Paul Sweezy Was One of the 20th Century’s Great Economic Thinkers
The Marxist economist Paul Sweezy dedicated his life to understanding how capitalism works, and how it had changed since Karl Marx’s time. The big economic questions that Sweezy addressed are still fundamental for socialists today.
Paul Sweezy (R) and Paul Baran (L) coauthored Monopoly Capital, published in 1966. (Monthly Review Press)
Paul Sweezy was one of the most distinguished and most controversial Marxian economists of the twentieth century. Sweezy took up some of the most vital questions facing those who wanted to understand capitalism in order to surpass it. Although he played a significant role in popularizing the ideas of Karl Marx, he was not content to stop there and developed his own conceptual framework to explain the way that capitalist economies were evolving during the postwar decades.
His two most important books, The Theory of Capitalist Development (1942) and Monopoly Capital (1966), the latter coauthored with Paul Baran, provoked a huge critical literature, and were translated into many languages. The problems Sweezy faced in making sense of latter-day capitalism are still ones that the Left needs to grapple with today, and his influence continues to be felt today in the intellectual world of radical political economy.
Sweezy’s Path to Marxism
Paul Marlor Sweezy was born in New York City on April 10, 1910, the son of a Wall Street banker. He was educated at Phillips Exeter Academy and at Harvard University, where he graduated in 1931, having been taught absolutely nothing about Marx. In 1932–33, he was a graduate student at the London School of Economics, where he studied liberal economics under Friedrich von Hayek and Lionel Robbins, but also learned socialist political ideas from Harold Laski.
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