Remembering Paul Sweezy
"He was an Amazingly Great Man"
By ROBERT POLLIN
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There is no doubt that Paul was the leading Marxian economist in the United States, and probably the world, during his lifetime. Certainly he was the most widely recognized and respected. In my view, he made four major intellectual/political contributions.
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[and evidently John Mage isn't the only one...]
Which brings up another point. Paul was legendarily handsome in his younger years, and apparently the attraction for women remained powerful. Some evidence: Paul Samuelson himself wrote about it, in an article in Newsweek called, I believe, "When Gods Strode The Earth." Samueulson was writing about a debate at Harvard between Schumpeter and Sweezy in the midst of the Depression, when Samuelson was a student there. In the article, as I recall, Sweezy, not Schumpeter, was "the God"-he was so smart, so rich, so handsome, and so Marxist. He apparently made mincemeat of the great Schumpeter, debating the most burning issue of the time. More evidence: In the mid 1980s I was at a small weekend retreat sponsored by MR. I happened to be talking to woman professor at the conference, Patricia Fernandez-Kelly (used to be at Johns Hopkins, not sure if she's still there). Anyway, I noticed that she broke off our conversation and became transfixed for almost a full minute. She then turned back to me and said, "Look at Sweezy. He is so beautiful." And this is when Paul was in his mid seventies.