Paul Sweezy

Independent activity Academic Marxism 1910.4.10.–2004.2.27. ○ Natural causes

American Marxist economist who founded Monthly Review and co-wrote Monopoly Capital

Born in New York City, the son of a bank vice-president, Sweezy took his Harvard doctorate with a thesis on monopoly and competition. As a Harvard instructor he wrote The Theory of Capitalist Development (1942), the first book in English to deal thoroughly with Marx's labour theory of value and the transformation problem. He worked for the Office of Strategic Services (OSS) in 1942–45, left Harvard in 1947, and in 1949 founded the socialist magazine Monthly Review with Leo Huberman. In Monopoly Capital (1966), written with Paul Baran, he analysed the rising surplus and stagnation tendency of monopoly capitalism, and he later studied the financial explosion with Harry Magdoff. He died in 2004, aged 93.

Also known as: Paul Marlor Sweezy