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Today's
Stories
March 6 / 7, 2004
Alexander Cockburn
Understanding the World with
Paul Sweezy
March 5, 2004
Chris Floyd
Uncle
Sugar: How the WMD Scam Put Money in Bush Family Pockets
Ron Jacobs
Chaos
Reigns: Haiti and Iraq
Lisa Viscidi
Guatemalan
Refugees: a Difficult Return
Yves Engler
Canada and the Coup in Haiti
Mike Legro
Those Bush Ads: Some Dead Bodies Are Worth More Than Others
Javier Armas
A Night of Inspiration: Oakland Benefit for Grocery Workers Strike
Bennett Hoffman
"Who Cares About Haiti, Anyway?"
Bill Christison
Faltering Neo-Cons Still Dangerous
Website of the Day
Haiti Support Group
March 4, 2004
Diane Christian
Sex
and Ideals
Sen. Robert Byrd
Stop the Stonewalling, Mr. President: Fairy Tales, Bush and the
9/11 Commission
Norman Solomon
Assuming the Right to Intervene: The US Press and Haiti
Jack Brown
A Fragrant Saga of Mexico's Greens
Hal Cranmer
The
John Kerry Experience
David Lindorff
Greenspan's Pension
Sam Smith
The Election is Over, We Lost
Christopher Brauchli
Goin'
to the Chapel: The Gay and the Dead
Brian D. Barry
The "Perfect" World of E-Voting: A Computer Scientist
Reports from the Polling Booth
Richard Oxman
Arsonists for Haiti?
Peter Phillips
Haitian
Fantasies: Mainstream Media Fails Itself, Again
Tariq Ali
Notes on Anti-Semitism, Zionism and
Palestine
Website of the Day
What If Boeing Ads Told the Truth?
March 3, 2004
Heather Williams / Karl
Laraque
Marines
Retake Haiti
Jack McCarthy
Guy's
Our Guy: "I am the Chief. My Hero is Pinochet."
Robert Sandels
The
Purloined Label: The Struggle Over the Havana Club Trademark
Juliana Fredman / James Davis
Israeli Organized Crime
JG
The Yuppie Silence on Haiti
Emilio Sardi
The
Colombia/US Free Trade Deal: It's About More Than Trade
Alan Farago
Swimming in Sewage
Mike Whitney
"Blood
Will Have Blood": 143 Murdered in Liberated Iraq
CounterPunch Wire
Nader's Legislative Record in the 1960s
Steve Perry
Kerry
Advisory: Remember Lena Guerrero
Nelson George/ Marcus Miller
Miles Davis & Hip Hop: a Conversation
Website of the Day
$10,000 Is Yours for the Taking: The USS Liberty Challenge
March 2, 2004
William Blum
If Kerry's
the Answer, What's the Question?
Conn Hallinan
Haiti:
the Dangerous Muddle
JoAnn Wypijewski
The Bravo
H-Bomb Test: One WMD They Couldn't Hide
Mike Whitney
Regime Change in Haiti: the Bush Dominos Keep Falling
Ra Ravishankar
Afghanistan, the Liberation That Isn't: an Interview with Mariam
from RAWA
Dan Bacher
Merle Haggard & the Politics of Salmon: "Clearcutting
is Rape"
Greg Moses
Oscar White
Brandy Baker
Mel Gibson's Minstrelsy Show
Little Tucker Carlson
What I Did on My Vacation
Robert Fisk
All This
Talk of Civil War, Now This
Merle Haggard
Kern River
Website of the Day
Rebel Edit
March 1, 2004
Alexander Cockburn
Morris
Thanks War Criminal in Front of Billions
Richard Oxman
Oscar's
Obit: Thanking Bob McNamara
Elaine Cassel
Writing and Reading as "Terrorism"
Mickey Z
Thomas Friedman's Education
Mike Whitney
George Will and Anti-Semitism: a Cul-de-Sac of Prejudice
Heather Williams
Haiti
as Target Practice: How the US Press Missed the Story
Cathy Crosson
Chanson d'amour haïtienne
Website of the Day
God Hates Shrimp
February 28 / 29, 2004
Stephen Green
Serving
Two Flags: Neo-Cons, Israel and the Bush Team
Gary Leupp
Another Senseless Bush Battle: Defining and Protecting Marriage
William A. Cook
Israel:
America's Albatross
Ron Jacobs
Kucinich: Good Fight; Wrong Battlefield
Ben Tripp
A Nosegay of Posies: Queer Weddings at Last!
