Genesis of the Monopoly Capital Interpretation of U.S. Economy Dynamics

What is it about?

In the 1950s, Paul A. Baran was the only Marxist economist tenured at a major elite United States University (Stanford). On the other side of the county, Paul M Sweezy who had taught at Harvard in the 1940s but had left to found the independent socialist magazine Monthly Review, had already established himself as an internationally known Marxist economist himself. Beginning in the 1940s, these two men developed an intense personal and intellectual friendship which led to their joint work MONOPOLY CAPITAL (published in 1966 two years after Baran's untimely death). This article mines the book of their selected correspondence to trace the development of the analysis in Monopoly Capital --- work that built on their earlier writings which they believed had been incomplete and at times not well developed. In their correspondence, the reader can see the Monopoly Capital Interpretation of the dynamics of the US economy being developed step by step --- The article highlights those aspects of their correspondence that show how they were working out the analysis. (It also mentions that there is a lot more to the correspondence than what this article chose to focus on.)

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Why is it important?

Too few students of the US economy -- particularly in graduate programs -- even KNOW that there is a "Monopoly Capital" thesis of the dynamics of the US economy. That is a loss. If someone reads this article and is moved to check out the book of correspondence and that leads to actually reading Monopoly Capital, the reader will not be disappointed.

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