Paul M. Sweezy, 1910-


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 encountered Marxian theory soon enough and 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. He also became involved in an infamous debate with Dobb on the issue of the transition from feudalism to capitalism (e.g. 1976). It was hardly surprising, then, that this young Harvard economist was to became a favorite of Schumpeter's and an anathema to the American government (Sweezy 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 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.

Major works of Paul M. Sweezy

Resources on Paul M. Sweezy

 


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