Leilla Matsui
Dances with Crucifixes
Mike Whitney
Dismantle
the Military Goliath
Yoel Marcus
Down and Out in the Hague
Uri Avnery
The Dancing Bear
Linda S. Heard
Britons and Americans Condemned to a Hobson's Choice
Al Krebs
Unmasking a Secret American Empire: Land, Water & Cotton
Stan Cox
Life (Pat. Pend.): Genetic Commandeering
JG
The Haiti Boomerang: "After The Looting & Pillaging,
Your Hunger Will Remain"
Rick Giombetti
Censorship at the Seattle P-I on Forced Psychiatry
Keith Hoeller
The Bankruptcy of Mental Health Insurance Parity
Dave Zirin
Colorado Football: Buffalo Swill
NADERAMA
Alan Maass
Nader and the Politics of Lesser
Evils
Michael Donnelly
Regime
Rotation: Anybody But Bush...Again?
Niranjan Ramakrishnan
Exeunt Serenaders; Enter Nader
Doug Giebel
So Nader's Running? Get Over It
Bruce Jackson
An Open Letter to Naderites
CounterPunch Wire
Stalinists for Kerry! and Other Roars from the Crowd
Poets' Basement
Davies, Scarr, Kearney & Albert
February 27, 2004
Thomas C. Mountain
A
White Jesus During Black History Month?
Laura Carlsen
Americans
Abroad: Bush is Persona Non Grata
John B. Anderson
Nader's Campaign Brings Back Memories: Creating an Open Electoral
Process
Jason Leopold
Spying
on Kofi Annan
John Chuckman
Nader,
Risk and Hope
Standard Schaefer
An
Interview with Michael Hudson on Putin's Russia
Ray McGovern
Punished
for Honest Intelligence
Saul Landau
The
Haiti Redux
Website of the Day
Bush: Why I'm Running for Re-election
February 26, 2004
Brandy Baker
Is Nader
on to Something?
Jacques Kinau
AEI
to Colombia: "Can't Give You Anything But Guns, Baby"
Norman Solomon
Bugging Kofi Annan: UN Spying
and the Evasions of US Journalism
Greg Weiher
A Purloined Letter: the Zarqawi Gambit
Walt Brasch
Janet Jackson, Bush & No. 542: There are No Halftime Shows
in War
Shadi Hamid
The Music World Explodes in Anger
Norman Madarasz
As Canadian as Corruption
Chris Floyd
Bullets and Ballots
Virginia Tilly
The
Deeper Meaning of the Wall
Amy Goodman / Jeremy
Scahill
Haiti's
Lawyer Says US is Arming Haiti's Anti-Aristide Paramilitaries
Website of the Day
Clear Channel Sucks
February 25, 2004
Dr. Susan Block
Saddam's
Sex Therapist and the Rape of Free Speech
Bruce Anderson
Treacherous Bastards: The Greens and the Dems and Nader
Ron Jacobs
Our Power is on the Streets and
in Our Hearts
Mike Whitney
Bush
and Gay America: the Politics of Duplicity
Sam Husseini
Jesus in 100 Words
John L. Hess
Kick Off or Flub?
