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One of the front
ranking Marxist political economists Paul M. Sweezy breathed his last in
Larchmont, New York on 27th February, 2004. Spanned over nine decades, the life
of Sweezy ran as a rich banker’s son with academic life as a student at Harvard
in 1931-32 and then at the prestigious London School of Economics from where he
imbibed Marxism and died a Marxist after about 70 long years. For many the
Monthly Review that he founded with Leo Huberman in 1949 and edited till
death had overtaken him along with a plethora of books, written singly or
jointly, do still provide comprehensive understanding of the Marxist view points
on the capitalist economy, imperialist exploitation in the third world
countries, socialism, etc. Sweezy’s writings on political economy clearly
reflect his command of not only Marxian economics but also other strands of
economic thought. What comes prominently in his long life is an unflinching
faith in Marxism and in the inevitability of socialism by replacing the existing
system of capitalism. There are some valid criticisms of Sweezy’s economic
analysis, but by no means does that undermine Sweezy’s great role as a leading
radical economist and political analyst in the world.
As early as in 1938
Sweezy wrote his seminal work The Theory of Capitalist Development:
Principles of Marxian Political Economy. It was a bold textbook on the
Marxist principles on political economy. And with this Sweezy opened a vigorous
debate with Joseph Schumpeter against his views contained in Capitalism,
Socialism and Democracy. It should be admitted that Schumpeter, the
prominent non-Marxist economist, was a close friend of Sweezy and held Sweezy in
high esteem. Drawing on a melange of elements from Marx and Keynes without any
self-contained model, Schumpeter had also to concede socialism as a consequence
of economic development in which "the economic affairs of society belong to
the public and not to the private sphere."
Schumpeter believed
that stagnation of the capitalist system was caused by political control while
Sweezy pointed to the inherent contradictions lying in the development of the
capitalist system itself. For Sweezy capital appears as obstruction to capital
itself. It is particularly true in Sweezy’s analysis of the tendency towards
under-consumption in the capitalist system.
Sweezy for some time
taught at Harvard, worked for some New Deal agencies and joined the US army when
World War II was on. He was a member of the League Against Fascism and other
popular front organisations in the late 1930s. While working with the Army
Research Branch in London in 1943, Sweezy tried his hand at editing the monthly
magazine European Political Report with a clearly anti-Fascist, left
leaning position. After his short stint at the army, he was denied appointment
at Harvard and he was driven to the conclusion that as a Marxist he had no
chance of a tenured position. A politically conscious Sweezy did not disavow his
Marxist stance and instead teamed up with Leo Huberman to bring out one of the
world’s most prestigious Marxist magazine Monthly Review: An Independent
Socialist Magazine in May 1949 through the financial assistance of Harvard
literary scholar Professor F.O.Matheissen. The first issue carried an article of
Albert Einstein on "Why Socialism?" This Monthly Review has
remained a necessarily invaluable magazine to discern modern capitalism and
movements over decades.
When the Cold War
clouds in the 1950s and draconian McCarthyism in the USA appeared as a menace,
Monthly Review under Sweezy and Huberman became so eloquent in its
scathing criticism that New Hampshire Attorney General subpoenaed Sweezy and
even put him behind bars on charges of contempt of court. A bold Marxist, Sweezy
refused to answer the questions of the court and later the U.S Supreme Court
purged him of the contempt charge in 1957. Sweezy emerged victorious as a symbol
of courage and intellectual honesty. It was times when anti-communism was the
battle cry of U.S. imperialism. The U.S. army invaded Korea and U.S. imperialism
went full steam with its cooked up version of the Korean War. Monthly Review
Press came into being with the publication of I.F Stone’s book refuting the
official version on the war.
