[Marxism] re Sweezy

[Jim Farmelant]

On Sun, 01 Feb 2009 21:20:21 -0430 "michael a. lebowitz"
<mlebowit at sfu.ca> writes:
> Jim,
>     You asked for some specifics. Ok, you begin by saying 'Sweezy in 
> 
> fact was one of the pioneer Keyensian
> economists in the US, right alongside his more famous colleagues 
> like 
> Paul Samuelson..' Aside from the fact that Samuelson wasn't a 
> colleague 
> [maybe a student in the socialism class-- I can't recall; remember 
> that 
 
Paul Samuelson, Paul Sweezy, and J.K. Galbraith
were all graduate students under Joseph Schumpeter
within roughly the same time period.  Sweezy and
Samuelson were by no means strangers to each other.
In fact many years later Samuelson wrote a rather
glowing tribute to Sweezy & Schumpeter in his Newsweek column.
 ------------------------------------------------
 When Diaghilev revived his ballet company he had the original Bakst sets

redone in even more vivid colors, explaining, "so they would be as
brilliant 
as people remember them." Recent. events on college campuses have 
recalled to my inward eye one of the great happenings of my own lifetime.

It took place at Harvard back in the days when giants walked the earth
and Harvard Yard.

Joseph Schumpeter, Harvard's brilliant economist and social prophet, 
was to debate with Paul Sweezy on "The Future of Capitalism." 
Wassily Leontief was in the chair as moderator, and the Littauer 
Auditrium could not accommodate the packed house.

Let me set the stage. Schumpeter was a scion of the aristocracy of 
Franz Josef's Austria. It was Schumpeter who had confessed to three 
wishes in life: to be the greatest lover in Vienna, the best horseman in
Europe, a
nd the greatest economist in the world. "But unfortunately," as he used
to 
say modestly, "the seat I inherited was never of the topmost caliber."

Half mountebank, half sage, Schumpeter had been the enfant terrible 
of the Austrian school of economists. Steward to an Egyptian princess, 
owner of a stable of race horses, onetime Finance Minister of Austria, 
Schumpeter could look at the prospects for bourgeois society with the 
objectivity of one whose feudal world had come to an end in 1914. 
His message and vision can be read in his classical work of a
quarter-century 
ago, Capitalism, Socialism, and Democracy.

Whom the Gods Envy

Opposed to the foxy Merlin was young Sir Galahad. Son of an executive 
of J.P. Morgan's bank, Paul Sweezy was the best that Exeter and Harvard 
can produce ... [and] had early established himself as among the most
promising 
economists of his generation. But tiring of the conventional wisdom of
his age, 
and spurred on by the events of the Great Depression, Sweezy became one
of 
America's few Marxists. (As he used to say, you could count the noses of
U.S. 
academic economists who were Marxists on the thumbs of your two hands: 
the late Paul Baran of Stanford; and, in an occasional summer school of 
unwonted tolerance, Paul Sweezy.)

Unfairly, the gods had given Paul Sweezy, along with a brilliant mind, a
beautiful 
face and wit. With what William Buckley would desperately wish to see in
the 
mirror, Sweezy laced the world. If lightning had struck him that night,
people 
would truly have said that he had incurred the envy of the gods.

So much for the cast. I would have to be William Hazlitt to recall for
you the 
interchange of wit, the neat parrying and thrust, and all made more
pleasurable 
by the obvious affection that the two men had for each other despite the
polar 
opposition of their views.

From
Paul Samuelson, “Memories,” Newsweek, June 2, 1969, as quoted in
"Remarks On Paul Sweezy On The Occasion Of His Receipt Of The
Veblen-Commons Award"
Monthly Review ,  Sept, 1999   by John Bellamy Foster 

> Sweezy was denied a job at Harvard], 

In fact both Sweezy and Samuelson were denied
jobs at Harvard:  Sweezy for being a red,
and Samuelson, apparently, for being a Jew,
even though Schumpeter had gone to bat for
both men.  Samuelson was, however, able to land a job
across the river at MIT, which at that time
didn't have much of an economics department,
but which in time would become famous
because of Samuelson.  Sweezy, on the other
hand was not to land a permanent position
in the academy, despite his great gifts
(while both Sweezy and Samuelson were
Schumpteter's favorites:  of the two, as
Samuelson conceded, Sweezy was 
THE favorite of Schumpeter).

Now a days, Harvard apparently no
longer discriminates against Jews, but
it still holds the line against reds.

Jim F.
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