Sam Hamod
Bush's Newest Red Herring
Cockburn / St. Clair
Winning
with Nader
Website of the Day
VotePact
February 24, 2004
Ralph Nader
Why
I'm Running for President
Greg Moses
Rally
the Mob! Bush, Gay Marriage and the Constitution
Douglas O'Hara
The
Merchants of Fear: Smearing Nader
Phillip Cryan
Frozen in Time: The WSJ's Paranoid
Lens on Latin America
David Lindorff
John Kerry's China Connection
Jason Leopold
Cheney's Shame: Halliburton Faces New Charges
Gary Younge
Haiti: Throttled by History
Kromm, Masri & Purohit
Why No Democracy in Iraq?
Steve Perry
Tangled Up in Red and Blue: Beware the Electoral College
February 23, 2004
Neve Gordon
Israel's Apartheid Wall on Trial
at The Hague
Kurt Nimmo
Richard Perle, Executioner: "Heads Should Roll"
Jonathan Franklin
US Soldier Seeks Refugee Status in Canada
Al Krebs
The Liberal "Intelligentsia" v. Nader
Josh Frank
Nader's Nadir? Not a Chance
Bruce Jackson
Nader, Another View: "He's as Evil as Bush"
Gary Leupp
A Misguided
Attack, The Passion, Rabbi Lerner and the Gospels
February 20 / 22, 2004
Cockburn / St. Clair
Kerry:
He's Peaking Already!
Derek Seidman
Chasing
Judith Miller from the Stage: Watch Her Run!
Ghada Karmi
Sharon is not the Problem
Vanessa Jones
This Week in Redfern, a Boy Dies, Chased by Cops
Ben Granby
Anatomy of a Night Raid on Balad, Iraq
John Holt
An Air That Kills: Greed, Apathy, Dead People
Saul Landau
Entry from a White House Diary
Tom Jackson
Why They Couldn't Wait to Invade Iraq
Frederick B. Hudson
Slave Power and the Constitution: Jefferson, Slaves, Haiti and
Hypocrisy
Roger Burbach
Argentina Fights Back
Kate Doyle
Lessons on Justice from Guatemala
Mike Whitney
Operation Enduring Misery: the Afghanistan Debacle
Greg Moses
What Gives Texas A&M the Right to Trample the Civil Rights
Act?
David Krieger
US Elections: an Opportunity to Debate Nuclear Weapons
Sam Bahour
Palestinian Issue Riddles Bush's Budget
David Grenier
You Could Get 10 Years in Prison Just for Reading This
Charles Sullivan
Corporatism vs. Single Party Politics
Poet's Basement
Hilda White, Larry Kearney & Stew Albert
Website of the Weekend
The Rumsfeld Fighting Technique
February 19, 2004
Cecilie Surasky
Anti-Semitism
at the World Social Forum? That's Not What I Saw
Ray McGovern
Iraq
Hawks and Deceptive Intelligence: Did They Really Think They'd
Get Away With It?
Tariq Ali
How Far
Will Bush Go in Iraq?
Ralph Nader
Whither
the Nation?
Wayne Madsen
Would Kerry Purge the Neo-Cons?
Norman Solomon
The Collapse of Dean's Cyber-Bubble
Christopher Brauchli
Cheney, Halliburton and the NYT
Mike Whitney
Bush's Iraq Strategy: "I Hope They Kill Each Other"
Lewis Carroll
Bush the Mighty Helmsman from Yale
Website of the Day
Sex Toy Horoscope
February 18, 2004
William Wilgus
Bush:
AWOL and Dereliction of Duty
William Blum
Mush-Minded
Liberals
Dave Lindorff
Bush's China Syndrome
Greg Weiher
Why
is Kerry Getting a Pass?
