Paul M. Sweezy

From KeyWiki
Jump to navigation Jump to search
Paul Sweezy

Paul M. Sweezy is an icon of the US far left.

Scientific and Cultural Conference for World Peace

Paul M. Sweezy was a sponsor of the Scientific and Cultural Conference for World Peace which ran from March 25 - 27, 1949 in New York City. It was arranged by a Communist Party USA front organization known as the National Council of the Arts, Sciences, and Professions. The conference was a follow-up to a similar gathering, the strongly anti-America, pro-Soviet World Congress of Intellectuals which was held in Poland, August 25 - 28, 1948.[1]

Science & Society

Science & Society is a quarterly journal of Marxist thought and analysis. Published without interruption since its inception in 1936. With a press run of about 2,500 copies, the journal reaches 565 individual subscribers, of whom 475 are in the United States and 90 reside in other countries. S&S also has 800 library and other institutional subscribers, both in the United States and abroad.

In its early years, Science & Society played a unique role in providing a home for scholarship in the Marxist tradition. It attracted contributors from many countries, and was a major site of interaction among Marxist researchers in capitalist countries and those working in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe. The British "social relations of science" movement was well represented, including some of that school's leading figures, such as J. B. S. Haldane, Hyman Levy and J. D. Bernal. Also from Britain, political economists such asMaurice Dobb, and historians such as Eric Hobsbawn and Christopher Hill, contributed regularly; in this way, S&S played a role in the early development of the British Marxist Historians school. In the United States, leading figures in history, literature and the social sciences, such as Joyce Adler, Herbert Aptheker, M. F. Ashley Montagu, W. E. B. DuBois, Abraham Edel, Lewis S. Feuer, Philip S. Foner, Margaret George, Alvin W. Gouldner, Irving Louis Horowitz, Corliss Lamont, Eleanor Burke Leacock, Robert S. Lynd, Robert K. Merton, June Nash, Joan Robinson, and William Appleman Williams, among many others, wrote articles and reviews for the journal.

Science & Society was founded, after a developmental period of several years that involved two main centers: one group in Boston, led by the MIT mathematician Dirk Struik, and another in New York, with significant participation from faculty members at New York University. Founding editor Margaret Schlauch, the distinguished linguist and medievalist, was a member of the English Department at New York University, as was Edwin Berry Burgum, another S&S founding editor. Dr. Annette T. Rubinstein, who was not a founding editor but joined the Editorial Board in the 1960s and was active with the journal until her death in 2007 at age 97, also taught briefly at NYU, where there was a concentration of S&S activism in the first period of the journal's existence.

One particularly influential contribution arose as a result of Paul Sweezy's 1950 essay on Maurice Dobb's Studies in the Development of Capitalism, which developed into a full-fledged controversy involving, in addition to Dobb and Sweezy, Rodney Hilton, H. K. Takahashi, and Christopher Hill, subsequently published in book form as The Transition from Feudalism to Capitalism, under the editorship of Hilton. This "first round" debate in the theory of social transformation set the stage for the later "Brenner Debate" on the transition to capitalism, and has often been revisited in recent years in S&S.

In the early decades, Science & Society had a strong base in the non-academic political left, in a time when "ordinary" working people felt comfortable studying political economy, reading critiques of the leading mainstream intellectual figures of the time, or debating the "situation in the biological sciences" (S&S was an early critic of T. D. Lysenko). There were "friends of Science & Society" clubs in various cities throughout the United States, and the journal also achieved an international reputation. It should be noted that, while S&S was in (what could be called, in that period) the Marxist mainstream, and some of its authors were aligned with or sympathetic to the Communist parties, the journal has always been organizationally independent, never affiliated with or funded by any political party or institution.[2]

Socialist Scholars Steering Committee 1966

In 1966, the following served on the Steering Committee for the Socialist Scholars Conference 1966, held September 9-11 1966, at the Hotel Commodore, New York.[3]

Socialist Scholars Conference 1966

The Socialist Scholars Conference 1966, held September 9-11, at the Hotel Commodore, New York, included panels such as:[4]

Critique of Baran and Sweezy, Monopoly Capital

Dinner Address:

GI Civil Liberties Defense Committee

Circa 1969, Paul M. Sweezy, Monthly Review, New York , was listed as a sponsor of the Socialist Workers Party led GI Civil Liberties Defense Committee .[5]

In The Times Founding sponsors

In 1976 founding sponsors of the Institute for Policy Studies/New American Movement linked socialist journal were;

Palestine Human Rights Campaign

A brochure came out in early 1978 announcing "A National Organizing Conference" sponsored by the Palestine Human Rights Campaign to be held on May 20-21, 1978, at American University, with the theme of "Palestinian Human Rights and Peace".

