Abstract
Most dissident economists operate either in splendid isolation or as accepted members (the more prominent of them as leaders) of an opposition school of thought. The subject of this chapter is unusual in being rejected both by mainstream academic economists and by their principal intellectual rivals, with whom he had much in common. Paul Baran was a Marxist, but his Marxism was of an idiosyncratic variety which rendered him something of an outcast among outcasts. His is the only case among those considered here of a writer who could claim to be a heretic in this double sense.
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Notes
Unless otherwise stated, all biographical detail is taken from P. M. Sweezy, ‘Paul Alexander Baran: a Personal Memoir’, in L. Huberman and P. M. Sweezy (eds), Paul Baran: a Collective Portrait (New York: Monthly Review Press, 1965), pp. 27–48.
Contribution by Isaac Deutscher to Huberman and Sweezy, op. cit., p. 94.
R. Jacoby, Dialectic of Defeat: Contours of Western Marxism (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1982), pp. 109–10;
see also M. Jay, The Dialectical Imagination (London: Heinemann, 1973).
J. K. Galbraith, A Life in Our Times (London: Deutsch, 1981), pp. 220, 233.
Paul M. Sweezy was born in New York City in 1910 (the same year as Baran), the son of a Wall Street banker. Educated at Harvard and the London School of Economics, Sweezy worked for various New Deal agencies but dropped out of academia when it became clear that he would not be granted tenure at Harvard. During the Second World War he was employed by the Office of Strategic Services and in 1949 founded — with Leo Huberman — Monthly Review, a Marxist journal independent of party control but broadly sympathetic to Soviet Communism. Sweezy was the victim of considerable harassment during the McCarthy period, but survived to hold visiting appointments at Cornell, Stanford and Yale Universities between 1958 and 1972, and to serve on the executive of the American Economic Association in 1964–7. See M. Blaug, Who’s Who in Economics (Brighton: Wheatsheaf Books, 1982), pp. 367–8;
L. F. Lifschultz, ‘Could Karl Marx Teach Economics in America?’, Ramparts 12, April 1974, pp. 54–5;
G. C. Harcourt, ‘Lorie Tarshis’, in Harcourt, The Social Science Imperialists (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1982), pp. 367, 370–1, 375n;
P. M. Sweezy, Four Lectures on Marxism (New York: Monthly Review Press, 1981), pp. 11–15. (Tarshis and Sweezy offer rather different accounts of Sweezy’s intellectual development.)
Galbraith, op. cit., pp. 219–21.
P. A. Baran, ‘National Economic Planning’, pp. 355–403 of B. F. Haley (ed.), A Survey of Contemporary Economics (Homewood, Ill.: Irwin, 1952).
P. A. Baran, ‘Discussion’ of J. J. Spengler, ‘The Population Obstacle to Economic Betterment’, American Economic Review 41, 1951, Papers and Proceedings, pp. 355–8.
P. A. Baran, ‘On the Political Economy of Backwardness’, Manchester School 20, 1952, pp. 66–84.
P. M. Sweezy, The Theory of Capitalist Development (New York: Monthly Review Press, 1970; first published 1942), pp. 278–86.
Ibid., p. 305; cf.
ibid., p. 326.
M. C. Howard and J. E. King, The Political Economy of Marx (Harlow: Longman, second edn, 1985), ch. 5;
V. Walsh and H. Gram, Classical and Neoclassical Theories of General Equilibrium (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1980).
Howard and King, op. cit., chs 4, 11.
P. A. Baran, The Political Economy of Growth (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1973; first published 1957), p. 156.
Ibid., p. 132.
P. A. Baran and P. M. Sweezy, Monopoly Capital (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1966; first published 1964), p. 23.
Ibid., pp. 355–74.
Monopoly Capital, pp. 80–1, 374. Baran and Sweezy do not explain the relevance of Phillips’s ratio, and the ratio of potential surplus to potential output might in fact be more appropriate. At some points in the Political Economy of Growth Baran seems close to asserting the law of rising surplus, but in others he appears to deny it (compare op. cit., pp. 176–7 and 258). On the falling rate of profit theory, see Howard and King, op. cit., ch. 11.
See especially W. J. Fellner, Competition Among the Few (New York: Kelley, 1965; first published 1949),
itself inspired by E. H. Chamberlin, The Theory of Monopolistic Competition (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1933).
Ibid., pp. 87–9; cf. Theory of Capitalist Development, pp. 186–9 and the critique by N. Georgescu-Roegen, ‘Mathematical Proofs of the Breakdown of Capitalism’, Econometrica 28, 1960, pp. 225–43.
Ibid., p. 132; cf. Baran and Sweezy, ‘Theses on Advertising’, in P. Baran, The Longer View (New York: Monthly Review Press, 1970), pp. 223–35.
B. Warren, Imperialism: Pioneer of Capitalism (London: New Left Books, 1980).
Sweezy, ‘Paul Alexander Baran’, op. cit., p. 41.
Baran to Sweezy, 30 June 1961 and 26 June 1963, in Huberman and Sweezy, Paul Baran, pp. 57, 60–1; Lifschultz, op. cit., pp. 55–6. The gory details were published in the Stanford Daily in 1971 after a ‘Pentagon Papers’-style leak of secret documents.