Mike Griffin
Killing the Messenger: the AFL-CIO's Attack on Harry Kelber
Mark Hand
Kerry Tells Peace Movement to "Move On"
February 17, 2004
Mike Ferner
The
Countryside Murders in Iraq
Mokhiber / Weissman
Corporation
as Psychopath
Marjorie Cohn
DrakeGate:
a Victory for Free Speech
Kurt Nimmo
Bush's
Endgame: a Review of Chalmers Johnson's "Sorrows of Empire"
Greg Bates
Nader Ambush: a New Low for The
Nation
Ximena Ortiz
A Bush
Doctrine, of Sorts
Gary Leupp
Whatever Happened to Gen. Khazraji?
Sen. John Kerry
"The Cause of Israel is the Cause of America"
Steve Perry
Kerry
1, Drudge 0
February 16, 2004
James Johnston
Huddling
with the Cheeseheads in a NASCAR World
Sara Eltantawi
To
Wear the Hijab or Not
Bruce Anderson
Kevin
Cooper and the Midnight Needle
Elaine Cassel
Feds
on Campus: the Drake Subpoenas
Rahul Mahajan
Bush,
Is the Tide Finally Turning?
Kevin Cooper
The Ritual of Death
Stan Cox
Goodbye, Howard Dean
Larry David
My War
Steve Perry
Bush and the Guard: the Cover-Up's the Thing
Website of the Day
Prison Patriots: Help This Vital Film Get Made
Hot Stories
Alexander Cockburn
Behold,
the Head of a Neo-Con!
Subcomandante Marcos
The
Death Train of the WTO
Norman Finkelstein
Hitchens
as Model Apostate
Steve Niva
Israel's
Assassination Policy: the Trigger for Suicide Bombings?
Dardagan,
Slobodo and Williams
CounterPunch Exclusive:
20,000 Wounded Iraqi Civilians
Steve
J.B.
Prison Bitch
Sheldon
Rampton and John Stauber
True Lies: the Use of Propaganda
in the Iraq War
Wendell
Berry
Small Destructions Add Up
CounterPunch
Wire
WMD: Who Said What When
Cindy
Corrie
A Mother's Day Talk: the Daughter
I Can't Hear From
Gore Vidal
The
Erosion of the American Dream
Francis Boyle
Impeach
Bush: A Draft Resolution
Click Here
for More Stories.
|
Weekend
Edtion
March 6 / 7, 2004
Remembering Paul Sweezy
"He
was an Amazingly Great Man"
By ROBERT POLLIN
When news came that Paul Sweezy had died
we turned to Robert Pollin, once a student of Sweeezy's, for
input on Sweezy's economic contributions. Pollin is professor
of economics at U Mass, Amherst, at the Political Economy Research
Institute, which he and his colleagues have made into a power
house of research, most notably into the living wage campaigns
across the US, most recently in New Mexico and Louisiana, which
Pollin pioneered. A few months ago we reviewed here Contours
of Descent: US Economic Fractures and the Landscape of Global
Austerity, Pollin's superb book on the US economy
in the Clinton and early Bush years. Pollin swiftly responded
with the extremely enlightening reflections below. AC.
Dear Alex,
Here are some thoughts on Paul Sweezy.
First, on his major intellectual and
political contributions:
There is no doubt that Paul was the leading
Marxian economist in the United States, and probably the world,
during his lifetime. Certainly he was the most widely recognized
and respected. In my view, he made four major intellectual/political
contributions.
1. His book, Theory of Capitalist
Development (first published, I believe in 1942), was an
extraordinarily cogent explanation of the economics of Karl Marx,
in particular the main themes of Capital. Paul went through all
the basic issues, starting with the labor theory of value, and
getting all the way to the falling rate of profit. However, this
was not merely a work of exegesis-of collecting and assembling
quotes. Paul presented a clear and fair treatment of Marx, but
he also developed some ideas of his own. Perhaps most important,
Paul was critical of the falling rate of profit explanation of
economic crisis in Marx-and that criticism was all the more powerful
because Paul presented Marx's arguments in such a clear way.
