[lbo-talk] translation of Taz obit of Paul Sweezy

John Mage jmage at panix.com
Sun Mar 7 08:56:20 PST 2004


my 3rd & last post of the day. on 2nd thought, the LATimes piece, while for the US pretty amazing, had little grasp of Paul's thought. the Taz obit from Wednesday was qualitatively more together on that subject. my niece Anita (who lives in Berlin) sent me the following translation, which i paste in with her cautionary heading. lbotalk is "personal use"... no? john mage

STEGREIFÜBERSETZUNG NUR FUER PERSOENLICHEN GEBRAUCH

Christian Semler, die tageszeitung, Nr. 7299, 3 March 2004, p.18 <http://www.taz.de/pt/2004/03/03/a0193.nf/text>

From Crisis to Stagnation and Back Again

Paul M. Sweezy, Marxist and co-founder of "Monthly Review", is dead. His theory of capitalist development was influential.

In the 1960s he became one of the great mentors of the radical left movement on both sides of the Atlantic. Paul M. Sweezy, the economist, unified thoroughgoing clarity in the exposition of Marxist basic tenets with his own approach to the hotly debated questions of the theory of value, the analysis of capitalist growth and its crisis. Sweezy, the political activist, resisted the political silencing in the McCarthy era; later he fought for the civil rights of afro-Americans, was active against the Viet Nam war and for the liberation movements in the Third World. A radical from the non-conformist tradition, he was an economically well off man who betrayed his class.

Sweezy kept a distance to Marxist Leninist orthodoxy and - despite cautious sympathy for the Soviet Union - did not let himself be used for the cause of real existing socialism. Sweezy, the organizer, created with his circle of friends a center of crystallization for the Left around the magazine Monthly Review, which has persevered throughout the turmoil and breakdown of Marxist thought that continues to this day and presents itself still today as an important organ of discussion for the Left. Now Sweezy has died, in contrast to many comrades of his generation at the end of a full life, at the age of 93.

Sweezy’s intellectual world was formed during the Great Depression. His influential “Theory of Capitalist Development”, both a theory compendium and an analysis of the problems of the present, revolved around three subjects of crisis, stagnation, and monopolization. He came close to left Keynsianism however without sharing their suggestions for fixing economic problems.

After the second world war and in the last third of the long postwar economic expansion he published together with his friend, the economist (early deceased) Paul Baran "Monopoly Capital". In this work they attempted to show that the postwar boom was and had to be merely offsetting (covering up?) the development tendencies of the US economy, which was dominated by large monopolies. The monopolies accumulate the social wealth, the “surplus”, but the do not have - despite the military industrial complex and despite a both inflated and decrepit consumer sector - profitable areas for investment. The USA attempt to become a hegemonic world power and to control the countries of the periphery only leads to a spatial and temporal displacement of the dilemma, but does not solve it. In the end there is no way out of economic stagnation.

Sweezy remained reserved vis-à-vis a possible move to the Left of the working class in the developed world, while he set great hopes in the potential for social emancipation in the underdeveloped world. He did not misunderstand the qualitatively new element of "globalization", but maintained that globalization would not be able to lead to an improvement of the conditions of life for people living in the countries of the periphery. They remained in his view the object of exploitation by multinational corporations.

For a long time it looked as if the stagnation theses of Marxist (and non-Marxist) provenance would finally end up in the dust-heap of economic theories. Reality seemed to vindicate the thinkers of permanent growth and “creative destruction”. But now it seems that the last word has not yet been spoken. While at the end of his life Sweezy no longer knew how a “feasible socialism” would look like, he did have quite clear ideas about the capitalist world system. The test of these ideas in the real world has not yet happened.



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