M. Bronfenbrenner, ‘Notes on Marxian Economics in the United States’, American Economic Review 54, 1964, pp. 1019–26;
G. J. Stigler, Essays in the History of Economics (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1965), p. 58.
M. Bronfenbrenner, review of The Political Economy of Growth, Journal of Political Economy 66, 1958, pp. 85–7.
A. N. Agarwala and S. P. Singh (eds), The Economics of Underdevelopment (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1958), pp. 75–92.
A. Brewer, Marxist Theories of Imperialism (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1980), chs 7–10;
M. C. Howard, ‘Fernand Braudel on Capitalism: a Theoretical Analysis’, Historical Reflections 12, 1985, pp. 469–83.
N. Kaldor, review of The Political Economy of Growth, American Economic Review 48, 1958, pp. 164–70;
J. Robinson, review, Nation 184, 1 June 1957, pp. 485–6;
M. Bronfenbrenner, review, op. cit., p. 86.
R. Heilbroner, ‘A Marxist America’, New York Review of Books, 26 May 1966, pp. 22–4. For a formal treatment of wages as partly a share in the surplus,
see P. Sraffa, The Production of Commodities By Means of Commodities (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1960), pp. 9–10.
R. L. Meek, review of Monopoly Capital, Economic Journal 77, 1967, pp. 114–16. (The Economic Journal carried no review of The Political Economy of Growth.)
Heilbroner, op. cit.,;
J. Tobin, The New Economics One Decade Older (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1974), pp. 41–51.
Robinson, op. cit., p. 485;
Kaldor, op. cit., p. 169.
J. Steindl, Maturity and Stagnation in American Capitalism (New York: Monthly Review Press, 1976; first published 1952), pp. 243–6;
R. Rowthorn, Demand, Real Wages and Economic Growth (London: Thames Polytechnic, 1981), pp. 28–30;
R. Stanfield, The Economic Surplus and Neo-Marxism (Lexington, Mass.: D. C. Heath, 1973).
W. J. Barclay Jr and M. Stengel, ‘Surplus and Surplus Value’, Review of Radical Political Economics 7, 1975, pp. 48–64; cf.
D. Horowitz, ‘Analyzing the Surplus’, Monthly Review 18, 1967, pp. 49–59.
D. Horowitz, ‘The Case for a Neo-Marxist Theory’, International Socialist Review 28, 1967, pp. 26–8;
M. Lebowitz, ‘Monopoly Capital’, Studies on the Left 6, 1966, pp. 61–71;
J. O’Connor, review of Monopoly Capital, New Left Review 40, 1966, pp. 38–50;
E. Mandel, ‘The Labour Theory of Value and “Monopoly Capitalism”’, International Socialist Review 28, 1967, pp. 29–42;
R. Stanfield, ‘A Revision of the Economic Surplus Concept’, Review of Radical Political Economics 6, 1974, pp. 69–74. The first to levy the charge of double-counting seems to have been ‘A Contributor’, review of The Political Economy of Growth, New Reasoner 3, 1957–8, pp. 119–23.
H. J. Sherman, review of Monopoly Capital, American Economic Review 56, 1966, pp. 919–21.
E. Mandel, ‘Surplus Capital and Realisation of Surplus Value’, International Socialist Review 27, 1967, pp. 56–64.
For a more critical appraisal see Warren, op. cit., and
Lebowitz, op. cit.
A balanced Marxist discussion is given by Brewer, op. cit., ch. 6.
Sherman, op. cit., p. 921.
Mandel, ‘Surplus Capital …’ N. Harris, Of Bread and Guns (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1983);
P. Auerbach and K. Skott, ‘A Critique of the Concept of “Monopoly Capital”’, mimeo., 1984.
O’Connor, op. cit.;
M. E. Sharpe, ‘Marx and Monopoly Capital: a Symposium’, Science and Society 30, 1966, pp. 461–70;
M. H. Dobb, ibid., pp. 470–5.
O. Nathan, ibid., pp. 487–96;
P. Mattick, ‘Marxism and “Monopoly Capital”’, Progressive Labor 6, 1967, pp. 34–49.
Mandel, Horowitz, articles cited above. See also E. Mandel, Europe Versus America (London: New Left Books, 1970).
See for example the use of extracts from Baran’s and Sweezy’s writings in two popular books of readings (D. Mermelstein (ed.), Economics: Mainstream Readings and Radical Critiques, New York: Random House, 1970, pp. 235–44, 309–14, 395–403, 542–52;
R. C. Edwards, M. Reich and T. Weisskopf (eds), The Capitalist System, London: Prentice-Hall, 1972, pp. 53–6, 161–8, 309–13, 435–42, 467–73); and the application of their concepts in an influential history of the labour process in the United States
(D. M. Gordon, R. C. Edwards and M. Reich, Segmented Work, Divided Workers: the Historical Transformation of Labor in the United States, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1982). There exists no European counterpart to any of these works in which the concept of monopoly capital is so prominent.
For a typical example see B. Fine and L. Harris, Re-Reading Capital (London: Macmillan, 1979).
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King, J.E. (1988). Paul A. Baran (1910–1964). In: Economic Exiles. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-07743-4_8
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