Posted by Claudio Puty
March 4, 2004
(exerpts below are all from Monthly Review's celebration of Sweezy's 90th birthday in 2000)


JOAN GREENBAUM:
There are so many wonderful stories to tell about Paul Sweezy, but the first one which comes to mind, is about the first time I met him. I was taking a course at the New School called Capital, Vol. I. Somehow I had thought that it would be a small seminar, but when I came in, the room—a large, auditorium-sized space—was full to overflowing. A thin man walked up to the podium, adjusted his glasses, and hitched up his pants. Then after clearing his throat he began in that quiet and careful tone. He told us a story about a letter written by Engels to Marx, in which Engels tried firmly to tell Marx that Chapter 1, the definitions of value, was not a good place to begin. Engels' advice was to begin with history; something like the section on Manufacturing which people had experienced and could understand. While the advice seems to have been wasted on Marx, it wasn't on us, the students of the early 1970s. We formed study groups as he suggested and plowed right into the section on Manufacturing. Thank you, Paul!

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ROBERT HEILBRONER:
Many contributors to this celebration can describe Paul Sweezy's contributions to economics better than myself. I nonetheless write on this occasion because I hope to speak for many who, like myself, owe Paul a great debt that escapes easy description.

My story begins in 1936, when I entered Harvard University. In those days, one took four courses a year, at fifty dollars each. One course had to be in science. I chose botany and learned two words that have stayed with me, xylem and phloem; I also attended a lecture series on history of which not a trace remains in my memory, a seminar on William James which led to several more in philosophy, and a survey of art that continued all my life.

My second year was better. I took a course in economics because it was clearly the road to business success. The course was organized into small sections presided over by junior faculty, all teaching from a common textbook which mentioned the Depression twice in its four hundred pages. My own section head was one Paul Sweezy, who quietly explained a text very far from his own ideas, perhaps because he knew that its author, Alvin Hansen, chair of the department who had shrugged off Keynes' newly published General Theory, was (perhaps still unknown to himself) fast becoming Keynes' most passionate American voice.

For whatever reason, I decided to major in economics. I was thereupon assigned none other than the same Paul Sweezy as my tutor, with whom I met weekly. I was becoming vaguely aware of Paul's interest in Marx, but he never had me read Capital. Thorstein Veblen's Theory of the Leisure Class taught me that there was more to business success than economics. Two years later, I reached the finals. Paul had encouraged me to dig into Keynes, about whom I wrote with passion; fortunately, there was no calculus on the exam and Alvin Hansen was its chief judge. I got a summa.

After the war, I had the good fortune of finding the New School for Social Research, very different from Harvard. I saw Paul only occasionally but he encouraged me to turn to the German intellectuals who were the spirit of the school—especially my mentor, Adolf Lowe, who gave me my first taste of a kind of sociological political economy. About this time, I began to write books, inspired largely by Paul or Adolf or both. Actually, I did not see Paul much in those days but I talked with him constantly—not in person but in my head. That conversation still continues as I have turned more and more to a consideration of the growing tendency of economists to consider their work a science. Never mind the disappearance of social formations, of power and obedience, of social norms and class interests, all central to economic thought as Paul and I still silently discussed it.

I rather doubt that Paul was ever aware of his voice within my head, but I am certain he knew of such a connection with many others, like himself in search of a perspective from which one could better grasp the world. Marx is no doubt indispensable for that task, but not exclusively—at least, that is what I seem to hear Paul telling me. Perhaps I misinterpret his voice, but I feel on sure ground when I salute his remarkable capacity to enter into our thoughts. This is a gift, and I know that many will join me in expressing our great indebtedness.

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ROBERT POLLIN:
Paul Sweezy was my first economics professor. He taught "Reading and Using Capital" in the Spring 1975 semester at the New School, my first term as an economics graduate student. There was an electric feeling among New School students as we signed up for Paul's course. I remember telling the student advisor that having Paul Sweezy teach me Capital would be like having Abraham Lincoln teach the Civil War.

The course lived up to its advance billing. Paul took us through the most important issues in Capital and many obscure but still fascinating ones—sharing his wisdom, erudition, sense of purpose, and sense of humor in his uniquely unadorned yet compelling style. Paul's teaching and writing have remained a deep resource for me, starting with my doctoral dissertation, which was inspired by his now so obviously prescient series of MR articles in the 1970s and 1980s with Harry Magdoff on contemporary speculative financial markets.

Given Paul's stature as a world-renowned economist and mine as a lowly graduate student when we first met, it was hardly inevitable that we would become friends. But one of the remarkable qualities about Paul is his eagerness to listen—really, truly listen—to other people, no matter who they are and what they say. This has kept Paul's thinking fresh all these years, as well as simply making him great fun to be around.