In the post-world war
II period the question of transition to capitalism from feudalism sparked a huge
debate with the publication of Morris Dobb’s book Studies in the Development
of Capitalism in 1946. Dobb stressed on the internal contradictions in the
feudal system and the growth of new productive forces in England as the
fundamental cause behind the emergence of capitalism. Paul Sweezy after a couple
of years contended the view with his ‘exchange relation’ perspective defining
capitalism in terms of production for profit through market exchange as against
the near-subsistence economy of feudalism. Sweezy forcefully placed his view
that capitalism emanates through forces like trade and the international
division of labour. Sweezy particularly raised aspects like the expansion of
internal and external trade, inclusive of unequal colonial trade which served as
a major factor behind dissolution of feudalism. However, after half a century of
that rich debate, it seems the internal or external factor – as emphasized by
Dobb and Sweezy respectively – cannot fit in with the development of capitalism
in all different countries. In any case it is in order to add here that both
Dobb and Sweezy held the focus basically on economic changes or the play of
economic factors against the prevalent view of the bourgeois sociologist, Max
Weber, for whom the catalyst of change from feudalism lay in the ‘Protestant
ethic’, a sort of cultural explanation.
Sweezy had his
academic training in classical and neo-classical economics and he admitted that
he had to struggle hard to reach the Marxian theory of labour brushing aside the
theory of marginal utility. In his Theory of Capitalist Development the
significant conclusion was made regarding long-term stagnation of capital as a
consequence of the tendency of capital towards over accumulation. Sweezy was
negatively influenced by John Mernard Keynes, the best representative of
reformed capitalism, going ahead of the classical economists like Ricardo and
others. While discussing value-determination and income distribution those
earlier economists started from the premise that in the capitalist system all
the factors are wholly involved and that for the given state of full involvement
of factors, there is never any scarcity of active demand. Keynes in his
General Theory dismissed such a prevalent view on the full play of factors
all the time as mere conjecture. Keynes wanted to prove that involuntary
unemployment exists in a capitalist society, production level rests far below
the full employment level and here full employment is not an inevitable reality.
He argued that a decrease in wages will also reduce the demands for commodities
and this decrease in demand will lead to stagnation. Keynes recommended that in
the period of decreasing household consumption, unused capacities in different
sectors and acute unemployment, the state should, in the extreme, go in for
increased supply of print money for financing projects for creating jobs. Keynes
also spoke of ‘comprehensive socialisation of investment’ – an opinion which,
however, was kept vague. Actually speaking, in essence Keynesian theory is
devoted to overcoming the massive crisis of the 1930s. Paul Sweezy admired
Keynes as an authentic representative of the neoclassical school "whose main
achievement was to rescue it from some of its worst errors." Like Marx,
Keynes also rejected Say’s Law of Markets (which denied the possibility of a
shortage of demand in relation to production) and Sweezy praised Keynes’s
greatest contribution as lying in the liberation of Anglo-American economics
from a tyrannical dogma. However, Sweezy found such negation "unmatched by
comparative positive achievement". Sweezy learnt from Keynes the "penetrating
analysis of the capitalist economy which shows that depression and unemployment
far from being impossible, are the norms to which that economy tends, and which
explodes once and for all the myth of a harmony between private and public
interests was the cornerstone of nineteenth century liberalism. But Keynes
stopped here in his critique of the existing society…"[Paul Sweezy, Essays
on Keynesian Economics and The Crisis of Capitalism, Cornerstone Publications,
India, 2002, p.13]. Sweezy critically drew on some of the analyses of the
capitalist system but the meeting points end at that, since Sweezy believed that
Keynes failed to see "economics as an integral part of a social system"
and as Sweezy himself was a believer in "a profound change in the structure
of social relations" for a new advance in the "material and cultural
conditions of the human race."
In Marx’s Capital
the questions of capital accumulation, concentration of capital and the tendency
towards concentration of capital, etc. found significance and in the Marxist
tradition Lenin and others argued that monopoly is the intensification of but
not negation of competition. They based themselves on the Marx’s theory of the
falling rate of profit. Paul Sweezy and Paul Baran in their seminal work
Monopoly Capital, in line with the under-consumption view, emphasized a
tendency to stagnation and saw monopoly as displacing competition and the
coercion to invest. Incidentally, in the Keynesian theory too deficiencies in
market levels of demand figure prominently. Sweezy and Baran incorrectly argued
that monopolistic firms do have increasing profits in contrast to Marx’s law of
falling rate of profit. In their view the profits approximate society’s economic
surplus tending to rise both absolutely and relatively with the development of
the system. In here lies, they argued , the structural change from "competition
to monopoly capitalism". The concept of rising "economic surplus" in
the national income is the difference between what a society produces and the
costs of producing it. Obviously this notion of ‘economic surplus’ is quite
different from Marx’s concept of surplus value. Its calculation is made at
market prices in stead of values and it depends on the socially necessary costs.
