In Schumpeter's HISTORY OF ECONOMICS ANALYSIS he goes out of his way to praise Sweezy's THEORY OF CAPITALIST DEVELOPMENT --- though he complained that Sweezy was trying to "Keynesify Marx" and "Marxify Keynes" --- I always thought that was a great positive aspect of Sweezy's work --- which by the time he and Baran had developed the ideas more fully (the ideas of what happened to the dynamics of capitalism once the 19th century competitive model morphed into what Schumpeter called "trustified capitalism" and what (first Lenin then) Sweezy and Baran called MONOPOLY CAPITALISM) it was clear that Keynes' proof that deficiencies in aggregate demand would NOT be automatically remedied was the foundation of the idea that there was a long run tendency towards secular stagnation within monopoly capitalism.
Schumpeter certainly was an anti-socialist but he feared that socialism was the future --- he didn't realize the incredible political power that the capitalist class had -- even over democratic societies -- I personally think his original THE THEORY OF ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT (dont' remember when the first English translation was available) is one of the best ways to understand that capitalism grows by "fits and starts" and that the recession/depression phase of the business cycle was NECESSARY to knock less productive capital out of existence to clear the way for the next surge of innovation and investment. One of Baran and Sweezy's best statements was the idea that under monopoly capitalism, Schumpeter's "gale of creative destruction" had become a "mild breeze" which left the giants loaded down with excess capacity --- making the "automatic recovery" less likely and more sluggish. (Josef Steindl said the same thing in his Maturity and Stagnation in AMerican capitalism) -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=- Groups.io Links: You receive all messages sent to this group. View/Reply Online (#39474): https://groups.io/g/marxmail/message/39474 Mute This Topic: https://groups.io/mt/116463374/21656 -=-=- POSTING RULES & NOTES #1 YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. #2 This mail-list, like most, is publicly & permanently archived. #3 Subscribe and post under an alias if #2 is a concern. #4 Do not exceed five posts a day. -=-=- Group Owner: [email protected] Unsubscribe: https://groups.io/g/marxmail/leave/13617172/21656/1316126222/xyzzy [[email protected]] -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
