Paul Sweezy Memorial Meeting
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I just returned from a memorial meeting for Paul Sweezy on the west side of
Frances Fox Piven, a DSA leader
(Cornel West, another DSA'er spoke as well), was
lavish in her praise of Paul's life-work even though she acknowledged that she
is not part of the "nuclear family" around MR. She made the point
that Paul was not in the business of providing easy consolation to an embattled
left. She remembers him saying in a talk that we were very possibly at the
beginning of a century that would be marked by bloodshed and struggle.
Selwyn Freed was a lifelong friend of Paul. He was a
physician who lived in Larchmont not far from Paul. (It should be mentioned
that Larchmont is a rather wealthy suburb north of
John Bellamy Foster spoke as somebody very close to Paul
politically. (Due to infirmities, Harry Magdoff could
not be present. His remarks, conveyed to the meeting by chair Bob McChesney, appear below.) He stressed how important young
people were to Paul, who was extremely anxious to connect with people in their
20s. He saw them as key ingredients in the building of a revolutionary
movement. John himself first became acquainted with Paul 25 years ago after
sending him an article that incorporated some of Paul's ideas on monopoly
capital. To his great surprise, he received a highly complementary letter. For
years following, up until the time that illness forced Paul into retirement
from politics, they maintained a correspondence that was extremely valuable to
John. Although I am no expert on the professional standards of the academic
left, I strongly suspect that Paul, who was driven out of academia during the
witch-hunt, can serve as a model for others in the field today in terms of how
to engage with and inspire young scholars.
John also stressed the importance of history to Paul, who
always viewed the present in the context of the larger historical landscape.
Once, in preparation for an MR article, Paul spent six months reading the first
few volumes of Arnold Toynbee's "A Study of History". He saw his
mission as explaining to the current generation how they fit into what his
writing partner Paul Baran called the "Long
View".
Paul was never interested in or intimidated by what was
fashionable in the left academy. Once, when John raised the issue of how MR's views on stagnation were being considered outdated by
Marxist economists, Paul's reaction was "They'll learn". This was
also the case with his views on dependency and imperialism, which were central
to the Monthly Review worldview, no matter what other Marxists thought. To an
extent, this supreme self-confidence was cultivated out of an education that
was out of reach to the average person, including Paul's longtime partner Harry
Magdoff. This in turn was related to Paul's patrician
family background, which customarily gives its scions a belief from an early
age that they were fit to rule the world. In Paul's case, this was transformed
into a conviction that this world had to be overthrown. (This is my
interpretation, not John's, for what it's worth.)
Paul was a model to radicals of John and Bob McChesney's generation who saw that Marxism can offer a
sharp and cogent critique of capitalist society without serving as religious
dogma for self-deluding sects. Although I have had a strained relation with MR
over one matter or another over the years, I have the same exact attitude
toward the role of the late Paul Sweezy and Harry Magdoff. As most comrades know, I have a strong
identification with the American Socialist project of Bert Cochran and Harry Braverman that lasted for 5 years in the 1950s. After it
collapsed, Harry went over to the Monthly Review after a short stint with Grove
Press. Those connections are part of the long, pure red thread of revolutionary socialism in the USA.
HARRY MAGDOFF
If I belong anywhere today, it is with you. But to my great
regret, I cannot be physically present. No doubt other speakers will deal with
Paul as a major theoretician, a worldwide influential thinker and struggler for
the sake of humanity. And there is much to say about Paul the human being. Not
to monopolize the stage, I have selected two areas to dwell on: Paul as a
friend and Paul as a co-worker.
We became friends a little more than fifty years ago. Of
course, the friendship didn't spring up out of thin air. It began in a loose
acquaintanceship intertwined with Leo Huberman, and
Paul Baran.
In the early days, a group of us used to meet weekly to
discuss what was going on in the world, Marxist theory, and related topics. A
wit named the group "martyrs and convicts." We were all hounded by
FBI and Congressional committees, blacklisted, and threatened with
imprisonment. And one of us had actually served a term in jail. Whenever Paul
was in
Despite the growing friendship and the frequency of being on
the same side of arguments, I was startled by Paul's invitation to be
co-editor of MR. Leo died in
Shortly thereafter, Paul asked me to join him as co-editor.
The terms would be the same on a fully equal basisthe
same as with Leo. I would be given 50 percent of the stock. As you will surely
understand, that had no financial significance. But it was in Paul's way a
symbol of full partnership.
I asked Paul to take more time before acting on the
selection of an equal partner. In fact, I hesitated to accept. I didn't think I
was qualified. I felt unprepared and needed free time on catching up on the
literature of the previous decades. Moreover, I didn't think I was in the same
league as Paul.
I resisted and urged him to consider other prospects. He
refused, and argued that I would have little to do. He would do all the writing, all I would need to do was review and comment on
the material going into the magazine. Before long I began to turn out Reviews
of the Month and other chores. After a while I reminded him of his early
promise about writing and other responsibilities, Paul smilingly answered, "You
didn't believe me, did you?"
What followed was over thirty years of a remarkable
collective relationship. Our social originsor, if
you wish, class differenceswere distinctly apart.
Paul had about the best education one can get in the
Paul and Leo had an understanding that if they disagreed on
the Review of the Month, MR would then print two pieces up front, each
co-editor presenting his analysis. Paul's invitation to me included a
continuation of that practice. There were indeed two occasions in Paul and
Leo's co-editorship when separate articles were indeed run side by side. One
had to do with the struggle between
Paul was a socialist through and throughin
passionate sympathy with the struggles of commitment and theory. His heart was
with the masses, working in full sympathy and understanding of social
revolutionary and national liberation struggles.
His theory of socialism fully embraced the necessity of
national planning, including the need to control foreign trade. He certainly
did not close his eyes to counter-revolutionary tendencies in really existing
socialism. But he never departed from the thoroughness of his belief in the need
for socialisma socialism based on empowering the
poorest and the most oppressed on a road to an egalitarian societyone
that was truly run by all the people and for all the people.
Paul's last years were tough. The decline was a long one,
accompanied by pain and infirmity. We should be grateful to his wife Zirel for her care and concern during the bad as well as
the good years.
In the good years, Paul and I talked by phone almost every
day. It became increasingly difficult to communicate in recent years. We
couldn't hear or understand each other. Not long before he went into the
hospice program, Paul suddenly asked Zirel to get me
on the phone. His voice was clear and we exchanged some comments on the world
and on MR. As his energy began to drop, his last words were, "I love you
Harry." I answered accordingly. But I never got to say goodbye. Let me
say it now. "Farewell, Comrade Paul."