This statement sent me scurrying back to my copy of Weeks at the first opportunity, Rakesh, because it didn't sound like him. I see Weeks as a fundamentalist marxist, and couldn't imagine him praising Sweezy (or, more so, Baran and Sweezy). Turns out he didn't.
When he mentions Becker, Weeks is contrasting two groups of writers, both claiming to be Marxists: those who he says have "abandoned value theory at the center of the analysis of capitalism" (and yes he lists Baran and Sweezy, along with Sherman and E.O. Wright--writing this in 1981), and those who still recognize the central role of value theory (Becker, Shaikh, and Europeans like Ben Fine, Harris and Himmelweit--no mention of Mattick). He returns to further criticize B&S in his chapter on Competition Among Capitals. He argues their use of monopoly/competition ahistorically imposes a bourgeios view of competition as a force that is external to capitalist relations. Contrary to B&S, Weeks argues, numbers or size of competitors are not key; the key is the social relations that determine and regulate the interaction of producers. Further, "the existence of capitalism implies competition....Competition is the 'inner nature' of capital, its force manifested in all the complex appearances that capial's movement assumes, and none of the appearances can be considered independently of competition, though the underlying basis of capitalist reproduction can be." (p. 164)
In a note to you a week or two ago, I mentioned how in several MR articles Sweezy, stung by criticism that B&S had abandoned marxian value theory, had traced through the development of their rising surplus theory starting with marxian values. At the same time, however, he of course reaffirmed the central role of monopoly in exchange--transferring value from small, competitve firms to large ones, and from wages to surplus value. So the disagreement is clear. As I said then, I find B&S's arguments laying so much of an explanation at the feet of monopolization unconvincing.
Becker's book can be seen as an attempt to take the same rise in U/P that B&S saw (although he treats it much more narrowly, as I recall, looking mostly at unproductive labor, but not at other kinds of unproductive spending), and explain it without recourse to monopoly; i.e., within the law of value. Hence his praise by Weeks.
>I am wondering if the nettlesome contradictions laid out by Becker is what
>Roger had in mind.
>
>Drawing on Shane Mage's classic dissertation, James F Becker writes:
>
>"The expanding ciruculatory system is composed of unproductive labor,
>living an dcongealed, and the relative growth of this labor *diminishes
>rather than augments* the surplus...[A] given rate of unproductive
>consumption pulls the real rate of accumulation below its feasible maximum:
>an increase in the rate further reduces that rate of accumulation. To be
>sure, the accumulation of circulatory capitals may stimulate a rise in
>aggregate demand, in this helping to reduce the 'deflationary gap', as the
>Keynesians refer to it. But the accumuolation of unproductive labor, and
>the growth of unproductive consumption, helps to solve ther elaization
>problem from two directions, and not merely by the stimulus it gives to
>aggregate demand. At the same time that unproductive investment raises
>aggregate demand in proportion to its own growth, it lowers the real rate
>of grwoth of the system. It reduces there increase of demand required to
>close the deflationary gap and solves the realisation problem. In other
>words, the problem of the deficiency in aggregate demand tends to dsapear
>with the capitalist solution of the realisation problem, with the
>accumulation of unproducitve labor, that is, the allocation of social
>capitals into circulatory activity on an extending scale. Th esolution of
>this problem, however gives to others aat least as serious. First of all,
>it tends to economic stagnation, and this *reinforces* the tendency of the
>general rate of profit to fall. Secondly, by by retarding the grwoth rate,
>it gives to a higher rate of secular unemployment as the population and
>labor continue to grow. Finally it occasions the plague of inflation. All
>of these are best seen, not as a response to a new law of rising surplus,
>but as a new response to the old tendency for the general rate of profit to
>fall." p. 238
This is an OK try at the purely economic effects of productive labor (directly on aggrgate demand, growth and profits, etc.--though I'm still looking for my copy of Becker and am not sure I agree with the effects described in this quote), though a more complete picture requires them to be integrated with all the other unproductive uses of the surplus. But social implications--the reproduction of the social relations of capitalism--may be even a more important effect. Social control of production is certainly the more important motive for the individual capitalist, who cares not about aggregate demand, etc. But even for capital as a class, unproductive uses of the surplus have much to do with finding outlets that (1) do not threaten profits or capitalist imperatives--so social spending to help the poor goes to the bottom of the list, (2) buttress profit possibilities--military spending is primary here, (3) aid in reproducing capitalist social relations--advertising, the school sytem, etc., and (4) are reasonably repeatable outlets over time, to help fight the stagnation inherent in insufficient investment opportunities.