In addition to that such ‘economic surplus’ is located in the process of
exchange, market domination in contrast to Marx’s notion of surplus labour based
on the labour process itself. Sweezy and Baran were inspired by Michal Kalecki
to conclude that if rising stagnation is not checked, for its inherent inability
to employ the surplus, it must lead to under consumption. Thereby, they tended
to drift away from the Marxist interpretation.
Beside that they
referred to ‘wastes’ as essential to monopoly capitalism, significantly
surpassing that of competitive capitalism. Such wastes are prominently found in
all kinds of sales effort by giant corporations, much-touted outlays on research
and development, regular expenses on litigation, entertainment of clients,
lobbying advertisements and so on. Such phenomena are far too common in the
present day capitalist world. In several later writings Sweezy and Magdoff
pointed to the new trends. Sweezy particularly held the focus on "a secular
increase in society’s debt structure, with a parallel decline in corporate and
individual liquidity. Thus the economy became more and more vulnerable to the
kind of shocks which in the old days used to touch off panics; and in order to
guard against this recurring threat, the need for still more inflation becomes
increasingly acute….."
Monthly Review
and the Monthly Review Press had to function in great adversity. In the early
1950s both Sweezy and Huberman regularly made devastating criticisms of the
Vietnam War in their writings. After the Cuban Revolution in 1959, just 90 miles
away from the U.S.A., Paul Sweezy and Huberman not only supported that event,
they personally got to know Fidel Castro and Che Guevara with whom they had
enjoyed the privilege of touring the island. Sweezy and Huberman discerned this
crucial fact in the aftermath of the revolution that in order to sustain itself,
Cuba must inevitably move on to the path of socialism. Monthly Review Press
published two books on Cuba focussing on its economic transformation.
Paul Baran’s The
Political Economy of Growth was path breaking in the sense that with this
publication the dependency theory came to the forefront establishing Monthly
Review’s role as the great supporter of the revolutions in the third world
countries. After almost a decade, when Sweezy and Baran wrote Monopoly
Capital: An Essay on the American Economic and Social Order, it was
dedicated to Che Guevara. Among the books published in the 50s and 60s Monthly
Review Press, the notable was William Hilton’s Fanshen – the vivid
description of land reforms in Mao’s China. Way back in 1967 Sweezy argued that
the tempo of struggles in the whole of the 20th century had transferred to the
third world and that revolts against capitalism and building of socialism would
unfold primarily in the peripheri of the capitalist world. In this context it is
necessary to mention the victory of Allende’s Marxist government through
parliamentary election and its toppling by the C.I.A sponsored coup in 1973.
Sweezy himself was present as guest-of-honour at the swearing-in ceremony of the
Allende government. While whole-heartedly supporting such a government Sweezy
was candid in his forewarning that without the backing of an armed force and
being cornered from all sides by capitalist states, the popular Unity government
would remain perpetually weak. In the Monthly Review Sweezy made his
brilliant analysis on the tragic experience in Chile with the clear conclusion
that in countries surrounded by the capitalist world revolution can win only
through armed struggle. Since the late 1980s Monthly Review began to
strike a sympathetic chord with the radical working class movements towards
social change. Not only was Sweezy a staunch supporter of the anti-US upsurge in
EI Salvadore, Monthly Review under the editorship of Paul Sweezy and Harry
Magdoff highlighted the Naxalite movement, the student movement in France,
Germany, Italy, etc. in 1968, the Maoist movement in Nepal, the Chiapas revolt
in Mexico, etc. Paul Sweezy joined hands with some other intellectuals in the
early 1970s to protest against state repression on basically Naxalite forces in
India. In 1974 too he was a signatory to the memorandum of protest against
Indian state repression.
