I didn't get through all the many comments, because their quality was so low. Almost all of them seemed to be by reflexive anti-anti-Communists who showed no sign of actually knowing anything about Professor Sweezy. The comments with any value to any reader lost most of their value by being embedded in garbage, thus deterring most readers--perhaps all but the ones who like to write more garbage, an interesting example of bad positive feedback. There might have been some halfway-intelligent Marxist who wrote something that would actually have helped Sweezy's reputation -- maybe Sweezy repudiated Stalin in 1965, for example-- but the Marxists who didn't make it to halfway would have hid it.
Skimming, I did see a couple of things, though. One was that somebody posted the New York Times (R) review. It was pretty much like the Guardian review I linked to and quoted from in my post of yesterday--- conventional biographical details and pleasant words with no mention of anything unsavory, leaving the reader with the impression that an important economist had died.
Another was this:
I have read very little written by P Sweezy actually nothing written
before 1989. Then I read an article in L'Unita (no longer official organ
of the Italian communist party but still 100% owned by the Italian
communist party). L'Unita had a generally favourable view of the events
1989 but they wanted to give the other view --roughly that it was a
stumble on the path to the Red Dawn. I think they had trouble finding an
Italian willing to say that. Paul Sweezy had no doubt about the
eventual triumph of communism in 1989.
Perhaps this is why the Times and Guardian
obituaries didn't have anything like
"Professor Sweezy later regretted his youthful enthusiasm for Soviet Russia, but
continued to support progressive causes." Modern leftwing journalists know that people
aren't supposed to admire Stalin, but also that (a) It's fine, and even admirable,
to have supported Stalin if you said you were sorry later, and (b) If someone
supported Stalin then and continued for his entire life, the polite thing is not to
mention it. My guess is that a year's youthful admiration for Hitler or Mussolini
would get some mention, with or without repentance later-- and rightly so.
[in full at 04.03.07a.htm . Erasmusen@yahoo.com. ]
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