But Paul went further than criticism: he also developed the underconsumptionist
strains in Marx's writings, which were not as well developed
in Capital as the falling rate of profit  arguments. No doubt, Sweezy
was strongly influenced by the pull of JM Keynes in developing
the underconsumptionist arguments in Marx. Keynes said the macroeconomic
problem of capitalism was effective demand-and that was the cause
of the 1930s depression. Sweezy saw this point coming out of
Marx, and well before Keynes. [By the way, Keynes himself acknowledged
Marx, along with some obscure people, like Silvio Gessel, as
predating him with an underconsumptionist perspective]. I will
come back to this Marx/Keynes connection in Sweezy. But the main
thing on Theory of Capitalist Development is that it was
a classic, incredibly clear, exposition of Marxian economics.
It remains today the first place I would send a student who wants
to get the basics of Marx in a serious, but still totally accessible
way.
2. The next big book was, of course,
Monopoly Capital, written with Paul Baran, though Baran
died before they finished the manuscript. This book tried, and
succeeded in many ways, to bring Marxism alive for its time.
It was not another exposition of Marxian economics per se, and
it did not use Capital in an orthodox way. It was trying to capture
the spirit of Marxism in an era of giant corporations and big
government capitalism. It focused on the U.S., deliberately,
in the way Marx focused on England in Capital-as the most important
and advanced capitalist economy. It was also written with the
1930s depression and 1940s war-induced amazing recovery as the
background. Thus, Sweezy and Baran hypothized about a "tendency
of surplus to rise" rather than the profit rate to fall.
Surplus would rise because big corporations had monopolistic
pricing power, and so they could extract surplus both from non-monopolistic
elements of the U.S. economy, and from less developed countries,
which at the time included everyone. The fundamental problem
to the internal logic of this system was then, what they termed
"surplus absorption"-who was going to buy the things
that the corporations could produce? This is how they linked
up the issue of big government and imperialism with the functioning
of the monopolistic capitalist model. They said military spending
was necessary to buy up the surplus product; and thus we needed
the cold war, and imperialism, to prevent the economy from again
lapsing into depression. Here again you see the links with Keynesianism,
and with the obviously powerful experience of coming out of the
depression: the only thing that brought us out of the depression
being, obviously, massive deficit spending to pay for the war.
And here is where the idea of military Keynesianism becomes very
clear.
I would add though that the idea of military
Keynesianism was first articulated clearly by Kalecki in his
great short paper "The Political Aspects of Full Employment".
Paul acknowledged his debt to Kalecki many times. He also said
that Monopoly Capital was heavily influenced by Josef
Steindl's book, Maturity and Stagnation in American Capitalism.
In any case, Paul was indeed trying to synthesize Marxism with
aspects of Keynesianism, as well as the theory of monopoly. This
latter connection also made lots of sense, since Paul himself,
in an earlier incarnation, had made a major contribution to the
theory of monopoly pricing, a topic to which I'll return below.
3. The third major intellectual and political
contribution by Paul was, of course, his creating Monthly
Review, and serving as its co-editor for 50 years. I mentioned
this contribution third, but I don't mean to place it third.
It is probably first in terms of overall influence and as a measure
of Paul's lifelong dedication to the left. However, it is also
true that Monthly Review would not have had anything close
to the stature it enjoyed had Paul not also been the author of
Theory of Capitalist Development and Monopoly Capital.
Monthly Review was hugely important, in my view, in sustaining
a serious Marxian left that was talking about real things, and
not wandering into either cult-like Marxology or over academic
trivia. It was also important in maintaining a focus on political
economy as central to Marxism, just as Karl himself meant it
to be. Monthly Review did also spawn something like what
Paul and Harry liked to call "The Monthly Review school."
I would say the most important stream of that school of thought
was its perspective on imperialism and underdevelopment. It was
connected to what became known as the "dependency school"-the
view that the third world was underdeveloped because of the system
of dependency that was created by imperialism. The Monthly
Review version of this approach was more infused with a Marxist
spirit, but it was basically in this strain of thought. Certainly
Andre Gunder Frank and Harry Magdoff was major thinkers here,
as well as Paul himself.