Sweezy is also
remembered for his famous debate (1970) with Charles Bettleheim who was at one
with Sweezy on the Monthly Review position on China and the Cultural Revolution.
While Bettleheim characterised the ruling class in the Soviet Union as "state
bourgeoisie" as did the CPC, Sweezy incorrectly considered that the USSR was
a "post-revolutionary society" neither socialist nor capitalist – having
potential to develop into a genuine socialist society. Actually Sweezy, despite
his acceptance of the new ruling class in the Soviet Union, could not think
otherwise than the earlier faith in the non-existence of private capitalists in
the planned economy and the non-separation of the total social capital into
competing or potentially competing units. One may refer to Comrade Charu
Mazumdar’s contrary assertion in 1968 itself pointing to the emergence of
capitalism in the Soviet Union where the classical capitalist class might not be
found. Yet, what is to be stated here is that Sweezy clearly wrote in the
December 1970 issue of Monthly Review that the bureaucrat–controlled
economy in the Soviet Union had either to go forward weakening bureaucracy by
politicising the people or to go backward towards the profit-earning course
towards establishing capitalist rule. However, Sweezy admitted that the new
post-revolutionary societies developed "a military–style cleavage between
the leaders and the people which in time ….. hardened into a self-reproducing
system of antagonistic classes ….." [Paul Sweezy, Preface For A New
(Japanese) Edition of Post-Revolutionary Society, July-August 1990].
Sweezy was never a
member of the American Communist Party which he criticised for its wrong
policies. But, unfortunately he never was part of any communist party and
remained only as a powerful revolutionary intellectual thinker. Similarly he was
critical of the CPSU and the communist parties owing allegiance to the Soviet
line from the Khruschev period onwards. But he was optimistic of Chinese
socialism and he held Mao in high esteem. When the Great Proletarian Cultural
Revolution was launched under Mao’s leadership, Sweezy had a general support to
it. In one of his brilliant essays "Hundred years After Marx" in the
March 1983 issue of Monthly Review Sweezy announced that after Mao’s
death Mao had been dismissed by the CPC and like in the Soviet Union at least
for a temporary period ‘Marxism’ turned into a Chinese ruling class ideology. As
an optimist and unfazed Sweezy, added that Marxism of Marx and Engles, Lenin and
Mao was alive and would continue to remain so, as a guiding spirit for human
emancipation.
Despite such robust
optimism and a sharp analytical mind, a flicker of false hope temporarily
overcame both Sweezy and Magdoff when perestroika and glasnost
came to be presented by Gorbachev as a democratic swing-back to socialist
principles. However, the rapid change of history and the fall of the Soviet
Union and other erstwhile socialist countries in East Europe cruelly dashed such
hope to the ground. Despite this, in his 1990 edition of Post-Revolutionary
Society he made the remarkable comment "….. the crisis of the Soviet
Union and the collapse of its East European allies was not due to the failure of
socialism. The struggle for socialism in the Soviet Union… was lost long before
with the consolidation of a class system, and it was this system which, despite
its undoubted achievements, ultimately failed." It is to be added that
Sweezy contributed in many ways in understanding the problems in a socialist
economy. He was unequivocal in his assertion that market based reforms in the
USSR and East Europe were incompatible with socialist transformation.
About globalisation
Sweezy wrote in 1997 September that it was not an event or state, it is a
process continuing since the time of the birth of capitalism. Sweezy strongly
reacted to the U.S. aggression in Iraq in 1991 and visualised the impending
menace of U.S. imperialism in the world. He was not an arm-chair critic of
imperialism. Nor was he an eclectic thinker. His creative analytical faculty is
well expressed in his writings. Monthly Review has reflected not only an
anti-imperialist, anti-capitalist stance; it has generallyespoused the cause of
socialism. Sweezy and his colleagues made a trenchant criticism of market based
socialism. Similarly Monthly Review articles gave befitting answers to
the anti-Marxist post-modernist views. Simultaneously it provided ample space
for highlighting Marxian view on environment and gender problems. Sweezy will be
remembered as a Marxist who believed that "unlike human beings, social
systems do not die of their own accord. They have to be over thrown by human
agents who find their ills no longer tolerable…."
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