The Age of Monopoly Capital: Selected Correspondence of Paul M. Sweezy and Paul A. Baran, 1949-1964
The rich correspondence that preceded the publication of Monopoly Capital

Paul A. Baran and Paul M. Sweezy were two of the leading Marxist economists of the twentieth century. Their seminal work, Monopoly Capital: An Essay on the American Economic and Social Order, published in 1966, two years after Baran's death, was in many respects the culmination of fifteen years of correspondence between the two, from 1949 to 1964. During those years, Baran, a professor of economics at Stanford, and Sweezy, a former professor of economics at Harvard, then co-editing Monthly Review in New York City, were separated by three thousand miles. Their intellectual collaboration required that they write letters to one another frequently and, in the years closer to 1964, almost daily. Their surviving correspondence consists of some one thousand letters.

The letters selected for this volume illuminate not only the development of the political economy that was to form the basis of Monopoly Capital, but also the historical context—the McCarthy Era, the Cold War, the Cuban Missile Crisis—in which these thinkers were forced to struggle. Not since Marx and Engels carried on their epistolary correspondence has there has been a collection of letters offering such a detailed look at the making of a prescient critique of political economy—and at the historical conditions from which that critique was formed.

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The Age of Monopoly Capital: Selected Correspondence of Paul M. Sweezy and Paul A. Baran, 1949-1964
The rich correspondence that preceded the publication of Monopoly Capital

Paul A. Baran and Paul M. Sweezy were two of the leading Marxist economists of the twentieth century. Their seminal work, Monopoly Capital: An Essay on the American Economic and Social Order, published in 1966, two years after Baran's death, was in many respects the culmination of fifteen years of correspondence between the two, from 1949 to 1964. During those years, Baran, a professor of economics at Stanford, and Sweezy, a former professor of economics at Harvard, then co-editing Monthly Review in New York City, were separated by three thousand miles. Their intellectual collaboration required that they write letters to one another frequently and, in the years closer to 1964, almost daily. Their surviving correspondence consists of some one thousand letters.

The letters selected for this volume illuminate not only the development of the political economy that was to form the basis of Monopoly Capital, but also the historical context—the McCarthy Era, the Cold War, the Cuban Missile Crisis—in which these thinkers were forced to struggle. Not since Marx and Engels carried on their epistolary correspondence has there has been a collection of letters offering such a detailed look at the making of a prescient critique of political economy—and at the historical conditions from which that critique was formed.

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The Age of Monopoly Capital: Selected Correspondence of Paul M. Sweezy and Paul A. Baran, 1949-1964

The Age of Monopoly Capital: Selected Correspondence of Paul M. Sweezy and Paul A. Baran, 1949-1964

The Age of Monopoly Capital: Selected Correspondence of Paul M. Sweezy and Paul A. Baran, 1949-1964

The Age of Monopoly Capital: Selected Correspondence of Paul M. Sweezy and Paul A. Baran, 1949-1964

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Overview

The rich correspondence that preceded the publication of Monopoly Capital

Paul A. Baran and Paul M. Sweezy were two of the leading Marxist economists of the twentieth century. Their seminal work, Monopoly Capital: An Essay on the American Economic and Social Order, published in 1966, two years after Baran's death, was in many respects the culmination of fifteen years of correspondence between the two, from 1949 to 1964. During those years, Baran, a professor of economics at Stanford, and Sweezy, a former professor of economics at Harvard, then co-editing Monthly Review in New York City, were separated by three thousand miles. Their intellectual collaboration required that they write letters to one another frequently and, in the years closer to 1964, almost daily. Their surviving correspondence consists of some one thousand letters.

The letters selected for this volume illuminate not only the development of the political economy that was to form the basis of Monopoly Capital, but also the historical context—the McCarthy Era, the Cold War, the Cuban Missile Crisis—in which these thinkers were forced to struggle. Not since Marx and Engels carried on their epistolary correspondence has there has been a collection of letters offering such a detailed look at the making of a prescient critique of political economy—and at the historical conditions from which that critique was formed.


Product Details

ISBN-13: 9781583676523
Publisher: Monthly Review Press
Publication date: 07/24/2017
Pages: 544
Product dimensions: 6.50(w) x 9.30(h) x 1.70(d)

About the Author

John Bellamy Foster is a Professor Emeritus of Sociology at the University of Oregon and editor of Monthly Review. He has written many books including The Robbery of Nature (with Brett Clark) and The Return of Nature, which won the Deutscher Memorial Prize.

Table of Contents

Preface Nicholas Baran 7

Introduction John Bellamy Foster 13

Editors' Note on the Text 49

1 The Early Postwar Years, 1949-1952 55

2 The Cold War Years to 1956 99

3 A New Left Critique 145

4 The Search for a Method 195

5 The Magnum Opus and the Cuban Revolution 227

6 The Kennedy Years: Civilian Government Spending 257

7 Inflation, Imperialism, and the Cuban Missile Crisis 299

8 Here is Rhodes: Jump Here! 361

9 The Last Struggles 417

Chronology 473

Bibliography 479

Acknowledgments 491

Glossary of Names 493

Index 511

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