Paul Sweezy Memorial Meeting

 

Posted to www.marxmail.org on April 17, 2004

 

I just returned from a memorial meeting for Paul Sweezy on the west side of Manhattan, where all the presentations were to the point and heart-felt. I want to repeat some of the observations that were made from the podium there, which resonated strongly with me.

 

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 Manhattan that is not exactly Bolshevik territory.) Freed was obviously also somebody who was part of the broad left milieu that came into being in the 1930s. Although most of their time was spent going to movies, dining out or watching baseball games, Selwyn was acutely aware of Paul's importance. He compared him to a fellow physician about whom it was said that he was "often wrong, but never in doubt". By contrast, Paul admitted to Selwyn in one of their frequent political conversations that "one can never be sure about socialism". On a more personal note, Selwyn shared a love of baseball with Paul, who turns out to be a rather fanatical Boston Red Sox fan. Selwyn explained that this was driven partially by a visceral hatred of the New York Yankees who symbolized the evil corporate world as much as anything.

 

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 New York, he participated. The talk frequently centered on the contents of Monthly Review. Our friendship blossomed at these discussions and in social gatherings, mainly at Beadie's dinners. More than the fingers of both hands would be needed to list all the unasked-for favors Paul bestowed. I recall especially when Beadie and I were stuck in Cambridge under doctor's orders not to drive our car home. Out of the blue, Paul arrived in Cambridge to drive us home in our car.

 

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 Paris when the two of them were on a European trip. Harry Braverman and I came to the airport to greet Paul's return. He was clearly upset and melancholy. He began to talk about the need for a successor to Leo. Harry and I urged him to wait until he was calmer and had time to reflect on the potential candidates.

 

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 United States. Mine was scraggly and very ordinary. We came to Marxism and socialism by different routes. Nevertheless, we worked year in and out in close harmony. I don't mean the absence of disagree­ments, but we never had a quarrel. No voices were ever raised. We always found a way to compromise, if needed. It was the best of human relations, a marriage in thought and purpose. The role and continuity of MR was what counted. It didn't hurt that in personal matters mutual aid was the guide.

 

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 Israel and Palestine, the other concerned the entry of the Red Army into Czechoslovakia. In the latter case each one asked for my approval. Leo's article attacked the Soviet invasion. Paul focussed on the steps Czechoslovakia was taking in the direction of market socialism. He saw in it an eventual return to capitalism­an analysis that we now can recognize in Eastern Europe and China.

 

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."