But the main thing with Monthly Review
wasn't so much the specific things that were in it, but rather
that it existed and it kept going, all through the dark McCarthy
period. It then was a touchstone for the left as the 1960s burst
out. This leads me to what I think was a fourth major contribution
by Paul, starting really in the 1970s.
4. This fourth contribution was the work
Paul was doing with Harry Magdoff, beginning in the late 1960s
and continuing through the 1970s and 1980s, of documenting the
emerging form of capitalism that has now become ascendant-the
increasing role of finance in the operations of capitalism. This
has been termed "financialization", and I think it's
fair to say that Paul and Harry were the first people on the
left to notice this and call attention. They did so with their
typical cogency, command of the basics, and capacity to see the
broader implications for a Marxist understanding of reality.
I myself was heavily influenced by this work when I was a graduate
student. Indeed, I got my idea for my dissertation after I read
a Review of the Month by them called "Debt and the Business
Cycle." They were writing such things when, at the same
time, the New School itself didn't even have a field in financial
economics-since most of the people thought this was for the bourgeoisie
to figure out on their own.
5. I mentioned Paul's earlier work on
monopoly and want to come back to that. Before Paul was involved
in Marxian economics, he was a superstar graduate student and
junior faculty member at Harvard. He was the protégé
of Joseph Schumpeter, who was conservative but brilliant and
open-minded. Anyway, in this early phase of Paul's career, he
developed an explanation for how oligopolistic firms set their
prices-he called it a "kinked demand curve." The kink
in the kinked demand curve refers to the capacity of oligopolists
to push up prices beyond what a normal smooth demand relationship
would suggest because of their pricing power. This was an important
contribution in the literature on microeconomics and industrial
organization, and I believe Paul wrote it as a graduate student.
In any case, this theory was in all the textbooks. There is even
a story that someone told me about an orthodox economist, obviously
totally oblivious to anything about the left, who said something
like the following: "Remember that guy Paul Sweezy? He was
this brilliant young economist who came up with the kinked demand
curve theory. Too bad he died so young."
Some other Sweezy stories:
The connection with Schumpeter is very
interesting. Schumpeter clearly admired Sweezy greatly. And remember,
at the time, with the exception of Keynes, Schumpeter was probably
the most prestigious economist in the world. Schumpeter wrote
this massive history of thought book, which went far beyond what
anyone else had attempted, at least in terms of length, called
History of Economic Analysis. The number of references
to Paul Sweezy in the index of that book are quite substantial.
I would guess Sweezy was in the top 10-15 in terms of references-and
that's pretty good when you are talking about the whole history
of economic analysis, including everyone. And this was before
Sweezy had done Monopoly Capital.
There is more to the Sweezy/Schumpeter
connection in my view, though I don't think anyone else had ever
thought about this. Schumpeter wrote this wonderfully provocative
book called Capitalism, Socialism and Democracy. He was
really reaching to be provocative since he started one section
with the book asking the question: "Can Capitalism Survive?"
And he answered no-this coming from probably the leading intellectual
defender of capitalism in the world at the time, with the possible
exception Hayek. But there's more. Schumpeter then goes on to
ask: "Can socialism succeed?" And to this, his answer
is an equally shocking, "Yes, I think it can."
Now Schumpeter goes on to explain what
he really means when he gives these answers. And in both cases,
I think he was heavily influenced by his relationship with Paul.