The list of "Sponsors" was a mix of a several groupings including the Communist Party USA and its sympathizers, the World Peace Council, the Hanoi Lobby, black extremists, mainly marxists, radical Christians, and Arab/Arab-American organizations, plus a few phone-booth sized pro-Palestinian Christian groups.

Individual sponsors of the event included Paul Sweezy Monthly Review.

URPE/Economics Society of the New School Conference on Soviet Union

A "Conference on the Nature of the Soviet Union and Its Role in the World Today" was scheduled for March 17, 1979 in New York City, and was co-sponsored by the Union for Radical Political Economics URPE andthe Economics Society of the New School.

It was divided into both a Morning Session and Afternoon Workshops, to be held at the Washington Irving High School and then the New School for Social Research respectively. The notice appeared in the March 14, 1979 issue of the "Guardian", the U.S. maoist-oriented radical weekly.

Morning Session Speakers:

  • Paul Sweezy - Editor, Monthly Review
  • Victor Perlo - author of forthcoming "Dynamic Stability: The Soviet Economy Today" (and id. Soviet spy, id. CPUSA member), later the open leader of the CPUSA's "Economics Commission"
  • Noel Ignatin - author of "No Condescending Saviors", and (well known marxist)
  • Michael Zweig - SUNY Stony Brook, contributor to "How Capitalism Has Been Restored in the Soviet Union and What This Means for the World Struggle", (another well known marxist)

New American Movement

In 1981, Paul Sweezy, Bobbye Oritz, Harry Magdoff and Jules Geller of the Monthly Review magazine congratulated the New American Movement on the occasion of its 10th anniversary.[7]

Socialist Scholars Conference 1990

The Socialist Scholars Conference 1990, held September 6-8, at the Hotel Commodore, New York, included panels such as:[8]

Is Socialism a Real Alternative in the Third World

Socialist Scholars Conference 1992

Paul Sweezy, Monthly Review, Daniel Singer, European Correspondent for the Nation, Samir Amin, Senegal and Leo Panitch, York University, Toronto were speakers on the Globalization and Delinking panel sponsored by Monthly Review and Socialist Register at the Tenth Annual Socialist Scholars Conference. The conference was held April 24-26, 1992 at the Borough of Manhattan Community College, New York City[9]

Socialist Scholars 1997

In March 28-30 1997 Democratic Socialists of America convened their annual Socialist Scholars Conference at Borough of Manhattan Community College, New York.

The conference was themed "Radical alternatives on the eve of the millenium".

Invitees were asked to join Doug Henwood, Robert Heilbroner, Paul Sweezy, Harry Magdoff, Bill Tabb, Frances Fox Piven, Robert Fitch, Jane Slaughter and Ellen Meiksins Wood "as they debate changes in the labor movement, Marxist theory, the state of the economy, market socialism, and other areas where theory and practice meet".

Or "listen to the United States' only independent and socialist congressman", Rep. Bernie Sanders, "dialogue with" Joel Rogers of the New Party and In These Times' ....Salim Muwakkil on independent politics..[10].

References

  1. ↑ Review of the Scientific and Cultural Conference for World Peace by the Committee on Un-American Activities, U.S. House of Representatives, Washington, D.C., April 19, 1949
  2. ↑ http://www.scienceandsociety.com/history.html
  3. ↑ Second Annual Socialist Scholars Conference program.
  4. ↑ Second Annual Socialist Scholars Conference program.
  5. ↑ Undated, GI Civil Liberties Defense Committee letterhead circa 1969
  6. ↑ [1] In These Times home page, accessed March 6, 2010
  7. ↑ 10th Anniversary Booklet for the New American Movement, 1981
  8. ↑ Second Annual Socialist Scholars Conference program.
  9. ↑ SSE Tenth Annual Conference Program, 1992
  10. ↑ http://archives.econ.utah.edu/archives/pen-l/1997m03.d/msg00084.htm
Retrieved from "https://keywiki.org/index.php?title=Paul_M._Sweezy&oldid=617627"