[lbo-talk] Paul Sweezy again

Doug Henwood dhenwood at panix.com
Mon Mar 8 09:18:00 PST 2004


Michael Dawson -PSU wrote:


>No doubt it's massively dated in many places. But it provides a deep and
>accurate explanation of present realities in three key areas, does it not?
>1. Political economy of the military and military spending in the U.S. 2.
>Political economy of marketing. 3. Institutional origins of the top heavy
>class structure.
>
>Do you think these three areas are outdated? How so?

There's a lot of continuity in 2), but 1) military spending has lost a lot of its stimulative power and 3) there's almost nothing in MonoCap about finance, an institution that contributes a lot to today's class structure, but didn't so much a generation or two ago. Also, the whole model of price leadership is extremely out of date.

Please don't take these criticisms as dismissive - reading MC 25 years ago really changed my life, and got me reading the business press avidly. And as I wrote in Wall Street, it was admirable to see finance appear prominently in the pages of MR, even though it barely appeared in MC, because Sweezy & Co. were closely observing the real world, and their analysis changed with the times, unlike those who cite Lenin on imperialism to explain the world today.

Doug



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