Paul
Sweezy, the son of a vice president of the First National Bank of
New York, was born on 10th April, 1910. He was educated at Philips
Exeter Academy and Harvard University,
where he edited the journal, Crimson.
In 1932 he went to the London School of Economics
where he came under the influence of Harold
Laski.
Sweezy
returned to the United States as a Marxist
and began work on The Theory of Capitalist
Development. This was eventually published in 1942. He
became active in politics and in 1948 was a supporter of Henry
Wallace and the Progressive Party.
In
1949 Sweezy and Leo Huberman established the radical journal, The
Monthly Review. Contributors included Albert
Einstein, W. E. B. DuBois, Jean-Paul
Sartre, Fidel Castro, Che
Guevara, Malcolm X, G.
D. H. Cole, E. P. Thompson, and Ralph
Milliband.
Sweezy
was a victim of McCarthyism. In 1954
he received a jail sentence after refusing to hand over notes for
a lecture he had given at the University of New Hampshire.
In
1960 Sweezy and Huberman travelled to Cuba
where they studied Castro's reforms in education, nationalisation
of industry and land reform. In a special issue of The
Monthly Review (Cuba: Anatomy
Of A Revolution) Sweeezy and Huberman argued that Cuba
was undergoing a socialist revolution.
Sweezy
was co-author with Paul Baran of Monopoly
Capital (1965). In the 1970s Sweezy became increasingly
concerned with environmental issues and the undeveloped world. In
1971 he wrote "the principal (capitalist) contradiction... is
not within the developed part but between the developed and undeveloped
parts".
Paul
Sweezy
died on 27th February, 2004.
Available
from Amazon Books (order below)
