement by Sweezy)).

Sweezy became involved in an infamous debate with Maurice H. Dobb on the issue of the transition from feudalism to capitalism (e.g. 1976). Sweezy was also a proponent of an "underconsumption" interpretation of Marx, a new theory of imperialism rooted in "dependency" and the examination of Keynesian demand management as a life-valve for capitalism - ideas commonly associated with the Monthly Review, which Sweezy helped found in 1949 and which he edited for the rest of his career which was to be highly influential on the emerging "New Left". Sweezy saw these ideas as a way of modernising the Marxian theory of crisis and he set them forth both in his numerous writings in the Monthly Review and, perhaps most famously, in his highly influential Monopoly Capital (1966) written with Paul Baran.

 

  

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Major works of Paul M. Sweezy

  • "The Thinness of the Stock Market", 1930, AER.
  • "Professor Pigou's Theory of Unemployment", 1934, JPE.
  • "On the Definition of Monopoly", 1937, QJE.
  • "Expectations and the Scope of Economics", 1938, RES
    Monopoly and Competition in the English Coal Trade, 1550-1850, 1938.
  • "Demand Under Conditions of Oligopoly", 1939, JPE
  • The Theory of Capitalist Development: Principles of Marxian political economy, 1942. [1970 ed: av]
  • "John Maynard Keynes", 1946, Science and Society.
  • Socialism, 1948.
  • The Present as History, 1953.
  • Cuba: Anatomy of a revolution, with L. Huberman, 1960.
  • Monopoly Capital with P. Baran, 1966.
  • Socialism in Cuba, with L. Huberman, 1969.
  • On the Transition to Socialism, with C. Bettelheim, 1971.
  • The Dynamics of U.S. Capitalism, with H. Magdoff, 1972.
  • Modern Capitalism and other essays, 1972.
  • The Transition from Feudalism to Capitalism, 1976.
  • The End of Prosperity, with H. Magdoff, 1977.
  • The Deepening Crisis of US Capitalism, with H. Magdoff, 1979.
  • Four Lectures on Marxism, 1981.
  • Post-Revolutionary Society, 1981.
  • Stagnation and Financial Explosion, with H. Magdoff, 1987.
  • The Irreversible Crisis, with H. Magdoff, 1989.

 
HET

 
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Resources on Paul M. Sweezy

  • "The Sweezy-Walsh Case" at Harvard Crimson, 1955 [online]
  • "Charges connect Paul Sweezy to Pro-Communists" at Harvard Crimson, 1955 [online]
  • "Statement to the New Hampshire Attorney General" by Paul M. Sweezy, 1957 [mro]
  • "Monopoly Capital at the Turn of the Millennium" by John Bellamy Foster, 2000, Monthly Review [mro]
  • "Sweezy versus New Hampshire: The Radicalism of Principle" by John J. Simon, 2000, Monthly Review [mro]
  • "Happy Birthday Paul!" 2000, Monthly Review, [mro], also Harry Magdoff's editorial [mro]
  • Monthly Review website
  • "Inflazione, ristagno e crisi dell’economia mondiale a partire dagli anni settanta: il contributo di Paul M. Sweezy ed Harry Magdoff" by Marco Bonzio, 1998, SdPE
  • Paul M. Sweezy memorial at Monthly Review
  • Sweezy obituary at NY Times, 2004
  • Sweezy obituary at the Guardian
  • Sweezy obituary at International Socialist Review
  • Wikipedia
 
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