I vaguely remember Sweezy quoting a critic who noted that while he could indulge fantasies that a persecuted person may have had about the Soviet Union, he found it inexcusable that a person as knowledgeable as Sweezy could have similar illusions. It was't clear to me that Sweezy was unsympathetic to the critic. Perhaps his wanting to remain a thorn in the side of McCarthyite apartheid America motivated him to continue to quote into the 1950s the tendentious works of Stalin, especially in regards to the putative development of democracy in the Soviet Union.
But what I worry is that Sweezy, convinced by his own arguments and perhaps Schumpeter's that capitalism was already in the process of decline, decided to hitch his wagon to what he thought was the rising power was in the world system. Yet as his his fusillades against LaSalle reveal Marx himself resisted socialists throwing themselves behind state power. Now Monthly Review, under Sweedy, did publish Hal Draper's monumental work on Marx, and the Marx that Draper recovers is hardly a Stalinist in the making! Another irony of course is that no one played a more important role in moving Marxists towards Keynesianism in terms of economic theory than Sweezy did. The influence can be seen in Pollin, Wolff, and (maybe Jim will disagree) Devine. The Theory of Capitalist Development which Hobsbawm celebrates as one of the great Marxist works is in fact a very impressive Keynesian performance in demand side and underconsumptionist economics. Its clarity is often astonishing, though I disagree with major parts of it. (Hobsbawn seems to think that the greatness of Sweezy's text shows how much Marxism improved as it moved from the Russian and German worlds into the light of French and Anglo culture!) Even his mentor and friend Schumpeter chided Sweezy for turning Marx into Keynes, not Stalin! To be sure, there is a lot of quoting of Petry, Lukacs, Grossman, Bauer and Hilferding, but how truly different is Sweezy's understanding of capitalist stagnation from Alvin Hansen's theory of stagnation? His later Marcusean theory of the irrational totality of monopoly capitalism and military Keynesianism to which only students, racial minorities, third world peasants and disaffected intellectuals remain exterior is hardly Marxian in any identifiable sense. No value, no FROP, no crisis, no working class. A couple of other points: I read DeLong's website quasi-religiously; it has led to much rethinking. He has been more than willing to criticize President Obama; he has relentlessly critiqued Yoo's and others' argument for torture and the suspension of civil liberties. And I hope that one day I shall be brave enough to post self-criticism that searching and honest, though of course in my case very few people would care. So it makes it all the more impressive when you have a true public following. Second point: Fred, I have to think about your message. Have A LOT of grading to do. I think Shaikh has recently tried to quantify how much the rate of profit was raised by a higher rate of s/v. It does not account for all of the recovery in his estimation. I don't think more than 30%. The recent post 2008 recovery in the rate of profit seems to have come mostly from the rationalization of existing investments, some eating up of capital, and the macroeconomic benefits of ultra-low Fed rates.
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