Can Capitalism survive? He said no because he said capitalism
breeds intellectual freedom, people with critical minds. And
it was only inevitable that this spirit would breed powerful
minds who would turn their guns on the deficiencies of capitalism
itself. No doubt, he had Sweezy in mind here-since here was Sweezy,
the smartest young economist at Harvard, from a ruling class
family, becoming a Marxist before Schumpeter's own eyes. Then
on the question of socialism. Schumpeter says it will succeed,
in that it will be workable, though it will be cumbersome and
bureaucratic, if more egalitarian than capitalism. And how will
it even work at that level? Because the brilliant thinkers who
have grown dissatisfied with the crassness and injustices of
capitalism will also rise to the top in a socialist society,
and make it function decently well. And again, who else could
he have had in mind here but Paul, his student and protégé?
Anyway, I once asked Paul about this theory of mine. He didn't
dismiss it, but of course, he was too modest to claim it was
entirely true. He told me, "well there were lots of people
around then and Schumpeter was just picking up the spirit of
the time." Yes, true, but no doubt, Sweezy embodied that
spirit for Schumpeter more fully and powerfully than anyone else.
On his Harvard career-again I think before
he became a Marxist, Paul and some other graduate students put
together a small book called, I think "A Program for American
Democracy." It was a clear exposition of how to implement
a Keynesian demand stimulus program for the fighting the depression.
My understanding was that it had some significant influence at
the time it came out-Kindleberger, for example, cites it in his
history of the Depression.
Let me finally give a few personal thoughts.
I may be the only person in the world who can make this claim:
outside of high school, the first book I ever read in economics
was Monopoly Capital, and the first teacher of economics
I ever had was Paul Sweezy. In my first semester at the New School,
spring of 1975, I took Paul's course titled "Reading and
Using Capital." As you can imagine, I was totally pumped
to be taking a course on Marx's Capital from the person universally
acknowledged as the leading Marxist economist in the world at
the time. When I met with the student advisor my first day there,
I told him I felt like I would be taking a course on the Civil
War taught by Abraham Lincoln.
Anyway, the advisor-Ron Blackwell, who
is now a leading official of the AFL-CIO-told me that "Paul
Sweezy isn't really a Marxist but a Keynesian." I didn't
know enough to have any idea what Ron meant by that. I have subsequently
come to understand the comment. In fact, there is a lot of Keynes
in Sweezy-as I mentioned before, with respect to both Theory
of Capitalist Development and Monopoly Capital. This
was a powerful synthesis he was attempting, while still retaining
the basic spirit and commitments of Marxism.
There was a fever pitch at the New School
when the course began. On the first day, probably 400 people
or so showed up, and you couldn't get into the room. The next
class, you had to show your proof of enrollment to get into the
class, as another 400 showed up. However, things calmed down
very quickly once we really got into things. Paul was an amazingly
clear and committed teacher. But he definitely wasn't into any
kind of theatre of teaching or histrionics. So the course rapidly
thinned down to 30-40 people who really wanted to hear Paul expound
on Marx.
Among the students-though he didn't come
every time-was Daniel Ellsberg. I noticed this person one day
just sitting there in class, taking notes on the lecture, like
everyone else. This of course was at the very height of Ellsberg's
fame. I said to another student something like, "Isn't that
weird. That guy over there looks exactly like Daniel Ellsberg."
Ellsberg heard me say that, and just walked over to me, stuck
out his hand, and said, "Hi, Dan Ellsberg." Then we
started talking about the class. He said he didn't agree with
Sweezy or Marx, because the Marxian tradition doesn't give enough
weight to spiritual and religious impulses in understanding human
behavior, or something to that effect. Anyway, it was a very
interesting discussion. Ellsberg was perfectly happy to mix it
up with the students, and try to learn from the great Sweezy.
At the time, the first English translation
of the Grundrisse had just been published. Paul was extremely
upset about the way it had turned out, and mentioned it to us
repeatedly. As I recall, it all hinged on a mistranslation of
the word from German, "Realization" I really don't
remember the problem exactly, but on reflection it all definitely
had to do with Paul's focus on the issue of underconsumption,
or "realization failure" in understanding Marx's theory
of economic crisis. Apparently Paul thought all this got garbled
in the English translation of the Grundrisse, where it
had been very clear in the original. This was a regular theme
in the class, and became a joke among the students-here goes
Sweezy again on "realization"
Another more trivial thing about Paul
then that we students joked about was the way he dressed. He
had these two loud short-sleeved shirts-one I think was orange
and the other one was blue. He seemed to wear these shirts on
alternating days-as though he knew which loud shirt to wear according
to the day of the week. We would say, "it's a good thing
he has on his blue shirt today. Otherwise, we might be going
over the material from last week's class." The general point
is this: Paul was completely unadorned, completely without pretension,
and paid not the slightest bit of attention to how he dressed.
Which brings up another point. Paul was
legendarily handsome in his younger years, and apparently the
attraction for women remained powerful. Some evidence: Paul
Samuelson himself wrote about it, in an article in Newsweek
called, I believe, "When Gods Strode The Earth."
Samueulson was writing about a debate at Harvard between Schumpeter
and Sweezy in the midst of the Depression, when Samuelson was
a student there. In the article, as I recall, Sweezy, not Schumpeter,
was "the God"-he was so smart, so rich, so handsome,
and so Marxist. He apparently made mincemeat of the great Schumpeter,
debating the most burning issue of the time. More evidence: In
the mid 1980s I was at a small weekend retreat sponsored by MR.
I happened to be talking to woman professor at the conference,
Patricia Fernandez-Kelly (used to be at Johns Hopkins, not sure
if she's still there). Anyway, I noticed that she broke off our
conversation and became transfixed for almost a full minute.
She then turned back to me and said, "Look at Sweezy. He
is so beautiful." And this is when Paul was in his mid seventies.
So, you asked for thoughts of all kinds
and you've got them. Paul was an amazingly great man. I could
also give you some criticisms, both of his work and his politics.
But at the moment these would seem totally trivial and petty.
Robert Pollin
is professor of economic and founding co-director of the Political Economy Research
Institute at the University of Massachuesetts-Amherst.
He is also the author of the Contours
of Descent: US Economic Fractures and the Landscape of Global
Austerity. He can be reached at: pollin@counterpunch.org.
Weekend
Edition Features for February 28 / 29, 2004
Stephen Green
Serving
Two Flags: Neo-Cons, Israel and the Bush Team
Gary Leupp
Another Senseless Bush Battle: Defining and Protecting Marriage
William A. Cook
Israel:
America's Albatross
Ron Jacobs
Kucinich: Good Fight; Wrong Battlefield
Ben Tripp
A Nosegay of Posies: Queer Weddings at Last!
Leilla Matsui
Dances with Crucifixes
Mike Whitney
Dismantle
the Military Goliath
Yoel Marcus
Down and Out in the Hague
Uri Avnery
The Dancing Bear
Linda S. Heard
Britons and Americans Condemned to a Hobson's Choice
Al Krebs
Unmasking a Secret American Empire: Land, Water & Cotton
Stan Cox
Life (Pat. Pend.): Genetic Commandeering
JG
The Haiti Boomerang: "After The Looting & Pillaging,
Your Hunger Will Remain"
Rick Giombetti
Censorship at the Seattle P-I on Forced Psychiatry
Keith Hoeller
The Bankruptcy of Mental Health Insurance Parity
Dave Zirin
Colorado Football: Buffalo Swill
NADERAMA
Alan Maass
Nader and the Politics of Lesser
Evils
Michael Donnelly
Regime
Rotation: Anybody But Bush...Again?
Niranjan Ramakrishnan
Exeunt Serenaders; Enter Nader
Doug Giebel
So Nader's Running? Get Over It
Bruce Jackson
An Open Letter to Naderites
CounterPunch Wire
Stalinists for Kerry! and Other Roars from the Crowd
Poets' Basement
Davies, Scarr, Kearney & Albert
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